I’m lvl75, my resistances are maxed, my armour is maxed, my defensive abilities are maxed*(5/5), I got as much defense as I could from the Paragon boards.
Reason for asking; I have more than enough dmg to clear lvl100+ monsters but I’m getting one shot when my defensive abilities are down. I’m a bit confused as to what am I suppose to be doing next.
I’m not an expert, but you do need a secondary survival factor.
I use health regen, lots of HP and freeze/slow down my enemies.
A small amount of health regeneration is very useful. Slow down your enemies too. So they hit me slower, their blows don’t kill me in one hit, and I immediately regenerate the lost life.
Increasing your health (hp) is usually not recommended, unless your regeneration is based on % of maximum health.
It must also be said that moving is extremely important… moving and attacking at the same time is difficult but pays off a lot.
(Two big fast hits in a row can kill me, so for me, moving is extremely important.)
cooldown reduction for your defensive abilities as well.
id disagree this season. with the removal of many damage reduction sources a lot of HP became quite important.
One usually underrated defensive layer is your movement speed to quickly get out of trouble, paired with snare/stun if possible.
Also what is you class/build to add some context ?
Yes, but a life that you can’t regenerate is a bit useless. I don’t know, it’s something I learned in D3.
Although, if you can kill the enemies before losing all your life then regeneration isn’t that important.
Regeneration gains impact in long, continuous fights.
and we also good the good old potions =P
Yes, an alternative is to equip a legendary that gives you more potions and use that to regenerate, but I think it is not enough regeneration.
oh also dodge chance can be quite interesting, tho of course it relies on you being lucky lol.
It just so happens that someone helpfully covered this earlier 
Lots of good info there, read through that. Credit to carrotfeets of course!
oh he points out a great point. cc. i love to roll some cc on my pants for example with tempering. it helps staggering bosses which is also free “no dmg” time.
The armor/res part is always unclear to me … If I get just enough armor/res to hit sheet cap, am I still capped against mobs above level 100 (assuming I hit those cap at level 100) ?
For sure. On my Rogue for example, I use Aspect of Surprise to drop the stun grenades when you evade. It only stuns for like, a second, but you have near infinite uptime on evade with the boots that reduce evade cooldown when you attack. And this season, I have smoke grenade on a 3 second cooldown from the tempering, it can daze the enemies for 4 seconds
I’m playing incinerate Sorceress. I use flame shield and ice armour as my defensive abilities. I don’t really have much CC tbh but I’m fast. That’s an area I could explore. But, I don’t want to be a glass cannon. That wasn’t my idea for the build. I don’t expect to be tanky but currently my survivability sucks.
Indeed, thanks for posting. He does mention damage reduction but I think they removed the stat? I’m not sure. I don’t think I saw it anywhere on gear. Maybe it’s on tempering and I’ve missed it??
They removed most damage reduction from gear (it’s not a general stat anymore, you can only get it via some uniques now).
At first, I was concerned about that change (I play Hardcore) but, it was just part of the overall simplification of gear this season. They have more than compensated for it by adding or improving defensive options via aspects, tempering, etc.
They have also made it significantly easier to get much more base HP with all the huge extra life stats on every piece of gear, even weapons! Do you want to survive? Get life on every piece of gear. It’s a great start.
And as always we have many defensive options via paragon board and skill trees.
Ironically while I love Incinerate Sorc, it’s literally the only character I did NOT play as HC (it’s the only one I played in ‘normal’ mode) but let me look anyway to see what defensive options I chose, though it’s from last season.
Some of that legacy 4 DR gear is probably worth billions in eternal. Damn!
Are you specifically in helltide when you feel it? I think helltide is probably “overtuned” around that level (but still fun imo) until you round-out with tempering & some paragon. Without getting a feel for your build, that’s what it might be, in the most general terms.
I did feel it a lot when I cleared NMD46 to open the pit
That’s the one thing I really don’t want to do. Stacking HP on every single item slot is beyond boring to me. I hope there are more ways, that’s why I opened this thread. I need to check tempering a bit more on my gear, maybe there’s options for damage reduction I’ve missed.
I dont like a system where one choice for you is taken away and it seems one has been as you have to get life on every item now. This is not a good change.
So I just took a quick glance at my old sorc, who wasn’t HC but I did want it to be able to survive and complete NM100 and all that, so I of course had to beef up the defenses a bit.
If you need a ‘quick fix’ to get your armor up, take a look at these aspects, if you haven’t seen them (you should only need one or the other, not both):
They both have downsides, but they’re a huge boost to defense if your armor is low. (Remembering that you need more than the listed ‘cap’ to defend against higher level monsters, that ‘85% cap’ number only applies to an enemy that is the same level as you).
Gear - to help survivability I had the ‘Soulbrand’ unique chest armor - gives you a barrier and damage reduction when you use a potion. A nice option if you can get it.
Glyphs options:
Paragon:
So it looks like really that’s all I had for defensive options on that Incinerate Sorc, of course you can kite and all that, burning them down before they get to you is the best! But tbh I hate kiting and just like to face tank everything, that’s why I went for more of the survival options.
I have no idea how well that’ll work this season, but just a few things to look at there.
I doubt it’s like that at all, just to be super clear, this is coming from my perspective as a Hardcore player. Of course I will take life on every piece of gear when it’s an option, it would be foolish not to. But that hasn’t changed, it was the same as before, just now we have more options.
Another option is get more life via tempering, even I (in HC) didn’t need to do both (yet), having options is a good thing. If you’d rather prioritize DPS stats on your weapon, go nuts, but you should still get more life in other places.