https://pobb.in/EwPpT8uI9K1m

TLDR: 90% max ele res, 85% phys as ele, 83-88% evade, capped suppress, perma quicksilver using traitor keystone on right side of the tree (for flask nodes).

Seeing the change to elemental flasks I decided to check how viable using traitor with Taste of Hate and melding would be for early-ish league to stack max res for defenses and it seems to be fairly realistic to achieve without breaking the bank while also offering other good defenses.

In this PoB we reach 90% max all ele res via Taste of Hate (+7), Purity of Ice (+5), max res shield (+5), glove implicit (+1/2) and life mastery (+1) with -4 from well rolled Melding of the Flesh. Since we already using Taste of Hate and armor being annoying for right side builds we could also utilize phys to ele conversion with ToH, Lightning Coil and helmet implicit+craft adding up to 85% of phys as ele which if you so desire can be taken to 97% with higher tier of helmet implicit and Watcher's Eye with Purity of Ice mod. Using Grace with permanent Jade flask from Traitor keystone also allows us to get to 83% evade, up to 88-89% if you use dread banner with generosity. Capped suppress as per usual. Pemanent-ish quicksilver with your choice of suffix as a bonus.

Gearing this is rather straightforward, most of your gear is gonna be just stacking as much res as possible since we need to overcome high res penalty from Melding and Lightning Coil. Permanent Bismuth flask with ele res roll will help a lot to offset those but sadly max ele res roll on it was nerfed for 3.24 so you now need more suffixes to compensate for lost res. You can use Cloak of Flame early instead of Lightning Coil which will take you from 30k to 22k for phys max hit but will free 110-130+ res from light res penalty on coil and extra fire res on cloak but you would also have to compensate for evasion mastery by taking Entrench / gearing more suppress.

Besides high res requirements the two annoying gear pieces are shield and belt. I don't expect similar shields to be that expensive, they are usually Rog crafts and you can swap max res with harvest if needed, aegis is an alternative but will most likely be pricier and we don't benefit from it really. Belt craft is sadly just chaos spam and pray from what I remember but you can compensate bad duration rolls with flask duration tattoos if needed.

Overall I think this is a decent defense option for builds on right side of the tree which can afford to be equipped in mostly rares. Saboteur synergies with this particularly well as you get blind (aka extra evade), 15% damage reduction, ignite and shock immunity which you can turn into full regular ele ailment immunity by grabbing an abyss jewel with 40% chance to avoid freeze (taste of hate gives 40+ and tree 20) and boots craft giving chill immunity allowing you to change out of Brine King pantheon. 10% life regen is a much needed recovery layer.

If budget is a concern with current PoB, switching from Coil to Cloak of Flame, micro-distillery to regular/stygian belt with flask rolls and shield to one with 3-4 max res instead of 5 should drastically reduce the costs (and your phys max hit) while still giving you 85+ max res.

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