endgame difficulties questions

Hi guys, I have a lvl93 char pathfinder poison cloud build, do al lot of 15-17 maps but i keep getting one shot by boss mostly (citadel and sometimes random ones).
2250 life
1250 ES
max resist and 40% of damage goes to mana before life.
Is it too weak ?

Also I have 92% chance do dodge, if i'm frozen, stunned, can i still evade ?

Your life and ES total are on the lower end I would say.
Also what does your evasion in general look like? Are you using any auras for defense?
Many poison builds focus on building energy shield, some are going CI.
There are some auras that grant defensive layers like Wind Dancer/Ghost Dance/Grim Feast, which can all be run simultaneously.
Other than that it's pretty hard to tell what's causing the lack of survivability without actually seeing the passive tree or gameplay.
There are some overtuned boss attacks though that can one shot even defensively strong builds.

Your life and ES are fine. The game doesn't particularly give you too many options to build life pool other than gear. ES can be doubled by running grim feast. This is sadly why almost every good build is ES + abuse grim feast.

I will share some insight on damage though:

First off 90% of deaths people think are 1 shots are not. They just happen so fast it seems like a 1 shot. This is something to keep in mind. Secondly, Armor is shit. Just abandon it for now. The other aspect of defense in this game is literally NOT trying to tank shit. You have a dodge roll for a reason. At this stage of the game's development, without ENORMOUS investment, you are not meant to tank. You just aren't. Get over it, stop trying, learn to zig and zag. If 20 mobs shoot spines at you and you just stand there, it's not GGGs fault you died. 90% of monster encounters if you can not attack quick enough to kill them before they attack should go like this:

1. See monster
2. Approach monster slightly to bait attack
3. Change position (so monster is now attacking your old position instead) You don't have to dodge roll everything. You can simply run to another position slightly after the monsters start their attack animation.
4. Kill monsters

If you are running headfirst into packs you will die. Period. There's no deviation from this attack strategy until your build is buffed up enough to smoke at least half the screen in the direction you are facing. Projectiles do not have life bars so you will get hit by them if you remain in the position you were in when the monster attacked. This part of the game is definitely a learn to play issue.

That being said you have to have at LEAST 2 good defensive layers (3 preferred)

The defensive layers fall into categories, Primary, secondary, and 3rd:

Primary is always going to be your combined life and ES. I do endgame content with no problem on my monk with 2300 life and 560 ES (doubled to 1120). So i effectively only have about 3500 hp. That's my primary defense.

Your SECONDARY layer is where most people fail. Your options here are block, and evasion. You can also use cloak of flame or some other form of physical damage reduction but they game is not going to reward you for using PDR later trust me. This form of mitigation is what I consider 3rd layer.

Evasion to be effective must take the Acrobatics node and you probably need at LEAST 50% chance to evade once Acrobatics takes it's 70% reduction. So before Acrobatics I had around 90% chance to evade but it was useless because if it's not a hit or projectile you might as well not even have evasion. Acrobatics is REQUIRED for evasion to be effective because it lets you evade aoe slams and you're really only susceptible to damage over time and degens.


Block is your second option but requires a shield or heavy investment into block jewels and block chance nodes if you don't use a shield. My blood mage summoner has around 6500 hp and 5500 ES but the 39% chance to block goes off constantly and stops hits completely. Most of my damage mitigation comes from the fact that I simply use a shield.

These 2 secondary layers are important because they COMPLETELY negate damage. Your primary layer is just supposed to kick in when the secondary fails. I suppose going block AND Evasion would be ideal but I haven't tried a build with both yet and not sure how damage would work although I'm sure it's possible to do well.

The 3rd defensive layer would be auras or crit reduction on the tree or physical damage reduction. These help a little but not as good as primary and secondary layer. If you can run ghost dance it's great for converting hits back into ES as well. Even at my measly 500 ES base, ghost dance is constantly replacing it when I actually get hit. Cloak of flame is another example of 3rd layer protection converting % of phys damage taken to fire so it goes against your (should be capped) fire resist instead of your ( I have no armor) physical damage reduction.

As always, very high dps will save you more than anything else. If you are off-screening enemies before they know you're there then they can't kill you. When it comes to bosses, stunning and freezing are king. These two mechanics alone completely make most boss fights trivial as you can actually stun and/or freeze almost every boss in the game.

Anyway hope this helps over my 3 lvl 94+ chars.