Question about Duelist armor?

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radiatoren wrote:

There is definately an argument for hit and run, but you are really getting boned by Chatters if you do not have the hit points to absorb at least 3 hits (getting frozen etc.).

Without a sufficient degree of health melee orientated characters will, as a rule, become increasingly exposed to precarious situations of being overwhelmed by damage exceeding basic defensive functions. And yet further independent of the tactics which match the defensive style (or for that matter the natural challenges of certain encounters) this is not in itself a fault that applies to evasion per see. Moreover my perspective and preference for how to utilise evasion is not principally one of "hit and run". Making use of positioning and mobilisation to determine starting conditions and adjustments can be an aim of evasion characters for a more constant and stimulating style of gameplay.

The extrapolation that a focus on evasion won't include additional health passives or incorporate other defensive skill aspects does not in any way follow from the discussion of defensive comparisons. And it is not clear in what way skills are deemed "expensive" if the same are considered to constitute a vital component and happen to be readily available from the character's second level. However, as an observation of interest on this matter, collating the opening skill selections available to Rangers there is an intricately useful skill branch with a number of defining features which complement the evasion approach to melee tactics and methods. The early pathway to Avoid Stun and Stun Recovery leading to Crystal Skin was my novice starting choice, a direction that naturally aborises to the primary Evasion cluster of skills nodes and thereby shares a conjunction with Arrow Dodging (one of my new favourite skills) as with options for sword proficiency.

Given that someone linked to my thread (which wasn't really addressing this problem head-on), I'll move my own experiences here (in the hopes that whatever was discussed there has been at least glanced at).

Chris, yes. Good grief, yes. The creeping-up of damage is very noticeable as a full evasion-dodge-block character. I'm not sure what you guys have in mind to address it, but it's enough for me to know you are aware there is an issue.

My evasion sword+shield ranger is level 26 right now: 62% chance to evade, 24% chance to dodge attacks+spells. I can SEE the evasion working -- I can go toe-to-toe with a boss, but always drinking liberally. I have a feeling the block chance is playing a big role here too.

My biggest suggestion would be *clarity* regarding the interaction between evasion and dodging (there's a nice thread about it but we need that sort of data in-game), and why it's good (or bad) to make that crucial journey to Acrobatics rather than taking more evasion +10% nodes. I Regretted some 10% nodes to get Acrobatics -- my chance to evade before that, when I was pure evasion nodes, was 70%. Right now, I'm not entirely sure I made the right choice.

Next I'd suggest a greater reward for choosing Acrobatics in the first place -- it kills both of the other defence types, completely. Acrobatics, NOT Iron Reflexes, should be the ultimate Evasion keystone. This might mean rethinking the keystone itself so that it somehow interacts with existing evasion or dexterity, or buffing the smaller bonus nodes wedged between it and its twin keystone to the north.

Actually, I'd be happy with those two changes just to see how it goes. If you're going to make a full evasion character, I think it's fair to have a keystone that defines it. This is not a standard build, really. Common sense suggests that mixing defence types is smarter -- my Shadow has plenty of evasion but just a little armour, yet that 'little' amounts to a decent 10-15% damage reduction. It counts. Take that away via Acrobatics and the payoff better be pretty damn good.

Why not just have some sort of damage reduction after an evade fails, based on the character's evasion rating? It shouldn't rival armor as a reliable defense, but it could certainly help make evasion less "woops, you died".

The numbers can change, obviously, but for example;

-You have 60% evasion
-You fail to evade a hit for 1000 damage.
(let's say one half of your evasion rating) 30% of that damage is reduced as a "glancing blow" or however you would want to flavor-text it.
-Damage is reduced to 700
-THEN armor reduction is applied.
-I don't know how armor works
-Then you take whatever damage goes through after all that.

So if I've learned correctly, it should go

Dodge (fail) > Evasion (fail) > Evasion reduction > Armor reduction > damaged.

I'm not sure where block or energy shield goes in that order, but it shouldn't change things no matter where they go. (Energy shield is damaged BEFORE armor mitigation, because otherwise would be far too strong, right? ... Right?)

Also please god buff Acrobatics, it is so bad. It doesn't even have to be good, just make it less bad. I understand getting rid of armor, but let me keep some energy shield at least. Give me -1 life just so it wont work with CI or something.

One of the points made in my other thread is that armour is currently the 'owner' of damage reduction. I can accept that. :)

- Contact Reflexes

Those who practice the martial arts are taught to gain complete control over every part of their body. This not only helps them execute stunning offensive maneuvers, but also gives them the edge defensively. When any physical attack comes into contact with the body of the martial artist, he is able to instantly shift his weight and movement, to allow a portion of the attacking energy to be deflected. This is simply a much more effective way to 'roll' with a punch.

In other words damage reduction for a high dex character that did not evade but actually received damage.


You can base the amount of reduction on the value of dex.

Low dex means low reduction.

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Pixelmancer wrote:

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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.

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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".

This is completely false; the dex tree has plenty of very accessible life passives, particularly for the Ranger/Duelist, it's just that most Rangers don't even bother and just go full out damage.

Shadows have it abit tougher for them since their life passives are abit farther out early on, but they make up for it being able to utilize ES which is by far the best defense in the game.

Players just need to retool their thinking into believing that Evasion should be viable as Armor/ES. It shouldn't; it should supplement those two. Pure Evasion builds should be a complete gamble.

I would actually like to steal a page from another awesome indie game, Dungeons of Dredmor, for a potential solution. I'll give a tl;dr version after explaining it.

Dungeons of Dredmor, for those who do not know it:

Dungeons of Dredmor is a turn-based rogue-like game from Gaslamp Games, and is frankly one of the best $8 investments I've ever made. They have skill trees depending on the character-type that you want to create, going from the mundane (Sword Mastery) to the hilarious (Killer Vegan). However, the way these interact with each other become quite deep, and a lot of things can be learned from their system, even though it is turn-based, and this game is action-oriented.

With certain builds, many of the stat-boosting effects are proc-based. You attack, and you may gain a rage buff, if you have the Berserker Rage skill tree. You cast a spell, and you may gain an arcane boosting shell if you have the Magic Training tree. The list goes on.

How this could work for evasion, and other builds:

Evasion, as far as mechanics are concerned, is a completely proc-based build. It would make sense, then, to improve it in a way that uses that nature, but not in a way that encroaches on the territory of the other types of defense. How about give it proc-based bonuses?

Example:

Add in a chance for monsters to deal minimum damage. Note, this does not grant actual damage reduction, which is what Armor does, but rather it is just a chance to make the blow as weak as possible for that attack, and as it can work on spells and chaos damage, it still gives its own kind of benefit as opposed to armor, energy shield, and resistances. As a preliminary example, let's suggest that the chance to minimize damage is 1/4 the evasion chance. So to give a numerical example, we will use this:

Attacks on user: 100 - 400 damage (avg 250)
Evasion chance: 50%
Min damage chance: 12.5%

This does *not* turn into 12.5% damage reduction, which, as I have said before, encroaches on Armor territory, but rather means that the attacks that do hit the user do not get into that massive damage range as often. (Technically, in this example, it turns into an average of 3.75% total average damage reduction.) This adds a lot more survivability than it sounds like, because with constant potion use (as Path of Exile tends to use) attacks that roll low are hardly noticed, because the constant health regen from the potion covers it up more quickly. This allows the character to have a constantly higher life pool for when the criticals inevitably do connect.

And when it comes to criticals, this type of bonus could stack with another implementable proc-based affix: critical chance reduction. The Marauder, near the start of his tree, has 2 nodes that reduce Critical Hit multipliers. That's armor territory. Evasion territory should frankly be the avoiding of Criticals in general. How about adding a proc-based affix of ignoring Critical hits? Up and beyond the Evasion chance to dodge the entire attack, if the attack does hit, there should be a chance to ignore additional damage inflicted by a critical. I don't think it would be broken to put that chance at 50% of the Evasion chance. So, to further elaborate that example, you could see something like this:

Attacks on user: 100 - 400 (avg: 250)
Crit chance for attacker: 8% for 250% damage
Evasion: 50%
Min damage: 12.5%
Ignore Critical: 25%

Now this monster has a very high Critical chance and Critical damage. That 25% Ignore Critical, coupled with that 12.5% minimum damage, actually turns into a very strong defense against this monster. Effectively, that monster's critical chance turns to 6%, and it will only hit the user 50% of that, so really, only 3% of its attacks will be critical hits on the user. Of those 3%, 12.5% of them will deal min damage, so 250 damage--the average damage that the attack would deal anyway. Effectively, this creature with high Critical Chance and high Critical Damage has been reduced to nearly nothing against an evasion character, whereas a pure tank would still feel some heavy hits. And this does not take into effect the advantages that a character could still get from Armor and Energy Shield, if the character happens to use Shadow Armor or Duelist Armor.

TL;DR:

Adding additional proc-based reductions to the inherent Evasion skill obviously will strengthen it, but it would do so in a way that does not eliminate the purposes of Energy Shield and Armor.

The goal would be to still evade part of the attacks, but not actually do anything to the damage the opponent inflicts. Rather, make it more difficult for the attacker to hit the Evasive character at its maximum potential. That would remain truer to the spirit of dodging an attack.

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Players just need to retool their thinking into believing that Evasion should be viable as Armor/ES. It shouldn't; it should supplement those two. Pure Evasion builds should be a complete gamble.

Maybe you think so, but why? Why "should" it be like this? It excludes whole defence type from game (from HC anyway). Maybe they could simply remove evasion from the game, right?

I don't think players should think that evasion isn't equal to armor or energy shield. They should just realize that it's different and can't offer protection in the same way that reduced damage or virtual life can.

That's what these threads are about: trying to brainstorm a way for evasion to act more like armor. People are wanting evasion to be something it isn't.

People just want to make evasion work. People who want to make evasion act more like armor already took iron reflexes keystone.