Path of Exile free to play in about six hours.

[swirly]

I do use some hybrid gear from time to time on my Summoner. I try to stick with Armour / ES, and not Evasion / ES, mainly because I'm a WoW tank at this, so I think Evasion is bad and random, Armour is bad and constant. Take the constant.

I use some of both currently. I know Evasion isn't random like it is in WoW. There is a guarantee to it with the way they calculate it. With me going CI though and having a lot of summons, I really wonder if Evasion or Armour are worth it. I feel like the summons give me time that if I take a couple of hits I can back away and regen the ES. That means small hits aren't a problem. So the only concern is big hits. Evasion is random on the first hit. If it is a hit/miss then the equation for it will affect future hits to make sure it provides what it is supposed. So that means it is random on that one first hit which is the one I'm concerned with. Thus not so great for me. Armour, like you said, is bad against big hits as well due to how they calculate it. Bad in the one case I am worried about again.

So I end up thinking that I should ignore Evasion and Armour and go for pure ES and resists. Taking that line of thought even further makes me start wondering about not wearing a shield. Like maybe I could use a big two handed staff so that I could get six sockets on it. I know it is unlikely to find a good roll like that, but it would be quite handy to have both the weapon and chest slot as possible to have 6 for support gems. Right now I'm still leaning towards keeping the shield and pondering the armour stuff, but it is on my mind.

I haven't looked into the ES difference between wand/shield and 2H staff. Though the lack of the free ranged attack that I get with the wand and lose with the staff bothers me. I imagine that disappearing as I level more though.

I agree, that those templar area nodes are very tempting. They are such nice rounded nodes.

They really are. Even the nodes on the way to them. There are some 8% armour 8% ES nodes that I compare to plain 8% ES nodes that I have debated taking. Even if the armour is bad... the nodes are equal not even counting it. I think the big problem is that if you have a hybrid item then it will have half armour and half ES. Whereas a pure item will have a full value of ES. So you end up with the best way to gear being to not have any armour on gear which then makes those notes equal and the couple of extra passive points to get to them a big minus.

So right now I am thinking I have to ignore those nodes. Probably not worth the travel cost to get to them in the tree. I feel like it is a close thing though. I have a few levels to really decide on it all still.

Edit: On the staff/wand thing. Seems shields get ES, but 2H staves don't. So that makes shields the clear winner. So probably should stick with wand/shield. Though I can go with one of the pure ES shields if I choose in regard to the armour/no armour thing.