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The Most Underrated Unique Defense Mechanic In Path Of Exile 3.21 - Fourth Vow

May 06, 2023

Today I want to discuss one of the best defensive items in Path of Exile 3.21, Fourth Vow. But it’s really underutilized in the game. It is a Devout Chainmail. It’s very good at protecting your character along with Glorious Vanity Timeless Jewel.

So what is the role of Fourth Vow? Its key stat is armor, which also applies to Chaos damage taken. But that doesn’t make you completely immune to Chaos damage from hits.

It’s just the next best thing to it, especially when combined with a character’s high Chaos Resistance, which grants them 75% Chaos Resistance by default. But if you use Fourth Vow, you might go a step further.

The Most Underrated Unique Defense Mechanic In Path Of Exile 3.21 - Fourth Vow

You can use Javaqua version of Timeless Dual Glorious Vanity, which will give you Divine Flesh, increasing Chaos Resistance cap to 80%. Besides that, you can also use Crucible Shield. This will increase your Chaos Resistance cap to 84 along with Divine Flesh.

Then, according to Suffixes of caliber, you can craft Crucible Shield. They can increase it to an additional 87% or even 89%. So over time, you’re pretty much immune to Chaos damage from any hits. 

This doesn’t provide any additional mitigation, and there’s armor applied against Chaos damage taken from enemies when you’re still dying from elemental damage, or when you’re still dying from physical damage. This is where Mechanism X can help you.

Then I want to introduce another mod we made on this Crucible Shield. So far, 3% of physical damage from hits is chaos damage, now that’s a stat you can earn. You can get 10% on armor, energy shield and Mastery.

POE 3.21 Timeless Dual Glorious Vanity

You pretty much need to use the whole cluster for this, as two armors and energy shield clusters are not that easy to come by. However, in order to do this, you’ll need to use 3-4 Divine Orbs for absolute worth, so 13% of the physical damage your character takes will be considered Chaos damage.

It’s from these sources that you’re looking for that 31% of Physical Damage your character takes can be converted directly to Chaos Damage. But these either need to consume a lot of POE Currency, or are not necessarily worth another important source.

What really matters now is how all of this interacts with Fourth Vow, defending against Chaos damage from hits, which is a very important mechanic and that’s why Fourth Vow is important. Where armor mitigates multiple types of damage, it mitigates damage separately for each type.

Also Read: Winter Orb Occultist Build Guide & Showcase - POE 3.21 Crucible League

In this case, let’s think that everything is in chaos right now. You will take 5000 Physical Damage and 5000 Chaos Damage, and your character’s Chaos Resistance reduces damage from Chaos by 5000. So for each damage type, if you have resistances that apply to that damage, Fourth Vow applies first.

So if you have 80 Chaos Resistance. But suddenly you take 1000 damage, Fourth Vow starts calculating that type of damage from the armor and applies it to the remaining damage. Now in this case, you only take 1000 Chaos damage while your armor is over 45000. Once your armor exceeds 45 times the damage. What you take is that you end up taking 90 less damage.

POE 3.21 The Fourth Vow

So that translates to 5000 damage of chaos, you’ll only have 100 actual health lost, and then for the component that still counts as physical damage, that’s 5000 damage. That means you can take two-thirds of the armor off from how the armor works. So this way, the 10000 damage you would have taken is now reduced to 1767 damage.

By contrast, if you don’t divert 50 physical damage into chaos, your armor will be less effective, and instead of providing two-thirds relief, it will only provide 50% relief. So you still get 5000 original damage. You’ll see here how this combination of combining Fourth Vow and turning a lot of damage into chaos can be very effective.

All in all, Fourth Vow is perhaps one of the best underrated damage deflection mechanics, and it often ends up protecting you from some of the deadliest blows in the game. This is why I like Fourth Vow so much. What do you think about it? Might as well try it out.

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