Question about Duelist armor?

I am only playing low level characters which is making my opinions biased to around the issues at lower level (up into mid-cruel). Evasion is just restricted in how to build a character and I still need success with a melee ranger.

It is simply very difficult to stay alive without a significant amount of evasion or life to absorb hits (I do not think I have reached that echelon of evasion where misses outnumber hits 2 to 1 and getting hit is pretty scary if there is even a small chance of taking a critical hit with the current damage, hence you are at the mercy of a random number generator.).


I will reiterate that I would prefer some significantly easier way to gain a buffer for the pain brought on by getting hit. I am not saying it has to be hp, but it seems like the easiest way to go. Most of the problems I see for the ranger is based on a weak passive skill-area when it comes to defensive early game options except for block and and evasion that does not a complete defensive option make. Players able to deal are stacking +hp mods to the max, trespassing on the marauders part of the tree and while that is a good strategy, it is pretty dependent on drops.
Another part to think about is lowering damage from getting critical hit and have it removed from the already very beefy marauders part of the tree. While it is not enough to get the ranger up to par alone, it could be a good part of it and with a better way to buffer damage I see it as a good piece in a solution.

Edit: Btw. I think the range being better than melee has a lot to do with how elemental damage can stack up crazy for bow-users on both quivers and bows. It makes it hard to balance it defensively, when the offensive capabilities are as good as they are.

"

Chris wrote:

"

Pixelmancer wrote:

"

Eiyer wrote:

I'm playing a tanking Duelist. I heard Evasion Tanking was good, but I'm not sure.

You heard wrong. The general consensus right now is that evasion needs a lot of work.

There were two changes in approximately 0.9.3 to improve evasion - reducing the average monster damage so that an unlucky streak wouldn't kill you before you could run away or drink potions, and improving the consistency of to-hit rolls so that you don't get streaks at all (i.e. if you have a 33% evasion chance and one monster is hitting you, it goes miss-hit-miss-miss-hit-miss, etc). Once these changes were made, players seemed a lot happier with evasion. Since then it appears that average monster damage (especially in higher areas) has crept back up again. This may have contributed to evasion being described as broken again. Any thoughts?

Chris, the problem with evasion is that its not a reliable form of defense. The only way Evasion is effective is if you pickup Iron Reflexes, in which turns your evasion to armor.

We shouldn't have to turn our evasion into armor for it to be effective, though I LOVE THAT option.

I think the problem that people have is that they cant RELY completely on Evasion for their build. Which they shouldn't in my opinion.

I think we need a few defensive dex skill gems that utilize evasion in clever ways. Or maybe unique items that allow for pure Evasion builds.

Or as others suggested rework the way Evasion works entirely. Or maybe just give evasion a base 25% dmg reduction or something idk.

IDK you guys just keep doing what your doing and don't stop! This game just keeps getting better..

I love this game!

"

lucid88 wrote:

I think the problem that people have is that they cant RELY completely on Evasion for their build. Which they shouldn't in my opinion.

I think we need a few defensive dex skill that utilize evasion in clever ways. Or maybe unique items that allow for pure Evasion builds.

....

I love this game!

I totally agree with this. I think evasion should be the 'worst' defense. People with dex have the awesome advantage of high accuracy. The trade off is not having the best defense. If you want better defense, then branch out of the dex area. Or, stay in the dex area, enjoy the accuracy, but bite the bullet regarding defense.

While decreasing the size of the monster hits, while increasing attack speed, and forcing more consistent hits over a series of attacks is great for PvE, I am curious what will happen in PvP scenarios.

Won't these complaints just resurface? Cross that bridge when we come to it?

"

ac429 wrote:

I totally agree with this. I think evasion should be the 'worst' defense. People with dex have the awesome advantage of high accuracy. The trade off is not having the best defense. If you want better defense, then branch out of the dex area. Or, stay in the dex area, enjoy the accuracy, but bite the bullet regarding defense.

The problem is that you stay in green area and spend all the points for the accuracy bonus while you could take one keystone and spend the rest in red area while getting damage and HP bonus (or spend few points on red accuracy). Basically by choosing the green area build you are already biting the bullet because 1. evasion sucks, 2. you can get accuracy without dexterity. Or you can go range, but what is the point of melee nodes in green area then?

Anyway one of my characters is a str/dex 1h/shield ranger, kind of duelist if you ask me, and she wears this armour/evasion stuff. It seems like the worst armour type to me. Low armour won't do anything against hard hits and evasion is not reliable. Most defence is coming from shield - block chance. It is still fun but of course, once you step to Merciless mud flats, things are getting hard.

To answer original question - you need a lot of HP to be tanky enough.

"

radiatoren wrote:

I am only playing low level characters which is making my opinions biased to around the issues at lower level

From what I understand the main issue doesn't show up until endgame. The problem I hear about is that since the dex side of the passives barely have any HP passives and since evasion doesn't reduce the damage that isn't dodged, when they do get hit they get one shotted.

"

ac429 wrote:

I totally agree with this. I think evasion should be the 'worst' defense. People with dex have the awesome advantage of high accuracy. The trade off is not having the best defense. If you want better defense, then branch out of the dex area. Or, stay in the dex area, enjoy the accuracy, but bite the bullet regarding defense.

Your logic is faulty. So what if dex gets accuracy? Strength gets damage and intelligence gets mana. It's not like dex is the only stat that gives a side benefit. By that logic all the stats should be the worst. Most of the accuracy benefit is wasted anyway since you'll be at the accuracy cap by midlevels anyway. Hell, my duelist was almost at the cap in his early thirties and he had half strength. A ranger would hit the cap even sooner. I never heard a witch complain about having too much ES or a marauder complain about too much armor on the other hand. Also, there's a big difference between "not being the best" and "not being viable".

The problem is with the Maelstrom of Chaos, and not with armour or evasion (or melee in general).

I think there is not a real armour cap or evasion cap in this game. There is only cap for chance to evade and fraction of damage reduced. Lets say you reach the cap of chance to evade at level 30 with evasion rating 1000. So average monster level 30 will only hit you in one hit out of 20. (5% chance)
Now you take another character with evasion rating 1000 to area with monster level 50 (or a monster with "hits accurately mod) - they have more accuracy. That monster will hit you way more often. This is because the ratings, not estimated chances are checked. (I think all this "estimated" business is kinda confusing for new players.) Correct me if I am wrong, I'm not 100% sure about it.

I agree with you Pixelmancer, I just wanted to clarify why can more than "cap" be beneficial. On the other hand, there is no cap for ES, mana, HP.. so yeah, dexterity sux because its effects are capped. I don't think they need to be to be honest. Due to those mechanics evasion/armour type defence is somewhat bad.

The only problem with evasion is spikes of damage caused by imbalanced enemies. If these spikes didn't exist (or were mitigated through other means), evasion would work well. Chris correctly identified the problem, being the negation of previous fixes. Lowering the average enemy damage and eliminating chances for a decent evasion build to be killed with 1 hit would fix the problems.

The two most common arguments I see brought up against evasion are rhoas' charge attack and evasion-based melee characters being easy to kill.

The rhoa charge attack is the most-often used example for evasion being broken, because this attack will kill most characters in 1 hit. That's not a problem with evasion; it's a problem with that specific attack. It kills armor- and most energy shield-based characters in 1 hit, as well. It's not affected by accuracy/evasion (though I think it should be), and therefore is extremely powerful against evasion-based characters. That skill needs to be reconsidered in a way that allows it to be fair. The sync issues it has are so bad that it's extremely hard to see it coming in time to move out of the way. Rhoa charge has always had this issue.

Melee characters using evasion... Well, from what I can tell, people are just playing them incorrectly and expecting things that shouldn't be expected. Evasion-based characters are meant to be nimble and quick, not to stand toe-to-toe against enemies. Go in, do some damage, and get out. That should be the tactic, not go in, stand there while making multiple attacks, and expect evasion to keep you alive. That's what armor-based characters do.

I think it'd be foolish to attempt to balance damage reductions and such based upon the Maelstrom of Chaos, considering it was always meant to be simply "something to do" for high-level characters.