Iron Reflexes or not?

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Lyutsifer665 wrote:

i dont know why you would spread such misinformation when OP can just go back one page and see this commet from another poster

It's not misinformation to clarify that iron reflexes has little to no big gain if you are having a low amount of armor.

You can even see it on your Poe ninja that the majority of players do use the keystone in high end scenarios and lots of evasion to gain a lot of armor.
Op does not really have a lot of investment into evasion therefore it's a wasted point.

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For Aegis Aurora builds, I'd go with Iron Reflexes. You want to be hit by as many small hits as possible. If you want evasion, better use another shield.

and i agree with that poster. Op is not using an "aegis alternative" so iron reflexes is much beneficial for him.

You do miss the keyword "small hits" here.
The little armor gain won't save you from bigger physical hits that don't end up getting blocked.
People do utilize iron reflexes and Versatile Combatant in combination once they can comfortably overcome the downside of both, one being a much lower chance to block making it easier for enemies to one shot you if you don't make use of it properly. People do use iron reflexes to convert large amounts of evasion, yes keyword large, into armor to help against big physical hits.

They also make use for Aegis for 90 max res since that's what aegis is good for to help with the mitigation of large magic damage hits that don't end up getting blocked.
OP has small amounts of evasion so he's not gaining any real mitigation against phys hits by using the keystone. The okay chance of evasion on the other hand gives him another roll to not get hit at all by the phys hit on his low budget.

OP is also not at the point of using aegis for 90 max res yet and also sits on 29% spell suppression chance making them quite vulnerable to elemental hits.
So it's not the wrong approach to skip wasting the one point for iron reflex and invest it into something that's on a higher priority list.
Even spending the point for the extra endu charge would be more worth it than the little bit of armor as it provides both physical and magical damage reduction.

The little armor gain is not the maker or breaker for them to enhance their defense for 8mod t16, something they do want to focus on after all. Going with a different approach to farm up the currency for a high end ageis version is the better approach here as they do want to farm maps and not hit a wall at every few maps.

The ES gain on block is not even the key feature of why those builds use it as they already survive all day long just on ES leech alone as long as they don't get one shot by something.
And no the gain on block is not going to save you from one shots as players have already explained to you in a different topic.

Some other builds like minion builds or armor focused builds on the left side of the tree use the shield to make use on the gain on block but all those melee tricksters are using the not exclusively for the gain.
That's why you see a lot more players with Svallin or different shields as those do provide better mitigation in low-mid investment area.

@OP: I checked your character and there are several things I noticed that you can improve.

1) You use 4 passive points for Revenge of the Hunted for the evasion mastery. However, you play a CI build so investing into life nodes is not good. If you want that specific mastery you should instead grab Survivalist which saves you a passive point, provides more %evasion per passive point and helps with your resistances. You might be able to drop Alira for an extra passive point, saving you 2 in the process.

2) Lightning mastery for phys to lightning conversion is unnecessary because most of your damage is flat added damage. Another passive saved

3) Use 2 passive points to grab the Endurance Charge from "Vigour" notable. This will improve your physical mitigation which you are struggling with currently

4) You have a bit of an odd setup going with those curses? Not sure if you're supposed to be running Anathema and forgot to remove those extra gems but you should make an assessment whether you want to run Sniper's Mark or Conductivity.

5) You run Immortal Call on a Ralakesh setup which is odd. You cannot consume those Endurance Charges to improve the skill so it's a waste imo. Better to run Molten Shell if you are going further down the Iron Reflexes route

6) You should consider changing the Sulphur Flask to a Jade Flask if you want to make better use of Iron Reflexes. Your flasks will only really have uptime during mapping (putting you at ~40k armour with Jade + Granite with %effect) and 25k without. That means blocked hits will return 500 ES without flasks which is not sufficient to sustain properly

Something else you could think about, and this would be a GREAT overall improvement to your build is changing One Step Ahead to Swift Killer for the +2 Frenzy Charges, then changing Voice of the Storm to Replica Badge of the Brotherhood which puts your max Endurance Charges at your Frenzy Charge cap.

Part of why OP was considering IR by the way was that he thinks he gets 48% PDR from speccing it alone, which it might for small hits but not for the big physical attacks which are the actually scary ones. OP likely doesn't know how armour works and that's another thing they should look into. The 90% PDR tooltip in game just doesn't work like that

What an interesting - no, insigthful thread. Thank you all for your contributions. Serious.

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Part of why OP was considering IR by the way was that he thinks he gets 48% PDR from speccing it

Yeah, haven't read through the whole thread, but a many of the comments I did read relate to this.

Further, every few days a thread comes up that relates to this. Even more threads on top of this are people asking why they are dying in maps, and super majority of the time it is physical damage.

Fixing this point of confusion wont magically make everyone in the community get along, but it wouldn't hurt.

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Belegur85 wrote:

Further, every few days a thread comes up that relates to this. Even more threads on top of this are people asking why they are dying in maps, and super majority of the time it is physical damage.

Fixing this point of confusion wont magically make get everyone in the community get along, but it wouldn't hurt.

Agree'd most players realise that 90% is the cap for PDR, but they always use the in-game character sheet which is misleading.
Causing people to post on the forums and complain cause they die heaps.
Highly recommend they fix the in-game character sheet, it's actually a point of reference for players and in this scenario in particular, it's consistently incorrect.

Thanks guys for all your help and suggestions. I have attempted to follow some.
The Replica Badge ammy doesn't work well enough at all, i actually did 1 complete map and did not generate a single end charge. Would like to use phys to chaos damage conversion on helm but mana is a big problem, as you can see i am using a small cluster jewel to help out. Logic behind the curses is Snipers Mark only applies to rares or uniques where it is really appreciated. The other 2 are just there for trash mobs, either curse is ok for them. This setup does work ok.
And you're correct in pointing out that my knowledge of how armour works in this game is not my best strength. I'm over 70 years old and i reckon this game's mechanics would stretch some very intelligent individuals.
Indication i suppose is t16 8 mod maps are a walk in the park, completed 15/15 Simulacrum levels. Only thing i cannot do is T17 bosses, need over 100 mill damage like the top guys but that won't happen, need to be happy with my 3.2 mill damage.

The idea with the Badge of the Brotherhood is always having max endurance charges thanks to Ralakesh boots and then also have Fortify (either as a support or double corrupted Ephemeral Edge) which then gets boosted to up to like 30% damage reduction

It's great that you're willing to experiment tho Edmoses! I learned a lot about the game and my characters by trying various things and see what works best for my situation. I can look at your character from a top down perspective and figure some stuff out, but at the end of the day it's your character and you're playing it :)

Thought i would try to give an accurate update on my question.
I am not using Iron Reflexes now. After extensive testing on very rippy maps i have found by not using Iron Reflexes i am a lot more stable. When i say a lot i very rarely take damage but with using Iron Reflexes i would get the occasional 1 hit and die. I have leveled with no deaths from 97 zero exp to 98 70% exp. Of course this is for my build so may not work with everyone. I have 2.5kehp and 2.9 mill damage. How i progress from here? personally have no idea this side of a mageblood - cheers.