PoE 2 Defences Basics: How to Stay Alive

In Path of Exile 2, building well-rounded defences requires having a character with multiple layers of protection that can be used to avoid and reduce incoming damage, and recover lost life after taking damage. This guide will help you to understand how to think about building your character's defences so that you don't overlook anything important.

Before we discuss defences, we need to understand, on a basic level, the types of damage a character can encounter in Path of Exile 2.

• Hits (Physical and Elemental): an attack from an enemy that hits your character. All spells and melee attacks against players are considered "attacks" in Path of Exile 2. Examples might include being shot by an arrow from an archer, big Area of Effect slams from bosses, or firebolts being cast from enemy mages
• Damage Over Time: certain status ailments and ground effects can apply damage over time and require a different set of defences to counter. Examples include poison, ignite, burning ground

To become tanky and have good defences in PoE 2, you need to think of incoming damaging as a process with an order of operation. Your defences are like an onion: once one layer has been stripped, you need to have something behind it to reduce incoming damage further. Let's break it down:

1. Avoidance: Can you avoid getting hit or taking damage entirely?
2. Mitigation: When you do get hit, how much damage do you take?
3. HP: After the damage has been applied, do you have enough life to stay alive?
4. Recovery: After you have survived a hit, can you recover the life that was lost?

And of course, a good offence also acts as a good defence: do you have the damage to kill the thing that is attacking you? If you can neutralise the enemy before they can hit you, they won't be able to damage you. Because this article is more about defensive layers, I won't discuss damage further, but damage absolutely can be considered as a part (not a whole) of a good defence.

The first layer of your onion defence is avoidance: can you avoid taking damage entirely?

The most obvious form of avoidance is Evasion Rating, which gives you a chance to evade dodgeable enemy attacks, preventing any incoming damage. In a few cases, it is possible for characters to forego primary avoidance layers in lieu of having more powerful mitigation layers, but the majority of well-rounded characters will have some form of an avoidance layer.

Primary Avoidance Layers

• Evasion Rating (Armours): % increased Evasion Rating from the Tree and gear as well as from Buff Gems such as Wind Dancer
  
• Block (Shields): includes both passive block and active block while using Raise Shield
  
• Movement Speed (Boots) - being able to move swiftly around the battlefield means you can get out of the way of potential damage
• Mechanical Skill (You) - if you're able to maneuver your character and dodge roll well, you can avoid getting hit

Secondary Avoidance Layers

There is also a secondary type of avoidance to prevent being inflicted by certain status ailments. These ailments and status effects you'll commonly encounter are:

• Non-Damaging Ailments: Freeze and Chill, Shock and Electrocute
• Damaging Ailments: Ignite, Bleed, Poison
• Stun
• Slow

Currently, the predominant way to avoid these effects is by using Charms or by allocating specific points on your tree, but some examples include:

• Ailment/Stun Threshold: your chance to avoid, or reduce the effect of ailments and stun. For Stun, Unwavering Stance doubles your stun threshold, while passive points on the tree such as Natural Immunityor Feel the Earth can improve your Ailment Threshold. Also remember that Stun and Ailment threshold modifiers exist on items
• Immunity: There are currently very limited ways to become entirely immune to specific ailments, but an examples would be an item like Dream Fragments, or Chaos Inoculation to become Immune to Chaos Damage
• Counters (Charms): Used when you become frozen/shocked/ignited/poisoned/bleeding/stunned

Tertiary Avoidance Layers

Another way to avoid taking damage from enemies is to slow or incapacitate them. This can be done in a few ways

• Freeze
• Stun
• Electrocute

Important Note

Evasion Rating and Avoidance only goes so far. Certain abilities from enemies cannot be evaded, especially slams from bosses, as well as damage over time effects. Acrobatics is one way to make your Evasion Rating function against all Hits, but you'll still need solutions for damage over time, and reducing incoming damage from hits that do land

Once your Avoidance layers have been bypassed by an enemy, you will be hit and you'll need to find ways to mitigate (reduce), incoming Physical, Elemental and Chaos damage.

Physical Mitigation

Reducing incoming Physical Damage from hits can be done in a number of ways:

• Armour: the stat Armour that comes from gear and the passive tree
• Taken As: Physical taken as Elemental with items such as
• Reduced Damage Taken: there are some sources that grant a flat reduced amount of damage taken from hits. An example would be an item such as Ashrend
  

Elemental and Chaos Mitigation

• Elemental Resistances: having higher Elemental and Chaos Resistances means that you'll take less damage from damage sources of those types. Increasing your Maximum Resistances with gear or Passives such as Unnatural Resilience can further improve your Elemental and Chaos mitigation

Generic Mitigation

There are some other sources of reducing incoming damage such as "#% less damage taken"

• The Dancing Mirage
  
• Bulwark
  
• Heartstopper
  
• Enfeeble
  

Once you have taken damage from a hit, you need to have the HP to sustain it. There are different forms of "Life" that exist in PoE 2, but having more means you'll be able to survive for longer:

Life

• # to Maximum or % increased Maximum Life modifiers on gear
• % increased Maximum Life on the Passive Tree (currently very limited, hopefully more will be added soon)
• Strength

Energy Shield

• Energy Shield from gear
• % increased Energy Shield on the Passive Tree
• Overflow with Grim Feast and Meditate
  

Mana

Mind Over Matter can be used to convert your Mana into a pseudo-life pool and Mana can be scaled with:

• Flat and % increased Mana on gear and the Passive Skill Tree
• 
  

After surviving a damaging hit, you'll need to recover the life that was lost. Recovery is one of the most overlooked forms of defence and is often the reason why many builds end up feeling squishy. Having a robust recovery layer is very important to any well-rounded build. Recovery is also very important as it is a strong counter to damage over time effects, which many players struggle dealing with.

Active and Passive Recovery

There are two forms of Recovery in PoE 2: active and passive.

Active Recovery allows a player to regain Life, Energy Shield or Mana by completing an action or after something has happened that triggered the recovery

Passive Recovery will recover lost resources in the background, even while the character is idle

Active Recovery Layers

• Leech and Life Gained on Hit
• Life and Mana Flasks
• Recoup

Passive Recovery Layers

• Life Regeneration: flat or % per second, Life Regeneration Rate, Gems such as Vitality
  
• Mana Regeneration: from the Passive Tree, , Items and Gems such as Clarity, Arcane Surge or Font of Mana
  
• Energy Shield: Faster Start of Energy Shield Recharge, Energy Shield Recharge Rate

Of course, it's impossible for all characters to have all defence types and layers simultaneously and you'll need to pick and choose which best work for your build. If you're playing a Dexterity character such as the Monk, your defensive setup might look something like this:

1. Avoidance: Evasion Rating, scaled with the Passive Tree, items and Wind Dancer. High Movement Speed and Charms to avoid certain ailments. Another avoidance layer includes Freeze from Ice Strike
2. Mitigation: Elemental Resistances for Elemental mitigation, ...and Protect me from Harm for Physical mitigation, and Chaos Inoculation for Chaos Immunity
3. HP: Using Energy Shield instead of Life and scaling it with gear and the Passive Tree, Grim Feast to Overflow our maximum Energy Shield
4. Recovery: Life Flask with Eternal Youth, Grim Feast to recover lost Energy Shield. Ghost Dance can also be used for bossing

And of course, the Monk has plenty of damage to destroy any enemies that try to get too close.

As you can see, even though we discussed several defensive layers and types in this guide, one doesn't need all of them to have a solid defence. Try to look at a build you've been struggling with or felt was too squishy - are you missing any of these layers?

Understanding exactly how much of each layer of defence will come with time and experience. Of course, more is always better, but don't forget that damage is also part of the equation and you won't be able to succeed if you invest entirely into your defences.

If you'd like to learn more about damage and defences, you can read this article from Dreamcore about Damage and Defence: Full Order of Operations