You know what happens when your Reflexes turn to Iron?

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KoTao wrote:

Iron reflexes ability to outperform a flat armor build in mitigation % is countered by its associated 5% evasion cap. Armor builds can still reach 30%+ evasion with grace, a three figure dex stat and perhaps some evasion affixes on jewelry.

...Although I basically said your first point earlier, your second one seems to back up my base argument that Iron Reflexes kinda sucks. I know that's a gross simplification, but...yes?

Iron reflexes is great on a build synergized around it, so i wouldnt say it sucks. Otoh its not the holy grail of evasion builds that alot of players have made it out to be and tends to fall off in power in chaos due to its inherent weaknesses becoming more pronounced: Large archer, cannibal, viper and fragment packs that all fire at once can be a big problem, as can clusters of fast, hard hitting blues such as goatmen and flicker monsters due to armor mitigations decreased functionality vs big burst damage, and anything that uses viper strike will tend to brutalize ir melee builds since theyll never miss and armor/cry/call are all worthless against chaos damage.

Im currently building a melee ranger (sword&shield with pure evasion gear) and wont be taking iron reflexes. Perhaps getting her into hc ladder top10 will help lay to rest most of the long-repeated claims that pure evasion isnt viable and the associated calls for changes to evasions base mechanic.

Interesting. Building a ranger almost precisely the same as the one I had on the go, but abandoned to incorporate into my Shadow.

Please keep me updated how she goes. :)

I'm still not convinced that Evasion is working quite right. Not yet.

I'd still love to see evasion specialize against burst damage hits. I'm told that armor is proportionally more effective against multiple little hits than single large hits: it might be nice to make evasion the converse of that. A flurry of smaller hits would be your counter, as well as magic.

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Gott wrote:

Make it so a hit can only reduce your life by a certain percentage at X Evasion, make it like 30-45% at 95% evasion, so you still have time to chug pots?

I like this idea for that: It can be explained quite simply, and is still useful to other defensive stats.

I'd suggest that at the level where you gain 75% evasion currently, you'd be capped at taking 25% of your maximum life per hit. At 60% evasion, 40% of your life as a cap. With the current implementation of a natural 5% evade chance, this would actually prevent anyone from being one-shotted from full health though, by capping the damage at 95% of their life.

The evasion reduction would only apply to whatever 'final damage' was being done to your health, so energy shield users wouldn't get an easy damage cap (from low max health) AND a large pool to drain it from.

This would change how evasion plays really drastically though, since it would be almost non-existant against multiple small hits.

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Softspoken wrote:

I'd still love to see evasion specialize against burst damage hits. I'm told that armor is proportionally more effective against multiple little hits than single large hits: it might be nice to make evasion the converse of that. A flurry of smaller hits would be your counter, as well as magic.

You're kinda leaving out energy shield there - and energy shield is kinda the go-to defense mechanically for handling burst damage.

What it doesn't handle well is sustained damage (especially DoT), since that disrupts its recharge capability. Armor doesn't handle most DoT particularly well either (only affects Puncture on account of the DoT being based off of the initial hit damage), but most of the sources of it at the moment are mitigated by other strength-aligned defenses (life, resistances).

With sustained damage and burst damage covered by strength and intelligence, respectively, what would dexterity be best against? The answer so far appears to be "status effects"... which, personally, I'm happy with.

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Skivverus wrote:

You're kinda leaving out energy shield there - and energy shield is kinda the go-to defense mechanically for handling burst damage.

What it doesn't handle well is sustained damage (especially DoT), since that disrupts its recharge capability. Armor doesn't handle most DoT particularly well either (only affects Puncture on account of the DoT being based off of the initial hit damage), but most of the sources of it at the moment are mitigated by other strength-aligned defenses (life, resistances).

With sustained damage and burst damage covered by strength and intelligence, respectively, what would dexterity be best against? The answer so far appears to be "status effects"... which, personally, I'm happy with.

Since status effects proc off of critical strikes, perhaps the best of both worlds could be combined by letting evasion also reduce the odds of recieving a critical strike, possibly from both spells and attacks?

Ok,

I just read this ENTIRE thread so I could make an informed post.

I do not think just plainly reducing damage taken in any way by evasion is going to be a good idea.

I really liked the idea of bleeding damage. I think an easy way to make that work is say for every X Dex it turns a percent into bleed damage. At low levels you will see more "whole" damage coming in big hits and as you gain more Dex/Evasion it will turn damage more and more into a "whole/bleed" into finally 95% full bleed damage maybe?

If it messes with the game too much considering other classes such as Mars and Temps can stack the stat too, you can always make it a passive instead of IR or along side of IR. This way players who want to play full Evasion most likely will need to get it, if they want to play IR they can get that.

It would play out like it sounds. At the max "dodge" of 95% you have 95% of the damage turn into a "bleed" or another DoT effect. This would mean you take 5% of the damage (that actually hits you) upfront and the other 95% over time. This prevents you getting 1 shot, and gives you SOME time to pop a flask, while not making evade too overpowered. If you get hit 2x you bleed 2x as fast. If you would have got 1 shot by the attack well you have a few seconds to pop a flask and hope that RNG is good to you and you will dodge again.

It seems to me that if armor can stack resistance, ES can get the anti chaos damage node, evasion users should be able to stack something or pick a node to help their issue:

The node can be called

"Glancing Blows"
-Turns an amount of damage a player takes into bleed damage over 5 seconds. The amount converted to bleed is determined by the players dodge chance.

I agree nodes should be the "end all" or "required" but It would fix the issue atleast a viable option.

Although I made the bleeding suggestion sort of on the fly and not very thoughtfully, I'm impressed with how people seem to have latched onto it. I really like your idea, clinx, and may I say THANK YOU for reading the whole thread -- in this case if not others, I think joining this discussion does demand a measure of exposure to what has been said so far.

I've realised recently that one of my huge gripes with the 'trinity' of defence types is that Energy Shield does indeed get its ultimate plug for its main hole: chaos damage. Armour naturally stacks with life (strength), so although you're being hit all the time, it really doesn't hurt TOO much.

Evasion is lacking that little edge at the upper levels. Acrobatics/Phase Acrobatics are not a worthy parallel to Chaos Innoculation, because they do not cleanly and clearly plug any holes at all.

A Glancing Blows 'Keystone' is far from the worst idea I've seen on this board.

@clinx did I misunderstand you or you propose that evading a hit merley turns it into a DoT? That would be a bad idea to say the least.
Keystone would be interesting but with current state of evasion it would be a must have. I wonder what 0.9.11 will bring to the table.

@Charan Your bleeding idea really could be refined into something very nice. I agree that other forms of defense can fill the gaps a lot easier that evasion. Especialy chaos innoculation - I just see no reason not to take it if you rely on es.

In my experience you had to stack a LOT of hp to counteract the misfortune of eating 3-4 or even more hits in a very short period of time(at the same time). DoT would ease the pressure to get every single hp node and piece of equipment you can get your hands on and more importantly give you time to react.
And at least to me it realies ties in to what evasion is all about - movment, constantly jumping in and out of combat.
But this have to be tied to evasion/dex somehow because if everybody focused on es or armor can take adantage of it too easily evasion will still stay as the least usefull form of defense.

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vankeris wrote:

@clinx did I misunderstand you or you propose that evading a hit merley turns it into a DoT? That would be a bad idea to say the least.
Keystone would be interesting but with current state of evasion it would be a must have. I wonder what 0.9.11 will bring to the table.

@Charan Your bleeding idea really could be refined into something very nice. I agree that other forms of defense can fill the gaps a lot easier that evasion. Especialy chaos innoculation - I just see no reason not to take it if you rely on es.

No, no, no you have me all wrong. It would ONLY turn into a DoT if the attack actually HIT you, I expanded on Charan's idea of bleed damage and I think it makes alot of sense since it still plays with the Dex based character functionality.

And just like with ES, Innoculate is almost a must have so in the Dex tree, making "glacing blows" or w.e a must have doesnt seem too unfair. I dont like the idea of having other classes have access to it just by passively getting Dex, I think a skill node makes more sense. IR should be more towards the Duelist side of the tree while "Glancing Blows" is more of the Dex side.

There was another idea of adding an "ES-type" bar where it would help damage when actually hit, my thoughts on that are.

A character with 5k hp and 100 "Evasion Points" (The number doesnt matter but its all about %s) has say 90% dodge. 10% of the time he gets hit. Lets say RNG is bad for him and he takes a hit for 4.5k (which would have almost 1 shot him.) Instead, his evasion points kick in and it uses say 90% and enacts a "dodge" instead of a hit (by use of his points) - so in this case 90 points leaving him with 10 points left and taking ZERO damage. Lets say he then gets hit again a few seconds later for 5k! (Again this would have 1 shot him) but this time it uses the remaining 10 evasion points, and would absorb(diminish) 10% of the damage making the blow do 4.5k instead bringing him down to 500 HP due to the useage of the points.

This is different then ES in the sense it is dodge related (points grant additional dodge) You can either make this a passive as well based upon Dex or Dodge % (EP would scale with more) OR make it an attribute on items like ES or armor, just Dex related. A shadow could get BOTH ES and EP in theory and therefore once his EP runs out, it hits his ES THEN his HP.

This addresses the getting 1 shot issue as well and offers a creative alternative that plays with the class well.

One cool idea I had about this system would be your EP refils upon successful attacks or damage or something so you cant just run away and let it refil like ES does, it rewards the duck/weave/jab mentality of the player so if your low on EP you need to kite/evade manually a little more to get that EP to refill. Kind of the risk/reward game so its not SUPER overpowered. This way you cant just stand there and dodge EVERYTHING but are still required to leave combat to reposition to attack but more forgiving...

Thoughts?


EDIT; @ Charan: Your welcome and thank YOU for being a diamond supporter and making this game possible.