Defense and blocking on a charged boltress

[:1]Hi all,

So here's my question. I've started an untwinked charged boltress with a pretty mean firewall as a backup LI killer. Both of these skills are going to cause me to get up close and personal in melee range with beasties. Can I amass enough defense to make a real difference in how often I get hit, or should I just go with dex and blocking as my damage mitigation?

I know there are skills that would help (ES and maybe the cold armors) but with a maxed synergy charged bolt and a nearly synergized firewall, I have no points to spare.

I thought about crafting safety gear along the way to help out and of course, an act 2 defense merc is a must. Keep in mind that she is a self found kind of girl, so no twinking AT ALL. Suggestions?|||Quote:








Hi all,

So here's my question. I've started an untwinked charged boltress with a pretty mean firewall as a backup LI killer. Both of these skills are going to cause me to get up close and personal in melee range with beasties. Can I amass enough defense to make a real difference in how often I get hit, or should I just go with dex and blocking as my damage mitigation?

I know there are skills that would help (ES and maybe the cold armors) but with a maxed synergy charged bolt and a nearly synergized firewall, I have no points to spare.

I thought about crafting safety gear along the way to help out and of course, an act 2 defense merc is a must. Keep in mind that she is a self found kind of girl, so no twinking AT ALL. Suggestions?




With high def armor/helm/shield and a normal defensive merc (Defiance), you could get reasonably high defense... but blocking and DR with a diff merc would be better. 1 point in a cold armor with your +skills is a big def boost, too. You can get max block pretty easily with something like a stormshield, visceratuant, or whistan's guard. Stormshield + Shako are both reasonably attainable in single player self found and would nearly max damage reduction also.|||I'll mostly repeat what Kuts said:

If your armour and shield has a good amount of defense then you'll end up with a solid total after Defiance and a cold armour. Defense isn't completely useless (some people seem to think so) but getting your total up may be a problem untwinked. You probably would not want to spend that pul you just got to up something. I'd say the better option would probably be to go max block, get a Holy Freeze merc and make him as tanky as possible.|||Quote:








I'll mostly repeat what Kuts said:

If your armour and shield has a good amount of defense then you'll end up with a solid total after Defiance and a cold armour. Defense isn't completely useless (some people seem to think so) but getting your total up may be a problem untwinked. You probably would not want to spend that pul you just got to up something. I'd say the better option would probably be to go max block, get a Holy Freeze merc and make him as tanky as possible.




I'll probably try going defense heavy until I get to act 2 NM and I'll see how hard I am getting hit. I can always respec my stat points to max block then if need be.

One thing I will definitely be needing is some faster block mods. I've found that the most dangerous situation for me right now is getting block locked into perilous situations. Man the Sorc has a SLOW block rate. I don't know how battle mages do it... |||Unless you're used to a holy shield pally, sorc FBR isn't so bad if you can hit the 15% breakpoint and most blocking shields you'll go for have ~20% anyway.