EHP & Defence Calculator
Life pool
Energy Shield is spent before Life. Runic Ward is a last-stand pool beneath Life.
Mitigation
Armour reduces the hit (physical always; elemental only if a mod grants it). Resistances cut elemental & chaos.
Resistances (total, before area penalty)
Avoidance
Evasion & Block can make a strike or projectile deal 0. Deflection cuts a hit by 40% on a chance. None of these apply to Area (AoE) hits.
Incoming hit
EHP is measured against this hit. Enemy accuracy drives Evasion & Deflection; area level sets the resistance penalty.
Damage type
Hit category
Effective health vs a physical strike hit
5,556
effective HP · survives 5 hits of 1,000
- Damage taken per hit
- 667
- Total mitigation
- 33.3%
- Armour reduction
- 33.3%
- Evade chance
- 19%
- Avoidance multiplier
- ×1.23
- Pool (Life+ES+Ward)
- 3,000
EHP by damage type (this hit & category)
Your lowest bar is your weakest defence — the hit type most likely to kill you.
How this is calculated
Every figure uses Path of Exile 2's real defence formulas (patch 0.5). The order a single hit is resolved:
- Evasion & Block can make a strike or projectile deal nothing. Evade chance is
0.95 × Evasion ÷ (Evasion + 4 × enemy Accuracy), capped at 95%; it's entropy-based, so over enough hits you evade exactly that share. Block fully prevents a blocked hit (cap 90%). Neither applies to Area (AoE) hits. - Armour reduces the landed hit by
Armour ÷ (Armour + 10 × hit), capped at 90%. It's stronger against small hits than big ones — which is why EHP is measured against a specific hit size. Armour only touches Physical damage unless a modifier makes a share of it apply to Elemental (applied before resistances in PoE2). - Resistances cut Elemental and Chaos damage, capped at 75% by default (up to 90% with maximum-resistance modifiers). The campaign applies a penalty by area level — reaching −60% at level 65+ — so "overcapping" above the visible cap is what keeps you at 75% in the endgame. Chaos resistance is not hit by that campaign penalty.
- Deflection has a chance to prevent 40% of a hit;
150 × (1 − Accuracy ÷ (Accuracy + 0.12 × Deflection)), capped at 95%. - "Less" and "reduced" damage taken apply last — "reduced" adds up, "less" multiplies.
The surviving damage drains Energy Shield first, then Life — except that Chaos removes twice as much Energy Shield (it no longer bypasses it as in PoE1), so this tool halves your usable ES against Chaos. Runic Ward then catches the killing blow: you drop to 1 Life and the Ward absorbs the rest, so it counts toward the survivable pool — but unlike Energy Shield it doesn't pre-reduce damage and doesn't help against damage-over-time. EHP is avoidance multiplier × pool ÷ fraction of the hit that lands.
Evasion and Block are all-or-nothing per hit; shown here as an average EHP multiplier. Enemy accuracy is an assumption (a tough endgame or pinnacle enemy is roughly 2,000) — set it to your situation. For the mechanics behind each layer, see the Defences and Resistances guides; to read your own numbers off the game, the character sheet reference maps every stat.
Resistance penalty by area level
Where an uncapped 75% Elemental resistance actually lands as you progress. Chaos resistance is exempt.
| Area level | Penalty | 75% becomes |
|---|---|---|
| 1–15 | None | 75% |
| 16–32 | -10% | 65% |
| 33–44 | -20% | 55% |
| 45–53 | -30% | 45% |
| 54–59 | -40% | 35% |
| 60–64 | -50% | 25% |
| 65+ | -60% | 15% |
EHP & defence FAQ
- What is EHP (effective health pool) in Path of Exile 2?
- EHP is how much raw incoming damage you can absorb before dying, once every defensive layer is accounted for — not just your Life bar. A character with 3,000 Life and 50% mitigation has 6,000 EHP against that hit. Because Armour is stronger against small hits than large ones, and resistances only apply to some damage types, your EHP is different for each type of hit — which is exactly what this calculator shows.
- Why does my EHP change when I change the hit size?
- Armour in PoE2 reduces a hit by Armour ÷ (Armour + 10 × hit), so the same armour blocks a much larger share of a small hit than of a big one. Against a 200-damage hit your armour might cut 70%; against a 5,000-damage hit the same armour might cut only 10%. That's why there is no single EHP number — it's always measured against a specific hit, and why armour stacking protects far better against many small hits than one huge one.
- How does Runic Ward affect my EHP?
- Runic Ward is a last-stand pool that sits beneath your Life: when a hit would drop you to 0, you fall to 1 Life instead and the Ward absorbs the remainder. It adds to the raw damage you can survive, so it counts toward your pool here — but unlike Energy Shield it doesn't reduce incoming damage in advance and it doesn't protect against damage-over-time, so treat it as an emergency buffer rather than everyday effective health.
- Does chaos damage still bypass Energy Shield?
- No — that was Path of Exile 1. In PoE2, chaos damage removes twice as much Energy Shield instead of ignoring it, so a chaos hit burns through ES roughly twice as fast. This calculator models that by halving your usable Energy Shield against chaos hits. (Chaos damage-over-time from Poison, and Bleeding, do bypass Energy Shield to hit Life directly, but those are degens, not hits.)
- What enemy accuracy should I use?
- Evasion and Deflection both depend on the attacker's accuracy, so you have to assume a threat. A rough guide: a tough endgame or pinnacle boss sits around 2,000 accuracy. Higher enemy accuracy lowers your evade and deflect chance, so if you want a worst-case read, raise it; for regular map monsters you can lower it. The value is fully editable so you can match your own situation.
- Why does my evade chance never reach 100%?
- Evasion is hard-capped at 95% — an attacker's chance to hit you can never drop below 5%. The formula (0.95 × Evasion ÷ (Evasion + 4 × Accuracy)) approaches 95% but never passes it no matter how much Evasion you stack, and because it's entropy-based you're guaranteed to be hit about once every twenty attempts rather than facing an unlucky streak.