In Last Epoch, Ward is a popular and powerful defensive layer, often allowing players to accumulate massive effective health pools that absorb incoming damage. However, not all damage plays by the same rules. Understanding and countering this "through-Ward" damage is crucial for surviving high-end content and pushing challenging milestones Last Epoch Gold.
Core Counter-Strategies
To effectively counter damage that bypasses your Ward, you need to bolster your fundamental survivability:
Maximize Your Health Pool: This is the most straightforward and arguably most critical defense. Since Ward is ignored, raw health becomes your primary buffer. Prioritize flat health and percentage health increases on gear (body armor, helmets, rings, amulets) and from your passive trees. Every point of health counts when your Ward isn't there to absorb the blow.
Cap Your Resistances: Resistances (Physical, Fire, Cold, Lightning, Poison, Necrotic, Void) are applied prior to any damage affecting your Ward or health. It is imperative that all your resistances are capped at 75%. Even in scenarios where Ward is circumvented, capped resistances will greatly mitigate incoming damage before it impacts your health pool. It is crucial to focus on the damage types linked to prevalent Damage over Time effects (e.g., Poison Resistance for Poison, Fire Resistance for Ignite).
Utilize Endurance and Endurance Threshold: Endurance serves as a robust defensive mechanism that diminishes all damage inflicted on your health when your current health falls below your Endurance Threshold. This functions as an additional, percentage-based layer of damage reduction that occurs after resistances and before damage is applied to your health. Enhancing your Endurance and establishing a higher Endurance Threshold (through gear and passive abilities) can significantly lessen the effects of damage that bypasses Ward, particularly in instances of sudden damage that rapidly depletes your health.
Generic Damage Reduction: Seek out sources of "reduced damage taken" from all origins. This can be derived from specific skills, passive abilities within masteries, or unique item affixes. This percentage-based reduction is universally applicable and stacks multiplicatively with other forms of damage reduction, rendering it exceptionally effective against any incoming damage, including that which bypasses Ward.
Gear and Build Considerations
When building a Ward-focused character, it's easy to overlook health and resistances. However, neglecting these foundational defenses is a recipe for disaster in challenging content. Many players find that optimizing their build means carefully considering every gear slot – a process sometimes expedited by trading for high-value items, which often involves buy Last Epoch Gold within the player economy. Prioritizing gear with robust health, resistance, and endurance rolls, even on Ward builds, will provide the much-needed resilience against the insidious threat of damage that bypasses your primary defense.
By diversifying your defensive layers and not solely relying on Ward, you can transform your character from a glass cannon with a large shield into a truly resilient force capable of withstanding anything Eterra throws your way.
