Let's Talk About PURE Evasion Items

Yes, I am opening that can of worms. I was scrolling through the list of unique items and couldn't help but notice a severe lack of well designed end-game PURE evasion uniques.

Evasion Shield

Why is the highest unique evasion shield in the game this useless item?:


Stats:
- Requires level 54
- Low evasion - end game evasion shields are around 1,700 - 2,000+ evasion
- NO life
- Useless curse reflection - both you and the enemy get the same curse

So basically the ONLY good stats on Atziri's Mirror are the mediocre tri-resistances - and this is for the highest end-game unique evasion shield in PoE right now?

That is really laughable, especially when you compare it to the utility of pure armor, pure ES, or armor/ES shields like:

- Aegis Aurora
- Lioneye's Remorse
- Rathpith's Globe
- Rise of the Phoenix
- Saffell's Frame

Evasion Chests

Honestly who is designing end game evasion chests? They either
a) Have useless mods, or
b) Have mods that do not complement each other

In fact, all 3 of the pure evasion high-level chests are pretty much useless:

Bronn's Lithe: are you serious? Requires level 54, decent evasion, NO life, NO resistances. Why even design this item? Who in their right mind is even using this chest?


Hyrri's Ire: Requires level 65. LEVEL SIXTY FIVE. NO life, NO resistances. Nada. Again - who in their right mind is using this chest except for skin transfer? It has Acrobatics which is just the 30% Dodge and 1 point away on most Ranger builds - so again why even introduce this chest? It is basically useless, especially at level 65 requirement.


Queen of the Forest: The highest unique evasion chest. Requires level 59. But too bad it is another useless one. High evasion, but mediocre life, poor resistances, some movement speed mods that don't really do anything net-net and which are useless when you consider how a Quicksilver flask has much more utility and uptime compared to a Jade flask. Finally let us not forget the animal mod - some low physical reduced damage taken from animals. This is a perfect example of a truly useless mod - I honestly don't even know why this was added as if evasion users at in end-game are concerned about small hits from animals.


And lastly, Daresso's Defiance, while NOT a PURE evasion chest I felt this needed special mention as another poorly designed evasion unique. The onslaught duration is too short. And good job introducing a Dodge mechanic on an Armor / Evasion hybrid piece. What do you want us to do with the 6% Dodge mod - get Acrobatics? Ok, but by getting Acrobatics we will cut all our armor in half, so why is there an armor mod on the chest? If you don't get Acrobatics - then what was the point of having a 6% dodge added to the chest which is frankly useless by itself at 6%?




Honestly apart from Atziri's Step and Alpha's Howl, there is a severe lack of end-game VIABLE pure evasion items - particularly shield and chest. And we are now 2+ years into this game.

entire evasion concept is 'cool'. that is - cannot work in a void (without getting armor from granites, phys reduction from AA and ofc block). this is due to industry-wide problem of inability to emulate in computer game real life concept of 'dexterity' and 'agility'. all attempts are based on numbers etc and to put it simply: that simply does not work at all

when it comes to numbers - it is a game of min-max. evasion has one SERIOUS flaw: phys spells. because of that - it HAS TO be augmented with other defenses: armor (from gear or from flasks), AA and spell block/dodge. all three of these can be used WITHOUT evasion providing mostly the same benefit... so why bother

back to uniques:

Ire is a TERRIBLE piece of gear. it is a catch 22 type of chest with mod, that you take, to take other nodes, but to take other nodes you do not need it on gear.. so what is the point of it? it should go Cloak of Defiance way and provide like +10% dodge or something because currently this is skin transfer item or a giant noob trap

Bron's is a 'movement' chest. sadly nobody cares about that as levels on movement skills mean nothing (ok, lightning warp deals more dmg.. big deal)

Shield is 'ok' - it is a pvp item (sadly pvp died long ago). fortunately there are other EV shield bases so there is still hope

"

i like how he consider almost 60 total resistance as poor resistance,
like hes expecting 100+ life and +40 all resistance like all the mirror items in standard.
please dont compare such uniques with mirror armours k thx.

I also found that odd. And the acro chest was made before phase acro existed.

I am probably going to regret this. Try that with acrobatics.

Queen of the Forest and Daresso's Defiance have their niches and they're incredibly good at them if used properly.

Queen of the Forest: Not only does it boost good life, nice res and super high evasion (up to 2464 eva with 20% quality), it also has a unique drawback which can be made into a super steroid.
Imagine you have 50% aura passives, Queen of the Forest, Atziri's Step and Alpha Howl. That would be like up to ~4k BASE evasion. Then take Grace in your Alpha (lvl 22 = 2166 eva) and multiply that with the aura passives = 3250 additional BASE evasion for a total of 7250 BASE evasion.
Now take some passives here and there and the %evasion boost from dexterity stat and you total out at ~200% (and that's not even that high) which gives you a total of 21750 evasion which is, if you divide it by 450, a movement speed boost of 48,3%. Now reduce that by 25% and you got a boost of 23,3% only on you chest. That is alot already and it can even be boosted to even more ridiculous amounts.
I once theorycrafted by myself and you could get like 100% movespeed WITHOUT flasks just by Queen of the Forest. Now that's insane. With such amounts you can manually evade any projectiles or AoEs if you're quick enough. You could even do hit and run and evade even melee attacks as melee yourself. Now imagine you have a bow lol, you can just snipe while running away :)
The last mod gives you good reduction vs all those apes. Remember you are the Queen of the Forest xD
So all in all you got a chest that gives res, life, huuuge evasion and an affix that can be minimally a drawback or such a huge steroid that it ridicules parts of the combat system and it can even be used for farming efficiently.
Queen of the Forest is certainly not useless, you just didn't think about the possibilities you could achieve with it.

Same with Daresso's Defiance.
1) You get Endurance charges from killing things. That already makes you tanky vs the next hit you get into your face and then you also get an attack speed and movespeed boost to bash your target faster in the time you don't have endurance charges up or run away if the situation is too much for you.
2) You get additional dodge. Stack it with outher sources and it can get to ridiculous amounts. Imagine you have Darkray Vectors corrupted and a corrupted amulet so you get +3 Frenzy charges, then you have +3 from passive tree and +1 from bandit quest = 10 Frenzy Charges. Those + Darkray give 20% dodge, then 40% from Acrobatics cluster and 6% from Daresso = 66% dodge = enemies hit you only 1 out of 3 times. THEN add evasion and eventually block to it (+Blind for overkill) and you are virtually unhittable from any attack.
3) The armour is not useless on it as it helps mitigate the smaller hits even at 50% from Acrobatics. If you don't have high amounts of dodge, evasion and/or block you will get hit way more because of the formulas, so the additional armour helps vs the smaller hits and the endurance charges help vs big hits (if they`re up).
4) Now find some additional synergy from this chest with some other stuff in the game like Endurance Charge on Melee Stun and you could be tanky all the time. Facebreakers are really good for that as the hits are big enough to stun enemies already and it has reduced enemy stun threshold which helps in stunning bosses so you get Endurance Charges vs bosses also (vs big hp targets you either need to do more dmg or reduce their stun threshold).
5) The life leech even if not that high helps maintain 4) in that you now can also use Melee Dmg on Full Life for doing bigger hits and stunning and getting Endurance Charges more frequently.

See? These uniques got their uniqueness, you just have to use it. If you are just looking for stat sticks then you rather take a look at all those mirror worthy rares out there. If these uniques would already provivde that then you could have been certain that they would be worth more than the above mentioned rare items and then they would be BiS. The world is more fun if there are different ways to achieve your goals. You don't want everyone to run around with the same items :)


Edit: Forgot to mention the others, my post was way too long lol.
Hyrri's Ire is outdated since now Phase Acrobatics exist. If they would change the passive to Phase Acrobatics it wouldn't feel useless and you could save up a couple or 1 point (if you rather only Phase Acro then and neglect Acrobatics).
Atziri's Mirror should be revised also. Atziri is a fraeakin monster and so this shield - lore wise - should also be in accordance to that. Just change the 'curse reflection' to 'curse deflection'. BAM. Curse immunity op and probably fun with Soul Mantle :)
Lastly, Bronn's doesn't impress me much unless they bring out a new movespeed skill SPELL. Spells do tend to get more ridiculous dmg as they are levelled up further and further. The +skill levels would certainly make that more interesting to use. Apart from that the armor is decent I guess, some attack speed, movespeed and decent evasion.

Daresso's defiance is a great unique lol. The entire point of evasion is that you don't take damage very often and if you don't get one-shot, the time between taking hits is sufficient to allow you to regen/leech back the lost hp.

The enduring charges on kill allows you to have enduring charges up a lot of the time so that if you take a hit once in a while, you'd get a fixed 12% physical damage reduction (probably more since you'd want to expand your max endurance charges if you're using this chest). The massive 20% aspd onslaught buff when you take a hit, together with the 2% additional leech (which doesn't appear on rare chests btw) allows you to leech back that lost health quickly upon taking a hit.

As Broliciously mentioned, the presence of armour helps with the small hits since if you're swarmed and getting hit often, those hits can still land pretty hard. Whilst ~500 armour (post acrobatics reduction) isn't much, it's still significant against frequent, small hits. And if you find yourself overwhelmed, use enduring cry to trigger the onslaught buff. That 20% movement speed helps in running away.

I believe I needn't explain any more why I've been chancing full dragonscales for months now.

Also, I haven't used this chest before, can anyone tell me how this chest interacts with CwDT - Enduring Cry?

Thanks for the replies. It really isn't hard to see that the top 3 pure evasion chests are pretty much useless. Who would use a chest just for movement speed? Movement speed doesn't keep you alive, and you can get very high movement speed from well-rolled Quicksilver flasks.

About Daresso's Defiance - yes this is a good chest. But it is NOT a PURE evasion chest. It is a hybrid armor/evasion chest, but I just added it in to my post to talk about how this chest doesn't make sense with dodge + armor. Daresso's Defiance should really have been a pure evasion chest and from what I have heard GGG wanted it to be pure evasion chest, but the supporter who made it turned it into a hybrid armor/evasion chest.

Here are 2 other OP hybrid armor/evasion chests that are really good for IR users:
- Lightning Coil
- Bringer of Rain

So why is it so hard to make a decent pure evasion end-game chest? And why is the highest pure evasion shield in the game a useless unique that no one even uses for end-game?

Let's not forget that we are now 2+ years into the game. Evasion items really need some focus from GGG because this is getting absurd as more and more supporter uniques are being made that are focused on armor/IR/ES.

Even the Jade flask wasn't in the game until 1 year after Granite flask - like come on.

"

i like how he consider almost 60 total resistance as poor resistance,
like hes expecting 100+ life and +40 all resistance like all the mirror items in standard.
please dont compare such uniques with mirror armours k thx.

You most certainly do not play evasion so I won't take offence to your post. But there is really NO ONE using those top 3 pure evasion chests instead of decent rare chest with life and resistances.

Please keep in mind the level requirement of those chests - they are meant for end game. Hyrri's Ire has a level requirement of SIXTY FIVE, and Queen of Forest at 59. Please show me someone using these chests to do end game content?

There are 2 easy ways to see how useless these chests are: go to Act 3 Merciless and ask anyone you see with Hyrri's/Bronn's/Queen what they are using the chest for. They will all tell you for SKIN TRANSFER. Go to poexyz.com and check the prices - less than 1ex for these items, and less than 2ex for Queen because it is new. If an end-game evasion chest is selling for less than 1ex on Standard - and you still think it is a strong chest......

Compare that to how much these top unique armor and ES chests sell for to truly understand the problem in PoE with pure evasion items:
- Kaom's
- Lightning Coil
- Bringer of Rain
- Death's Oath
- Incandescent Heart
- Shav
- Cloak of Defiance

QotF seems like the pure evasion unique chest pure evasion folks have always wanted.

there is NO SUCH THING as pure evasion

to survive physical spells you are REQUIRED to use one/all of these: AA, spell block, granites

you CANNOT survive without these

yet, one can surely survive with pure armor

ofc anyone can and should mix defences, but sorry - evasion in pure state does not exist