it is very useful for infinite ward builds, because it allows you to always take damage that is within ward capacity regardless of your armour, but also reduces damage that would actually outright kill you.
But as far as I know, most wardloop builds depend on the Heartbound loop ring and the physical damage taken portion of it, if you have pdr you will break the loop, or is there other ways I'm not familiar with?
@@N3K0Cloud Regarding wardloops, yes, you are correct. But I think OP mentioned builds that actually uses ward to tank incoming enemy damage instead of self-damage. The only other cwdt loop engines I've seen in use before were storm secret using Herald of thunder plus a way to shock enemies automatically (be it with a triggered skill or flask) and eye of innocence using cwdt with low level multi-hitting skills to ignite and deal self-damage this way.
@@N3K0Cloud you can always use forbidden rite on a lesser cwdt trigger to fill in missing damage, but after removal of a gem that reduced efficiency of potion (thus increasing ward) that became difficult to use (and you also have to risk being deleted by chaos through low resistance to that). Otherwise you just use saboteur to double procs. Or no loop and just gain health and mana regen for free, so why not. You could also use cast on crit setup, it's not as effective at low budget per say, but it works. I think you can also pair CoC on saboteur with kitava thirst to create pseudo loop that is twice as efficient, because every trigger of sabo is double, and 50% chance becomes 100% and it casts your spell twice again, so it basically casts 8 skeletons in 1 go, so you gain 3360 for cwdt all the time, while also spamming auxillary spells as you. At least i think it should work?...
@@N3K0Cloud It's kind of amusing that wardloop is such a prevalent use of ward that it's automatically assumed to be what someone means whenever ward is mentioned.
@@kelpsieyeah and a bit sad, unbreakable ward is a simple -X damage, and since -X damage is the last step in checking for damage taken, that is where it is the most effective. I am still trying to get my damage while keeping up my unbreakable ward.
I love this series. Mentioning "this is the damage of a shaper slam" and such really helps me as I don't know how big a 2000 damage hit is normally and where it would happen.
Yeah, in this video i wanted to do some more generalized examples and also some relatable ones too. The generalized ones will often be more akin to things you find in maps but it's impossible to be specific with these really with all of the variables. So showing some boss abilities is very useful I think
10 years playing this game and I often have to remember myself that the wording is super important in order to understand what mechanics can and can't do. Great video
I love the pace you're putting these out. I thought it might be weekly so it would take forever to get to know the nitty gritties of the passive tree, but here you are making these every other day. Thank you!
Think I've only used it once with a champion in 3.14, was mainly focusing on evasion but had some small amount of armour from gear and the ascendancy so it was worthwhile to pick it up since I was near it anyway for the aura cluster. I feel that it is a pretty good keystone but that is partially held back by it being placed in a location where people often go more fully into armour. It might have seen more use if it just was more accessible for characters on the right and north sides of the tree.
The biggest reason noone uses it is probably since its located in a awkward spot at the marauder side. Wish it was located between shadow and ranger tree, like swap places with supreme ego for example.
Tbh I always thought its positioning on the tree didn't really make much sense, I think somewhere near Scion start in the middle would be more appropriate. Most builds that reach it easily would never use this keystone, with rare exception of bossers using it to tank boss abilities, because they already have good amounts of armour and taking it will mostly be detrimental for mapping etc.
Thanks for once again highlighting an interesting keystone with niche applications! Great periodic reminder that specific wording is specific and that this rule applies to just one of the many damage mitigation steps documented on the wiki. This shines against larger damage hits it would not have reached 50% mitigation on otherwise, and in lower armour situations such as Ruthless, SSF, and right side of the tree builds. An interesting way to turn the downside into an advantage is with Heartbound Loop, a ring that deals you 350 phys damage when a minion dies. With lvl 1 cast when damage taken, this is the setup for a self sustaining loop… if you dont mitigate the damage by 90%! It seems this keystone may be part of the solution to create a loop that sustains itself: take 528 dmg, create 2 skeletons, a SRS, and a zombie. Use infernal legion to self immolate, take 4*175=750 damage. Repeat. Attach a Forbidden Rites to accelerate. Ditto for phantasms on a lvl 20 minion. With this you dont even need Scold’s Bridle anymore for the self dmg, but its damage wont be mitigated anymore by 90%, so that gives possibly more options. Add recoup, divine shield, and all the recovery layers to become self sustaining. Then unleash a damage 5-6 link potentially every 0.26 seconds! The fact that this removes the anti synergy of Determination for these builds is huge!
@@dreamcore_gg Yeah I doubt it as well. The use cases are few, very little flexibility and not really enabling anything. Especially since X% chance to defend with 200% armor is elsewhere on the tree and having more than 100% means nothing so no room to improve it. Odd Keystone for sure.
I am absolutely loving these videos. If I'm understanding all of this correctly, am I correct in my thinking that using Steelskin in conjunction with flat -physical damage taken from hits seen on the Persistence anoint and on Immortal Flesh belt would be the way to go for reducing those smaller hits that are now hitting for more due to the 50% cap? And on the opposite end of the spectrum, the less %physical damage taken from Immortal Call, Arctic Armour and Doppelgänger Guise combined with more easily achieving 50% reduction due to defending with double your armor makes it easier to further reduce the damage of massive physical hits in a bossing setting? Prior to your video, I never understood what this keystone did, and now the gears are hard at work trying to figure out how to get the most out of it. Very much looking forward to your next video! Keep up the great work!
Yes exactly, flat damage taken modifiers become very strong at lessening the downside of the keystone(making the smaller hits deal more damage), at least for general mapping play. These combined with other damage taken modifiers can really go a long way at heavily mitigating hits on both ends of the scale. Appreciate the kind words - glad you're enjoying the vids!
So, what I take from this video is that Imbalance Guard is really really really useful when you have some mediocre armor and no other physical damage reduction sources like endurance charges. As the dude said, put on that unique belt that gives a lot of armor and IG for free, if you are absolutely reducing no physical damage whatsoever. Because tiny hits will rarely catch you of guard, it's those big slams will single-shot you. I don't play those kind of vulnerable builds, but if you are playing one, this seems totally worth it and the beauty of it is that it's very low investment, you won't have to stack a shit ton of stats after taking the keystone, kind of cool.
I always thought it also reduced the damage reduction from resistances, very helpful video, so I consider that keystone in my face tank boss killer build next time.
so from what i can understand, builds that dont use armor or have very little somewhere in the range of 2-8k armor should probably use this keystone if they can as with that low of an armor value this would just be a straight upgrade to use. well at the very least im glad you cleared up what is considered damage reduction because i just simply misunderstood how this keystone worked and assumed it was complete trash but its not as bad as i thought
For those it is good yeah, problem is just the opportunity cost of getting to it. At least in crucible there is always the option of getting it on a weapon I suppose though.
Yeah the negative impact of the keystone moves closer and closer to zero the lower armour you have. You just need to always be mindful of any other damage type reduction you have in your build. There are not many ways to get these stats, but I could definitely see PoE2 adding more if things like Eternal Damnation and the Fourth Vow are anything to go by.
I honestly always thought the keystone was useless because i made the (very common it seems) mistake to think damage reduction = max resistances. I just didn't read it right, it is way more useful than i thought it was.
One thing that could be relevant is that there seem to be an increasing amount of "chance to defend with 200% armour" available, possibly giving you the upside of the notable without it's downside.
Yeah the stat is quite difficult to reach 100% chance but it's doable. There's 30%(up to 36% with quality) on an Elder belt, 20% on a Synthesised body armour(this one is a hard tradeoff since you lose Eldritch implicits), 20% on the passive tree armour mastery, and 15% on the Dragon Hunter small cluster jewel notable that appears on armour and fire resistance clusters.
Thanks for the breakdown. Whenever I look at that keystone, I think the wording of "100% chance to defend with 200% of armor" is kind of weird. Why not just say "always defend with 200% armor per hit" or something?
One of my characters is one of these 35 characters using Imbalanced guard. I am using Bloodnotch for mitigating most hits.But I noticed I sometimes get one shot by large physical hits. I used determination (got 6k armour)+ endurance charges and Imbalanced guard to improve this.
Thanks, I thought this keystone would reduce my max ele and chaos resistances to 50%. I'm still not going to use it because I have almost 50k armor and 6 endurance charges. This will result in ~2/3 damage reducing. Using imbalanced guard would change surviving a hit into the hit being fatal.
I think this is intended to be used with pure evasion builds, helping them to get a way to get good pdr on nearly no investment. The unique belt basically screams it out(punishing you for taking strength nodes, large flat armour and imbalanced guard)
I think one of the reason its not picked more often is the location, I'm playing berserker with only 6k armor, all coming from determination which I kinda want to drop. and was thinking about picking up imbalanced guard, but spending 3-4 points to get it doesnt seem worth it. Maybe if I needed soul of steel and the hp cluster then yeah but at that point I would just invest on armor more.
Shouldnt jugg's unbreakable work with this rly well in uber exarch ? On my ssfhc ruthless uber attempt I had 100k armour with 90 fire res e.g. Uber exarch ball: 17375 damage with 8% fire pen > Reduced to 3127 (bc 82% fire res applies) 8000 Armour is applied -> 2490 dmg taken With imbalanced guard, 16000 armour is applied, so 2069 dmg taken. When exactly does the 50% downside apply? Spell supp doesnt work on exarch balls, even if pob is saying so btw
Spell suppression working or not doesn't matter anyway as that's not damage reduction. The 50% maximum on damage reduction in the example you've given would apply to the moment that armour interacts with the damage after resistance, so yes, Imbalanced Guard would be very useful here. I wen't over Jugg's Unbreakable in the video at 10:43 when only a small percentage of armour is being applied to damage, IG is often going to be very effective, but the issue is that most of these builds also use armour to mitigate physical hits as well so that must be factored in.
So...this keystone is just...ugh. Because it's basically in the worst spot on the tree for the kinds of builds that'd really want it. Which is basically the "granite flask of armadillo + determination = all your armor" style of builds. I.E. if this was in the spot that Supreme Ego is in now, you might see a ranger or shadow occasionally take it if they actually use determination/granite flask. But considering where on the passive tree it is, it basically makes no sense to pick it up unless...you're some sort of low-armor melee build pathing over to that area for max res? It just...boggles the mind as to what build actually wants this. I guess one thing you *can* do with this, which might be a bit cute is: are you going to go bossing and are already in the area? Okay, spec into this for a point, do your bosses, regret out of it. But just as a generally useful all-around keystone? No, absolutely not.
Imbalanced Guard seems like a good combo with Bloodnotch. Bloodnotch lets you completely ignore small hits, so the only thing that matters is increasing your one shot threshold. With armor values less than 100k, Imbalanced Guard should help.
It helps at MUCH lower armor values than 'less than 100k'. Even at half that figure it's not worth it. This is for builds whose only armor is either Determination + Granite flask, or just wearing hybrid armor/evasion gear.
Basically, the perfect situation to use Imbalanced Guard is: you have around ~10-25k armor, ~85-95% chance to evade attacks, Bloodnotch, a bit of recovery on top, phys taken as ele. This way u completely mitigating the downside and basically just doubling your armor. The only problem is that u can't really use Bloodnotch on champ or marauder, since there are no ES stun threshold masteries around, and the pathing from ES stun threshold masteries to Imbalanced Guard takes really many points..
So the way this sounds, correct me if im wrong here, is that imbalanced guard is really good if used with properly layered defenses, but bad if you are using purely armor
You'd still suffer from the same problem - the smaller hits now deal more damage to you. Against very big hits it might be beneficial, fe. 60k armour vs an Uber Shaper Slam ability will mitigate 33%, but with Imbalanced Guard that goes up to 50%.
Still suffers from the same drawbacks - the smaller amount of physical damage you take still deals more damage on smaller hits and less on bigger hits. If anything it's not ideal because with a lower initial hit you'd be more likely to mitigate more than 50% without using IG.
As Shankar said, it is competing with other belts for that slot. However, as i said in the video I think this is great on that type of character for early game mapping before you solve physical damage via other means or before you get stronger gear.
In all examples this keystone didnt worth their points. Maybe in Ushaper, but some phy-> convertion will be ALOT stronger. Lets assume you spent 3-4 points on this keystone, so theoretically its 15-20% inc life, which is better in any situation.
It's definitely one of the weak keystones in the game, but it has some niche use cases. I expect it will be gone whenever PoE2 comes along with changes to the passive tree.
I think its useless guide when u try to calculate only 10k armor, cos any builds which use armor have it near 50k and so this keystone totally useless cos cant reach same PDR as 50k of armor
If you think every build that uses armour has 50k, you're completely oblivious to the majority of non Marauder/Duelist builds that are running 10-25k armour. And no, the keystone isn't useless even with 50k armour, you'd largely increase your mitigation against an Uber Shaper slam by clicking the keystone.
@@dreamcore_gg gah, I appreciate that you make videos, but it says right on the keystone "defend with 200% Armour", not "your Armour rating is doubled." So, if you have 100 armour, you now defend with 200% of that which is 200, for a total of 300. If it said, "your Armour rating is doubled" then you would be correct.
@@nonyabeeswacks1919 Defend with 200% of armour. The keystone doubles your armour for the purpose of defending against hits. Your interpretation of it would be something like 'Defend with 200% More Armour'. That's not what it does. I'll just link this thread from Mark here, you can scroll down to his reply to Nicklodze: www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/h9rlc2/comment/fuymflw/?context=3
it is very useful for infinite ward builds, because it allows you to always take damage that is within ward capacity regardless of your armour, but also reduces damage that would actually outright kill you.
But as far as I know, most wardloop builds depend on the Heartbound loop ring and the physical damage taken portion of it, if you have pdr you will break the loop, or is there other ways I'm not familiar with?
@@N3K0Cloud Regarding wardloops, yes, you are correct. But I think OP mentioned builds that actually uses ward to tank incoming enemy damage instead of self-damage.
The only other cwdt loop engines I've seen in use before were storm secret using Herald of thunder plus a way to shock enemies automatically (be it with a triggered skill or flask) and eye of innocence using cwdt with low level multi-hitting skills to ignite and deal self-damage this way.
@@N3K0Cloud you can always use forbidden rite on a lesser cwdt trigger to fill in missing damage, but after removal of a gem that reduced efficiency of potion (thus increasing ward) that became difficult to use (and you also have to risk being deleted by chaos through low resistance to that). Otherwise you just use saboteur to double procs. Or no loop and just gain health and mana regen for free, so why not. You could also use cast on crit setup, it's not as effective at low budget per say, but it works. I think you can also pair CoC on saboteur with kitava thirst to create pseudo loop that is twice as efficient, because every trigger of sabo is double, and 50% chance becomes 100% and it casts your spell twice again, so it basically casts 8 skeletons in 1 go, so you gain 3360 for cwdt all the time, while also spamming auxillary spells as you. At least i think it should work?...
@@N3K0Cloud It's kind of amusing that wardloop is such a prevalent use of ward that it's automatically assumed to be what someone means whenever ward is mentioned.
@@kelpsieyeah and a bit sad, unbreakable ward is a simple -X damage, and since -X damage is the last step in checking for damage taken, that is where it is the most effective. I am still trying to get my damage while keeping up my unbreakable ward.
I love this series. Mentioning "this is the damage of a shaper slam" and such really helps me as I don't know how big a 2000 damage hit is normally and where it would happen.
Yeah, in this video i wanted to do some more generalized examples and also some relatable ones too. The generalized ones will often be more akin to things you find in maps but it's impossible to be specific with these really with all of the variables. So showing some boss abilities is very useful I think
10 years playing this game and I often have to remember myself that the wording is super important in order to understand what mechanics can and can't do. Great video
I love the pace you're putting these out. I thought it might be weekly so it would take forever to get to know the nitty gritties of the passive tree, but here you are making these every other day. Thank you!
Sounds good for petrified blood buils, where you're resistant to weak hits but weak agaist big or critical hits.
Been playing since 2012, had no clue about the specificity of damage reduction. Nice video.
6k+ hours in the game and still learning tons of stuff here. Lovely serie, please keep on. Thanks a lot for your work
Appreciate that!
Think I've only used it once with a champion in 3.14, was mainly focusing on evasion but had some small amount of armour from gear and the ascendancy so it was worthwhile to pick it up since I was near it anyway for the aura cluster.
I feel that it is a pretty good keystone but that is partially held back by it being placed in a location where people often go more fully into armour.
It might have seen more use if it just was more accessible for characters on the right and north sides of the tree.
This is wonderful for me as I often listen to videos while playing and collecting information is what poe is about. Keeping pumping them out!
The biggest reason noone uses it is probably since its located in a awkward spot at the marauder side. Wish it was located between shadow and ranger tree, like swap places with supreme ego for example.
Tbh I always thought its positioning on the tree didn't really make much sense, I think somewhere near Scion start in the middle would be more appropriate. Most builds that reach it easily would never use this keystone, with rare exception of bossers using it to tank boss abilities, because they already have good amounts of armour and taking it will mostly be detrimental for mapping etc.
GGG put it there because of builds of Endurance charges from Slayer and Judg. I thought it should have been somewhere near Scion too
@@GuHan-n7c Yes exactly, it came from a time when stacking what would now be considered a 'good' amount of armour was difficult
Thanks for once again highlighting an interesting keystone with niche applications! Great periodic reminder that specific wording is specific and that this rule applies to just one of the many damage mitigation steps documented on the wiki.
This shines against larger damage hits it would not have reached 50% mitigation on otherwise, and in lower armour situations such as Ruthless, SSF, and right side of the tree builds.
An interesting way to turn the downside into an advantage is with Heartbound Loop, a ring that deals you 350 phys damage when a minion dies. With lvl 1 cast when damage taken, this is the setup for a self sustaining loop… if you dont mitigate the damage by 90%! It seems this keystone may be part of the solution to create a loop that sustains itself: take 528 dmg, create 2 skeletons, a SRS, and a zombie. Use infernal legion to self immolate, take 4*175=750 damage. Repeat. Attach a Forbidden Rites to accelerate. Ditto for phantasms on a lvl 20 minion.
With this you dont even need Scold’s Bridle anymore for the self dmg, but its damage wont be mitigated anymore by 90%, so that gives possibly more options.
Add recoup, divine shield, and all the recovery layers to become self sustaining. Then unleash a damage 5-6 link potentially every 0.26 seconds!
The fact that this removes the anti synergy of Determination for these builds is huge!
This is one keystone that always confused me so thanks for covering it
No problem! I have a feeling this keystone may not make it into the inevitable PoE2 reworked passive tree, but here it is anyway!
@@dreamcore_gg Yeah I doubt it as well. The use cases are few, very little flexibility and not really enabling anything. Especially since X% chance to defend with 200% armor is elsewhere on the tree and having more than 100% means nothing so no room to improve it. Odd Keystone for sure.
Thank you for your explanation of this! I’ve been pondering on how well it’d suit my build and it seems like some of my fears were unfounded!
This is by far one of the best POE channels atm absolutely love all the videos that have been posted thank you Dreamcore learning a lot 🎉❤
Glad you like them!
First
Edit:
Brilliant! Love this series! Every time I watch one of your videos I feel like the mind blown meme! ❤
Don’t lie first was Adam
I absolutely love this series! Thank you for all the hard work!
Appreciate that!
That is really enlightening, I should pick it up for when I am going against bosses
I am absolutely loving these videos.
If I'm understanding all of this correctly, am I correct in my thinking that using Steelskin in conjunction with flat -physical damage taken from hits seen on the Persistence anoint and on Immortal Flesh belt would be the way to go for reducing those smaller hits that are now hitting for more due to the 50% cap?
And on the opposite end of the spectrum, the less %physical damage taken from Immortal Call, Arctic Armour and Doppelgänger Guise combined with more easily achieving 50% reduction due to defending with double your armor makes it easier to further reduce the damage of massive physical hits in a bossing setting?
Prior to your video, I never understood what this keystone did, and now the gears are hard at work trying to figure out how to get the most out of it.
Very much looking forward to your next video! Keep up the great work!
Yes exactly, flat damage taken modifiers become very strong at lessening the downside of the keystone(making the smaller hits deal more damage), at least for general mapping play. These combined with other damage taken modifiers can really go a long way at heavily mitigating hits on both ends of the scale.
Appreciate the kind words - glad you're enjoying the vids!
Yoooo this video was really informative, I was always confused how this node worked
Thank you these videos are very well done, just binge watched like half of your channel today
Nice, I'm glad you're enjoying them!
im looking forward to Perfect Agony! I dont understand this node and would love to hear about it, Subscribed!
So, what I take from this video is that Imbalance Guard is really really really useful when you have some mediocre armor and no other physical damage reduction sources like endurance charges. As the dude said, put on that unique belt that gives a lot of armor and IG for free, if you are absolutely reducing no physical damage whatsoever. Because tiny hits will rarely catch you of guard, it's those big slams will single-shot you. I don't play those kind of vulnerable builds, but if you are playing one, this seems totally worth it and the beauty of it is that it's very low investment, you won't have to stack a shit ton of stats after taking the keystone, kind of cool.
I always thought it also reduced the damage reduction from resistances, very helpful video, so I consider that keystone in my face tank boss killer build next time.
so from what i can understand, builds that dont use armor or have very little somewhere in the range of 2-8k armor should probably use this keystone if they can as with that low of an armor value this would just be a straight upgrade to use. well at the very least im glad you cleared up what is considered damage reduction because i just simply misunderstood how this keystone worked and assumed it was complete trash but its not as bad as i thought
For those it is good yeah, problem is just the opportunity cost of getting to it.
At least in crucible there is always the option of getting it on a weapon I suppose though.
Yeah the negative impact of the keystone moves closer and closer to zero the lower armour you have. You just need to always be mindful of any other damage type reduction you have in your build. There are not many ways to get these stats, but I could definitely see PoE2 adding more if things like Eternal Damnation and the Fourth Vow are anything to go by.
I honestly always thought the keystone was useless because i made the (very common it seems) mistake to think damage reduction = max resistances. I just didn't read it right, it is way more useful than i thought it was.
One thing that could be relevant is that there seem to be an increasing amount of "chance to defend with 200% armour" available, possibly giving you the upside of the notable without it's downside.
Yeah the stat is quite difficult to reach 100% chance but it's doable. There's 30%(up to 36% with quality) on an Elder belt, 20% on a Synthesised body armour(this one is a hard tradeoff since you lose Eldritch implicits), 20% on the passive tree armour mastery, and 15% on the Dragon Hunter small cluster jewel notable that appears on armour and fire resistance clusters.
I think the best way to use this keystone is by allocating it only when you’re about to take a big hit and the unallocate it after.
5Head
Thanks for the breakdown. Whenever I look at that keystone, I think the wording of "100% chance to defend with 200% of armor" is kind of weird. Why not just say "always defend with 200% armor per hit" or something?
Absolutely fantastic explanation!
it's really good for builds that have recover life/es on block to mitigate small hits
One of my characters is one of these 35 characters using Imbalanced guard. I am using Bloodnotch for mitigating most hits.But I noticed I sometimes get one shot by large physical hits. I used determination (got 6k armour)+ endurance charges and Imbalanced guard to improve this.
This sounds like a great use of this keystone
You've earned a new sub, what a great content man. Keep it up!
Glad you liked it!
Thanks, I thought this keystone would reduce my max ele and chaos resistances to 50%.
I'm still not going to use it because I have almost 50k armor and 6 endurance charges.
This will result in ~2/3 damage reducing. Using imbalanced guard would change surviving a hit into the hit being fatal.
that keystone actually looks really juicy for builds i usually like to do.
Too bad it's so far away
I think this is intended to be used with pure evasion builds, helping them to get a way to get good pdr on nearly no investment. The unique belt basically screams it out(punishing you for taking strength nodes, large flat armour and imbalanced guard)
Really helps with bigger phys hits imo
I think one of the reason its not picked more often is the location, I'm playing berserker with only 6k armor, all coming from determination which I kinda want to drop. and was thinking about picking up imbalanced guard, but spending 3-4 points to get it doesnt seem worth it.
Maybe if I needed soul of steel and the hp cluster then yeah but at that point I would just invest on armor more.
Yep, location is definitely a big factor
Shouldnt jugg's unbreakable work with this rly well in uber exarch ? On my ssfhc ruthless uber attempt I had 100k armour with 90 fire res e.g.
Uber exarch ball: 17375 damage with 8% fire pen > Reduced to 3127 (bc 82% fire res applies)
8000 Armour is applied -> 2490 dmg taken
With imbalanced guard, 16000 armour is applied, so 2069 dmg taken.
When exactly does the 50% downside apply?
Spell supp doesnt work on exarch balls, even if pob is saying so btw
Spell suppression working or not doesn't matter anyway as that's not damage reduction. The 50% maximum on damage reduction in the example you've given would apply to the moment that armour interacts with the damage after resistance, so yes, Imbalanced Guard would be very useful here. I wen't over Jugg's Unbreakable in the video at 10:43 when only a small percentage of armour is being applied to damage, IG is often going to be very effective, but the issue is that most of these builds also use armour to mitigate physical hits as well so that must be factored in.
So...this keystone is just...ugh. Because it's basically in the worst spot on the tree for the kinds of builds that'd really want it. Which is basically the "granite flask of armadillo + determination = all your armor" style of builds. I.E. if this was in the spot that Supreme Ego is in now, you might see a ranger or shadow occasionally take it if they actually use determination/granite flask. But considering where on the passive tree it is, it basically makes no sense to pick it up unless...you're some sort of low-armor melee build pathing over to that area for max res? It just...boggles the mind as to what build actually wants this.
I guess one thing you *can* do with this, which might be a bit cute is: are you going to go bossing and are already in the area? Okay, spec into this for a point, do your bosses, regret out of it. But just as a generally useful all-around keystone? No, absolutely not.
Imbalanced Guard seems like a good combo with Bloodnotch. Bloodnotch lets you completely ignore small hits, so the only thing that matters is increasing your one shot threshold. With armor values less than 100k, Imbalanced Guard should help.
It helps at MUCH lower armor values than 'less than 100k'. Even at half that figure it's not worth it. This is for builds whose only armor is either Determination + Granite flask, or just wearing hybrid armor/evasion gear.
Basically, the perfect situation to use Imbalanced Guard is: you have around ~10-25k armor, ~85-95% chance to evade attacks, Bloodnotch, a bit of recovery on top, phys taken as ele. This way u completely mitigating the downside and basically just doubling your armor. The only problem is that u can't really use Bloodnotch on champ or marauder, since there are no ES stun threshold masteries around, and the pathing from ES stun threshold masteries to Imbalanced Guard takes really many points..
This is great content, keep up the good work
Thank you!
Random idea: combining Imbalanced Guard (defense against large hits) and Persistence (flat reduced damage taken for small hits).
It's simply located in the wrong part of the tree.
if it was close to the shadow part, it would see alot more use
This series is so dope
So the way this sounds, correct me if im wrong here, is that imbalanced guard is really good if used with properly layered defenses, but bad if you are using purely armor
Well, it can still be good even with pure armour, depending on what is hitting you, how much damage it's dealing and how much armour you have.
Doppelganger gives less damage taken, it also provides 10% regen.
So doppelganger with unbreakable ward. Yup yup yup.
Nice one, arrow dancing next?
Next is Corrupted Soul, but Arrow Dancing soon!
with high regen build. guess this will go well with jugg RF?
Does topaz, ruby and sapphire flasks count as "Damage reduction"??
No, these are damage taken modifiers
does the doppelgänger fall into the physical damage reduction bracket?
No, less damage taken is not damage reduction
Resistance is not a form of damage reduction. I'm floored. Glad I stopped playing wiki of exile years ago.
Ok, what if I have a lot of armour but no additional physical damage reduction at all?
You'd still suffer from the same problem - the smaller hits now deal more damage to you. Against very big hits it might be beneficial, fe. 60k armour vs an Uber Shaper Slam ability will mitigate 33%, but with Imbalanced Guard that goes up to 50%.
Thank you.
So this is good after small hits even more?
How abt use with phys damage taken as elemental/chaos is that good?
Still suffers from the same drawbacks - the smaller amount of physical damage you take still deals more damage on smaller hits and less on bigger hits. If anything it's not ideal because with a lower initial hit you'd be more likely to mitigate more than 50% without using IG.
Great series
Appreciate that!
Keep up good work!
Then survivors guilt would be amazing on an evasion character right?
It would if seen in isolation. But there's always opportunity cost for any gear slot. There's lots of good belts out there.
As Shankar said, it is competing with other belts for that slot. However, as i said in the video I think this is great on that type of character for early game mapping before you solve physical damage via other means or before you get stronger gear.
I have used it on ruthless. It's good but in most cases a good leather belt with a lot of life is better
In all examples this keystone didnt worth their points. Maybe in Ushaper, but some phy-> convertion will be ALOT stronger. Lets assume you spent 3-4 points on this keystone, so theoretically its 15-20% inc life, which is better in any situation.
It's definitely one of the weak keystones in the game, but it has some niche use cases. I expect it will be gone whenever PoE2 comes along with changes to the passive tree.
It is just impossible to understand for an average player.
W
🥰
Worst Keystone in the game gotta be Necromantic Aegis. I can't find a single reason to run that garbage.
I think its useless guide when u try to calculate only 10k armor, cos any builds which use armor have it near 50k and so this keystone totally useless cos cant reach same PDR as 50k of armor
If you think every build that uses armour has 50k, you're completely oblivious to the majority of non Marauder/Duelist builds that are running 10-25k armour. And no, the keystone isn't useless even with 50k armour, you'd largely increase your mitigation against an Uber Shaper slam by clicking the keystone.
Quick correction, it isn’t doubling your armor value. It’s tripling it.
No, you don't get 200% armour on top of your actual armour, you defend with 200% of armour.
@@dreamcore_gg gah, I appreciate that you make videos, but it says right on the keystone "defend with 200% Armour", not "your Armour rating is doubled." So, if you have 100 armour, you now defend with 200% of that which is 200, for a total of 300.
If it said, "your Armour rating is doubled" then you would be correct.
@@nonyabeeswacks1919 Defend with 200% of armour. The keystone doubles your armour for the purpose of defending against hits. Your interpretation of it would be something like 'Defend with 200% More Armour'. That's not what it does.
I'll just link this thread from Mark here, you can scroll down to his reply to Nicklodze: www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/h9rlc2/comment/fuymflw/?context=3