You know what happens when your Reflexes turn to Iron?

I'm going to have to agree with Charan. Iron reflexes reads as "Give up your build, it is not going to work, and build something else".

Sorry if I read just the first few lines, but I think I quite agree here.

I posted this already somewhere, but would be nice to see something more to evasion. Skills like "damage control: you learn to minimize damage from hits you do not evade; If incoming damage you did not evade is greater than 25% of your max life, you reduce it by your evasion percent". Should be somewhere quite far away though replacing iron reflexes which shouldn't be needed.

Also interesting one would be "attack/move speed boost" when you evade, very powerful but fun if done right. Would convey that feeling of a master evader.

Another one could be "tumbling": "When you get hit you redirect kinetic energy of the impact by tumbling away, you receive reduced damage and fly in the opposite direction. Distance traveled based on damage." Could be fun or could be frustrating, depends on your playstyle. Small hits wouldn't be a bother this way.

Another thing - with high evade you should evade most of the stupid mass monsters. Maybe there could be some charge system that would decrease the effectiveness of evasion under sustained attack. Not so unlike the energy shield but different still. This should be native to evasion though or tied to a 30% evasion boost node.

An evasion keystone that would add a chance to reflect a percent of the damage that would be dealt back at the monster would be cool!

Being extremely agile you learn not only to avoid attacks, but turn them against the attacker.

Iron Reflexs is a great concept and a great keystone. It lets dexterity based characters gain a more controllable and manageble way of taking damage. It's a great "option", I don't think it necessarily says evasion builds can't work just by it's existence...

My Hybrid duelist was going to take IR, but in merc now I am thinking of just trying out hybrid armor and keeping both stats. Evasion is just so powerful that I don't want to give it up entirely. Being missed by status effects when you avoid is amazing. Taking less damage but still being chilled is good but annoying...

I am personally of the mindset that evasion should never be a stand alone defensive mechanism, just because at some point, evasion will make everything else trivial. If the developers create a system thats effective, I wouldn't complain though.

I do think that there should be some easier access to health/es or armor to supplement the evasion so it doesn't result in insta-gibs on failure.

I'm glad how much IR disappointed me, not just as a concept but in practice. As I progress through act 2 Ruthless, I realise that part of why I'm surviving is precisely because of what happens when you get hit. My poor murder-partner takes so many of the hits and is constantly being poisoned, burned, frozen, punctured...the works. As for me, I move around far too quickly and evade enough of the attacks that I suffer status ailments far less. If it were merely about damage, then armour and thus IR would win. But with all these things I'm avoiding simply by not being hit really do help restore the balance.

I do love Evasion and do NOT believe that Iron Reflexes is worth the sacrifice of anything better than 5% chance to evade, at least not for melee. I think Iscariot is right and that a mix of Eva/Armour is a good way to go, especially given the diminishing returns of evasion past 60-65% (I added over 1000 evasion rating at level 45, gained about 5% chance to evade), but if I had to pick either pure evasion or pure armour, in a game where being hit frequently does so much more than simply deliver a packet of damage, I choose evasion every time.

This is not a complete retraction of my sentiments, but I think it does link to why Arrow Dodging, Acrobatics and Phase Acrobatics are the true Keystones of evasion. I WOULD sacrifice all armour and energy shield if it gave something a bit more potent than 24% chance to dodge spells...

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Neikius wrote:

Another one could be "tumbling": "When you get hit you redirect kinetic energy of the impact by tumbling away, you receive reduced damage and fly in the opposite direction. Distance traveled based on damage." Could be fun or could be frustrating, depends on your playstyle. Small hits wouldn't be a bother this way.

I think this fits evasion perfectly, it would reduce damage but with a penalty of being moved around. It would look cool with the character dodging about and it mirrors Iron reflexes as in that IR meks you steel yourself against the impact while evasion corewise rolls you away.
It wouldn't be only a penalty either, since being moved can be very good from a defensive perspective, since it stops immidiate consecutive attacks from the last attacker.
I've wrote about it also and it's, to me, a lot about the aestethical and "feel" of the evading.
Like it is now, it's not represented by anything but large chunks of hp going away.
With actual dodgings, it would be more visible how hard the hits were and it would very much fit an evasive character.
If you'd wanna get evasion, but still want the character to be firmly in place, you'd get iron reflexes. And if you'd want to simply tank, you'd get armor and hp.

I do think damage reduction fits well into an agility theme overall, since it is about rolling with blows.

Also I think armor rating should be converted to plain physical damage reduction, like the elemental DR, but that's another topic.

I know I'm really late for the party, but I'll add my two cents since I finally decided to give evasion a try.

I'm agreeing that Iron Reflexes doesn't exactly convey the right meaning of the words, and I'm thinking about Iron Will and Iron Grip, those take strength and make it more useful to alternate stat builds. This passive seems to do the opposite, taking something innate to a non-strength build and making it into something which strength builds use.

I would like to see a keystone similar to what OP describes, taking glancing blows instead of full hits if the evasion fails, not completely removing the evasion. This would be like adding all evasion to armor instead of changing all evasion to armor. Instead of OP's idea for a bleeding DoT effect, what about a guaranteed stun on failed evasion?

I would also add something like "no movement penalty from armor" to the keystone and then call it something like "Granite Stance" since the Granite flasks have to do with armor.

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

I think Iscariot is right and that a mix of Eva/Armour is a good way to go, especially given the diminishing returns of evasion past 60-65% (I added over 1000 evasion rating at level 45, gained about 5% chance to evade)

I came to this conclusion as well initially, but I think if you actually try it you'll find it isn't as effective as it sounds on paper. I've gone on about the subject in a few different threads (maybe even earlier on in this one).

#1 - There is no synergy with armor/evasion like there is with the other hybrid types

#2 - The armor factor becomes almost non-existent in merciless difficulty due to how the equation functions. Higher damage hits cause your armor to be worth less, and when everything hits like a truck in merciless, your already low hybridized armor value becomes even less.

[edit] #3 - There are no hybrid armor/evasion nodes in the skill tree like there are for armor/energy shield and evasion/energy shield.[/edit]

You sacrifice half your evasion rating for armor, which then is rendered worth even less then it tells you due to the heavy hits of your opponents at that difficulty level.

I really hope they fix this and make it more worthwhile. I enjoyed the character up until merciless mode.

Level 58 Armor/Evasion 1h Sword/Shield Ranger, by the way.

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

(...) As for me, I move around far too quickly and evade enough of the attacks that I suffer status ailments far less. If it were merely about damage, then armour and thus IR would win. But with all these things I'm avoiding simply by not being hit really do help restore the balance.

Same conclusion. It seems Iron Reflexes is worth it only if you really pile on the life nodes.

I am in a position now where I have two melee Rangers, my 1st in Legacy League had lots of DEX, my 2nd in Default League has lots of STR (basically 150/250 and vice-versa).

I noticed that my 2nd ranger which had lower evasion, and more health was very easy to play and didn't die until level 50, however once I reached Merciless, I found that she is doing worse when facing poison even though she picked up 2% life regen near the Marauder's start nodes. It turns out that my DEX Ranger simply got bitten less often, and in practice I had more time to react and as a result I rarely got poison stacked more than once, and she was safer to play in Merciless.

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Grundnir wrote:

#3 - There are no hybrid armor/evasion nodes in the skill tree like there are for armor/energy shield and evasion/energy shield.

What about Shield passives? Some nodes give 30% Increased Evasion from Equipped Shield, and others 20-30% Increased Defences from Equipped Shield. A melee Ranger could stack 70% Increased Defences and 90% Increased Evasion from Shield.

However the hybrid Armor/Evasion shield don't seem to be worth the trouble to take advantage of this.