Why Evasion rating + Iron Reflexes gives more reduction than pure armor items.

I'm a dual wields duelist who's trying to shine through hardest difficulties of the game.

This is the result of my observations trying to find the best way to defend my char between STR armor and DEX armor.

If you compare in the item database pieces of armor of the same level which give pure armor with the ones which give just evasion, you'll notice that for some body parts values are the same, while for others, like chests, pure armor beats in value pure evasion.

Example is Chaos Plate (421 armor) vs Brigandine (382 Evasion).

Since we assume we are not gonna go for evasion, but for evasion converted through iron reflexes, we can say for example that the best pure STR chest armor give about 40 armor more then the one which require DEX.

So generally speaking, at a first glance,
Pure STR armor gives more damage reduction then pure DEX armor.

Dex though gives +1% evasion every 5 points.
Now, duelists go for axes, swords, or both weapons build.

Axes (more STR oriented builds weapons) beats slightly Rapiers in dps (full DEX oriented builds). The dps with axes will be even more thanks to +% melee damage coming from str. But we are here to find the best way to mitigate damage.

Going for a full Dex build, saying aiming for 200 dex, we will have +40% evasion rating.

If we compare those 2 chest plate we took in example before

421 STR armor
382 DEX armor

we add them 20% quality

506
458

And we apply the 40% on the second one we have

506
641

Even if we add Determination to the first value (+20% armor for 40% life reservation) we still have

600
641

Iron reflexes is not that close from duelist starting point, but if you go full dex you are likely to going that way anyway, and is totally worth the effort.

I would be happy if others players would contribute to this and increase our knowledge of the game ;)

Hi! In recent posts I have gone into detail about cranking evasion to silly numbers & converting it to armor via IR. This however relies on using an evasion shield & taking advantage of certain shield skills.

Right now I am testing evasion tanking without IR & it is working. With no armor & little energy shield I am running chaos in MF Eva gear with 63% evade, 8847 total evasion. Full evasion gear & Grace gives right at 13,500 evasion for 71%. Highest has been 14.5k.

Im going to lvl Enfeeble to see how far I can push evasion survivability. You might want to try using that curse.

I am running an evasion + ir tank build on my duelist and currently at level 25 i have 75% damage mitigation with mid grade gear. I cant wait to see what i can do at later levels. I plan to get the shield passives too i think evasion + ir + stacked block will make an insane tank.

Ya, Evasion on Shield + Shield Block passives skyrocket your values & make ya feel like a proper tank :P

Are armguards counted as "shields" for the purposes of those delightfully powerful shield passive nodes?

If not, exactly what is the point of them being in the game as no passive nodes would apply to them that I've seen...

Yes Armguards are considered shields. They have both energy shield & evasion which works well with Shield Defenses/Evasion on Shield. Their top property is 12% IAS which is just sweet. If you can roll an Immortal Armguard with + Energy Shield & increased % it will be very strong addition.