About agility vs defense and negative elemental resistances

So I'm nearly at level 100 on my arcanist which means that I'll finally be able to use this build:
https://hppeng-wynn.github.io/build...Q0t0p0K021t1g00001007lU0z0z0+0+0+0+0--FVF-v21
WynnBuilder build:
> Aries
> Conduit of Spirit
> Sagittarius
> Skidbladnir
> Photon
> Photon
> Vortex Bracer
> Contrast
> Morrowind [a6a6a6]

However, it has negative 200 earth defense and negative 40 fire defense which seems like I would be very vulnerable to those elements if the high agility stat doesn't allow me to dodge. I tried to find more information on the wiki about how specifically agility works but the wording is very unclear:
"Agility increases your chance to dodge when you get hit, reducing damage taken by 90%"
Does this mean that the damage is reduced by 90% when you dodge or does it mean that you have a % chance to dodge (taking 0 damage) as well as always reducing damage by 90%?
And should I be putting earth and fire powders on the armour, giving me a sub-optimal armour special for a build focused around dodging attacks or can I rely on the dodge / does negative elemental defenses not really matter that much or have a cap?
Also, could I afford to put less points into agility, just the ones needed to meet the requirements on conduit of spirit so I can put them into intelligence for the spell cost reduction or would putting them into agility to increase air damage be overall more effective? (final stat spread would be 55 2 69 2 119)

Also for clarification, I'm going to be doing most endgame content like raids, lootruns dungeons etc and I don't intend to be doing any PvP.

 

Agility reduces the damage by 90% when you dodge

For your pants and boots, first apply two A6 powders on each, then apply an E6 powder to each. This allows you to still have 3/4 air powder bonus, while still giving you a greater chance against Earth Damage enemies.

elemental defenses can either be not noticeable at all, or fairly significant, depending on how element-focused the enemy you're fighting is.

there is no cap to elem. defenses.

I would suggest splitting any extra points between intelligence and defense, unless you're extremely confident in your ability to dodge, or won't be fighting anything that can deal over 11k damage rapidly (shotgun AI mobs, certain TNA attacks, certain The Eye attacks, certain TCC attacks, certain Orphion attacks, guild towers)

 

ok awesome, thanks so much for the help. i'll definitely be fighting those things so i'll put them into defense.

 

aries has 2 powder slots, would it be good to put one air and one earth powder on it? that gives 5 air powders 3 earth powders in total

 

If you are confident in your dodging and strafing skills, then put 2 air powders on it to maximize damage.
If not, put 2 earth powders on it to minimize negative earth defense.

 

i don't really care about elemental defenses as long as they're not below -400s or -500s, so i would just put a6a6 for the powder special and move on

you'll want to assign sp to dex if you want to maximize damage - balancing str and dex usually has the max dmg outcome
but since you're playing arcanist i would put some into intel and rest into dex
if you want to focus on mana sustain, i recommend doing 55 21 50 2 119 - this meets Lunar Spine requirements
i wouldn't recommend assigning sp to defense
30k ehp with 166% walkspeed is good enough, just keep moving to dodge attacks

 

Something important a lot of people don't realize is that each mob actually has unique elemental stats for attack, defense, and weakness. As mentioned above, elemental defense can really shine or hit you in the shins on certain enemies that may have high elemental attacks.
I would personally say that thunder usually has the highest damage attacks. Just like thunder themed weapons that have the potential for high damage but are inconsistent, thunder damage mobs are usually similar

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Unless you're in Molten Heights or in The Canyon Colossus where the vast majority of enemies are themed around a specific element, there will almost always be enemies in the vicinity that have the potential to exploit an elemental weakness you may have. If you have negative elemental defense, just keep an eye out for them

 

i put 36 into intel because i read on a thread that that's a breakpoint for lowering mana costs for (i think) 9 mana spells, the rest into def because i prefer to have more sustain and survivability than raw dps. at least if i'm alive then i can keep pumping out damage but there's not much point in having absurd damage if you die to dodge rng before you can kill the mob. that's my logic at least. i have like 57k ehp which is probably far too much but it feels like a good amount after doing qira hive to unlock Contrast (i beat her first try solo and the extra defense definitely came in handy)

plz let me know if i'm wrong about any of this, you're far more experienced than me and there's probably something i'm misinformed about

 

In the silent expanse which is where most endgame raids and dungeons are stronger in the other elements that aren’t negatively affected by this build. Also from experience its just your ehp that matters.

 

i'm not 100% sure but you seem to be talking about how the total mana increase rate starts to decline from 36 int since it isn't linear to int assignments, though i don't know where that 9 spell thing came from when spell costs are different on each build


when i talk about endgame builds, i usually set standards to TNA since it tends to be the most difficult one(and because it's the place where builds matter the most imo)

Greg(the boss) hits pretty hard, one proper charge and your 57k ehp will go down quite fast
but once you learn how the attacks work, you should be able to take no/little dmg, which allows lower ehp and more dmg - which is practically better than having more ehp lower dmg since the fight will end quicker, meaning there is less room to make mistakes
this is why glass cannon builds are most seen in TNA, and also why i suggested to assign sp into dex&int
especially when the build has walkspeed enough to dodge most stuff in TNA

for other content like TCC, lootrun or LI etc it's ok to assign sp into defense as long as the build sustains