I'm a newbie to PoE and still learning all the ins and outs. I seem to be doing decent damage but still get slammed by mini bosses. Am I supposed to favor all Intelligence/Energy Shield armor and gear over the Evasion or Armor type gears? I'm almost to lvl 70 but only have like 1.6k life and 1k energy shield. Been using Lightning based skills until I read Chaos is better. Any general help is appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Need more informations about your question.

You are lvl 70 in White maps i guess ? (Tier1-5)
Are you trying to figure out a build on your own? Maybe try reading through similar builds to understand their way of "defense"
Have you fixed your Resistances?
Have you put on %chaos res? or are you at -60%

Dying with lvl 70 in white maps is mainly resistances. A bit of evasion is good enough for it.
And yes, if you focus on defenses like Energy Shield & Evasion, you prefer the right item bases for it.

Also, whats better, lightning or chaos, also depends on a few things. It does not mean chaos-damage is stronger than lightning damage all the time.
That is because damage conversion functions in a way where chaos damage comes last, so it will like benefit from alot of sources, but thats kind of an advanced thingy.

This post was edited by behindme on Mar 24 2025 04:02am

I was just wondering if overall, if I were a Witch, with main attribute being Intelligence, wouldn't Energy shield be the thing I'd max over evasion or armor? Or should I add in Evasion in with Energy Shield?

I'm lvl 70 with about 1.7k life and 1.2k energy shield now. With Lightning Tendrils, I'm doing about 20k lightning damage with some chaos mixed in. Fire, Cold and Light Resists are maxed. Chaos res is at like 60. I'm n chapter 10 and I blow through most groups, unless I try to mine Crisom Iron whatever. The tree thing goes to zero long before I can kill all the monsters. Maybe they are lightning immune.

thanks for the pointers.

im wondering what gear u have at lvl 70, having maxres and 60 chaosres.
what "mini bosses" are killing you, like campaign bosses or boosted rares?

if its only the season content from settlers, they are really strong. i ran t17 and i still had to care if i fullcharged a verisium node on t16.

best thing u can do is to blast through maps until u hit the red ones and then chill and farm there until u find or craft better basegear. i would not care about the settlers content for now, since higher tier maps give really alot more ressources.

some players say, best defense is damage. kill them before they can even see you

This post was edited by behindme on Mar 24 2025 06:13am

I have decent gear for my level and roll with a Chaos Golem for damage reduction. I'm lvl 70 with lvl 60-ish gear. My current plan is to continue to work on upgrading gear, while keeping my res maxed or as close as I can get. Not all of the gear is Energy Shield based. That is why I posed the original question. Should I be working on getting all gear that will be Energy Shield based, maxed damage, maxed res and max life/mana. In that general order.

So, now I'm working on 2 questions:

1. Should I aim for ALL Energy Shield/Intelligence based gear?
2. ----Update Incoming----

I had an aura on that may have been aiding to my frustration. Aura of Purity or something like that. It looks like mostly a melee based aura. Will update later...

that depends the most on your gem-links at this moment.
i would even wear a tabula rasa on your stage at the game in the moment, just for the 6link, wich has 0 stats or defense.
i would recommend you to go through maps now and dont try to farm the campaign layouts for loot or for settlers ressources.

1. Should I aim for ALL Energy Shield/Intelligence based gear? Yes, but not at this stage of gearing.
Why?
Higher iLvls roll better prefixes and suffixes. so if you are looking for rare gear, you most of the time look for the highest ilvl of the item you can get.

fair enough. thanks a bunch.