For the love of god, please, rework DEXTERITY. (Updated)

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You can't avoid projectile fire when it comes unexpectedly from off the screen.

This is called 'player error'. If you're in a map where you know there are monsters that can fire flame projectiles, why wouldn't you expect them? Maybe I'm just too used to having to manually dodge around volleys of icebolts from mobs of Brittle Mages lest being frozen and killed instantly, but still.

If you're talking about Flame-enhanced Archers though then I get what you mean, many people would agree that Archers need to be tweaked.

That said, even with Flame Archers, there are still Ample Potions of Dousing in the game.

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You can't work around reflected damage when you get one-shotted from off the screen.

Forgive me for asking, but why are you getting one-shotted again?

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Each survival mechanic has a variety of pros and cons which you ignore.

What? You were just saying they "Can't be compared" and now you want to split it into simple pros and cons? This is a fundamental difference in game mechanics we're talking about here.

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Also, what is your HP at? It sounds really low if you're really getting one-shotted.

It's actually 465, which isn't half bad for a DEX-heavy build if I may say so myself.

Come one, it's not so complicated.
Pure dex characters = only get evasion as defense.
If you only have evasion then you risk getting killed by a few unlucky rolls that are completely out of your control.

If dex instead gave bonus to armor then the "killed by few unlucky rolls" factor would be reduced significantly.

Sickness, the problem is that Armor is STR not DEX.

Saying 'Evasion sucks so let's just make DEX use armor', you might as well say "Marauder is OP, so let's turn every single class into Marauder".

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Sev wrote:

Sickness, the problem is that Armor is STR not DEX.

Saying 'Evasion sucks so let's just make DEX use armor', you might as well say "Marauder is OP, so let's turn every single class into Marauder".

What? No. You get evasion from two sources. 1 is dex and the other is items. The evasion items can still require dex and can still give evasion.

The only change would be that every stat would give something that helps against "instagib".

Yes but you're not seeing the point, every class has unique survival mechanics for a reason, to make them unique. STR heroes get HP and armor, INT gets Eshield, DEX gets evade.

The problem is that Evade as it's implemented now doesn't do it's job.

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Sev wrote:

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You can't avoid projectile fire when it comes unexpectedly from off the screen.

This is called 'player error'. If you're in a map where you know there are monsters that can fire flame projectiles, why wouldn't you expect them? Maybe I'm just too used to having to manually dodge around volleys of icebolts from mobs of Brittle Mages lest being frozen and killed instantly, but still.

When I said "fire" I didn't mean the element, I just meant attacks. I was thinking more of Shadow Fragments, whose projectiles travel much faster, and can fire from much farther away than most ranged enemies. And I have run across packs of 4-6 Shadow Fragments in chaos, some of whom had multiple projectiles.

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If you're talking about Flame-enhanced Archers though then I get what you mean, many people would agree that Archers need to be tweaked.

That said, even with Flame Archers, there are still Ample Potions of Dousing in the game.

Archers are definitely high on the danger scale, but not impossible since they walk slowly and have limited range, so they can be kited in open areas. Personally I think this is an artifact of the old view distance. Archers used to have about the same range as your view distance, now it's much easier to hit them from out of range.

In close quarters, Frost Walls and Ice Spear are usually enough to protect against archers, although it's not easy.

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You can't work around reflected damage when you get one-shotted from off the screen.

Forgive me for asking, but why are you getting one-shotted again?

Because if I fire a single volley and an ele reflect mob runs at me from off screen, or happens to be sitting just out of view I'm dead?

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Each survival mechanic has a variety of pros and cons which you ignore.

What? You were just saying they "Can't be compared" and now you want to split it into simple pros and cons? This is a fundamental difference in game mechanics we're talking about here.

Once again I said "Can't be DIRECTLY compared". Nowhere did I say they can't be compared at all. I'm saying that you're being incomprehensive in your comparisons.

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Also, what is your HP at? It sounds really low if you're really getting one-shotted.

It's actually 465, which isn't half bad for a DEX-heavy build if I may say so myself.

What level is this character?

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Strill wrote:

When I said "fire" I didn't mean the element, I just meant attacks. I was thinking more of Shadow Fragments, whose projectiles travel much faster, and can fire from much farther away than most ranged enemies. And I have run across packs of 4-6 Shadow Fragments in chaos, some of whom had multiple projectiles.

Is Chaos even going to be in the final game? From what I heard it's not, and specifically meant to have broken things like that.

In any case, Fragments make an extremely distinct sound they make when firing, and because their projectiles are so fast they fire in a predictable manner. They're by no means impossible to dodge. (Unless they have multiple projectiles) I'd say the Snake's ranged attack is worse, but then Snakes have to get really close to spit at you.

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Archers are definitely high on the danger scale, but not impossible since they walk slowly and have limited range, so they can be kited in open areas. Personally I think this is an artifact of the old view distance. Archers used to have about the same range as your view distance, now it's much easier to hit them from out of range.

In close quarters, Frost Walls and Ice Spear are usually enough to protect against archers, although it's not easy.

Can't you defend against Fragments with Frost Wall as well? I'm fairly certain they're firing solid projectiles.

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Because if I fire a single volley and an ele reflect mob runs at me from off screen, or happens to be sitting just out of view I'm dead?

I don't understand how more ES can do anything but help prevent that from happening but okay. Honestly though they probably should add a range limit to reflected damage, because that does seem silly.

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Once again I said "Can't be DIRECTLY compared". Nowhere did I say they can't be compared at all. I'm saying that you're being incomprehensive in your comparisons.

How so? And honestly, this isn't even about class comparisons, comparing classes are just how you make the symptoms obvious. It's a simple matter of bad game design. You do not use chance-based evasion on a character that can't survive it's failure, otherwise you force people to suffer luck-based deaths, and forcing people to suffer luck-based deaths is bad game design. Witch and Marauder have nothing to do with it, they just happen to not have suffered the same class-breaking flaw.


I'm level 58

really sorry but 465 hps at level 58 it's absolutely not enough...
this is a true glass cannon... with no shield or a low energy shield it's suicidal and logical that you can be one shot sometimes.
even if you were wearing armor instead of evasion stuff!

glass canon characters are only viable (and they eventually die) with total optimal offensive's stuff.

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Sev wrote:

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Strill wrote:

When I said "fire" I didn't mean the element, I just meant attacks. I was thinking more of Shadow Fragments, whose projectiles travel much faster, and can fire from much farther away than most ranged enemies. And I have run across packs of 4-6 Shadow Fragments in chaos, some of whom had multiple projectiles.

Is Chaos even going to be in the final game? From what I heard it's not, and specifically meant to have broken things like that.

In any case, Fragments make an extremely distinct sound they make when firing, and because their projectiles are so fast they fire in a predictable manner. They're by no means impossible to dodge. (Unless they have multiple projectiles) I'd say the Snake's ranged attack is worse, but then Snakes have to get really close to spit at you.

Snake poison deals weapon chaos damage, which can be stopped by block and evasion, and at least in my experience, is quite a bit weaker than a Shadow Fragment's attack.

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Archers are definitely high on the danger scale, but not impossible since they walk slowly and have limited range, so they can be kited in open areas. Personally I think this is an artifact of the old view distance. Archers used to have about the same range as your view distance, now it's much easier to hit them from out of range.

In close quarters, Frost Walls and Ice Spear are usually enough to protect against archers, although it's not easy.

Can't you defend against Fragments with Frost Wall as well? I'm fairly certain they're firing solid projectiles.

Yes but the difficulty is that they catch you by surprise and, at least in my experience, do significantly more damage than most mages, possibly due to lack of resists. There's also the question of whether the cast time on frost wall will be too long to prevent you from taking another hit, or allowing a melee enemy into range, especially if the enemy gets on your side of the frost wall since you've just blocked off an escape route.

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Because if I fire a single volley and an ele reflect mob runs at me from off screen, or happens to be sitting just out of view I'm dead?

I don't understand how more ES can do anything but help prevent that from happening but okay. Honestly though they probably should add a range limit to reflected damage, because that does seem silly.

The reflection limit is HP/4 + Energy Shield per hit. The more energy shield you have, the more damage you can take in a single reflect.

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Once again I said "Can't be DIRECTLY compared". Nowhere did I say they can't be compared at all. I'm saying that you're being incomprehensive in your comparisons.

How so? And honestly, this isn't even about class comparisons, comparing classes are just how you make the symptoms obvious. It's a simple matter of bad game design. You do not use chance-based evasion on a character that can't survive it's failure, otherwise you force people to suffer luck-based deaths, and forcing people to suffer luck-based deaths is bad game design. Witch and Marauder have nothing to do with it, they just happen to not have suffered the same class-breaking flaw.


I'm level 58

I see. Because my Witch before switching to Chaos Inoculation had 650 Life without any Life passives and I've had close to that amount for quite some time. I think that might be your problem.

I'd like to bring my prespective and perhaps, if its even possible, bring this thread somewhat back to its original purpose of providing feedback on benefit that dexterity provides and as a side effect of that, gain you get both defensively and offensively. I do not have any experience playing str or int character, so I will refrain from comparison to our blue and red brothers and instead focus on my play-through as a bow ranger.

To get the correct perspective here, I'd like to include that I am a level 64 ranger with the spec that consists mostly getting 8/8 frenzy nodes followed up by bow/projectile passives as well as minor concoction of int and str to satisfy some of the red/blue skills I was forced into taking. On character sheet in town, I do 713.9 dps, have 0 armor, 548 life, 186 shield and 1982 evasion, which provides 34% chance to evade an attack.

As I played through the game, I had no minions, and when stuff didn't die in time, I would kite and kill, as a bow class might be expected to do. As I have outran everything including double speed mobs (speedy suffix + a speed aura nearby run right about as fast as I, but thankfully they like to stop and derp) Caves/dungeons would provide me with some difficulty, but mostly it was due to inexperience as well as sometimes buggy behavior that's well documented and I would imagine is on the list of things to fix. In chaos, as they say, shit got real, really fast. I went back to the drawing board and farmed some gear as well as 2 minion gems, raise zombie and raise sepectre, with an added benefit of minion life, just so they wouldn't die to every single mob they attempted to fight. It has made things easier, significantly so, but even still I stay away from any cave chaos due to me relying on the minions to actually tank the hits, and their AI proves to be slightly too unreliable in the cave systems to survive the inevitable situation of a eager goatman or a super speedy corsair ruining my day.

I agree with original point of this thread, I believe evasion on its on is not enough of a survivability stat to reliably stand up to the content that this game currently provides, and I also like the suggestion made, where you have evasion "charges" and until that meter hits 0, you can, with a few defined exceptions such as chaos damage and spells, expect it to work as such, and to balance it, make it extremly small, I would be actually totally ok with it being fixed permanently as say 10, perhaps with some modifications from specific mods and passives to increase it slightly. Dexterity/Evasion would then stand to increase the recharge rate of this number, with the higher ends (3k+) recharging it maybe even as fast as 1 or 2 a second.

Furthermore, to echo the second part, it has become abundantly clear that in order to dish out enough damage to keep my mana and flasks recharging and xp and drops flowing, depends entirely on getting my hands on as many dmg passives as I possibly can, and given that I have chosen bow spec, they're quite far and few in between, so in order to hit the next cluster, I must invest in more dex, forgoing any passives that might help me not get 1 shot. As it stands, a random death, to me, is not significant enough deterrent to continue pushing damage upwards. To make a completely uneducated comparison (so please if you dispute this point, understand that its not the facts that matter, its the perception), from what I've read and seen, str and, to a lesser degree, int based classes suffer no such drawback, the damage keeps going up, and certainly going up enough to kill things fast enough so you can afford to take some survivability passives. As it stands, I do not feel I have the same luxury.

Just to throw in a bit of my perspective into evasion vs energy shield debate that seems to be raging on, I am certainly glad that I have 186 shield on my char, as the feeling it gives me, is simply 186 more life. I understand that's not black and white, but its the feeling I get, as soon as I see my energy shield disappear I know I'm in trouble and its time to run away, spam more zombies and pray to god I just refreshed my frenzy stacks.