You know what happens when your Reflexes turn to Iron?

I definitely see where Malice is coming from, and from a game-balance perspective it makes a lot more sense. I believe that there could still be room for a form of mitigation applied to evasion and possible even Energy Shield. That way the monster damage output wouldn't have to be tweaked as hard.

Marauder currently is the best class by far because of the excessive power that armor grants to a character, and the disproportionate power that Strength characters have. A nerf to this class' fundamentals may be necessary as you suggest, Malice. Don't believe me? Make a Bowrauder and a Bow Ranger and get them to the same level and see which one is better?

Interesting idea, indeed. Maybe once this is resolved, we can look at suggestions for ES so that it's no longer a thin film of non-regenerating life and add some defenses to that as well.

I should note that the evade/es hybrid armors are perfectly viable endgame gear (evasion syncs quite well with energy shield). Evade/armor gear, while not as symbiotic, is also strong enough for endgame builds. These claims both assume the actual build and associated gear are endgame material, of course, and that the player is up to the task of executing the build effectively.

I mention this because while evasion alone is not up to the task of providing adequate endgame-level defense for many builds, the general sentiment in this thread seems to be that evasion overall is near worthless as is, which couldnt be further from the truth.

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YoMicky wrote:

Maybe once this is resolved, we can look at suggestions for ES so that it's no longer a thin film of non-regenerating life and add some defenses to that as well.

Energy shield is currently the strongest defensive mechanic in the game when combined with chaos inoculation, and a potential effective life doubler without.

The last thing it needs is a buff.

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Malice wrote:

I've never really been convinced that there is anything wrong with evasion. If there is a problem it is that there is no feedback to the player that they evaded. I think this causes a lot of people to immediately blame evasion when they die, while being oblivious to the many times that evasion saved their life.

I'm going to have to highly disagree with you here. Unless I'm mistaken, your implication seems to be that if I have some indication of when I've evaded before, that somehow helps me survive later? The fact that I may have evaded the last 10 attacks in a row is irrelevant when the 11th kills me in one hit.

The real problem is that Evasion is binary at end game. Either you evade the hit and live, or you take the hit and die. There is very little, if any, time to react to save yourself like the other two builds have. With both Armor and ES, you have time enough to see that your pool is getting low and know to back off. Evasion doesn't have this luxury. Even in those times that you don't get one shot, if a mob or group of mobs happen to get two consecutive hits in on you, its likely the end of the line.

Of course, I say this from a very specific perspective, that of a melee ranger. Some might make the argument that Evasion shouldn't be used on melee characters and only ranged, but that sounds just as wrong to me as saying it shouldn't be viable at end game like the other damage types.

I do agree with you though that part of the problem is the way the end game needs to be balanced around armor. In fact, I think this is a bigger problem then just evasion, but is also why armor hybrid types (Armor/ES, and Armor/Evasion) are borderline worthless as I've stated a few times in these types of threads. I'm not sure what the solution is to that though. Maybe pure defensive types should be abolished, and make it more of a pick two sort of thing, otherwise I can't fathom how you can make hybrid armor types useful in the current system with how armor calculations are done.

Though it's probably a temporary thing because of Maëlstrom of Chaos, I thought I'd mention I was surprised when I suddenly lost 20% on my DR when levelling from 59 to 60.

Some thoughts from 53 evasion/hp point blank ranger starting act 2 merciless.

Evasion is very complicated thing to balance in any game and I have yet to see it done so its on par with armor in any game. Because evasion relies on randomness it will never be as reliable as armor or es.

I died because of bad luck 3-4 hits in a row only 3-4 times and I am actually alright with that because I knew that this is a possibility. Only thing that came close to 1-shotting me was merciless Merveil and I actaully killed her in melee range with one death because of my own stupidity.

Currently I think evasion requiers pretty specific playstyle and gear. You have to constantly be on the edge, duck in and out of fight, pop emergency flasks. But I am alright with that even though I know other people are having easier time. That is how I like play.

That's my personal opinion, not that evasion does not need any tweaks. Just that this kind of play might appeal to some people.

I will just reply with what I said on another thread about this exact issue.

Awhile ago I did a little bit of systemic analysis on the issue.

One of the things I learned, or at least seemed to learn based on the data I was given complicates this a great deal. Namely:

One-Hit kills are fantastically rare. Most spikes of damage that most people describe as instant death are probably actually two or more blows that happened to occur at the same instant. Now, feel free to correct me if I am wrong here. That is just what I determined based on my limited knowledge.

Based upon this assumption, you can do a few things to dampen the effect. The easiest one is as follows:

You have a tracked value which is the damage you have taken over the past second. When an attack would cause this value to exceed 90% of your base health, the damage that exceeds this amount is reduced to 10%(by 90%) of the damage it would deal. A 500 damage attack followed immediately by a 400 damage attack against a 600 health player would deal 590 damage - leaving the player with 10 life.

This does not apply to ES at all, only attacks that damage your health. Alternatively it could simply add in ES as a health-equivalent when doing this math. This is a matter of balance more than functionality.


Basically, this would remove the most extreme-case instant deaths from the game, regardless of their source, while still permitting the event if the player received a full 2x their max health in damage over that second.

Even more great feedback. I'm glad to see that this is not an issue to be swept aside. I am particularly savvy to the idea of 'multiple blows at the same time' -- I've seen that happen, even at low level.

My current gripe is minor: large, fairly bulky looking shields are giving me significant boosts to evasion. Uh, okay. Related to that: to get the highest evasion rating for my level (a mere 12 so far, plan to work on that today), I HAVE to equip a shield, which means that increased block-chance is coming into play and mucking about with the experiment.

That said, I think the only way I could test pure evasion is to use only one weapon with no shield, which really is silly for an evasion build (unless you have Tipua). Even when dual-wielding there's a block chance, after all. So some blocking will come into effect.

I can hit 59-62% chance to evade right now, neglecting all other nodes and stats. This is NOT a balanced build, but it's definitely producing noticeable results. I can stand in the middle of a crowd of melee attackers and see the airswings.

But my argument was never that evasion doesn't work, especially at low level. It's a query of whether it's viable sans Iron Reflexes past low level. I am fairly sure Charan 3.0 at level 31 is pure evasion, but he's relying on a LOT of life for a dex build -- Diamond Skin and that area. It will be interesting to see how Seamstress (the pure evasion build) looks at 31 compared to him.

That said, I believe in Evasion. I don't think I'd have made this thread if I didn't. I was just tired of people saying 'get IR!' as though it's a necessity, high level folk who definitely know what they're talking about.

Wouldn't be the first time I've pushed a suboptimal build past its typical viability by sheer brute force and perserverence, but even I have no taste for one-hit-kills (be it from one source or several spontaneously).

And I still believe 'converts all evasion to armour' is a horribly sub-par keystone.

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CharanJaydemyr wrote:

Spoiler

Even more great feedback. I'm glad to see that this is not an issue to be swept aside. I am particularly savvy to the idea of 'multiple blows at the same time' -- I've seen that happen, even at low level.

My current gripe is minor: large, fairly bulky looking shields are giving me significant boosts to evasion. Uh, okay. Related to that: to get the highest evasion rating for my level (a mere 12 so far, plan to work on that today), I HAVE to equip a shield, which means that increased block-chance is coming into play and mucking about with the experiment.

That said, I think the only way I could test pure evasion is to use only one weapon with no shield, which really is silly for an evasion build (unless you have Tipua). Even when dual-wielding there's a block chance, after all. So some blocking will come into effect.

I can hit 59-62% chance to evade right now, neglecting all other nodes and stats. This is NOT a balanced build, but it's definitely producing noticeable results. I can stand in the middle of a crowd of melee attackers and see the airswings.

But my argument was never that evasion doesn't work, especially at low level. It's a query of whether it's viable sans Iron Reflexes past low level. I am fairly sure Charan 3.0 at level 31 is pure evasion, but he's relying on a LOT of life for a dex build -- Diamond Skin and that area. It will be interesting to see how Seamstress (the pure evasion build) looks at 31 compared to him.

That said, I believe in Evasion. I don't think I'd have made this thread if I didn't. I was just tired of people saying 'get IR!' as though it's a necessity, high level folk who definitely know what they're talking about.

Wouldn't be the first time I've pushed a suboptimal build past its typical viability by sheer brute force and perserverence, but even I have no taste for one-hit-kills (be it from one source or several spontaneously).

And I still believe 'converts all evasion to armour' is a horribly sub-par keystone.

Nice to see I'm not the only one who dislikes IR quite a bit. Really interested to see how evasion melee evasion will work out for you. Although I think if you're not getting HP spell damage will be a huge problem later on. Damage ramps up pretty quickly from what I've experienced. It can work but with a LOT of resists but getting the right gear becomes a problem very quickly.

Now at 54 with evasion/hp I can't do much in act 2 merciless because I ran out of nice HP and evasion nodes, and getting the right gear is difficult - stuff that would be perfect for me people just throw away to vendor. I can move some passive points from damage to survivability but that won't help because it will just be a closed circle of more survivability/less dmg - get hit more ofter because I can't kill fast enough - get more survivability kill even slower.

I have given up on Iron Reflexes. After sixty levels, six nodes in evasion and three in health, I still found bosses like Kraitlyn and Oak were able to one or two shot my bow duelist. After reinvesting those evasion nodes and iron reflex points I raised my average DPS by at least 200 and actually improved my survivability since hits no longer landed on me 95% of the time. The build would never fly in Hardcore either way though.

I cannot imagine armor/evasion hybrids working as the armor provided, even with Iron Reflexes, is insufficient to survive more than two hits against Kraitlyn in Merciless without significant investment in HP nodes and gear.

The only possible exception I can imagine are one handed/shield builds since blocking provides an additional layer of protection. Even then, the need for extra HP and evasion nodes signal to me that significant loss of DPS will still follow such builds.