Evasion vs Armor for Witch?

Hi all - Just got through Normal mode with my witch and had a ton of fun. Starting cruel now, I'm guessing I need to get a bit more serious about my gear.

I've read the attribute descriptions and still a little bit unclear as to the difference between evasion and armor, especially for a witch. I started out playing a minion witch and lately have been mostly Arc. Seems like the evasion would be good for attacking from a distance, but as my totems don't last very long, I eventually get mobbed and then armor seems to be best.

How do you think through evasion vs armor?

All input appreciated - Thanks!

Armor reduces physical damage taken while evasion allows you to completely negate physical damage. That being said, there are more implications to it than you might think.

If I were to decide between armor and evasion for a Witch I would most certainly go for armor, because it increase your stun threshold. I.e. the more armor, the less you get stunned.

However, you need to keep in mind that sockets will most likely roll the colour of it's base. Meaning armor based items will roll red sockets, evasion will roll green and energy shield will roll blue sockets.

Since you are a witch (and a caster, mostly) you will need alot of blue sockets and therefor need to get energy shiel based items. Now, theoretically you can pick a armor based chest plate and try to roll the required blue sockets, but this is very very hard.

Furthermore, I'm pretty certain that you don't get any passive nodes that increase armor/evasion. Getting these nodes as a witch would be a huge waste of passive points. Now considering that you will have hybrid energy shield/armor or energy shield/evasion based items the amount of armor or evasion you would end up with is somewhat obsolete (if you don't own insanely good items).

Thanks Kahzin,

Good education on some of the finer issues, and I'm back to I guess just using the best I can find for now.

As I mostly solo, I agree with your suggestion to focus on armor. I try to fight ranged for the most part, but now in cruel I'm finding my totems and even temporal slowdown doesn't help much. I damn near broke my mouse mashing buttons one time before I realized I was stunned. So eventually I'm taking hits and the armor seems to be a better solution.

Love the input on sockets and will keep that in mind. So far, I've been pretty lucky on color change rolls, but I don't anticipate that continuing, lol!

Thanks again!

I posted a very similar question in the Ranger forum. I lean toward armor because evasion is based on a roll, whereas armor soaks up physical damage. Period. No roll. But I did not know that about rolling colors so I might have to rethink. Good info there thanks!

Happy Hunting

For a witch I would recommend spending the skill points, going over to the ranger area and getting acrobatics and phase acrobatics.
With those two, you don't need a lot of other defenses, having evasion on a few slots is enough. (Solves the "I need blue sockets" problem.)

Toss in Atziri's Step boots, which are absurdly cheap, and you get 40% attack dodge, and 46% spell dodge.

I do this for all my casters.


Now if you were starting down in the Maurader area, that would be a different story, lots of armor options down there.

"

Odif wrote:

For a witch I would recommend spending the skill points, going over to the ranger area and getting acrobatics and phase acrobatics.
With those two, you don't need a lot of other defenses, having evasion on a few slots is enough. (Solves the "I need blue sockets" problem.)

Toss in Atziri's Step boots, which are absurdly cheap, and you get 40% attack dodge, and 46% spell dodge.

I do this for all my casters.


Now if you were starting down in the Maurader area, that would be a different story, lots of armor options down there.

This is a very good suggestion, and VERY effective as well. However, I wouldnt stress too much about defenses now. With the HUGE expansion only a day away, wait for that and the changes that come with it.

theyre both good, but as has been said, neither are going to be good unless you invest in some % increases on the tree to get to get the values up a bit. socket colours are also an issue. So, theres 2 ways to look at it...

Where are you on the tree? If you spread from witch to shadow, then theres some evasion in shadow you can get, so go evasion. If you go to templar, theres armour in the templar, so go armour.

What socket colours are your chest? Whats your 5 link skill setup for endgame? BBBGG? Go evasion. BBBRR? go armour. Certainly dont go armour if you want BBBGG sockets. If you want a lot of blues you just use a hybrid chest, armour + energy shield or evasion + energyshield, they will both be able to roll all blue if thats what you want, but if you want 4 blues and 1 red, itll be a little easier with armour, tho totally possible on an evasion + energy shield piece. However BBBBR will be virtually impossible on a pure evasion chest armour.

"

kkjhhbeb wrote:

I posted a very similar question in the Ranger forum. I lean toward armor because evasion is based on a roll, whereas armor soaks up physical damage. Period. No roll. But I did not know that about rolling colors so I might have to rethink. Good info there thanks!

Happy Hunting

The roll idea for evasion is very misleading, theres a roll, but it doesnt actually matter, and this is why.... Its entropic. So the way it works, say you have 50% evasion rating, something attacks you, a roll is made and its 50/50 you could get hit. But thats where it ends, lets say for the example you get hit by the attack, the second time the monster tries to hit you it will miss, for certain, because you have 50% evasion rating. It will force you into a pattern of hits, with 50% if you get hit then the next attack will miss, the next will hit, the next will miss etc. You wont get hit twice in a row, its not random every time you get hit, first hit is random and then subsequent hits will form a pattern. If you had 75% evasion and you get hit then the next 3 will miss, for certain, then hit, then 3 more misses, it will follow that pattern. 25% evasion you will get hit 3 times then one will miss and that pattern will repeat. In this sense evasion is absolutely as consistent as armour, its not the RNG luck based system that it might seem from a distance.

Evasion is actually very helpful, you might get 1 shot, but say you get hit really hard and it doesnt 1 shot you, the next hit will miss, for sure, so you have that space to pop a potion, where armour you will take successive hits in a row that wont give you time to react and can stunlock you. The flip of that situation is obviously where you get 1 shot with evasion but armour would have reduced the damage enough to let you survive.

Are you saying that the evasion roll is NOT probabilistic, but deterministic? Because your description is not how probability works. Having a 50% chance at something does NOT mean that you are "certain" to get it the next chance after not getting it. So if that's really the way evasion rolls work, they shouldn't characterize it as "a 50% chance", they should instead characterize it as "alternating".

"

Winterfury wrote:

Are you saying that the evasion roll is NOT probabilistic, but deterministic? Because your description is not how probability works. Having a 50% chance at something does NOT mean that you are "certain" to get it the next chance after not getting it. So if that's really the way evasion rolls work, they shouldn't characterize it as "a 50% chance", they should instead characterize it as "alternating".

well the devs class the method of calculation as 'entropy'. There is a 6 second timer, I believe its 6 seconds I maybe be wrong, but a timer exists. When you get hit your % chance to evade is exactly that, a % chance, if its 50% then its 50/50 you might get hit or not. Whatever happens though, you then get weighted in the other direction, so if you got hit by the first attack, the second will miss for certain, so yes it becomes deterministic after the first hit in that situation and it will follow a hit, miss, hit, miss, hit, miss pattern consistently presuming you never go more than 6 seconds between being hit, or whatever the timer is. When you go 6 seconds without being attacked your entropy counter resets and the next attack is random % chance again, then the entropy kicks back in and the pattern resumes.

Your evasion wont be 50% in many cases though, it might be 40% so it will be hit, miss, hit... etc but youre evading 4 out of 10 so somewhere in that pattern of 10 youll get hit twice in a row, or you might be over 50% etc where somewhere in the pattern you will evade twice in a row.


Block is a % chance to block attacks, now that really is random. With 50% block chance you could block 10 times in a row or be hit 10 times in a row, just like flipping a coin, its complete rng, same with dodge %. If you successfully block you can still be stunned based on the damage the attack would have done, if you evade or dodge you cant be stunned. So % for %, evasion and dodge are better than block, and because evasion is entropic and hence reliable evasion is better than dodge. Evasion also rolls against attack crits. So if a mob crits you and you fail to evade it, it then rolls a second time against your evasion (a pure chance roll) and if you are successful the attack is downgraded to a non crit.

So 40% evasion is way better than 40% dodge or 40% block, but evasion has harsh diminishing returns, its extremely hard to hit 75% chance to evade, I dont even know if its realistically possible to always be at 75%. Block and Dodge can be stacked to 75% with a lot of investment, so is 75% dodge better than say 40% evasion? Well thats a matter of opinion.

Make no mistake though, evasion is an extremely good defensive layer, having that forced pattern of hits and misses means when you get hit you have that space where the next hit virtually always misses and you have time to react, hit a potion, run away, leech back, regen, whatever it is you need to do. All defenses are best stacked though, casters mainly have to make do with whatever they can jam into their setup, but for melee builds down the bottom of the tree I stack armour, evasion, block, life, life regen and endurance charges, I stack them all together. Any one of those things on its own has severe weaknesses, evasion has no physical damage reduction, armour has no avoidance... ranged chars can get away with light defenses, if you are getting in the thick of combat though you want as many layers of defense as you can muster, evasion isnt a 1 stop solution for defense and neither is armour, or any defense layer tbh.

Great comments continue - thank you all for adding to this.

Definitely interested in Acrobatics, and also discovered the little Evasion group about halfway there from Witch, mid tree. Not sure I'll get all the way over into Acrobatics, but the Evasion node should get me a good boost as well.