Imbalanced Guard

Imbalanced Guard is a keystone passive skill. It doubles your armour value against hits, but caps all damage reduction effects at 50%.

  • 100% chance to Defend with Double Armour
  • Maximum Damage Reduction for any Damage Type is 50%
  • (Armour is treated as double value, only for calculating damage mitigation)

Armour grants physical damage reduction. However, armour requires that the defender is hit by the damage.

Currently there are 5 types of damage: Physical Damage, Fire Damage, Cold Damage, Lightning Damage, and Chaos Damage.

 Imbalanced Guard PoE

Physical damage reduction

In general, the only damage reduction a character will have is physical damage reduction, either directly or from armour.

Transcendence and Doryani’s Prototype Doryani’s Prototype apply armour to elemental damage, in which case both the double armour and reduction cap will apply.

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Resistances

Resistances are not considered damage reduction, so Imbalanced Guard will not cap resists.

Reduced/less damage taken

Reduced/less damage taken modifiers also don’t count against the maximum damage reduction.

How to get Imbalanced Guard?

1. Passive Skill Tree

Imbalanced Guard is located at the middle layer of the southwest part of the tree, to the left of the transition path between Duelist and Marauder, next to the Soul of Steel cluster.

Class Distance from start
Marauder 9
Duelist 10
Scion 14
Templar 16
Ranger 18
Shadow 24
Witch 24

2. Imbalanced Guard Uniques

These unique items have the Imbalanced Guard modifier, which provides the same effect as this keystone. Taking the keystone in addition to equipping one of these items will impart no additional benefit.

Item Base Item Lvl. Category Stats
Skin of the Lords Skin of the Lords Simple Robe 1 Body Armour Item has no level requirement and Energy Shield (Hidden)
Sockets cannot be modified
+1 to Level of Socketed Gems
100% increased Global Defences
You can only Socket Corrupted Gems in this item
Item has 6 Sockets and is fully linked (Hidden)

<Random Keystone>

Corrupted
Survivor’s Guilt Survivor’s Guilt Heavy Belt 52 Belt +(25-35) to Strength+(800–1200) to Armour
Regenerate (50–70) Life per second
20% increased Stun Threshold
10% reduced Armour per 50 Strength
Imbalanced Guard

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