You know what happens when your Reflexes turn to Iron?

"

Zakaluka wrote:

I liked pure evasion on an archer, but there it is again: I wasn't melee. And the unfortunate bit about it is a 7-multi-projectile merveill's freezing pulse insta-gibbed my archer. So every time I've brought this up the one response I could count on has always been: "but you died."

Up until that point, I felt pretty damn safe.

All the arguing about numbers won't prove my point, I have to demonstrate it. But >50% evasion with 24% acrobatics on top, and blind - it feels pretty safe, if you build it right.

I think one of the big mistakes people make is building into regen as a pure evasion character. You take damage in large chunks, not gradually. It's no surprise to me that the easiest "healing" nodes to reach from the ranger tree are the %flask nodes. They provide healing in large chunks to match the damage patterns you'll face. Other mistakes - deleveled lightning arrow? 5-hit LA with 90% or better pierce is the best way to AoE blind in the game currently.

I know melee doesn't have an analog.

Anyway, high evasion with acrobatics, plus healing through 45% larger reflexes bubbling flasks - this felt very safe to me. Yeah, I stacked my life pretty high.

Anyway, charan, you and I are always going to disagree on this. Pure evasion can work, and you don't have to do the waves build (nothing but life). Kiting from melee, though? I'm not sure about that. Kind of a different arena.

But, from my perspective, I shouldn't see everyone taking IR. From my point of view, it's an inefficient choice. So either I'm wrong, or everyone else is wrong. What are the odds? :p

I don't really see us disagreeing, Z. Pure evasion can work, and you don't HAVE to stack life (it's just the easiest way to do it) -- although you did say just before that that you did stack life 'pretty high.' What exactly are we disagreeing about?

You're dead right about the regen. I don't bother with it. It's incidental. If I get hit once or twice, I get out of there and drink. I don't stick around and rely on the regeneration. It's just not a smart way to play evasion at all! Kiting melee...I guess that's what I do, but I prefer to see it more as mobile melee. I'm not slowing the enemy and making them come to me. I'm going to them, delivering a craptonne of DoT, zipping to the next one knowing that the tagged critter will die before it can reach me.


Overall, I was hoping for a more straightforward response from you though -- what if IR were removed? You're one of the smartest math-cookies I know on here, and I acknowledge that I have trouble seeing past my own experiences. So using what you know and think, can you predict what'd happen if IR were to simply fuck right the fuck off?

I think there would be a great deal of complaining, and very few people would play ranger/duelist for a while.

The only real problem with this game's defensive systems is that they're hard to understand (with the exception of ES). Other games use linear-EH rating systems, so the rule is always simple: get as much rating as possible. Here, that's not nearly enough. You have to understand how that rating scales, and you have to stack other defenses. You have to understand how those other defense systems work with your primary defense. You need emergency defenses that put your other defenses into overdrive.

You have to know how you're going to heal.

Armour has the exact same problem evasion does. Have you noticed the trend is to ignore armour completely and just get life/endurance? It's not too terribly different from being an evasion character.

Here's my point: people use armour inefficiently. For example, my earlier case: IR+grace with 4 endurance and 0% incr armour rating. It's a poor scenario for armour scaling. People use evasion inefficiently and stack the wrong kinds of healing against it. They're the same. The big differences are that the strength-aligned guys have endurance, and armour is a little more forgiving. What I mean is, you get at least a little reduction from your armour and endurance, and it at least improves your regen a little bit. So not a total waste. On the other hand, if you don't have your healing strategy nailed down in an evasion build, you're dead.

In the end, someone has to show us how it's done. That's the only way to get people to realize they've just been doing it wrong. If IR goes away, people will cry rivers and stop playing dex classes until it happens. We need Urist to make us another demo, since I can't bring myself to complete the build on default. Actually, I deleted her a while ago now.

Or GGG will implement a glancing blow system, but I doubt it. We had a very in-depth discussion about that some time ago. The crit-negation thing came out of it, which I actually think I'm satisfied with.

I have had a tank shadow that runs maps without much problem and tanks harder than my marauder.

CI, mostly mixed-stat/dex gear, Arrow Dodging, and the eshield cdr nodes. Enduring Cry and Granite Flasks complete it, and can stand in front of a map-Brutus for a while before running off to instantly regen the shield. Runs about 3k eshield with a relatively huge amount of evasion rating (don't remember off the top of my head).

I'm still unconvinced that eva+hp is better than eva+es given that CI is still haxmode.

EDIT: As he sits in (what will soon be) legacy.

no, you're right, pneuma. CI in melee would make me nervous in HC, because I like my instant-heal buttons. But i'm pretty sure it'd be super effective.

We just want pure ev to work, that's all.

"

Zakaluka wrote:

We just want pure ev to work, that's all.

I contest that that is pure eva insofar as you still have to survive chaos damage and elemental damage spells. It's as low on eshield/hp as possible while stacking evasion fairly hard.

I agree, this is a worthy evasion build of which pneuma speaks, and something I've been wanting to try for a while.

So let's assume we're changing the game not for those who have experienced otherwise, but for newcomers who don't know what they'd have missed. In other words, let's assume IR never existed.

Would people not play rangers or duelists then?

Or...would IR be invented?

I think any melee evasion build would still pack a granite flask or two. Then my question is, are they really pure evasion builds? I suggest not.

I reckon a massive life evasion melee build with insta or close to insta health flasks would be the best boss tankers in the game :)

but for general melee, where there are many hits coming at once, you either need to be a dart in/dart out of the fray build (viper and flicker), or IR to get the DR so you take little damage from lots of hits, rather than a lot of damage from not many hits.

You raise a good point re: granite flasks. Are they enough to save the hide of an evasion character not well built enough to handle the heat?

Can we use the existence of granite flasks are further fuel for the War On IR?

Evasion gets a bad rap because people compare a melee-weapon ranger to a melee-weapon marauder, see that one is way better than the other, and blame evasion. But the comparison is unfair.

- Armour characters often have more life than evasion characters
- Armour characters often use big AoE attacks such as sweep, cleave, and ground slam, rather than single-target attacks
- These AoE attacks have range, meaning the armour character is subject to less hits
- The AoE attacks stun many enemies at a time, meaning the armour character is subject to less hits
- Armour characters often use resolute technique, and therefore cannot be blocked or evaded. This makes an enormous difference, gaining the stun initiative versus the monsters, and therefore the character is subject to less hits.
- The AoE attacks do not suffer anywhere near as much from desync, since the AoE gives greater margin for sync error (I swear every time I use a single target melee attack it misses the first time). Instead of clicking on a monster right next to you, then watching your character wander helplessly in circles taking hits because the monster is actually in the middle of the pack on the server, rather than on the edge - you just AoE the whole pack. This means the armour character is subject to less hits.
- Armour characters often take blood magic along with regen, meaning near infinite mana. Life leech is much easier to get than mana leech, and is helped by the melee physical damage support gem. Not only does this mean being able to spend passives on more life or damage instead of mana, but also frees up flask slots for more survivability.


Just imagine playing an armour-focused marauder, using only single target melee attacks, with around 2k-2.5k life and no regen, no resolute technique, just stacked armour. It would be horrible.

Now imagine if STR gear gave evasion, and DEX & DEX gear gave armour. A standard strength ground slam marauder with evasion probably wouldn't be too shabby. Dex characters would probably still take IR to convert their shoddy armour into evasion, to try to be more tanky like the marauder.

Double post but I forgot unwavering stance, which is banned from evasion users. Which is very powerful, allowing you to escape when you need to (instead of being stun locked to death), and allowing you to complete attacks that might otherwise have been interrupted, therefore stunning the enemy, dealing more damage, and taking less hits as a result.