A little more Path of Exile Currency about guards -- Armour will make you take reduced physical damage from strikes, Evasion will give you chance to prevent harm entirely and Energy shield will give you longer efficient hp (3000hp + 3000 Energy shield gives you 6000 effective hp).

Armour (associated with power ) -- lots of melee characters have armour because their principal source of harm mitigation -- a few unite it with block chance, which is another way to avoid taking damage but requires double or shield wielding firearms. Additionally, Granite Flasks and Basalt Flasks are extremely useful when used in combination. In terms of reliability, armour would be the most consistent defensive mechanism.

Evasion (associated with dexterity) is another way to avoid harm -- it is mostly used by ranged characters which don't anticipate being struck a lot. Combined with Acrobatics keystone from the Passive skill tree, evasion gives you fairly high opportunity to avoid taking any damage in any way, but it's among the very unreliable defensive mechanisms (because few unlucky hits can take you out immediately ) -- that's why it's not as hot in hardcore.

Energy shield (related to intellect ) is a defensive mechanism that was meta till 3.0. Depended as hp that was high upon it. Combine that with Basalt Flask and Granite Flask and you still have a good amount of armour with extremely high hp. On top of that plenty of builds utilized Vaal Pact keystone in combination with life leech that made these characters able to facetank even the biggest hits and recover full hp in a very short amount of time.

You will find more ways to prevent damage -- block (your character blocks incoming assault and doesn't take damage from it), dodge/spell dodge (lets you dodge attacks and spells similarly to evasion) -- those are usually utilized as additional layers of protection along with one of those earlier mentioned defense mechanisms.

Physical damage reduction -- correlated with armour, this stat tells you just how much physical damage you're mitigating. The stat could be boosted by certain unique items, Basalt and Granite flasks, Endurance charges Cheap PoE Currency and several different alternatives.
Path of Exile Currency https://www.mmoexp.com/Path-of-exile/Poe-currency.html