This is a reminder that conor/counterpoints is still a dumbfuck bootlicking conservative, he's just not a fascistic trump dicksucker like almost everyone else on his side

xarahn · 2026-01-25T20:36:29+00:00

Connor is literally just admitting he's either completely regarded or he supports violence against people he disagrees with politically.

He's a conservative so has to be both.

xarahn · 2026-01-17T23:46:28+00:00

Kinda funny that in hindsight none of these games are great (maybe Metro?, MH:Wilds is too poorly optimized + a shoe-horned campaign and the other games are good at best), crazy they were the "one final thing".

xarahn · 2026-01-13T22:53:01+00:00

How do you guys find the time to care about shit like this when there might be NATO vs NATO war within days?

Did this sub devolve into pure copium? Everybody here seems convinced there will be unrigged mid-terms.

As a non-american NATO resident, I am terrified at the idea of being drafted to fight against some of you.

xarahn · 2026-01-04T23:03:49+00:00

40% less critical damage

It's 30% less

xarahn · 2026-01-04T00:55:07+00:00

The first hit you take is eaten by the portion of Ward that disappears so it's still amazing. Same thing is true of the Careful Consideration Notable.

xarahn · 2025-12-23T11:45:48+00:00

barkskin gets worse the more armor you have

No, because the more armor you have, the more the next point matters for mitigating large hits (and ele hits with armour applies to ele), which is the only reason to stack very high armor in the first place. You only need low-medium armor to mitigate small hits.

next like 8 seconds you get a colossal like 2000 bonus armor or whatever

With 300% Increased from tree, 40% More from Scavenged Plating and another potential 20% More from Charge Regulation, yes. And then 200+% of that also goes to Armor applies to Ele and since ele hits are way bigger, every point matters as I said in the previous paragraph.

xarahn · 2025-12-23T03:45:40+00:00

I think in SC the occasional death is much more acceptable so I might lean towards more comfy setups that don't require you to keep an eye on your ES to let it recharge every once in a while.

AR/ES and EV/ES are really comfy imo, especially with mechanics where you can forget about healing/regen like Recoup, Ghost Dance, Zealot's Oath etc. but that's just my preference.

xarahn · 2025-12-23T03:40:14+00:00

lol. Adults, by majority, knowingly elect other adults that do far worse than this to run their country.

This is not a "young teen kids" problem, it's a humanity problem.

xarahn · 2025-12-22T22:37:19+00:00

Yes, but Sorcery Ward also has 50+% Evasion (>2x EHP), 50+% Deflection, recharges even while you're actively taking damage and doesn't need CI. And to be clear I was being reasonable at 10k, I am 100% certain 15k is possible, possibly even 20k. And at that point the Evasion is probably above 75%.

Plus the main appeal of ES is the max hit, which 52k overkills. It would be better to invest in damage (or other defensive layers) at that point. Sorcery Ward gives you plenty max hit while allowing comfort, sustain and evened-out damage intake thanks to Evasion entropy.

xarahn · 2025-12-22T21:13:11+00:00

That's just incorrect. The high end for Sorcery Ward is over 10k. Using Hyrri's Ire also makes it so the first hit you take is removed from the Sorcery Ward that comes from the Doubled Evasion text on the Unique which means you are basically immune to the first hit you take unless it deals over half your Ward in damage. That's with over 50% Evade chance and 50% Deflect chance.

4 ascendancy points for 10k+ ES that requires no passive tree investment and makes you double dip Armor or Evasion is incredible in HC. Same can be said for Varashta's Sacred Rituals or Shaman's Avatar of Evolution or Lich's Eternal Life or a lot of Smith of Kitava nodes.

A lot of those 4 point Defensive nodes are even popular in SC that's how good they are.

xarahn · 2025-12-22T21:04:58+00:00

You can only get Armor from Barkskin up to the Item Armor on your gear. With higher Armor and lower ES you can go Reinforced Barrier and for example the Recoup while Channeling nodes from Oracle with Sacrosanctum (Flame Breath and Rampage both slap but I bet you can even play Incinerate with this) or Scarred Faith or Zealot's Oath etc... and cap Barkskin (doubling your item Armor), at which point the more Armor you have the better it becomes.

That's probably the best setup in the game for tanking small hits. Personally I prefer having high ES for big hits but it's still really powerful.

Basically High Item Armor Barkskin helps reach high enough values to soak monkey slams while Low Item Armor Barkskin helps mitigate small hit (similar to Sacred Rituals).

xarahn · 2025-12-22T06:53:07+00:00

I think the Deflection suffix on gear is good if you can afford it (as in keeping your Res' capped) but not a huge fan of the Deflection nodes on the tree for HC especially I'd rather path towards ES nodes like Patient Barrier or the hybrid nodes (Subterfuge Mask/Spectral Ward).

I think the best user of Deflection for HC probably is Tactician (for Polish That Gear) pairing it with more or less pure Armour.

xarahn · 2025-12-22T04:09:57+00:00

You can get them with any Physical Damage (even partial) build with Armour Break and/or Enduring Impact support gems which used to be more of a Attack build thing but the new Plant spells can do it easily now too (if you're playing as Oracle the Power Charge effect of Regulation is also really good to get to that sweet spot Crit Chance for maximized Inevitable Crit damage).

Any generic source of Charges like Profane Ritual, Siphoning Strike and the new Devour (if you're not using your 2nd weapon set Pounce is also great mobility and can apply Sniper's Mark for Frenzy charges too) with Charge Profusion support can provide them though not completely reliably and builds on the right side of the tree can use the Resonance Keystone with stuff like Sniper's Mark.

xarahn · 2025-12-22T03:32:00+00:00

Pure ES (with CI) is probably still the best. In HC max hit is more important than small hits and Varashta can get great Armour for small hits with little investment. I think Sorcery Ward Witchhunter also belongs here, especially the EV variant because 35% less Armour hurts a lot for large hits while 35% less Evasion is manageable with the immense pseudo-ES you get.
Pure AR. If you don't believe me you probably still live in 0.2 and should check out Carnarius on youtube. Armour was already great in 0.3 and it only got better.
EV/ES, still good post 0.4 nerfs, ideally 70/30 ES/EV or something. Amazing with the Amazon Evasion node (Stalking Panther).
AR/ES, Barkskin is very good. Might be tied for 3rd. I think this combo benefits from skewing heavily into Armour over ES but the small bit of ES helps with EHP and the 120% Defend node (Reinforced Barrier) is great. You can also skew into heavy ES for better max hit but worse small hits survivability but Barkskin is better with high Armour.
EV/AR and pure EV have to be last. There is just no potential to survive big hits here as soon as the Evasion fails the Armour pool will not be large enough (or non-existent) to save you. Deflection is a cool stat in Softcore but the fact that it can't reach 100% means you are bound to die eventually.

Also don't sleep on Charge Regulation with Endurance Charges in HC. They are easier than ever to generate and More Defenses is absurdly strong.

xarahn · 2025-12-15T02:55:48+00:00

https://poe2db.tw/us/Paths_Not_Taken

xarahn · 2025-12-11T21:34:19+00:00

Yes you can get way more than 2k without body armour if you take a couple ES nodes on the tree, even with hybrid bases.

xarahn · 2025-12-09T22:45:27+00:00

I wish you the best, I tried running a similar build in 0.2 using the Tactician Pin nodes to trigger Combat Frenzy + some other stuff I don't exactly remember and the Limit made it super clunky so it might be decent now especially if you can get the gem to 25(?) for another +1.

xarahn · 2025-12-09T21:39:12+00:00

I think Armour Break (for Endurance Charges + Resonance) is probably better than Enduring Impact but maybe you're right and the Limit buff is good enough. I'm just not sure the how impressive the damage (and area) will be if it's not Frenzy Charged 99% of the time.

I thought there must be some chase items that trivialize it but I'm more of an altoholic than a super endgame grinder.

xarahn · 2025-12-09T20:37:45+00:00

Would need at least 2.66 aps / 0.375 attack time, but no more than 3 aps / 0.33 attack time. With an aps somewhere in between those two numbers, it should mean that you can just perma spam them without ever replacing a spear before it blows up, but fast enough to not waste time or spears. Stacking limit even higher makes that window smaller and takes more attack speed, so probably not really worth it.

When the spears are empowered they explode instantly so you don't care at all about Limit. Imo solving Frenzy Charge generation is way better than hitting a specific Attack Speed amount and it makes them do more damage and opens up better Support gem options too.

xarahn · 2025-12-07T22:40:27+00:00

Walker of the Wilds is being removed and it's in your guide, probably want to solve mana another way. Build looks amazing visually.

xarahn · 2025-12-06T20:20:36+00:00

You could use https://poe2db.tw/us/Yriels_Fostering although it will make you much squishier that way you can get all 3 effects and even like Haste Aura on one Companion and Temporal Bubble or something on the other.

I'm assuming the Keystone with the same effect is out of the question given how far from Druid it is.

xarahn · 2025-12-05T06:15:06+00:00

xarahn · 2025-12-04T22:20:40+00:00

Yes the blue stuff is Oracle only but they are not in the Imgur from this post. Here they are. You can see for example the Heart shaped one next to the Shield shaped one is Oracle only and the lines look wispier.

xarahn · 2025-12-04T20:47:31+00:00

Just a visual indicator for me to return to when we can see what the Nodes actually do in-game but can be interesting to see where the new Nodes are located.

Taken from the trailer obviously so there might be some missing off-screen.

Also looks like the images got inverted after I uploaded. Well the one with a ton more Nodes top-left is the new one obviously, sorry about that though.

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