Path of Exile 2 Defense guide: Energy Shield, Armor, and Evasion explained

In Path of Exile 2, defenses and resistances are an inescapable thing you'll have to account for in any build. Regardless of whether you're a caster or an up-front brawler, you will eventually be compelled to facetank damage in this game. Taking damage is inevitable throughout many points in the six-Act campaign, and even more so in the zerg-prone endgame.

The three main ways you can tank up are Energy Shield, Armor, and Evasion (discounting raw Life). While these elements are common in ARPGs, Path of Exile 2 makes their interaction with incoming damage a bit complex, especially with the Armor stat. The character sheet gives you an overall estimated value of how durable you ought to be, but it's not explained well enough.

In this guide, we'll explain all defensive avenues you can mix and match to increase your durability in Path of Exile 2.

Path of Exile 2 Defenses explained: How does Energy Shield, Armor, and Evasion work?

Before we discuss the defensive layers, the first and most obvious gauge of durability is, of course, Life. The Strength attribute in Path of Exile 2 gives a measly +2 Life for each point, so it does not scale it much by itself. Instead, those who want a higher Life pool will have to pad it out with + Maximum Life affixes on their gear.

Martial classes who do not scale INT and therefore cannot gain much Energy Shield will have to invest quite a bit into Life. However, even with a 4k Life pool, your raw EHP does not let you facetank bosses due to the limited Physical damage mitigation. To explain why, we have to discuss how Armor works in Path of Exile 2.

How does the Armor formula function in Path of Exile 2?

Armor is highly ineffective to stack (Image via GGG)

Armor is mainly gained from gear that requires STR to put on, and it is advertised as a tool to directly mitigate Physical damage from hits.

While that's true on paper, Armor in Path of Exile 2 does not give you a consistent amount of physical damage resistance. Instead, the amount of damage mitigation you get depends on the magnitude of the singular physical damage instance relative to your total Armor.

Theoretically, the maximum amount of damage you can mitigate is 90% of a physical damage instance. However, to reach that value, your Armor needs to be considerably higher than the individual physical damage from the hits you take.

Based on verifiable calculations done by Reddit user Bluedot55, the Armor Formula for Path of Exile 2 is as follows:

Damage Resistance from a specific hit = Armor / Armor + (12 x Incoming Physical damage from the hit)

On average, a full-fledged Armor-centric build in the endgame of Path of Exile 2 will realistically top out at about 25,000 total Armor. Against regular monster packs, this amount is good enough to be unkillable, at least by standard melee or projectile hits.

However, a low-tier map boss attack in the endgame will hit for at least 3,000 damage and the same amount of Armor will only prevent 40% of it. With bigger area-damage hits that cannot be blocked, the damage can easily go up to 5,000, where you'll potentially get into one-shot territory if your raw Life is not big enough.

Theoretically, it's possible to stack Armor much higher. But you will give up a lot of your gearing flexibility in that process to get a degree of durability achievable far more easily via other alternatives.

Note that Path of Exile 2 also has an independent % of Physical Damage prevented affix that is additive to damage reduction from Armor.

What does Armor defend you from?

The damage resistance from Armor in Path of Exile 2 applies against all Physical hits. This includes all melee attacks (including AoE slams that deal purely Physical damage) and projectile attacks. Spells that deal Physical damage also count towards this resistance. However, it does not defend directly against Physical DoT (i.e. Bleed Ailment), but since the Bleed is based on the initial hit, the DoT is less deadly.

How does Evasion work in Path of Exile 2?

Evasion cannot be higher than 95% deterministically (Image via GGG)

Evasion in Path of Exile 2 is conceptually the simplest defense avenue to understand. The character sheet gives you an estimated chance to Evade, but this varies based on the specific monster you face.

While the exact formula has not been discovered yet, the general idea is that if your Evasion Rating is much higher than a monster's Accuracy rating, you are likely to evade their attacks. Generally, monster Accuracy increases with monster level, so you'll need a higher Evasion Rating against higher-level opponents.

Rather than relying on true RNG, Evasion uses a weighted entropy-based system that ensures you will get hit at least once every 20 hit attempts from monsters. This is because the Evasion cap is 95%, i.e. a monster's chance to hit cannot be lower than 5%.

In practice, unless there are Magic or Rare monsters with the "Always Hits" or "Accurate" modifier, Evasion is quite useful against melee strikes and projectile hits.

Which attacks does Evasion defend you from?

Evasion works against melee strikes and projectile hits, regardless of whether they would deal Physical or Elemental damage. With the Acrobatics Keystone Passive, its scope also extends to slam attacks and Spells (those without DoT).

However, there seem to be limitations on what Spells you can Evade with Acrobatics—in general, Evasion only works against Spells having a projectile that comes at you horizontally. Those channeled to materialize on the ground such as Asinia's Rite of the Full Moon do not count.

What is Passive Block Chance in Path of Exile 2?

Block Chance is another method of outright damage prevention similar to Evasion in Path of Exile 2. Other than the active blocking system, wielding a Shield in your off-hand also gives you a passive Block Chance (generally starting at 25%, going up to a hard cap of 75%). Dual-wielding martial weapons also give you at least a 20% passive Block Chance.

Unlike Evasion, though, Block Chance does not have any weighted roll system as it is rolled individually against all hits. This can passively defend you against all non-DoT damage instances that do not have an AoE, including Spells, strikes, and projectile hits.

The Glancing Blows Keystone Passive turns blocked hits into instances of flat 50% damage resistance rather than damage avoidance, but also doubles your current block chance (which still cannot bypass the 75% cap). This 50% damage resistance applies after any other resistances you have for that damage type.

How does Energy Shield work in Path of Exile 2?

Energy Shield is essentially the same as Life in Path of Exile 2, except you cannot recharge it with Flasks. Instead, you have to rely on a natural Energy Shield recharge rate that kicks in after an activation delay. Both of these can be buffed with numerous nodes in the Passive Tree, which lets classes gain significantly more out of Energy Shield than they would out of raw Life.

The only big weakness of Energy Shield is the Chaos Damage type, which is by default twice as damaging to Energy Shield than it is to Life. The Chaos Inoculation Keystone Passive eliminates this downside by making you immune to all Chaos damage, at the cost of setting your max Life to 1.

Eternal Youth is another Keystone that synergizes with this, letting your Life Flasks regenerate Energy Shield rather than Life.

As for interaction with other damage, Energy Shield is no different from Life. Both receive full mitigation from Elemental Resistance and Armor if you get hit.

What are Elemental Resistances in Path of Exile 2?

Elemental Resistances are probably the easiest defensive layer to understand. They are the only way to mitigate Elemental damage, i.e. Fire, Lightning, Cold, and Chaos. The cap on these resistances is 75%, but certain Passives and Uniques can increase them to 90%.

Increasing Elemental Resistances also helps you avoid Ailments from those Elements since their proc chance is based on the incoming damage of the Element.

Why you should use Resistance Conversion in Path of Exile 2

Gear affixes and Passive nodes can give you a special modifier that converts a percentage of Physical Damage to a given Elemental Damage. For example, the Cloak of Flames unique will convert 40% of all incoming Physical Damage to Fire Damage. This is useful if you have low Armor but high Elemental Resistances, functionally making you far more durable against Physical Damage than Armor can.

Check out our other guides on the game:

Edited by Virat Fumakia