You know what happens when your Reflexes turn to Iron?

I don't necessarily agree with all your points, but I do feel that Iron Reflexes is unfairly monopolizing the dex tree. If your build is accumulating over 200 dex, you basically need it. Or even if you don't necessarily "need" it - not taking it seriously gimps your build.

The Ranger/Marauder trees need some serious rework in the defensive side of things. Offensively, the Ranger/Duelist are great - they have a ton of offensive options (not necessarily the Marauder here, but he gets the job done if he leans heavily toward Templar or Duelist). Defensive options on the other hand, are basically health stacking+evasion or evasion stacking+iron will+health. They're basically the same strategy, only iron will enhances the usefulness of evasion.

I think we need a whole bunch of new defensive clusters for the Duelist/Ranger/Marauder. Dual Wield block is good, but doesn't offer anything for 2h/bow users. After adding these new areas for players to invest, keep iron reflexes, but don't let the new armor be further be increased by +armor% nodes on the tree (or by your equipment), say it's a "flat" armor conversion or something. Also, add a few more +8-10% health nodes around the Duelist/Ranger. Iron Will would still be a viable option for some bulids, but it would not the "be all".

We also desperately need more shield-based/block-based (and by extension, exclusively one-handed weapon) skills. I think a shield-based Ranger/Duelist would be really good, there are a ton of +block opportunities, but the damage output of a one-handed character is just way too low to be viable (at least in HC). The only way you could make up for this is with active skills (or perhaps some interesting support gems).

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

Iron will is the English equivalent of that, I believe, if any such equivalent exists. Not Iron Reflexes. In English, 'Iron reflexes' makes no sense.

I guess iron will would be better but they would have to rename the IRON WILL keystone then.

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anubite wrote:

We also desperately need more shield-based (and by extension, exclusively one-handed weapon) skills. I think a shield-based Ranger/Duelist would be really good, there are a ton of +block opportunities, but the damage output of a one-handed character is just way too low to be viable (at least in HC). The only way you could make up for this is with active skills (or perhaps some interesting support gems).

Isn't it the point of 1h+shield style though? Low damage, good defense? Maybe simple buffing one stat or another (attack, block chance) would do the trick? Or maybe it is fine as it is, I haven't really got to lv60 with shield yet. I feel like shield skills are the way. There is the lightning shield and the shield charge...

Except it's impossible to capitalize on Tempest Shield whlie starting as a Ranger/Duelist/Marauder AND taking points in the dex side of the tree. You'll spend about 20-30 points navigating to all the +int nodes necessarily to use Tempest Shield, plus if you want it to do any damage, you'll want a few +lightning damage clusters. Your dexterity is pretty much going to waste AND COUNTERACTING TEMPEST SHIELD -- because if you evade an attack, you're not blocking it. Thus, your tempest shield does nothing.

I've a merciless 1h+shield Marauder - it's pretty hellish. Leveling is very slow. You have less than half of the DPS of any 2h/dual wield/spell caster/bow users out there. Fights are pretty safe though, you don't really die unless you try to take on too many enemies at once. The main issue is leveling speed - it's many times slower because you can only fight small groups at a time. You're also reliant on skills for dealing with clusters of enemies.

I think adding more shield/block/1h skills WILL help in fixing the dex/str trees, but Iron Reflexes in itself is a little too good, or perhaps, the only real defensive option available. 20% dodge/20% spell dodge keystones are... okay? But they're really at the tip-top of the Ranger tree, so that defensive strategy isn't as easy to bulid for, while Iron Reflexes is in the core of the dex/str area.


Thus, Iron Reflexes is too good because it allows you to combine +evasion nodes and +armor nodes for a "double dip", it's easy to acquire as a Marauder/Ranger/Duelist, and it doesn't really come with any major downsides. It's not like there are any evasion/dodge based skills in the game yet (like a counter-attack or something).

How about a keystone that prevents 1 hit kills and gives the evasion character time to escape if they are paying attention.

My previously mentioned "Roll With the Punches" idea could work like:

Any hit that would take more than 20% of a characters Hp will instead take 20% of the characters max hp. Activation of the ability applies debuff to character preventing health regeneration for x secs.

This would mean you could take at most 5 unevaded hits. Once you started getting hit you could fall back and regroup. Debuff would prevent the creation of low hp builds that exploit regen.

I just find it dull that it is currently necessary for ANY evasion build to get Iron Reflexes in order to be viable. That shouldn't be the only option. Evasion should be a decent stat on its own.

Iron Reflexes is by far my least favourite keystone. I have minor concerns about its power (since Evasion gets +% boosts from Dex that Armour doesn't), but primarily I just think it's bad, boring design - I feel it specifically exists to dilute character distinction (which is bad, to me) and also that it is covering up real problems with evasion and hybrid armour.

First of all I'd remove this keystone entirely. And then do I-don't-know-what with the evasion mechanics (god knows there have been a million suggestions already) to hopefully make it a system that really feels different to armour (and addresses people's one-hit-kill complaints somewhat). And then go over all armour stats and requirements, (and probably, necessarily, the passive tree - the way in which attributes are doled out) to make sure people aren't always telling each other to go all one way or all the other instead of using hybrid pieces.

Yes, I'm well aware all I just said was "rawr, there are problems, they should be fixed, it'd be great if we made everything great!". :P

Maybe the correct way is to not change Iron Reflexes, but change the way dexterity works. Maybe some armor bonus could be added into it, but only vs ranged attacks.

So that when you do get hit on your EV character (the 5% chance), your dexterity bonus will alleviate Ranged damage a bit, since your armor will be higher vs that damage.

Each 10 points in dex provides xx armor vs ranged attacks, or something like that.

This way, it will help a bit, but you will still be the whole 5% vulnerable vs melee attacks..

heck, even make a Key hex that includes ranged spells.. awesome!

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

It's true that str/armour is the realm of damage reduction, but more specifically, it's the realm of absolute damage reduction -- with Armour, every single incoming source of physical damage is reduced by a percentage.

This is false. Armour doesn't reduce elemental damage or damage over time, while evasion does since you evaded the cause of it.

Every single dexterity thread forgets about this point, thus making them all irrelevant. I've never seen any problem with dexterity and evasion myself.
Now that there are more dot and elemental damage dealer mobs, I ensure that evasion is not weaker than armor, I even believe the opposite.

(ps : I only read the first post)

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zriL wrote:

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

It's true that str/armour is the realm of damage reduction, but more specifically, it's the realm of absolute damage reduction -- with Armour, every single incoming source of physical damage is reduced by a percentage.

This is false. Armour doesn't reduce elemental damage or damage over time, while evasion does since you evaded the cause of it.

Every single dexterity thread forgets about this point, thus making them all irrelevant. I've never seen any problem with dexterity and evasion myself.
Now that there are more dot and elemental damage dealer mobs, I ensure that evasion is not weaker than armor, I even believe the opposite.

(ps : I only read the first post)

You might want to re-read the bit you bolded.

And then the bit I italicised.

I'm not too fond myself of some of these "high impact" skills (using a term from Jonathan/GGG). I like the premise, but they tend to become the center pieces of gimmicky builds.

Unique passive skills are hard to design, no question. But there's something that's bothering me about these skills which turn off completely mana, or evasion, and supposedly balance it with something else. Same for Chaos Inoculation. It's a bit sad when people suggest you use any of those skills when you are running into difficulties in the game.

I much prefer a long, smooth progression with some highs and lows, where you gradually build up stronger and stronger defenses and combat skills. And if you don't have good gear, you make up with passives, or auras. If you have good gear then you can drop the aura or passives and go more offensive... but of course atm the passive tree is so rigid, it does not allow for this kind of adaptation.