PoE Glancing Blows — Path of Exile

Glancing Blows is a keystone passive skill in Path of Exile that provides significant benefits and drawbacks to your character’s block mechanics. This keystone doubles your chance to block both attack and spell damage, but causes you to take 65% of the damage from blocked hits.

PoE Glancing Blows

Mechanics

Doubled Block Chance:

Glancing Blows doubles both your chance to block attack damage and your chance to block spell damage. This makes it significantly easier to reach high or even capped block chance, providing better protection against incoming attacks and spells.

Taking Damage from Blocked Hits:

While Glancing Blows greatly improves your block chance, it introduces a major drawback: you will take 65% of the damage from hits that you block. Normally, a blocked hit prevents 100% of the damage, but with Glancing Blows, you still take a portion of that damage.
Importantly, despite taking some damage from blocked hits, other benefits of blocking, such as preventing ailments, curses, and other on-hit effects, remain unchanged. You are still protected from these effects even though you take some damage.

Interactions and Synergies

Damage Taken from Blocked Hits:

The 65% of damage taken from blocked hits applies to all hits that are successfully blocked. This percentage can stack with other sources of similar modifiers, potentially leading to situations where you take more or less damage depending on your build.
For example, certain items and passives can reduce or increase the percentage of damage taken from blocked hits. Using these can help mitigate the downside of Glancing Blows, although you can never completely avoid taking some damage with this keystone active.

Block Animation and Damage Thresholds:

The mechanics of block remain unchanged when using Glancing Blows. A blocked hit still triggers the block animation if it meets the damage threshold for animation, but the damage you take from blocked hits does not affect the likelihood of seeing the block animation.

Synergy with Recovery Mechanics:

Since you will still take some damage when blocking with Glancing Blows, it’s important to consider recovery mechanics such as life gain on block, energy shield recovery, or other forms of sustain. These can help offset the damage taken and keep you alive during sustained combat.

Interaction with Specific Items:

Several items in the game also have modifiers that affect the percentage of damage taken from blocked hits. For instance:

The Oppressor: Reduces the damage taken from blocked hits by 20%.

Legacy Brimstone Treads, Basemetal Treads, Darksteel Treads: These older items (pre-3.25) reduce the damage taken from blocked hits by 20%.

Thwarting Gauntlets, Guarding Gauntlets, Preserving Gauntlets: These items reduce the damage taken from blocked hits by 10%.

Strategic Considerations

Balancing Block and Defense:

Glancing Blows is particularly useful for builds that can quickly reach high block chances but struggle to cap their block rate. By doubling your block chance, you can more easily achieve high block effectiveness. However, the key to using this keystone successfully is balancing your defensive layers to mitigate the damage you still take from blocked hits.

Builds that Benefit from Glancing Blows:

Builds that utilize strong recovery mechanics or that can stack additional defenses to absorb the damage from blocked hits will benefit the most from Glancing Blows. Characters that rely on high evasion or dodge might find this keystone less appealing due to its focus on blocking rather than avoiding hits entirely.

Mitigating Damage from Blocked Hits:

Consider incorporating life or energy shield recovery on block, damage mitigation, or even using items that reduce the damage taken from blocked hits. These strategies can help make Glancing Blows a more manageable keystone, allowing you to capitalize on the increased block chance while minimizing its downsides.

PoE Glancing Blows Build

Classes:

Chieftain: 59%
Necromancer: 11%
Juggernaut: 7%
Occultist: 7%
Inquisitor: 4%
Slayer: 4%
Ascendant: 2%
Elementalist: 2%
Guardian: 1%
Hierophant: 1.0%
Trickster: 0.4%
Deadeye: 0.3%
Gladiator: 0.3%
Pathfinder: 0.3%
Berserker: 0.3%
Champion: 0.3%
Warden: 0.2%
Assassin: 0.2%
Saboteur: 0%
Shadow: 0%

Main Skills:

Righteous Fire: 60%
Fire Trap: 53%
Shield Crush: 9%
Vaal Righteous Fire: 7%
Summon Raging Spirit: 5%
Cyclone: 5%
Ice Nova of Frostbolts: 3%
Summon Skeletons: 2%
Vaal Summon Skeletons: 2%
Raise Zombie: 2%
Animate Guardian: 2%
Forbidden Rite: 2%
Lightning Strike: 1%

Masteries:

Auras from your Skills have 10% increased Effect on you: 63%
Regenerate 1 Life per second for each 1% Uncapped Fire Resistance: 62%
+1% Chance to Block Spell Damage per 5% Chance to Block Attack Damage: 58%
15% increased maximum Life if there are no Life Modifiers on Equipped Body Armour: 57%
You take 30% reduced Extra Damage from Critical Strikes: 55%
10% less Damage Taken from Damage over Time: 53%
Corrupted Blood cannot be inflicted on you: 51%
12% increased Mana Reservation Efficiency of Skills: 50%
+30 to maximum Life: 24%
8% increased Damage for each of your Aura or Herald Skills affecting you: 13%
10% of Leech is Instant: 12%
+1% to Critical Strike Multiplier per 10 Maximum Energy Shield on Shield: 12%
+25% to Critical Strike Multiplier against Unique Enemies: 10%

Conclusion

Glancing Blows is a powerful keystone for characters looking to maximize their block chance, but it requires careful consideration of the damage taken from blocked hits. By doubling both attack and spell block chance, it offers substantial defensive potential, but the 65% damage taken from blocked hits means it is not without risk. To effectively use Glancing Blows, you’ll need to balance this keystone with strong recovery mechanics and other defensive layers to ensure your character can withstand the damage that slips through.

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