Dexterity, We Have a Problem.

Interesting, I think I misunderstood your original proposal initially Solistus. Enjoying the discussion here quite a bit so far.

I'm just careful about mitigation style effects partially because I like the flavor added to the game by having three distinctly different types of mechanics in play.

Too often a glancing blow idea (and there seem to be a lot of them) basically wants to provide evasion with a percentage reduction to damage, or to limit the total damage you can take somehow to a portion of your current life.

Such ideas seem to me to be edging very close to the prerogative of armor, and also at the same time lowering the value of the iron reflexes node.

Capping the damage at a maximum percentage of your TOTAL life rather than your current life does prevent you from being killed in one shot provided you are at full health already. It might need something else added to it to prevent you from getting killed in two shots when under attack from multiple enemies but that is a different issue entirely.

Thanks for pointing out my mistake there.

Good talk so far. I read from page 8 onward (today). I Still support everything I said at the bottom of page 7.

Just talking about evasion here, but I agree there are other problems like accuracy. So, lets start with these assumptions:
1) We just want to touch dex/evasion and leave the other stats alone(str/armour, int/ES).
2) We want player and monster evasion mechanics to work the same.
3) A pure evasion build must have a means to survive one or two hits from weapon attacks, preferably without a required external aid(skills, keystone, flask, ect.).


Further I will assume the following though I imagine many of you will disagree
4) GGG wants to keep accuracy stat and the chance-to-hit forumula of {acc/(acc+(evasion)^0.8)} or whatever it is.
5) For a dodger that runs after one hit, ES and HP are functionally the same in discussions of max hp. Their only difference is how they recuperate(assuming the physical attack is not mostly chaos damage)
6) Raising max HP would require changing Armour and ES so we dont want to do that.




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Considering the above, the only options to fix Evasion are:
1) Link evasion with increased health. This has to function differently than ES/Evasion gear.
2) Link evasion with some form of damage reduction. This has to function differently than Armour/Evasion gear.
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Some options are presented below:

1) Link evasion with increased health:
a) Some life-gain that can increase your current hp over max hp.
. i) some flasks, health gain on hit attacks, et cetera can boost hp over maximum. While over maximum, you incur significant health degeneration.
. ii) Vigor skill: raises your current HP by x for y(5?) seconds. The activation of this skill may set your HP above max HP. While above max HP you cannot gain HP. When Vigor ends, current HP is reduced by x to a minimum of 1. Having max HP+x gives you z% increased physical damage. While above max hp, you are considered at max hp for all other effects(Melee Damage on Full Life).

b)passive skill life nodes near evasion. They seem improved in 0.9.11.
c)give evasion gear inherent HP boosts. Reminds me of final fantasy 13. your gear options were good physical armour & physical damage, good magic armour & magic damage, or extra HP.

2) Link evasion with some form of damage reduction:
a) Glancing blows: Most of these proposals are functionally the same as Armour/Evasion gear or just too complicated.
b) Riposte ability: next weapon attack gets reduced by x or x% and you damage them or something.

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Commentary:
I haven't seen 1)a)ii) proposed before.

I used to be all for glancing blows, but I now support increased HP as well. Flavorwise, Dex characters are fit like Str characters, but dont have the unhealthy habit of letting their internal organs get stabbed all the time.

I dont like an Armour penetration stat because I dont like the accuracy stat or a ES penetration stat.

I worry that having a Hybrid gear is weaker than a singular gear-type like ES, but I could be wrong.

And yes, Iron reflexes is still stupid.

"

TheRabbit303 wrote:

All 3 stats increase your damage over time:
Strength - bonus to physical damage.
Dexterity - bonus to accuracy.
Intelligence - bonus to mana.

Obviously not every stat is good for every build, I have an elemental weapon damaging templar. Of the damage he deals with weapon hits, 6% of it is physical. That means I could increase my strength by 100 points and that would increase my overall DPS by ~1%. Meanwhile, his hit chance is in the mid 80s, a substantial increase to dexterity would significantly improve his dps. He has close to 300 intelligence so that he has a massive mana pool and enough passive mana regen to be able to spam skills.

Don't try and make dexterity a mirror to strength, it's a terrible idea.

I think Dex should improved by:-
1. adding higher chance to evade range attacks (except spell)
2. slightly lowering chance to evade at melee range.


OR

I think the problem isnt DEX at all. Rather, give the bow user the ability to escape, like letting them use the current Whirlblade Gem while using bow. Or maybe a totally new escape gem.

(you see sometime the problem is that when you surrounded by the mobs, you cant escape because everywhere u click is in attack mode.)

I think what would be neat with Evade, while keeping in spirit with the evading hits / having a dex based class be more about mobility than 'stand and face-tank'.

- If the character is moving, and a hit lands - Evade acts like a damage reduction
- When a player stops moving, three is a small period of time of which it functions as armour reduction also
- If a player is just standing in place and tanking w/o moving around, it acts as it currently does - and has no damage reduction

The concept being - if they are getting hit while moving, it will be more like a 'glancing blow', but I think the mechanics behind it stops it (ie: needing to actually be moving) from being just a mirror of armour, while still providing some protection from the 1-hit kill that can happen in higher difficulties.

OK. The real problem with evasion versus armor (damage reduction) is time. Let's assume in the abstract that with equivalent levels of Armor and Evasion that you should take equivalent total damage from identical scenarios: Perhaps your armor mitigates 80% of the damage you take, while your Evasion negates 80% of hits. The problem is that the Armor character has plenty of time to drink a potion or otherwise mitigate that gradual damage, whereas the Evasion character is taking giant hits all at once when they do land; they don't have time to react to the damage they're taking. If we solve the time problem then Evasion is fine.

Solution: high evasion turns hits into bleeding DOTs, giving players time to respond to the damage. This has been proposed elsewhere but I wanted to point out and emphasize what a simple and elegant solution this is to the fundamental issue at hand.

The exact mechanic would probably involve extending the duration of the DOT (while preserving the total amount of damage conveyed) as evasion increases. This would basically turn all damage into DOTs, since all characters have an evasion stat, with damage being applied very rapidly (apparently instantly) for low EVA characters but more slowly for high EVA characters. There would probably need to be some normalization of EVA versus character level in order to make low to mid levels playable for dex characters; someone who stays in level-appropriate EVA gear should be taking damage over roughly the same time span at any level.

It may actually be relatively easy to reuse the code from the flask mechanics to turn all damage into DOTs in this fashion.

Please just fix it!
Dex builds at the moment take a lot more time, and i feel like its required to move out of your skill tree much faster to try to balance your health and dmg.
I am already leaving the Ranger Skill tree I am only lvl 23. ( I already have +160 dex and still having troubles )

on hardcore i find myself grinding 5-6 lvls above areas when i run into a boss because i simply can't tank the them.
Currently i am using iron reflex which does help..... I feel like the evasion is fine if Dex gave me crit or attack speed i could just kill mobs before they could even have time to think.

I don't care if i miss a hit if i have 50% Crit and 300% Damage. ;0

https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAQIABdzTvQjbctcfEZAjIrX6zSPvSKwp1jkyMnIEVjXuYPpBLfD0aYVs3HAjd-CCee3uhuaFD4lpfpaMnwtqpJhN4q662-G_UjmuwAzcYd6BFAXeoK9N8K7Vkv1oCW0=

if you miss 50% of time your dps is cut in half. Also your hits would crit 50% less. Unless ofcause you use spells. Adding crits to dex would beway too strong. Also keep mind about combining effects.
75% chance to be hit from acrobatics,60% from evasion,and 74% from blocking would net you like
33% chance to be hit. If you are not face tanking like 10 mobs it should be enough. Face tanked oak with my eva/es witch character oak yes he kills me like in 4 hits but most of the time es regenerates between hits. Also you don't really apriciate your luxury of drinking potions to mitigate huge chanks of damage.

As i said it can be done it just much harder.

Currently I am lvl 25 with 88 strength 240 Dex and 25 int.... I am finally starting to feel safe where I am but mobs are 3-4 lvls below me as well.
I feel like my stat base is very high as I have got some good roles on equipment.... But I am still having issues.

( I am in hardcore so going much slower ) as the other classes i do fine at staying kept up with the levels of mobs even in solo.


I feel like I would do much better in a party but I don't always have time to join a party.

Almost at 60% reduction.

Frankly, basic Str nodes are superior in every way to basic Damage nodes. But anyway. +Life should be given for each stat.

Nodes:

Strength - +5 Life. +2% Damage. +1% Armor.
Dexterity - +3/3.5 Life. +20 Accuracy. +2% Evasion.
Intelligence - +2 Life. +8/10 Mana. +2% Shield.

Or some facsimile. I'm dead tired of spamming skeletons or having to wander into the Marauder/Duelist zone if I want to survive during the leveling game.

And a keystone that lets you shed excess accuracy into Critical Damage. Iron Reflexes isn't something I think should even be in the game; accuracy can reach a ceiling of usefulness. It's something Dex characters want to shed. Give them a way to do it.

And of course I've just discarded a character that had nothing but Int nodes pretty much for the first 20 levels, and was still mana starved. Mana isn't as powerful as Life. Int nodes should provide more mana. Oak should provide less life than the witchy girl's mana, not the other way around. That's upside down town.