Evasion Isn't bad - A Revolutionary Breakthrough

I've seen it, you have seen it, we have all seen it.

"Evasion sucks"
"Evasion is bad"
"Get Iron Reflect cause Evasion is horrible"

I now have a level 75 ranger who is pure evasion with acrobatics. Hell, I didn't even get the four 3% (or 2%, whatever I don't know) nodes yet. I think my evasion chance is like 55% and my characters survivability is fine.

I've done some pretty decently hard 71 maps just now before coming to make this thread. I can at least say, at the very least, that you will be 100% fine doing level 71 maps with hard mods if you have gear at least this good:



And by 100% fine I mean I'm level 75 with barely any accidental deaths. I'm using a 4l split arrow for christ's sake heh and the rest of my gear is pretty much garbage (except gloves!).

Aside from my game experience with evasion being fine, theoretically it's fine as well. Armor and evasion honestly deal with damage exactly the same way. 30% damage reduction to 30% chance to miss. It plays out the same over time. Higher damage mitigates armor higher accuracy mitigates evasion. They both do pretty much the exact same thing. They are just different implementations of the same concept, reduce the amount of damage you take, and really are pretty similar. And just as has been said before; if you're going to get insta-gibbed from full health due to an unlucky missroll on evasion, chances are pretty high that you're going to get insta-gibbed from full health due to armor negation from high damage. You can also argue the inverse as well, where that the hit that would have insta-gibbed you with armor was evaded since you have high evasion instead of armor. See? They are pretty much exactly the same.

I just want to put my voice of reason out there, that evasion is fine. If you want to play evasion, just go for it. It's really not as bad as people make it out to be. Maybe in a level 77 map it's going to be nuts and you're going to be better off with armor but I can't say for sure. I can at least say in hard 71 maps, you will be 100% fine. If you're using iron reflexes and you have a lot of evasion, spec out of it and you will gain a few passive points and probably have the same survivability.

I'd also like to note, that the patch that buffed evasion may be a very strong contributing factor to it being good now. Regardless, as of right now, evasion is fine.

I'm with you.

Started a ranger when i heard about the patch coming. I'm level 73 now and have done up to 74 maps with friends that have 85+ chars. I have had yet to die (I'm in anarchy) since I've been able to equip all my gear.

I'm almost entirely evasion based. Have like 9k evade 3.7k life, and 1k armor or something trivial like that and I'm not having any problems staying alive. Still debating on whether or not I should get acrobatics, but I probably will.

I do have better gear than you though :P I want those god damn gloves of yours.


etc etc

I agree that evasion can be made reasonably if not completely viable and strong, BUT I believe the complaints were mostly about melee using evasion, in which it just can't compare to armor. The issue is that if you can get one shot; which is largely a thing for melee characters, it's where the problem comes in.

Most of the 1hko's are very close ranged skills, melee being more susceptible and evasion making your overall chance to get hit much lower, but the chance for something to 1hko you much higher. This is where the evasion issues come in. That and spells and all that jazz. (To elaborate, it's not that the spells themselves are more dangerous, but it is often the ranged attacks that kill people if they get brought low quickly by a single big attack)

Really enjoying Evasion with ES right now. Originally I planned to remain evasion, until I found out it isn't possible to dodge your reflect damage using evasion if you are wearing a lioneye's glare, which is disappointing. So, until I get a mega godly thicket bow to replace my good lioneye's glare, I'm respeccing to reflexes.

My ideal build would be EVA + Armour though, as having a bit of both scales better than stacking huge armour.

I'm a crit frenzy build :)



gonna be selling this 5L chest piece within the next week...

Hey now don't be stingy guys. Lets see some skill trees C-:

But you're playing ranged.
Evasion is fine if you're hardly ever in melee range.
Playing a melee evasion char and surviving up until end game is much harder than going armor or ES. You need serious RNG luck to make it out alive, one unlucky crit and a few spells and you're fucked.

Still fun though. I'm also going pure evasion melee, lvl 55 so far. Almost died a few times.

"

Davidson wrote:

But you're playing ranged.
Evasion is fine if you're hardly ever in melee range.
Playing a melee evasion char and surviving up until end game is much harder than going armor or ES. You need serious RNG luck to make it out alive, one unlucky crit and a few spells and you're fucked.

Still fun though. I'm also going pure evasion melee, lvl 55 so far. Almost died a few times.

I dunno if that's any less true for melee in general though. If you're at the level of the zone, a crit->spells spells bad news for any melee. If you're pure EVA you have access phase acrobatics so you're less likely to die to the spells.

At least as evasion or moderately-high-evasion melee you're virtually invincible to the archers that make up some of the most annoying damage in the game and you get to laugh at ice piety.

Evasion with okay armor as melee got me farther than anything else in this game. Curse you Kudoku and your lag-inducing sparks->triple shock->dead.

"

Davidson wrote:

But you're playing ranged.

I've played both evasion and armor melee several times. My opinion remains exactly the same. I simply have not done as high difficulty content as I managed to do today on my ranger (these maps were literally nuts (bonus damage/added cold/temp chains/1/2 regen was one) so I don't really feel qualified to comment on the balance between armor and evasion melee regarding end game. But for everything up to merciless act 3 level 57? Pretty much the same from my experience. I doubt it's much different being armor or evasion as a melee character in maps.

Evasion-haters gonna hate, no matter how much Eva gets buffed. Still, it's good to see that you can play Eva even without optimal gear.