You know what happens when your Reflexes turn to Iron?

I think that's a bit extreme, we don't need huge penalties. I think it's even okay to allow equipping leather to be a very slightly favored by way of the %incr evasion rating from dex, as before. And, as the above poster points out: move speed. We're talking about a 3% difference though, just a tiny advantage.

But a perfectly-rolled Glorious Plate should provide the same amount of base armour as a perfectly-rolled Assassin's Garb. The leather gets a +35% or so additive increase over the plate, if you can manage to support the dex requirement. This leaves equipping leather just barely better than equipping armour, but not by much and with a significant drawback: you need 170 dex, man! That's not cheap.

How to make perfect rolls on plate, hybrid, and leather gear provide the same base armour rating, though? IR would need to apply a multiplicative 30% penalty on the conversion. I believe that would leave plate armour in the lead for early progression, while leather would be better with good itemization.

Of course, it depends what you consider "perfect" gear.

The bigger way this adjustment fixes things? The interaction between grace and IR is even more problematic than the interaction between IR and gear. There's no analog. 1200 evasion rating is about half a perfectly-rolled assassin's garb. 1200 armour rating is almost a full perfectly-rolled astral plate. Grace becomes insanely powerful with IR, putting a huge red flag waving over any max armour build *without* IR.

If your findings result in Grace being nerfed, Z, I'll be really upset. :)

Um, I don't think grace takes a nerf the way I worded that - it just makes grace less amazing under IR.

I did at one point suggest moving some rating out of grace and into base gear stats. But I'm not sure what I think about that one anymore. It wouldn't really solve the big problem of IR being *too* attractive for someone already stacking armour. I've made bad suggestions before, that was probably one of them.

The problem boils down like this:
* Evasion rating numbers are just always much higher than armor rating numbers.
* If you're in any kind of strong armour build, your defense rating has increasing returns. Yes, I'm assuming that armour builds should always use endurance.
* Evasion, on the other hand, always has severe diminishing returns past about the 5000 rating mark (maybe much sooner).

diminishing returns on evasion, increasing returns on armour. Bigger evasion numbers, smaller armour numbers. Now add in a shortcut to trade all evasion rating at 100% face value for armour rating. This is why it's broken; can't really simplify past that.

The trade can't be 100%.

I think grace is fine, it's just what IR does to grace that's a bit broken.

Do make sure that you're including the benefit of avoiding puncture, viper strike stacks, and elemental effects into your calculation of armor versus evasion.

A pure evasion build should have slightly less effective damage reduction compared to armor due to this bonus.

"

CNKalmah wrote:

I feel a good idea was posted earlier in the forum, elaborating on it:

What if you introduced a new health overlap similar to energy shield called "stamina". This "stamina" comes from your evasion rating (the numbered one).. EG: 2500 Evasion = 2500 Stamina.

When a hit passes through your evasion it lands as unmitigated damage to your "stamina", you then would receive X% of that damage as a Damage over Time - this would depend on the damage type, fire, cold, etc.

Once "stamina" reaches 0, the following form of damage is completely applied to your health pool.
- "Well what if you have 2 "stamina" left and you take 1000 damage?" - Have it so if ANY damage passes through "stamina" then there is no damage over time effect. Problem surpassed.

"Stamina" could regenerate over time, this could introduce new passives, keystones, affixes/suffixes.


What do you think?


PS: Is it possible to separate the base 5% evasion from the rest? If so, you could apply this to every character that has an evasion rating past the base 5%. This would be fair to ES/Evasion users and Evasion/Armour users, since they are going hybrid anyways and they would both have the stamina buffer.

PSS: I like the idea of having a keystone that grants a percent chance to have evasion act as armor upon having a hit go through. This intrigues me.

Anyone?

Your idea is off-topic to this thread, that's the first reason I just didn't know how to respond to it. We're more on the subject of iron reflexes, not evasion - although discussion has swung in that direction a few times.

The other reason is that your idea seems too much like hybrid ev/es defense, but also too powerful at the same time. Stack pure evasion and also get a (large) buffer that replenishes constantly. Doesn't feel like evasion anymore, but evasion with a large energy shield. And more evasion, more energy shield than you could get with hybrid ev/es. Too strong.

No, right now evasion is the "mathematically superior" pure defense in all kinds of situations. The reasons it doesn't feel powerful are subtle, and mostly revolve around:
buffer (or luck on long hit streaks, depending on your points of view)
healing
scaling at extreme rating values

Zeto explained it best in the acrobatics thread. I don't think we need a big paradigm shift at the moment, just some minor tweaks. Our proposal in that thread addresses all three of those points.

"

Zakaluka wrote:

But a perfectly-rolled Glorious Plate should provide the same amount of base armour as a perfectly-rolled Assassin's Garb. The leather gets a +35% or so additive increase over the plate, if you can manage to support the dex requirement. This leaves equipping leather just barely better than equipping armour, but not by much and with a significant drawback: you need 170 dex, man! That's not cheap.

I actually disagree with this point.

Firstly, Str chestpieces and Dex chestpieces both have their own characteristic strengths/weaknessess for a reason. They shouldn't be identical and should never be. There are a few reasons for that.

Amongst all the dex chestpieces, only assassin's garb has an implicit and it is +3% movement speed. Astral plate has +12% to all resistances which has only gotten more valuable with the resist penalties patch. Trying to give the astral plate the ability to roll the same amount of defense as its dex counterpart would just make it op.

Next: there are differences in the passive trees in both mara and duelists for a reason. IR is associated more with duelists which is fine as they don't have as many defensive nodes as compared with maras, hence the reason why im fine with armour chestpieces having less defence as compared with dex chestpieces. it's a trade-off.

If it became possible for mara chestpieces to get the same defensive stats as dex chestpieces, most duelists would get mara chestpieces for the red sockets and you'll have a new problem.

From what I've seen from other threads, the main gripe about IR seems to be because it's pretty much the only keystone most duelists build around, probably because of the synergy it has with Unwavering Stance and also because most people don't like evasion the way it is and would rather sacrifice evasion for armour rating.

Instead of trying to fix IR which according to the devs is not broken, why not add in another new keystone into the game that might give duelists more choice and make IR less appealing to them? If after the new keystone gets implemented, giving Duelists an extra choice, and IR remains the favourite, perhaps we could go back to trying to give IR more penalties.

As far as penalties go, imo it seems like the decreased ms/as is the most apt one since Iron Reflexes is termed "Iron". Given that alot of duelists like to go for dw swords and fast move speed and attack speed, this might hurt them more rather than decreased conversion of evasion rating to armour which let's face it, isn't going to change most IR builds.

they'll just qq about it but at the end of the day still use it, simply because all the penalty does will be to decrease DR. you aren't going to fix anything. you're just gonna nerf things and cause ppl to qq about the game not being as fun as before and not really changing anything.

you can't really be fair to the IR builds atm by nerfing their only option and not giving them an alternative

As a first note, I can accept a disagreement. That's fine. But please don't get too hung up on calling out a flaw in one particular example I make (such as comparing an Astral to a Garb relative to Grace) - Please try to address my actual point, or tell me why my basic idea is flawed. Semantics arguments are unappealing, I'm sure you feel the same way.

------------

You have some good points, which is why I haven't responded to most of this :). Just a couple points I'm not sure about.

Unwavering stance is a nice cherry to put on top, but you've taken me a bit out of context. The single largest reason to pick up IR is that you wind up with more armour rating than any other possible configuration. In a deliberate armour/str build, take IR and wear leather: you get 40% more rating (if both the leather and plate have reasonably good stats).

If that weren't the case, armour builds would just wear plate, and buy IR simply to transform grace into armour. IR would be used to transform rangers/shadows/duelists into armour builds; using the armour type that plays into their skillset best (the type with desired socket colors).

There's more evasion rating in the stat budget than armour rating. The point about an astral is just fine, yes. An astral should get less armour, and the comparison to grace was a poor one. But should a 100%/+320 zodiac contribute 40% more total armour rating than a 100%/+120 gladiator plate? Because that's how things stand now. The two should be equivalent, or the zodiac should be just a little better. Right now the leather is massively favored.

Let's not get hung up on semantics. I'm talking about making leather, hybrid, and plate gear budget equivalent for rating before passive bonuses. Of course intrinsics carry some value in the stat budget. It was an oversight on my part.

"

Invalesco wrote:

probably because of the synergy it has with Unwavering Stance

Unwavering is nice, but it's hardly a selling point. It's just a little extra sweetener. I asked DDT about that, once: he laughed at me when I asked if unwavering was a big reason to take IR. IR is all about getting armour from grace, if you're coming from the west side of the skilltree. Also access to leather gear, if you can somehow afford the requirements, and happen to have hundreds of chroms laying around.

keep in mind, my viewpoint is that of someone who wants IR not to be a requirement. I avoid buying it, and try to figure out how I can make that choice less of an obvious disadvantage.

"

Instead of trying to fix IR which according to the devs is not broken

If you can provide a quote for us, then at the very most there is some disagreement among the GGGgang. This claim that devs think IR is just fine, I don't think it's completely true. I have reason to believe (due to previous conversations) that there's some internal discussion on this topic. Not to say that my idea is necessarily receiving attention - and actually I'm fairly certain at least one dev dislikes it.

Are you referring to mark's recent replies? Think very carefully about his wording; every reply I've seen by mark in this thread deliberately avoids giving us even a glimpse of his opinion. From his tone we might imply he doesn't really want to re-work it, or doesn't like my particular fix. That's about as much insight as he's given us recently.

----------

A picture is much more valuable than all this technical talk. Here's what I'm proposing. It shouldn't particularly matter what kind of armour you want to wear. If you pick up IR, wearing leather should provide about the same base rating as everything else. After all bonuses, the leather should be worth just slightly more total rating than anything else because of dex, but if saving some chroms appeals to you hybrid gear also becomes very attractive:

note: my use of the term "base" is incorrect here; that should say "tooltip rating". An AR focused pieces has +100%/+120. An EV focused piece has +100%/+322. "base AR" is the sum of evasion/armour values in the item's tooltip.


After a 35% incr evasion rating bonus from dex requirements, the leather is still about 500 total armour rating better than the plate. That's alright, because the dex requirements are costly.

After a 35% incr evasion rating bonus from dex (realistic for duelist, even though requirements are lower) the evasion-focused hybrid gear is about 200 total armour rating better than the plate.

All options provide about the same base rating, so if you don't wish to carry tons of dex your natural aligned armour type becomes preferred. If taking away that 40% more rating seems absolutely detrimental to a whole class of builds, think about this. That just means there isn't enough armour and evasion rating in the stat budget, not that IR should be left alone.

To leave things more in favor of dex/evasion than this proposal does, just change the 30% penalty to a 20% penalty.

"

Zakaluka wrote:

Unwavering stance is a nice cherry to put on top, but you've taken me a bit out of context. The single largest reason to pick up IR is that you wind up with more armour rating than any other possible configuration. In a deliberate armour/str build, take IR and wear leather: you get 40% more rating (if both the leather and plate have reasonably good stats).

If that weren't the case, armour builds would just wear plate, and buy IR simply to transform grace into armour. IR would be used to transform rangers/shadows/duelists into armour builds; using the armour type that plays into their skillset best (the type with desired socket colors).

this is something I'm curious about. Do most top maras bother going all the way to IR to pick up that keystone? what do maras generally feel about IR? Do they think it is worth getting? If alot of mara builds are centred around IR as well, then yes I do believe IR will be a problem and base armour from basic str armour chestpieces should be raised. if not then maybe the discrepancy seems abit too much in a theory point of view but does not affect gameplay that much.

"

Invalesco wrote:

probably because of the synergy it has with Unwavering Stance

"

keep in mind, my viewpoint is that of someone who wants IR not to be a requirement. I avoid buying it, and try to figure out how I can make that choice less of an obvious disadvantage.

I haven't played much of a duelist build so I'm a little curious regarding this. There is a fascination about keystones in this game. Most builds are centred around 1 key stone or another. Eg. EB builds, CI builds, etc. If a duelist does not go for IR, what else can he possibly go for?

"

"

Instead of trying to fix IR which according to the devs is not broken

If you can provide a quote for us, then at the very most there is some disagreement among the GGGgang. This claim that devs think IR is just fine, I don't think it's completely true. I have reason to believe (due to previous conversations) that there's some internal discussion on this topic. Not to say that my idea is necessarily receiving attention - and actually I'm fairly certain at least one dev dislikes it.

Are you referring to mark's recent replies? Think very carefully about his wording; every reply I've seen by mark in this thread deliberately avoids giving us even a glimpse of his opinion. From his tone we might imply he doesn't really want to re-work it, or doesn't like my particular fix. That's about as much insight as he's given us recently.

Yes I probably assumed from his tone that he felt it wasn't broken. My bad. He did mention however that it's 1 positive for 1 negative exchange. So I've been thinking, instead of converting all evasion to armour, would it be alright to just convert 50% of evasion to armour and leave the remaining 50% as evasion? This way it's still a one for one exchange without actually nerfing IR too badly because the values are preserved.

----------

"

A picture is much more valuable than all this technical talk. Here's what I'm proposing. It shouldn't particularly matter what kind of armour you want to wear. If you pick up IR, wearing leather should provide about the same base rating as everything else. After all bonuses, the leather should be worth just slightly more total rating than anything else because of dex, but if saving some chroms appeals to you hybrid gear also becomes very attractive:



After a 35% incr evasion rating bonus from dex requirements, the leather is still about 500 total armour rating better than the plate. That's alright, because the dex requirements are costly.

After a 35% incr evasion rating bonus from dex (realistic for duelist, even though requirements are lower) the hybrid gear is about 200 total armour rating better than the plate.

All options provide about the same base rating, so if you don't wish to carry tons of dex your natural aligned armour type becomes preferred. If taking away that 40% more rating seems absolutely detrimental to a whole class of builds, think about this. That just means there isn't enough armour rating in the stat budget.

To leave things more in favor of dex/evasion than this proposal does, just change the 30% penalty to a 20% penalty.

I know where you're coming from Zaka :) but i personally don't feel that trying to balance everything for the sake of balancing is necessary the right path to go.

I will probably have to do some more research regarding str builds, but other than the duelist class, how many other builds go for IR and is IR really that overpowered that it's restricting players' creativity in coming up with a variety of build? if this is overall a choice made due to necessity (due to the lack of any other keystone near duelist) then might not suggesting a new keystone be the solution?

If this is indeed the case where IR is overpowered, perhaps converting some of the evasion into armour and leaving the remainder as evasion rather than converting all the evasion into armour but then subsequently downscaling the value of armour be a better option?

"

Invalesco wrote:

this is something I'm curious about. Do most top maras bother going all the way to IR to pick up that keystone? what do maras generally feel about IR? Do they think it is worth getting? If alot of mara builds are centred around IR as well, then yes I do believe IR will be a problem and base armour from basic str armour chestpieces should be raised.

This is about the beginning of my thought process here. Top maras are indeed building over to IR, just so they can get armour rating from grace. There are other things along the way, though, that make it not really "building straight to IR" - there's a lot of juicy stuff on the way.

People don't necessarily do this to wear leather. Wearing leather is the second step, but it comes much later. Leather is expensive, it takes time.

"

I haven't played much of a duelist build so I'm a little curious regarding this. There is a fascination about keystones in this game. Most builds are centred around 1 key stone or another.

Why?

Why can't I have a build that's just super efficient and gets lots of really basic stat bonuses?

Keystones have a definite opportunity cost, in build efficiency. You have to spend more +10 stat points to get them, and they pigeonhole your build otherwise into a really rigid mould (anything NOT along the highway to said keystone becomes inaccessible). Most keystones also have a face-value cost: something you lose just for buying the keystone.

So why not have a build that gets ZERO keystones, but way more defensive ratings? Considerably more offensive stat boosts? Higher block?

I actually kind of dislike the way keystones place focus on a few very common builds. Without keystones, we'd see much higher build diversity.

But a lot of people really like them, and I suppose it's not actually terribly harmful.

"

So I've been thinking, instead of converting all evasion to armour, would it be alright to just convert 50% of evasion to armour and leave the remaining 50% as evasion?

I'm not sure on this one. I can think of several different problems with it, but it's also a fairly interesting idea. I'm not entirely opposed. That one has come up before.

I still think IR needs to maintain equivalence in the stat budget between armour and evasion, however the conversion ends up being done. If that hurts IR builds too much, then base rating values were too low (something I believe you and I would agree on, there).