You know what happens when your Reflexes turn to Iron?

I see nothing inherently wrong with IR. It provides another way to build armour for those who want it. The difference is, Str based armour users (Marauders) inevitably have much more life (better life% nodes make the life from Str more noticeable). On the other hand, hybrid armour users will have more armour but lower life (dex -> eva -> armour, rather than Str -> life).

I also disagree that armour and only armour should provide damage mitigation. I believe damage mitigation is the only way to truly balance evasion as to be more accessible without being either a) totally broken (no 95% cap; possible 100% dodge chance), or b) being totally broken (5% dodge fail; die to spike damage). There are all kinds of possible workarounds, but truly how accessible would they be? Remember, you want people to play with them, not have to work for them. I think that is why IR is so popular; armour is straight forward, easy to understand what it is doing for you, see its benefit immediately.

The problem is that armour offers degrees of protection while evasion is all or nothing. To fix evasion, you need to find a way around the all or nothing nature, and instead offer something with degrees of effect. Something where having a 35% dodge chance doesn't mean avoiding 100% damage 35% of the time. Otherwise it will always be either broken (as described above) or be so convoluted it won't be accessible to the greater player base.

Imo, the best way to do that is through damage mitigation. The trick is how it mitigates damage, that will maintain disparity between evasion and armour. But to say damage mitigation should be armour only, is only shooting evasion in the foot right from the get go.

I've more to say, but just woke up and feel as though I've only barely expressed my opinion on the matter as is.. So more on this later?

I'm going to take a stab at the idea that's been brewing in my head since last night when I first read this.. But it will be rushed in fashion..

Armour provides damage mitigation by absorbing blows. It doesn't care about hit or miss, it doesn't try to avoid the attack, it just stands there and laughs while blows ping off of it.

Evasion on the other hand, tries to avoid the blow, it offers little protection against a direct hit. It protect the user the most by not being there when the blow lands, but it can also protect the user by rolling with the blows to soften their impact (something Taijiquan is famously known for).

Unlike armour, evasion only substantially mitigates damage on a partial success, and otherwise (when dodge chance fils) does so by comparing its value against the attackers accuracy and damage dealt, combined, rather than just damage dealt. In this way, evasion is less effective at mitigating large chunks of damage than armour is. Evasion is also much more effective at avoiding blows altogether while the user is moving, but is not as effective at mitigating damage when hit, as the user is otherwise preoccupied with moving rather than rolling with the blows.

Dodge chance = equationy formula stuff.
Dodge chance expresses the user's ability to altogether avoid an attack (dodge) as well as a user's ability to to move with successful hits to reduce their impact (glance)

Dodging is successful on a dodge chance roll that lands within the median dodge chance percentile (example: a 13 on 25% dodge chance) out to a range expressed as a percent of the remaining dodge chance, determined by comparing accuracy plus movement bonuses versus attacker's accuracy. (Example: the range is determined to be expressed at 50% of the remaining dodge chance; dodge is successful on a dodge chance roll of 7 to 19).

Glancing represents greater damage mitigation by using the user's full skill in being evasive, expressed by the remainder of the dodge chance that does not express the above range. It compares evasion to damage received to determine damage mitigation.

All dodge chance rolls outside of this range compare evasion to both accuracy and damage received to determine damage mitigation.

In this way, evasion never leaves a player undefended, and allows a chance for 1) avoiding damage altogether, 2) providing greater damage mitigation than armour (for "rolling with the blow", and 3) much less damage mitigation than armour. The behavior and method are all different to that of armour, therefore maintaining disparity between the two. It also offers greater incentive for hybrid defenses, as well as much greater opportunity for keystones (than tha rather uninspiring acrobatics) by modifying things such as how movement and being stationary affect things.. Etc..

The system itself is complicated, but the benefits are clear and immediately noticeable by the evasion user. Most importantly, it avoids "breaking" evasion by allowing it to actually defend the player without having a 100% chance to avoid damage, and by avoiding the issue with spike damage. It creates predictable behavior within the game, where players aren't all of a sudden surprised when a mob gets that lucky 5% chance roll and 75% chance to bypass acrobatics. Hopefully I was awake enough to explain the importance of these things :)

Charan, you've got me on this project again. What I meant by "we'll always disagree on this": I don't believe evasion is broken anymore. I think the new system will just take some time to show itself now.

Pneuma, I'm not convinced the CI-shadow build is pure evasion. That 3k ES costs you evasion rating; you have the same amount of buffer I do; and I have seething flasks to cover shitty situations. I'm sure it's got merits, but the only benefits it has over a life build is chaos immunity, and not having to worry about life flasks. I have other ways to deal with chaos damage, and I like my flasks.

The ES eats into other defenses, and costs passives to develop. Not pure evasion. Although I'm sure your total avoidance (through block and %EV) is very high, and I bet you rarely get stunned by blocking. Benefits, drawbacks.

This most recent patch made life nodes a little cheaper for ranger - there are more life clusters along more resource highways. Just makes life a cheaper pickup.

So, I'm going to try my A/PA ranger again. First iteration will be this one, a haste/physi build. Second iteration is here, the ele-crit variation. But this time I'll wait until I have a suitable 5-link to respec into crit. That was my biggest mistake last time, doing that respec early.

The biggest improvement that I think could be made to "pure evasion" builds is to make life an even cheaper pickup for us than it is now. We need 8% life nodes to be worth 10% instead. You can't put 10% life nodes in the ranger tree, though, because duelists will just build into the ranger area. No, wouldn't work. What you could do, though: complete the dodge circle with two new life nodes. These would be very unique points; rather than reading "8% increased life" they would read "10% more life". Problem solved: life is suddenly a 20% cheaper pickup for pure evasion builds. If you bought those two points, every 8% node suddenly becomes worth 9.6% of base/bonus/worn HP instead. Biggest plausible problem in that gets averted, too: only pure-evasion characters get to pick it up.

I say all this because even balanced evasion builds need a shitton of life. This build I just linked has 132%, and that's LOW for HC. It's a bit build stifling, that need to rack up life nodes. My proposal would relieve a little of that, maybe give me back three of my skillpoints (take the 20% more, drop 40% incr)

What do you think of my idea?

"

Zakaluka wrote:

Charan, you've got me on this project again. What I meant by "we'll always disagree on this": I don't believe evasion is broken anymore. I think the new system will just take some time to show itself now.

Pneuma, I'm not convinced the CI-shadow build is pure evasion. That 3k ES costs you evasion rating; you have the same amount of buffer I do; and I have seething flasks to cover shitty situations. I'm sure it's got merits, but the only benefits it has over a life build is chaos immunity, and not having to worry about life flasks. I have other ways to deal with chaos damage, and I like my flasks.

I think you, Malice and I all agree that evasion isn't broken anymore. I use it in Merciless on a melee Shadow, for goodness sake -- what better way of saying 'I believe in this' than such a risky method?

But I question your logic in challenging pneuma's build. What's the difference between using nodes to get 3k ES to buff a build and using those same nodes to stack life -- a method we have both admitted as quite logical with an evasion build? All pneuma has done is traded life for ES in this case, and possibly more cost-effectively, node-wise.

Oh, checked out your build proposals. Archers?! Boring. :(

Seriously, though, given the damage output of archery in this game (and most games), I'd expect that a defence type like evasion should be more than sufficient.

He's given up half his base evasion rating to trade life for ES. I only disagree with calling it pure evasion. It's clearly a hybrid defense. Half of item budget goes to ES, half goes to evasion. A pure evasion character will have significantly higher chance to evade.

I'm not arguing the merits of the build. ES/evasion work incredibly well together. I just can't agree with calling it a pure evasion build :b

I assumed you were still coming from the belief that evasion is inferior, otherwise you wouldn't see IR as even mattering. You'd see most people taking IR and just go "well, that's misguided." There'd be no reason to erase IR, because only the duelist could make proper use of it anyway. Everyone taking IR without bonus endurance charges is trading evasion for an inferior defense, after all.

By the way I was more interested in hearing what you thought about my idea with the passive tree :b. And the archer build, well, it's aimed at proving more than one thing. There are a lot of little "accepted truths" I'm trying to debunk with it. And besides, this is hardcore mode we're talking about here. If I can make it to level 75 with a 60/40 split offensive/defensive build and A/PA, that says something. In hardcore, very few builds spend less than 50% of their points on defense. Metronomy is wierd.

I also happen to not like playing melee on the right hand side of the skilltree. I can't run around single-targetting everything, and I resent having to use a str-aligned attack for multi-target melee. Probably won't do melee evasion until a green multi-target attack gem gets introduced. If I do, it'll be with firetrap (underpowered, I hear).

Whirling blades would give you multi attack (but desync worthy!). Also it's damage is pretty low, I've only really used it as an escape mechanism.

Totally agree with not going melee with pure dex without an AoE dex skill....

Look forward to seeing how your toons go!

Yes at the moment melee dexterity class actually means melee dexterity/strength hybrid. I just wish IR gave us only 30-50% conversion (100 evasion would become 30 armor and 70 evasion for example), then I would consider taking it.

Z: Heh, I see your point now. I somehow disregarded the fact that he actually would need to wear ev/ES gear to make CI work. I'm a moron, but I get there in the end! :)

I look at IR not just as a player but as a tester and, yes, even as a moderator -- someone who can step back a bit from the game as 'I' experience it and look at it as a product to be consumed by many different people. So while IR doesn't bother me as an evasion player, it still bothers the hell out of me as someone who wants evasion to be treated fairly in this game. I still believe that if you're going to go the evasion route, you should learn to play with it, not simply convert the lot to armour. That's jumping the queue to me, or, perhaps more appropriately, it's like being able to teleport on the Skilldrasil itself. Suddenly what you had built has changed dramatically.

I also find it offensive as it will entice ignorant (read: new) players to view evasion not as evasion but as potential armour.

At the core of it, Iron Reflexes' existence makes me doubt GGG's competence as game designers, which is a feeling I very much dislike, given my rather obvious support of Chris and the GGGang. They've made so many things work that shouldn't, and come up with so many innovations and trend-buckers, when we see a nail sticking up like this, it's all the more noticeable.

I KNOW they're going to address CI soon. I just know it. IR should be next in line. If it's not looked at, somehow, I'm always going to have some nagging doubt in my mind that GGG just couldn't be arsed dealing with it, and like I said, that's not cool.

Your two tree ideas are fine, but something you yourself have taught me: the skilldrasil isn't where we build our characters. It's just where we construct their skeletons. A build is so much more than its passives, including the skill gems, supports, gear and (here's the bit you taught me) flasks.

I also have far too little experience with (and interest in, I confess) archers to give good feedback.

I hope they add a green multi-target attack gem soon, then, because if anyone could make melee evasion work, I reckon you'd be near the top of the list. I admit that my method of tagging with Viper Strike and WBing around isn't true melee in the toe-to-toe sense, but maybe it's about as melee as evasion can get.

no, no! 20% more life. let me quote myself again :)

"

Zakaluka wrote:

The biggest improvement that I think could be made to "pure evasion" builds is to make life an even cheaper pickup for us than it is now. We need 8% life nodes to be worth 10% instead. You can't put 10% life nodes in the ranger tree, though, because duelists will just build into the ranger area. No, wouldn't work. What you could do, though: complete the dodge circle with two new life nodes. These would be very unique points; rather than reading "8% increased life" they would read "10% more life". Problem solved: life is suddenly a 20% cheaper pickup for pure evasion builds. If you bought those two points, every 8% node suddenly becomes worth 9.6% of base/bonus/worn HP instead. Biggest plausible problem in that gets averted, too: only pure-evasion characters get to pick it up.

I say all this because even balanced evasion builds need a shitton of life. This build I just linked has 132%, and that's LOW for HC. It's a bit build stifling, that need to rack up life nodes. My proposal would relieve a little of that, maybe give me back three of my skillpoints (take the 20% more, drop 40% incr)

What do you think about this.

(And I don't think there's anything wrong with CI. Other than, maybe ES mods go too high. Life flasks are so powerful...)

Gosh, I've derailed this thread so thorougly. I'll quit it now :b

"

Zakaluka wrote:

Gosh, I've derailed this thread so thorougly. I'll quit it now :b

No, please keep up the derailing, you're one of the people the devs SHOULD listen to about this. I want evasion more viable, and that little change to the skilldrassil would be amazing and maybe people would stop going "Evasion sucks" all the time.