[Balance for Evasion classes] Proposal for more melee class diversity

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Strill wrote:

Do your research first. If you take a large hit, then dodge a weak hit from some other enemy, you might very well take another large hit from the first enemy right after and easily die. It doesn't work anywhere near as reliably as you make it out.

The point is that entropy makes evasion a form of non-random mitigation; armour is also a non-random mitigation. An armour/blocking build wouldn't fare much better than the evasion/dodging build in the example you provide, especially since the larger the hit, the less effective armour is.

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Morgawr wrote:

You can make it based on entropy but that won't change the fact that you can still get one shot by something (or a lot of things) that still wouldn't touch an armor (or IR) build.

First off, it's already based on entropy.

Second, if you're getting one-shot with evasion, you're probably getting two-shot with armour. And you can't evade, so those two shots come fast. Armour isn't magically better, it sounds like you'd get pwned either way. Get more life.

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B_TAHKE wrote:

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Strill wrote:

Armor is actually a (partial) substitute for life. Taking less and more consistent damage means you have more time to react to damage spikes say by popping granite flasks or running away. The main purpose of raising max life early on is to survive damage spikes, so armor and life match in this respect. Less consistent damage from Evasion means you need more life than an armor build would in order to keep from taking too much burst damage, and can't effectively leverage other sources of mitigation like flasks and escape abilities since you don't know when you're in danger until it's too late.

Until you meet brutus and armor shatters in pieces and reduces damage like by 4%-20%. It is 1-2 life passives.

4-20% damage reduction is a hell of a lot better than getting one-shotted. Also, no that's not 1-2 life passives if you already have a lot of them.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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Strill wrote:

Do your research first. If you take a large hit, then dodge a weak hit from some other enemy, you might very well take another large hit from the first enemy right after and easily die. It doesn't work anywhere near as reliably as you make it out.

The point is that entropy makes evasion a form of non-random mitigation; armour is also a non-random mitigation. An armour/blocking build wouldn't fare much better than the evasion/dodging build in the example you provide, especially since the larger the hit, the less effective armour is.

Armor is supposed to be less effective the stronger the hit, but even if that's true I have a hard time seeing any meaningful impact from it. Before I switched to Iron Reflexes I got three-shotted by charging rhoas. Now I can take at least six hits, and since the damage is more consistent I know when to use granite flasks and when to run.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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Morgawr wrote:

You can make it based on entropy but that won't change the fact that you can still get one shot by something (or a lot of things) that still wouldn't touch an armor (or IR) build.

First off, it's already based on entropy.

Second, if you're getting one-shot with evasion, you're probably getting two-shot with armour. And you can't evade, so those two shots come fast. Armour isn't magically better, it sounds like you'd get pwned either way. Get more life.

No, you probably WOULDN'T get two-shotted with armor because such powerful hits don't tend to be so common. For example, a failed dodge on Brutus or his clone in Lunaris Temple would just kill an evasion character in one shot. An armor character has time to react, like running away and regenerating. More likely the armor user would get hit once, pop a granite flask, and have no trouble for the rest of the fight.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

First off, it's already based on entropy.

Yes, I know that, didn't deny it.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Second, if you're getting one-shot with evasion, you're probably getting two-shot with armour. And you can't evade, so those two shots come fast. Armour isn't magically better, it sounds like you'd get pwned either way. Get more life.

Why does the solution must always be "get more life"?
Do you tell a witch to "get more life"? No, because they usually have alternative ways to survive (wall of flesh with minions, loads of energy shield) and have alternative builds.
Why would an evasion character have to go the "tank" route then?
Why isn't there a chance to survive without putting everything into hp?

Because let's get serious here, in HC if you don't put EVERYTHING into HP as soon as you can you're getting one shot. Even full hp/str armor tank characters (Marauders for example) can easily get one/two hit without popping granite flasks in endgame, what's the purpose of putting a few points in HP and then go with evasion if in the end you're still getting one shot?

It doesn't scale well, suddenly it becomes either all or nothing.

Using such type of talent as I suggest would make it viable for a character to build based on damage (while putting some points in hp to avoid stun or whatnot) without having to go full hp stack. Yes, it's not as viable as a tank marauder but at least it would pose some kind of new challenge and different playstyle, making it more interesting and versatile.

This isn't an alternative to "stacking more hp" and being a tank, it would just be an alternative playstyle

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Morgawr wrote:

Do you tell a witch to "get more life"? No, because they usually have alternative ways to survive

If the problem is chaos damage, then yes absolutely. Otherwise you tell them to get more energy shield. And no, Minions are not a substitute for life if you're not specced into minion life passives, and other skills like Frost Wall cause desync which gets you killed. Of course, they don't have the problems that melee characters have since energy shield is the anti-burst-damage in this game.

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Morgawr wrote:

Why does the solution must always be "get more life"?
Do you tell a witch to "get more life"? No, because they usually have alternative ways to survive (wall of flesh with minions, loads of energy shield) and have alternative builds.
Why would an evasion character have to go the "tank" route then?
Why isn't there a chance to survive without putting everything into hp?

No you can use enfeeble, or get more ES if it is matters for you. Armor doesn't protects you from stun locks either. It is mortaly easy to stun something Chance to stun is 200*damage/max life.
Ok I agree it is not 1 passive on life, and infact there are many heavy hitting mobs, both chaos damage and elemental, and quite a few capable stunlocking. Both played evasion and now playing armor character. And find evasion far more stronger then armor. Especially if you don't go omg my evasion chance over 70%. 50% and 19% dual block was far enough for me to be hit rare enough that my shield started to regenerate. It is damage is unlike armor is really predictable so you always know weather you can survive hit or not, because damage is consistent.

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Strill wrote:

Otherwise you tell them to get more energy shield. And no, Minions are not a substitute for life if you're not specced into minion life passives, and other skills like Frost Wall cause desync which gets you killed.

See? There's plenty of options to go with if you're a caster (a witch, templar, whatever).

The problem is, what do you tell to a dex based melee character? (keyword: melee, no bow)
You tell them to get Iron Reflexes and get more health.

There's no real alternative there, in the end it all boils down to that.
Sure, you can go with evasion+dodge+block but then your survivability once a single hit goes through simply goes down the drain.

Personally I think armor in this game sucks. Damage avoidance (ie. Evasion, Dodge, Block) is much better than damage mitigation (armor).

First off you get base evasion from leveling up. You start with 50 and gain 3 per level. That isn't much but it's better than nothing per level. At level 100 you would be getting 350 more of your defensive stat than an armor user.

Also Dexterity gives you % Evasion while Strength only gives life and % physical damage. On top of that you can get massive evasion bonuses on gear. The base evasion prefix on items goes up to 400 while armor only goes to 150.

Armor is mainly only useful against large packs of enemies that don't hit very hard. The harder you get hit the less effective your armor is. If you take large hits it severely diminishes the effectiveness of your armor. I would much rather dodge/block those big hits rather than get hit by them. If I had an evasion/acrobatics character with 4500 life vs. an armor character with 4500 life... I would need to get hit with 4500 physical damage to one-shot me. If the armor character got hit by 4500 damage it would probably nearly one-shot him as well. And the problem with the armor character is he will most likely take 2 hits for 4500 damage back-to-back while I only get hit by one and if I survive I will be guaranteed to dodge the next few attacks until the entropy value surpasses 100 again, giving my HP time to recover or give me time to leave the game.

The one-shot two-shot distinction is fairly important as (latency permitting) you can pop 2 seething life flasks and a granite flask after the first hit, and maybe a quicksilver to GTFO before a second hit can land. You can't safely take any hits in a 50:50 OHKO situation. You have no idea what your entropy is at a given time, and the first hit you take could send you straight to Default league.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

So yeah, nice armchair theorycrafting

Yes, this thread won't really go anywhere until some people who have actually made it to HC Cruel Act3+ with pure evasion builds (without converting them all to armour) come and have their say. Default League mindsets just aren't useful in this discussion and many, many things that work on Normal and early Cruel are downright suicidal later on.

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Birdulon wrote:

Yes, this thread won't really go anywhere until some people who have actually made it to HC Cruel Act3+ with pure evasion builds (without converting them all to armour) come and have their say.

I know devmoon runs a pure Evasion/Acrobatics character and has made it to Merciless multiple times. Also he did high level maps in closed beta on a similar build.

I still think pure evasion is better than armor but you need the life to support it. Obviously going pure evasion and 1500 life is really dumb, but I would think full evasion with something like 4k life would be much stronger than armor. Also block is rolled after evasion, so if you have high block you may just block the hits you don't evade.

The whole point of getting a lot of armor is to reduce the damage you take from huge hits. Unfortunately in this game the harder you get hit the less your armor protects you.