My previous guide had some success despite some misinformation that made it in the final draft (Reflected damage is not considered your damage, it will not apply Damaging/Non Damaging Ailments and it will not leech for you). I decided to make a defensives guide, but as usual, if you see any inconsistency or misinformation, please make sure to comment and point it out.

There are many defensive layers you could get in the world of Last Epoch. I will focus on the following: Armor, Block, Dodge, Endurance, Resists, Ward, % Damage Reduction and More Damage Reduction. I will also point out which natural defenses classes can make use of, as well as include some niche approaches that might not fit thematically with what those classes are supposed to do.

If you want to pursue the absolute hardest content and succeed, you will need to layer your defensives. Unless there is an absurd mechanics that will be immediately nerfed (such as gaining hundreds of thousands of Ward), no one Defense mechanic can save you from death, but several of them combined surely can.

Before we begin, a short glossary:

-HIT will mean any melee, thrown or spell that has a Hit component (in other words, something that connects physically to your character, doing flat damage)

-DAMAGING AILMENT will mean any damage over time ability, be it a spell, melee, ranged or thrown hit. A Damaging Ailment will do damage, but will not be considered a HIT. Common examples include Ignite, Frostbite, Electrify, Poison, Bleed and so forth.

Armor

Armor is a lot more efficient in LE than in other games. It is 100% effective versus Physical Hits and 70% effective versus non-Physical Hits (such as Void, Necrotic, Cold, Fire, Lightning Hits). It has 0 value versus Damaging Ailments since they bypass Armor. Yes, even Bleed, despite being a Physical Damaging Ailment, will bypass all of your Armor, because it is not a Hit. The majority of the playerbase prefer simply to not sit in dangerous puddles, so not a lot of emphasis is being put on Damaging Ailments to begin with. Which makes Armor a perfectly valid way to build your defenses.

This graph will show you the effectiveness of Armor a different values and against Physical and Non-Physical Hits https://lastepoch.tunklab.com/armor . We can clearly see there are diminishing returns. This means it will be easier for certain classes to stack Armor and harder for others. The good news is, it will provide a tangible % damage reduction even if the total Armor value you have is low.

Classes that excel at stacking Armor: Forgeguard, Druid (ridiculous synergy, just ask Perry the Pig!)

Classes that can still benefit greatly from Armor: Paladin, Shaman, Beast Master

Classes that can use Armor as an extra layer of defense: Rogue (Shift + Shurikens offers some 24% reduction from Armor for Physical Hits and around 18% for non-Physical Hits), Mage, Spellblade

Do not forget the Spirits of Fire and Age of Winter Blessing if you pursue Armor as a main defense. For those skills that are Channeled, the best improvement comes from the Spirits of Fire Blessing.

Block

Block is, again, deceptively strong in Last Epoch. It is similar to armor, does nothing versus Damaging Ailments, but against Hits? It is quite good.

Before you think to yourselves "I don't play with a class that can Block naturally, no passives to support it", let me show you some math:

Ironglass Shield (35% Block Chance) + Tier 5 Block Chance (12%) + Rings and Gloves with Tier 5 Block Chance & Effectiveness (3% on each one) = 56% Block Chance and 40% Block Effectiveness with ZERO passives.

There is no entropy system that I know of regarding Block in Last Epoch, so in effect that 56% chance to block will always be a 56% chance to block (when reaching maximum level of your character; before that you are penalized when area level is higher). This already pushes over half the Hits from doing full damage. We just sacrificed 3 Suffixes on the jewelry (which would be replaced with Resists/Endurance mostly) and a Prefix on a Shield (we don't have many good Prefix options for damage, so for non Melee, non Physical builds you can just use Block Chance + Block Effectiveness).

Just like Armor, Block has some harsh diminishing returns. You also need to invest in Block Chance AND Block Effectiveness (how much % damage reduction does a Blocked Hit offer; the more the better). The good news is, on Rings and on Gloves it comes as a package, both values in one affix. This is also true for some of the Block passives some classes such as Sentinel get. So it is not such a harsh investment as you might think, besides the obvious damage compromise: you do more damage when dual wielding or using a 2 handed weapon than with a 1 hand weapon and a Shield, regardless of your character being melee or caster. Here is a graph showing you how effective Block mitigation is versus investment: https://lastepoch.tunklab.com/block

And here, I must add the one item I have been searching for in the past 2 weeks: Bastion. This shield is nutty. It gets you 100% Block chance from nearby enemies, and you can see the range when equipping it. It ALSO gets you some decent Block Effectiveness and up to -14% Damage reduction on TOP. For most classes, equipping this is like a 30% Damage reduction boost at the minimum, before any investment. If you have the patience to farm for one, it will be hard to not equip it on anything. Remember, a dead DPS does no DPS!

Remember the Age of Winter Blessing if you use a Shield! It greatly increases the benefits. There is no % Block Chance Blessing... yet.

Dodge

Dodge is binary: either it is there for you or it isn't. That being said, it is perfect mitigation against Hits: all attacks and spells thrown at you will deal 0 damage if Dodged. There are some specific mechanics that cannot be Dodged, such as Julra's one-shot big circle thing. But they are very rare.

Dodge will also NOT work on Damaging Ailments. Sitting in a puddle of Poison will not work with Dodge, it will simply stack Poison instances on you. It also has diminishing returns. You can consult the values here: https://lastepoch.tunklab.com/dodge

Classes that excel at stacking Dodge: Rogue (any tree).

Classes that can still benefit greatly from Dodge: Shaman, Beast Master, Spellblade, Sorceror

I must also mention here Apostacy, the Blade Dancer passive. If you stack layers of defense, like you should, getting to 100% Glancing Blows might be better for you than 60% plus Dodge. Glancing blows reduces any hit against you by 35%.

Remember the Black Sun and Spirits of Fire Blessings if you choose this as your main Defensive layer.

Endurance. And Endurance Threshold

Endurance is a newer kid on the block and it does its job quite well. Endurance is a % damage reduction that kicks in at a certain value of your HP; by default this value is 20%, and the absolute limit is 60% damage reduction; any more than that is wasted. Your Endurance Threshold will tell you when the value is reached for the damage reduction to kick in.

Endurance ONLY WORKS ON LIFE! It will not protect Ward or Mana (for Mage, where you can use an Affix that makes a % of incoming damage be taken from Mana before Health). This also means it is useless on Low life toons (those builds that sacrifice life to get Ward instead, meaning constant low life values). Once your ward is gone, you are left with <100 HP and most likely die to a gentle breeze.

Every class has a default value for Endurance, 20% damage reduction, and it will be activated once your character reaches 20% of its maximum health. This can be improved by taking the following passives:

Endurance in the Druid tree, +14% Endurance (so from the base 20% up to 34%)

Hideskin in the Druid tree, +10% of maximum life as Endurance Threshold (so 30% of Maximum life is now the value at which Endurance kicks in)

Life in the Wilderness in the Beastmaster tree, +80 Endurance Threshold

Avian Shelter in the Beastmaster tree, +140 Endurance Threshold.

Bliding Light in the Paladin tree, +14% Endurance

Prayer Aegis in the Paladin tree, + 72 Endurance Threshold

The more Endurance Threshold you have, the sooner the Damage Reduction from Endurance will kick in (up to 60% damage reduction if sufficiently low on HP).

Classes that excel at stacking Endurance and Endurance Threshold: Primalist (all trees), Paladin

Classes that can still benefit greatly from Endurance: all of them. Even if you just cap Endurance, the 60% Damage Reduction is really, really good in harder content, because when your character reaches 20% HP it will kick in and offer great survivability versus one shots.

Remember the Spirits of Fire and Age of Winter Blessings if you want to support Endurance as a main defensive layer!

Resists

Oh boy, lots of misconceptions and false info floating around.

Let's set up the basic rules here:

1. The 75% cap a Resist can have is always active. There is no reason to go beyond 75% Resist of any type, as long as you account for the occasional Resist reduction some mobs apply!
2. Resists are NOT as important as in other games. They are 100% efficient versus Hits or Damaging Ailments, meaning they do offer some protection versus DoTs as well. But they are calculated as such: mobs get 1% penetration against your Resists per area level (they reduce your value by 1 per area level); this goes up, on and on, until mobs do no bonus damage to you, as long as you have capped (75%) resistances. Being under capped will not lead to stupid one shots from a tiny mob, and as a rule of thumb, you can consider the % missing as a % increase in the hit a mob would apply to you; missing 5% Fire resist? You take 5% increased damage from all Fire damage, as long as only Resists are concerned and no other layer.

So. Resists are generically good, but because they go against the mob's natural Resist penetration, they are not as important as the other layers described here.

If you need help to cap resists, Reign of Dragons is the Blessing you want.

Ward

Not in a great spot, but meet our Energy Shield, folks. Ward, just like Endurance, is a two part mechanic. You can gain Ward, but you also lose it at a steady pace. For that, you must invest in Ward Retention. This will slow down the loss of Ward until it plateaus around a balanced point: your passive Ward generation equals your Ward loss, so the number is stable.

Ward is NOT protected by Endurance! It is also a bit different than basic HP, since once it is gone you don't have a lot of tools to get large numbers back up again (Flame Ward is an exception, it can provide huge Ward values on activation). With HP, you can also benefit from leech as it directly replenishes your main defensive. For Ward, we do not have the luxury. In fact, many builds have to sacrifice extra affixes (such as % of Potions converted to Ward) to balance out the effects. With some niche exceptions, Ward on top of Life is meh, and Ward gained from Life is a more expensive investment than currently acceptable, at least to me.

You can calculate your stable Ward here: https://lastepoch.tunklab.com/ward Remember to factor in the Ward Retention from Intelligence (4% per point of Intelligence)

Now, as for building it as a layer of defense, you need to consider the following:

Passive ward generation. This can be completely passive (such as Bloodrust Aegis, an off-hand that generates up to 40 ward per second), passive trees, skill nodes, or conditional (such as Idols with % chance to gain 30 ward when hit). You must also invest in Ward Retention. A good rule of thumb for Ward Retention would be over 200% value, but it depends on specific builds and gear. Some classes get some nice Ward boosts and fight to keep it high (such as the Spriggan from from Druid or Spellblade) or can generate a steady income of Ward (such as Sorceror).

Classes that excel at stacking Ward: Mage (any tree), Druid (again Perry, thanks!)

Classes that can still benefit greatly from Ward: any class that can farm Julra 4 and gets Vessel of Strife. This Unique Relic will get you up to 66% of Health regeneration as Ward generation (for every 100 life regen you get 66 Ward generation per second). Most classes have some small benefits to Ward generation or retention, but there was little support before this Unique. Now you can finally make that Ward Rogue build that was so close, but so far.

Now I know that I was quite quick with Ward, and I did not cover all of the passives/items, but compared to the other defensive layers, Ward is decently well represented and it would have implied a much longer post. As such, feel free to PM me if you have specific questions or maybe there are some tricks you need to be able to push further on your Ward build.

% Damage Reduction versus More Damage Reduction

When it comes to Defensives, linear % reduction is better than more damage reduction. Allow me to show you.

Scenario 1. A mob hits us for 1000 Physical Damage. I have a source of 20% Less damage and another source of 20% Less damage. Lets assume no other defenses, no Armor, no resists, nothing.

I will get hit with 1000 x 80% x 80% = 640 total damage taken.

Scenario 2. A mob hits us for 1000 Physical Damage. I have a source of 20% Reduced damage and another source of 20% Reduced damage. Like in Scenario 1, we assume no other defenses, no Armor, no resists, nothing.

I will get hit with 1000 - 200 - 200 = 600 total damage taken.

Now that we got that out of the way, % Damage Reduction is a great, safe way to dramatically improve survivability. It comes in the form of Passives (Armor Clad from Sentry, -10% Damage taken, Ursine Strength from Primalist, -16% Damage taken, both from nearby enemies), temporary buffs (Boar Heart in Beastmaster, -15% damage taken after being melee hit, can be upgraded to -30% with Porcine Constitution and Prefixes + Idols for Aspect of the Boar effect, a % increase in the damage reduction) or even a conditional requirement (25% less damage taken while moving from Evasion, in the Rogue tree; not as good as linear %, since it is a less modifier, but every bit counts!).

The other major source are Unique items. Since there aren't many of them, I will just list them here:

-Ravenous Void (The Last Ruin from Elder Gaspar, Very Rare OR Ending the Storm, EXTREMELY RARE)

-Wings of Argentus (The Stolen Lance final boss, Rare)

-Bastion (The Black Sun, Very Rare)

-Lessons of the Metropolis (Spirits of Fire, Common): 5% less damage taken while moving, it ain't much but being a Common Unique, you should see +2 Legendary Potential sometimes in this life time. The Hybrid Health on Boots can make up for the lack of other stats quite well!

I would also be amiss to forget another item with great potential, Aurora's Time Glass. Once attack and reaching 30% life, it will bring you back to full life, the missing life will be turned to Ward, you will gain Haste (30% movement speed) and all nearby enemies will be slowed. 20 second CD cheat death. Tyty, please don't abuse it!

As an example of layering defense, and as a way to introduce to you the Effective Health Pool calculator that Tunk graciously built for us, let me leave you with an example of defensive layers for my Blade dancer:

https://lastepoch.tunklab.com/ehp?p=100_2000_0_780_75_0_100_1900_100_60_240

This will greatly help you in finding out and perhaps fixing weaknesses your build might have.

Again, if you find out any inconsistencies or maybe mistakes, please make sure to point them out. I was more thorough with some of the defensive mechanics than others, that's also on me. I still hope this helps newer players when making builds, so enjoy!

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