To use ES or not to use ES

[Mule]

I'm in the process of making a PvP lightning sorc non-ladder. So far the plan is to Max lightning (well doh), chanin lightning (synergy and anti-group) and of course lightning mastery.
I can't really decide on whether to use energy shield or not. If I choose ES I surely want Telekinesis (TK) to back it up, at least 16 points, only one point in ES itself as I'll have a lot of +lightning skills, so what do you recommend of the following:
1) To hell with ES, going pure synergy for damage.
2) ES with 16 points TK for even mana/life damage taken.
3) ES with 20 points TK for ultimate life replacement in the form of mana.
4) Something entirely different, please state what as I'm terrible at guesswork :)

A few gear suggestions too, but I'd imagine those are highly dependent on the above selection. For instance, going high on TK (hence using ES at all) would mean a requirement for more mana, Wiz really fits that bill, going pure synergy might warrent more for one of the unique orbs with additional goodies on them. Recommendations are welcome here.

[Soepgroente]

You lose a third of your damage by maxing telekinesis (from 32 000 to 24 000 with lvl 40 skills). Even more if you invest in ES at all. That's not worth it in my opinion. You'll end up dying quicker against most melee probably. Plus you have that thing where charge/zerk misses but you do lose ALL your mana with ES.

I say no. Matter of taste though. Look for a +3 ES 4 socketed staff for pre-casting ES if you do want it (memory = +3 sorc/es for a total of +9 ES) :)

[Mule]

Never knew about such a bug. I do find ES pretty useless without TK as synergy, so we're talking about 17-21 points spent elsewhere besides synergies. The +ES staff/wand wouldn't be great without the TK backup, but it could save one point otherwise going into ES :)

[SHouston]

Energy Shield works well enough for Physical Dmg but it has a bug where Elemental Dmg is taken into effect BEFORE your resistances are calculated. In Hell, even a low lvl elemental attack will drain your Mana Ball with one hit. Until this bug is fixed i wouldn't use ES at all.

[Usufruct]

I don't use Energy Shield at all anymore.

[Soepgroente]

Never knew about such a bug. I do find ES pretty useless without TK as synergy, so we're talking about 17-21 points spent elsewhere besides synergies. The +ES staff/wand wouldn't be great without the TK backup, but it could save one point otherwise going into ES :)
I don't know how high telekinesis charges can get, but if they go to a decent level you can try it without spending points (they count as synergy, perhaps your opinion is that it's a bug, i still think it's a feature personally :p). You do need enigma for teleport though, and you have to pre-cast ES since it won't work if you place actual points in telekinesis.

[Mule]

I had to make a snap decision yesterday, well not quite snap, but made one anyway as it doesn't take too long to level to ~80. I'm going for ES+TK, even put a point in TS for that evusive life chipping ability. Wish me luck and let's see how it works out :)

[Soepgroente]

I had to make a snap decision yesterday, well not quite snap, but made one anyway as it doesn't take too long to level to ~80. I'm going for ES+TK, even put a point in TS for that evusive life chipping ability. Wish me luck and let's see how it works out :)
Oh yea one point of thunderstorm is definitely nice, forgot that. Especially if you get 10 lightning charms, but even without them it's pretty cool.

[Jell-O]

I don't know by heart how many synergies you need to max, but when using a skill like frozen orb where there is only 1-2 synergies I'd definately go es and tk.
I'd even recommend no vitality and all energy and get a very high lvl energy shield but that also requires at least 16 in tk so it's up to you.

Either way I'd get energy shield with any build.

[Mule]

Base vit? That sounds rather scary. How much life would be considered "enough" for a sorc going for PvP?
My expected lightning skillers doesn't contain a drop of life, so from inventory only 200 would be gained tops from charms, besides that there's the usual shako, waterwalks and socketing jobs.

[Jell-O]

I can only speak from my own experience and sorc, but I have lvl 32 energy shield and max tk with around 650 life(base vit) and 2000+ mana and it works great.
The more mana the better, but I think you could get by with around 1600 and up depending on how much you avoid attacks :)

Those 650 points of life are enough for me as long as I have some mana to have reduced when taking damage, but there is of course the chance of having all your mana drained and unless you can regen that quickly you can die very quickly.

In short, when your energy shield is around 90% your mana turns into life, when you're out of mana you're basically a sitting duck or already killed :)

[Soepgroente]

I shall list some nice pre-casting gear for mule. That way you can achieve lvl 40 (maximum useful es) without maxing it. That yields 95% absorb, after that only the duration increases. Pretty useless since it's already 40 minutes there.

"Memory" in a +3 energy shield staff (3+3 energy shield and 3 sorc skills means +9 for weapon/shield)
+3 energy shield ormus robe's
11 from charms (10 skillers and anihilus)
3 lightning skill amulet/circlet (+6)
1 belt/rings (arachnid & sojs or bulkathos's)

That gives you +32 to energy shield, meaning you need 8 points if you have all that. That's if you plan on maximizing your absorb techniques. I'd do that, since for example an increase from 90 to 95% means halfing any damage done to you while only draining a little more mana. Your build would look like this:

~8 energy shield (depending on what you can get from the above list a little more)
20 telekinesis
1 warmth
1 thunderstorm
20 lightning mastery
20 lightning
20 chain lightning

It's a pretty ok idea now that i think about it :)

[Mule]

Currently I have a minor screw up with skill placement, so CL won't get maxed unless I go to clvl 87, but that aside, base vit sounds interesting, pre-buffing ES can be done in time, I don't have the memory staff yet but I guess it shouldn't be too hard to find. Great advice all around :)

I guess this would suit an Orb sorc better with lower synergy requirement, only problem would be getting room in the stash for those replacement charms.

[nebby]

I don't use Energy Shield at all anymore.

Just curious- do you play PvM or PvP? Softcore or HC? I ask only because I only play HC (rarely pvp, just pkk in some cases), and due to the elemental bug in hell, I've been thinking about not doing ES anymore either. Last two sorc deaths were due to ranged attackers in hell that were FE + something (fanat/ES or EF/might). Since the resists don't calc into it, my mana is insta-drained, and the second and third hits toasted me (boss packs rain arrows). Mash those full rejuv keys as you might, sometimes it doesn't save your butt anyway.

[Los Sin Nombre]

I have a feeling I will not like this sorc...

[Soepgroente]

I have a feeling I will not like this sorc...
She's great for pubbies. Might wanna re-consider for friendly dueling. A sorceress is usually already overpowered, so if she's 10 times as tough to kill (assuming half as much life because of the no-vitality thing) it might be overpowered².

[Mule]

On the other hand, her damage won't be impressive, I've calculated it to about 16k max, so with lightnings ~1-16k = 8 avg. / 6 (pvp) / 4 (resist) ~= 333, substract from that some absorb and I think it's pretty fair.

[lextalionis]

I can only speak from my own experience and sorc, but I have lvl 32 energy shield and max tk with around 650 life(base vit) and 2000+ mana and it works great.
The more mana the better, but I think you could get by with around 1600 and up depending on how much you avoid attacks :)

Those 650 points of life are enough for me as long as I have some mana to have reduced when taking damage, but there is of course the chance of having all your mana drained and unless you can regen that quickly you can die very quickly.

In short, when your energy shield is around 90% your mana turns into life, when you're out of mana you're basically a sitting duck or already killed :)


This is the reality of ES, right now. Elemental attacks will decimate you. But remember you get 1 point from 1 point of Vitality. But you get 4 mana for every 1 pt of energy. That's a big bonus. So you can be more like a Barb if you can use your Mana as your life.

Second what are you using your energy for? Usually attacking. Does your attack reduce your mana heavily? If the answer is yes, you maybe building yourself a sacrificing paladin. Where you are trading your life for damage. But if your build barely uses mana to attack and then with a significantly large mana pool you'll be regenerating it quickly.

Third, remember mana regeneration. How it works. The larger the mana pool the more you get back/second. So grab %mana regeneration and %mana increase items. Frostburns, SOJs, Silkweaves are so important to this build. Far more important than Damage goes to Mana. This mod will be really useless as its only going to be damage that gets through your shield that goes back to you. And you don't want damage through your sheild.

Fourth, what's the other thing you are using mana for? Attacking? Life? The last thing is teleport. Teleport gets you out of trouble, but at high levels it doesn't cost you much to use at all. At level 20 it costs you only 5 points to cast. So if you are using lightning attacks and have lots of plus lightning gear you have significantly reduced your casting cost of teleport. You'll regenerate this much per frame if you have the right gear on. Thus ES makes more sense for Lightning builds. This is the real reason that people aren't using ES. They want to have mana to teleport. But for Lightning builds this is far less a problem than for Fire or Cold Builds. You almost might say for a lightning build well tweaked. You'd be a fool not to use ES. And to not use ES at as high level as possible. So that Memory Staff is a great idea.

[Jell-O]

You get 2 life/vitality just like you get 2 mana/energy, the thing that makes high ES build more profitable with energy than vitality is that it's much easier to get +mana% items than +life%.

ES does of course make more sense with lightningbuilds as they have almost all lightningskills already, but it's perfect for the orber aswell mostly because it only has 1 synergy and you don't even have to max it's mastery which gives you many spare skills.

[Mule]

Thanks for the input, I'm now convinced this is going in the right direction, near base life and huge mana pool. Only issue is frosties will be hard to use as I want 120% FCR for lightning attacks, but everything else should be in place :)

[ahcw]

Hey guys about the ES bug. Yesterday when i let my friend fight dclone, he hit me a lot with his lighting and fire attacks. However they didn't drain my mana pool hardly at all. I emailed Bliz about the bug and they said they'd try to patch it when they could, so maybe it's fixed. Some further testing is needed but I hope this helps with you trying to figure out about your ES.

[Suryl]

Just curious- do you play PvM or PvP? Softcore or HC? I ask only because I only play HC (rarely pvp, just pkk in some cases), and due to the elemental bug in hell, I've been thinking about not doing ES anymore either. Last two sorc deaths were due to ranged attackers in hell that were FE + something (fanat/ES or EF/might). Since the resists don't calc into it, my mana is insta-drained, and the second and third hits toasted me (boss packs rain arrows). Mash those full rejuv keys as you might, sometimes it doesn't save your butt anyway.

My untwinked PvM HC sorc died in a similar fashion. Elemental attack drained my mana on the first hit coupled with my lack of fhr gear and I could never recover and rejuv enough to escape my death. My remake is not using ES and I'm pumping vitality instead of mana. Probably will still die but I feel better this time. :D

I don't think that its a matter of one choice being right for everyone in every situation. For me it was hard to go without es since I had always used it in the past and I don't adapt well to change, but so far it's worked better for me.

And on another note, so this is where the europies are hanging out. :D

[Jell-O]

Hey guys about the ES bug. Yesterday when i let my friend fight dclone, he hit me a lot with his lighting and fire attacks. However they didn't drain my mana pool hardly at all. I emailed Bliz about the bug and they said they'd try to patch it when they could, so maybe it's fixed. Some further testing is needed but I hope this helps with you trying to figure out about your ES.I was fighting the clone around 3 days ago aswell and I had a manaregen shrine right next to him so I used it and then tanked him, my mana wasn't drained that fast but it was still drained fast enough so I had to use one rejuvenation.
I don't think they fixed the "bug" and maybe it's supposed to be like this to prevent that sorceresses are virtually immune to everything.

What may have caused your low manadrain is blocking, I had 75% block and that helps alot against the lightning which is(or was) partially physical, the firetrails still do alot of dmg though.

[Mule]

I was doing a few quests in normal and NM yesterday, level being 70 and TK at 15. For what it's worth the monsters I met on the way to Hellforge (act 4 river of flame) could easily take down my mana if I teleported into the wrong group. However, this is still with rather low class gear and zero points spent in either energy or vit, so regenerating was really hard. The thing I really worry about is damage done in PvP as it won't be those 40k I've heard about, but rather "drain over time"-like, let's just hope I actually get to do some draining and not just dying :)

[Jell-O]

Just a thought, the unique gothic staff Warpspear has +3 sorc and +3 energy shield, that should be good enough and much cheaper than memory for using on the switch :)

[Zarhrezz]

Ok, first off, the elemental damage taking alot of mana with non-maxed ES is not a bug. ES is now the 2nd item in the damage resolving stack (PvP modifiers being the first) so yes, it will take a heavy beating, since resistances are considered after it. ES without max TK is asking to be mana drained.

Now on the viability. I just matted my base vitality ES sorc last night (at level 86). She has around 360 life and 2000 mana. I'm a SP player and generally don't go into MP games at all, but I'll go and see if I can find someone to try her in pk with, to see how well she can tank. Seeing as how the PvP penelty is applied first and her ES/DR prevent the first 400 physical and 540 magical damage from touching life, another player has to deal upwards of 4000 damage to deal 0.5% of the damage over 4000 to her life. 10k damage hits will deal 30ish damage!

For more thoughts/comments/findings on this kind of build, do a forum search on my name for the poster, and/or Mephista as search term.

[Mule]

I can't imagine such a staff being valuable, at least I won't spend much on it :) Anyway the Warpspear looks like a good intermediate solution, so I gotta get hold of that. I did a few calculations on ES too, I don't plan on getting it to 40, about 34 or so, the real problem is that it's before resist and PDR (which will only be 10% from shako), but it does look quite good compare to life.
Remember, this is for PvP so I won't end up standing in a group of fanat blood lords, but rather take few but heavy hits, the goal is for these to not drain my entire mana pool allowing me to escape for a bit of regeneration.

[Soepgroente]

Lum is the highest rune, that's not expensive, but if you can't find a +1-3 ES 4sock staff or it's got insane requirements it's just as good :)

[Jell-O]

I was merely suggesting it because it's such a hassle to find a 4 socket staff(or white that can get 4) and then start looking through all your mules for that el rune or whatever.. :)

Speaking of fanatic blood lords(I guess you mean the dualwielding ones and not the vampires), with just above decent equipment you can tank(with max block) those for probably 15-20 seconds before you're out of mana and thus dead, which gives you plenty of time to escape, that says quite alot about the power of this build :)

[Philoio]

It has been pointed out many times that ES does not take resistances into account.

Isn’t that a good thing in some cases? Perhaps I can just accept -70 resist in hell with a good ES… :thanks:

[SnowBlind]

You get 2 life/vitality just like you get 2 mana/energy, the thing that makes high ES build more profitable with energy than vitality is that it's much easier to get +mana% items than +life%.

ES does of course make more sense with lightningbuilds as they have almost all lightningskills already, but it's perfect for the orber aswell mostly because it only has 1 synergy and you don't even have to max it's mastery which gives you many spare skills.
Not forgetting that mana regenerates alot faster than life , interesting build with base vit+es/tk btw smth i may try oO

[Zarhrezz]

I was merely suggesting it because it's such a hassle to find a 4 socket staff(or white that can get 4) and then start looking through all your mules for that el rune or whatever.. :)

Speaking of fanatic blood lords(I guess you mean the dualwielding ones and not the vampires), with just above decent equipment you can tank(with max block) those for probably 15-20 seconds before you're out of mana and thus dead, which gives you plenty of time to escape, that says quite alot about the power of this build :)

Heh, I tanked a minion group of them in the ToD untill all were dead from FOs...took about 10-15 seconds but my ES sorc has no shield. Of course 9k defense does put their hit chance at about 34%. If I actually used a shield with the build, I could prolly tank them forever...on the other hand, the loss of mana due to having to spend on dex would be incredible (I have 65 strength, the rest in energy).

[Mule]

As noted in a way previous post, I feel a personal need to start out with max block, as I still can't imagine a PvP char without, maybe a remake will be done without, but I'll have to see how this girl does first.

Also another issue which puts some strains on this kind is FCR, normally sorcs can settle with 65%, 105% being much wanted but not quite essential. It's also pretty easy to get those 105%, after all Wiz, viper, gloves and just something else gets it there, usually there'll also be lots of oppotunity to switch gear around depending on whether you need high mana (i.e frosties) or can go lower with for instance tal's amulet.

However, I can understand lightning uses other breakpoints, namely 117% for a 12 fpc, which isn't really impressive but higher is unatainable within reason gear wise. This forces a lightning type to go for 12% more in essense (without super gear) meaning at least one other slot must be used for FCR gear, more likely two slots. Of course I'd like frosties as they really ups the mana pool, especially when having so much spent in actual energy, as the percent increase doesn't work with the likes of harlequin or wiz anymore. I currently have quite a few different means to get to the 117%, so I'll eventually report back on what's takes my liking :)

[Soepgroente]

http://rpgforums.net/showthread.php?p=1428878 for mule, sorry that it took so long

[Stubbs]

I feel the elem bug (if you want to call it that) keeps the skill in balance. One could reach close to invincibility if it wasn't there. Maxing tk and warmth would just about keep you immortal. But it can still be effective with the bug. It justs keeps the sorceress from becoming too powerful. If the bugs weren't around, everyone would be a melee sorc by now

[Zarhrezz]

I feel the elem bug (if you want to call it that) keeps the skill in balance. One could reach close to invincibility if it wasn't there. Maxing tk and warmth would just about keep you immortal. But it can still be effective with the bug. It justs keeps the sorceress from becoming too powerful. If the bugs weren't around, everyone would be a melee sorc by now

That's why it's not a bug. The change was made totally intentional. Peoples should really stop calling it a bug since it is not.

You're completely right on the reason though. 95% reduction after 75% resists would mean 1.25% of fire/cold/lightning damage would come through. 100 elemental damage would take 1-2 life and 18 mana. Irrelevant on both accounts. 100 magic damage would take 5 life and 72 mana. Seeing has how little pure magic damage monsters deal, not a threat whatsoever. 100 physical damage after 50% PDR would lead to 3 damage and 37 mana damage. After 75% chance to block that is. Also, under Amplify Damage, the numbers are 8 damage and 107 mana drain. Nothing that'd kill you. Imo, the change to ES was a good one. It's definitely possible to make pure Energy sorcs that rely completely on ES for survival, which is cool...this wasn't possible in 1.09. Besides that, I think that now with TK synergy, no sorc should put ES aside, seeing that there's always an increase in effective life at a reasonable price.

[Boogie]

Interesting, damage2mana equipment would compliment this build.

[lextalionis]

Interesting, damage2mana equipment would compliment this build.

damage2mana equipment really isn't as big a help as you would think. One its 2 mana for every 1 life saved. Second, you have enormous reductions to the life you loose from resists and PDR, that further reduce the damage that gets thru. In actuallity, more mana regeneration is probably better. Damage to mana will help a bit, but its best to get it by accident, not looking for it. Even at 200% Damage goes to mana you will not become invulnerable. Maybe at 1000% Damage to mana it might work, but that's impossible.

[Lantto]

With the base vit ES build how much ES would you need. I belive I'm getting +19 skills so 1p will only be 75% absorb. Should I go for the memory prebuff plan and get 84% or go for max ES to get 94%? Maxing ES would take about 9k off from my lit dmg so Id rather not. But I would like an ES effective enough to get me though the day. I havent calculated my manapool yet, but I belive its gonna be quite huge with all points after max block and str for eq into ene (I think I'll get around 250) together with 2x Soj, Frosties and possibly Wizzy.

[Soepgroente]

With the base vit ES build how much ES would you need. I belive I'm getting +19 skills so 1p will only be 75% absorb. Should I go for the memory prebuff plan and get 84% or go for max ES to get 94%? Maxing ES would take about 9k off from my lit dmg so Id rather not. But I would like an ES effective enough to get me though the day. I havent calculated my manapool yet, but I belive its gonna be quite huge with all points after max block and str for eq into ene (I think I'll get around 250) together with 2x Soj, Frosties and possibly Wizzy.
Go for 95% ES or nothing imo. +skills on telekinesis (obviously) don't work, only hard invested points count.

[Lantto]

I just realized somethign (which everyone except me already knew probably). If ES is taken in account before resistances isnt res basicly useless if you have a good ES?

You can make your build not caring at all about res just about maxing mana and dmg, thats not too bad is it :)

[Soepgroente]

Resistances still make you take less damage, but they have no effect on the amount of mana that is drained.

[Mule]

Resists are as soup says still useful, after all taking 100 damage will be reduced to 25 with basic max resist. As for the dmg to mana, earlier in this thread there's a reference to another thread on just this subject, the conclusion is for it to have real effect you need to take as much damage as possible. Now this seems somewhat odd of course, especially going out of your way to take nothing (well, close to) with ES, which leads me to the conclusion dmg to mana is great PvM against mana burn and maybe non-ES PvP builds.

Mana burn should be somewhat selfexplanatory, go into the wrong monster crowd, get burned, take a bit of damage, you're now hopefully able to TP out. Non-ES PvP your general mana pool will be smaller, hence a bit of help when getting hit might be just what you need.

For this specific build the cost of teleport is 1-2 depending on gear, combined with a huge mana pool, you regenerate more than this every frame, so to keep you from teleporting you'll need ES up (goes down with zero mana) AND be hit for damage every frame continually, this is simply unrealistic in by far most duelling environments including pubbies with many on one :)

When going with base vit, I currently would suggest going with as much +life gear you can get, this is usually very valuable for sorcs due to only getting 2 life per vit point, for instance my Walterwalk boots give 53 life ~= 26 vit, could be better of course with the perfect 65 life ~= 32 vit. Even if ES takes off a lot of the heat, life must still be there, so some builds gear wise might have to resort to actually putting points in vit. Since I'm still testing only, I can't give a "best" number, it's also highly dependent on your agressiveness and againt which chars your playing, for instance a trapper with lightning sentry gave me a lot of trouble, hence more life and less mana would be great as I could afford getting closer and having a bigger chance of hitting. Heck, maybe there's even a reasonable possibility this could work with base mana and huge life, or a 50/50 split, only time will tell :)

[gideon2086]

es = no mana = death = long walk to body.

[Flyte]

Going off on a tangent here...

Would any of you recommended ES (with maxed TK) for a melee Enchantress in HC? Dying is definitely not an option to me, and I was wondering if I should bother putting points into ES and TK (as well as the prereqs). If so, assuming I go with an slvl 1 ES (with some +skills, but not many), should I bother putting any points into energy? I probably won't be using any +mana% items; no Wiz, no Shako, no SoJ, no Frosties as I'm going 'Passion' Phase Blade, +3 Fire Skills Circlet, +3 Fire Skills Ammy, some other rings, and Magefist.

[Soepgroente]

es = no mana = death = long walk to body.
I really suggest you back that up and read the thread before somebody presses the *FLAME* button. ;)


Boogie sent me a modified (sounds much better than hacked :teeth: ) single player lvl 99 sorceress with ultimate equipment (lightning skillers +45 life * 10 and 10*20/17 mana sc's). I played a bit with her. I found her damage somewhat disappointing but she could really stand in a bosspack of black souls lightning at you + moon lord slashing at you forever. In the end when i teleported away her mana was half drained and her life like 1/10 gone. Awesome! She did have 1600 life and 4900 mana though (call to arms). Wizardspike is such a nice weapon but you lose the big damage boost. Some real hard choice there.

In the end i couldn't beat baal because of the life/mana curse and i had ran out of all my two full rejuvvies :thanks:

[Mule]

Well, both against monsters on most players, they do have ok lightning res, players at least 75%, so if we take a "standard", no super equipment build with about ~17k max damage, this will on avg. do 17000 / 2(avg) / 6(PvP) / 4(res) = 354 damage, hardly impressive compared to the immense damage some other builds both sorc and other chars do. What I do like with the build is however that she's not a one-hit-killer, extrem teleport speed and hard to kill, she'll be able to drain others slowly, this also means if I make too many mistakes or the opponent simply is better, I'm toast. That's what I like about duelling :)

As for gideon's remark, some people just don't have much clue.

[Lantto]

I'm basicly trying to decide between a 17k max dmg 95% ES, max TK build or a 30k max dmg no ES build. I'm leaning towards ES though. To me it seems I still need mana to be able to throw lighnings and in that case I wont get that much more life by spending points in vit and trying to take the hits to my life. Better just maximize mana and hope ES works long enough for me to hit a few more bolts instead of just one big.

[Necrophiliac]

What does telekensis do for Energy shield anyway?

I don't see what it gives and in single player it doesn't add anything when I put points into it.

[lextalionis]

What does telekensis do for Energy shield anyway?

I don't see what it gives and in single player it doesn't add anything when I put points into it.
Its a synergy. It will reduce the amount of mana taken away when your mana sheild gets hurt. Look on the arreat summit website : http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp/skills/sorceress-lightning.shtml

[cheap_trik]

soo in order for es/tk build to do well u must have es at slv40 and tk max??

[Soepgroente]

soo in order for es/tk build to do well u must have es at slv40 and tk max??
That's not true, but if you go energy shield anyway, just do it completely right in my opinion :)

[Zarhrezz]

If you push for very high ES, it's indeed best to aim for slvl 40. The why should be obvious from this example:

Situation 1:
2000 mana
300 life
ES 35
Damage Reduced by 20 total from gear
If hit for 500 damage, ES absorbs 90% or 450 damage, which translates to 338 mana loss. Life loss will be 50-20 = 30.
In percentages: 16.9% of all mana lost, 10% of all life lost.

Situation 2:
Same as 1, but slvl 40 ES.
When hit with 500 damage, ES will absorb 95% or 475 mana, which means 357 mana. Life loss will be 25-20 = 5.
In percentages: 17.85% of all mana lost, 1.7% of all life lost.

Conclusion: at an addition loss of 1% mana, 8.3% of life loss is prevented. Of course if you change numbers somewhat, the exact %'s will also vary, but the general idea still stands; at high levels of ES a few %'s more towards the 95% the relative life loss prevented is huge compared to the additional mana lost.

[Soepgroente]

Or you can just say you half the damage taken with 5 more points. Those last few % actually matter more than the first %.

[cheap_trik]

thanks!

ive been trying to decide wether to go es/tk route or max block/vita route w my enchantress seeing those calculations helped push me over the edge to go es/tk
hope it works!

-cheap_trik

[Mule]

I've been running around with ES taking 80%, this seems to work quite alright. Of course using pre-buffing gear to make it higher would be better, but certainly not a requirement.

[Zarhrezz]

thanks!

ive been trying to decide wether to go es/tk route or max block/vita route w my enchantress seeing those calculations helped push me over the edge to go es/tk
hope it works!

-cheap_trik

If this is for a melee Enchantress, do not go the ES/TK route, you'll die to mana burners at each turn. Ranged Enchantress should be alright though.

[cheap_trik]

this is for a ranged enchantress probably using demon machine for its speed and explosive arrow
i see a potentially serious problem with this tho
attack rating

the rest of my gear is either towards -pd (helm, armor) and +to mana/skills things of that nature (rings, belt, ammy) so this leaves only gloves or boots to add to my ar (i would like to keep the rest of my gear the same, but if it has to change so be it)

so could this problem wreck my sorce or does ar even matter? does it make much of a difference wether or not u hit them with the arrow as long as u fire explosive? (ive also heard from a few ppl that explosive always hits, but i think they are reffering to the explosion always going off)

any input is greatly appreciated!

edit:how much of ar boost does enchant give? is it substantial enuf to ignore ar equip????

-cheap_trik

[lextalionis]

Enchant's AR boost is exceptionally substantial. But its a % increase. You may want to place some points into Dex or find at least one good source of +100 or so to your attack rating so that the Enchant has a decent base AR for the Enchant to boost.

[lextalionis]

Enchant's AR boost is exceptionally substantial. But its a % increase. You may want to place some points into Dex or find at least one good source of +100 or so to your attack rating so that the Enchant has a decent base AR for the Enchant to boost.


If you are actually using Demon Machine it grants a very good base +AR on the weapon so you shouldn't have to worry about it.

If you go melee, Enchant and your Dex to give you max block will grant you a pretty good AR.

[Zroc]

Quick question on ES...does it absorb hammers at all (i.e. magic damage)?

[Zarhrezz]

Quick question on ES...does it absorb hammers at all (i.e. magic damage)?

2 things aren't absorbed: Poison damage and bleeding from Open Wounds.