Monster Accuracy and Evasion changes in 0.11.2

evasion is totally fine as a bolean defense. Characters can stack decent armor with items + granite flasks etc. etc., so if evasion would turn into a kind of armor mechanic the game would become faceroll.

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tmaciak wrote:

IR is popular, because evasion at the moment is weak, so IR drawback is not worth almost anything, if evasion will be stronger, there will be less intention to convert it to armor.

The other controversial aspect of IR from a balance perspective is that IR builds can easily get a bigger armour total than pure conventional armour builds. It even works for players wearing pure ES gear, thanks to Grace aura (+ Determination). This issue still needs to be addressed, no matter how strong pure Evasion builds become.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

I think Iron Reflexes draw back should be that you dont have any evasion from gear.

QF worst idea ever

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The first thing that became apparent was that dexterity-based monster had enough Accuracy to act as very hard counter to player Evasion. If you evade 50% of the time at level 50 but encounter a Ghost (which is a heavily dexterity-oriented monster), they'd be able to hit you around 70% of the time. Evasion based characters often prematurely ended their adventures in Wraeclast when they ran into groups of Flicker Striking ghosts.

In 0.11.2 we are making several changes to monster Accuracy and Evasion. We are completely removing Accuracy bonuses for dexterity-based monsters. Magic and Rare Monsters can still receive increases to accuracy from their mods but overall monster categories will no longer just wreck Evasion characters.

mmmmm tasty!!

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As a contrast to this, dexterity-based monsters now demonstrate their dexterity by evading more than they did before.

Really?!?!? RT is already king and now you make accuracy mean even less than before?? Taking 20 mins to kill a white ghost because you can't hit him =/= fun.

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Accuracy and Evasion values on monsters at higher levels have been heavily reduced. The exponential increases monsters gained made stacking Accuracy and Evasion a losing battle. Now if you choose to stack these values you will be rewarded with better chances to hit and evade.

This is a bonus for sure. Overall probably a buff to accuracy (and of course eva) but we shall see how it comes into play with the "dex mobs evading more" mechanic.


Overall I'm happy with the current information we have on the patch. I love dodge chars and have been waiting patiently to get to play one effectively :D

Very good to hear all of this and glad to know that this stuff has been in the works and that GGG is taking the time to listen to their playerbase and fix things that need fixing. However, while I know this isn't everything and I won't let the hype make me get unreal expectations, I am concerned about one thing not mentioned. This post talks about Monster accuracy and evasion changes, which again I know is only part of it, but can we expect to know how PLAYER accuracy and Evasion are going to be handled with the patch? Those are certainly important as well, but even without knowing those just yet I am glad to see that changes are being made and effort is being put into making Evasion better and not trying to make drastic changes. GGG is learning from Blizzard what NOT to do (most of the time :p ) and that is to not make huge, drastic changes and to focus on the 'disease' and not the 'symptoms'.

Also, looking forward to seeing more Ranger tree changes because so far the two teaser images have shown promise. ^_^

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Incompetent wrote:

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tmaciak wrote:

IR is popular, because evasion at the moment is weak, so IR drawback is not worth almost anything, if evasion will be stronger, there will be less intention to convert it to armor.

The other controversial aspect of IR from a balance perspective is that IR builds can easily get a bigger armour total than pure conventional armour builds. It even works for players wearing pure ES gear, thanks to Grace aura (+ Determination). This issue still needs to be addressed, no matter how strong pure Evasion builds become.

At the moment, there is no intention to truly use hybrid armor/es armors like in "I have 40% chance to evade, but if I'm hit, I have 20% mitigation from armor" because as evasion works at the moment it sound like "I have 40% chance to evade, but it gives me a shit, so lets convert it to armor to have 30 not 20% mitigation".

But if/when evasion will be stronger, it will be hopefully less incentive to convert evasion to armor.

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knac84 wrote:

Making accuracy matter more may have some interesting dynamics for endgame gameplay (having to endure longer fights unless you have a good amount of accuracy, for example, so 'secondary defences' like armour & evasion mitigation may become relatively more important, which is intentional obviously for the second), but devaluing LG it's not one of them. If anything, the 'can't be evaded' mod becomes even more powerful relatively speaking (as well as RT), if this comes as good as the ES/Life refactoring, would be better to leave it as it is.

We may have to come and see how exactly it feels in endgame, the relative values of accuracy vs monster evasion values etc. But given the difficulty of rolling a better bow than LG even w/o taking into account the cannot be evaded mod, yeah, does not seem much of a 'nerf' to me.

What?

I am so confused. Did we read the same thing Chris posted? Chris said, "Accuracy and Evasion values on monsters at higher levels have been heavily reduced. The exponential increases monsters gained made stacking Accuracy and Evasion a losing battle. Now if you choose to stack these values you will be rewarded with better chances to hit and evade."

What it seems to imply is, if you weren't using LG or RT before, you were obviously stacking accuracy nodes or items with accuracy. Whereas pre-patch, you won't get rewarded as much because the accuracy nodes and gear you get will help you a lot less than what they will theoretically help post-patch.

You are correct in saying that it's difficult to roll a better bow than Lioneye, but that's intended. The "BiS" bow should be very, very hard to get and require a significant amount of wealth. So good, that if a person has it, he/she might probably never trade it off.. and hence people have the option to use the mirror.

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knac84 wrote:

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Athoy wrote:

An obvious example of how an item is indirectly "nerfed" would be the patch where life nodes were reduced in % that indirectly nerfed Kaom's Heart. Kaom's is still very powerful and useful for many people, but since we can't get as much % max life as before, Kaom's doesn't give as much life bonus as before. One can argue that the patch made Kaom's even more powerful and crucial since it's now much harder to get life, but I won't get into that because then we'll derailed into how monsters do less damage, armor, effective HP, etc.

Well, as you acknowledged in the last phrase, worst example could not be chosen, given than now BASE life is more important than before, and Kaom's is even more mandatory & powerful for life builds than before. BTW people who thinks than physical damage is a threat or was ever a threat with a life based character has no freaking idea (as you can build virtually invulnerable characters to that sort of damage), as the biggest danger to an endgame character (past the 80's mid 80's) is and always will be spike elemental damage (specially from bosses) & reflect, that's why the life nerf did help little. (For melee characters, desync being the n.1 threat must be added.)

I apologize, but I will not be baited into a long discussion about reduced monster damage, thereby a boost in armor, effective HP, etc to explain my position on why Kaom's was indirectly nerfed. It would take too long and in the end, I have a feeling you would disagree anyway. Do some reading and analysis on your own and come up with your own conclusions as it seems like you already have.

We can agree on these points though. The life node % reduction and monster damage reduction patch did one of three things to Kaom's:

1) Kaom's was made weaker in terms of power.
2) Kaom's remain relatively the same in terms of power.
3) Kaom's was made stronger in terms of power.

I got the impression that you think it's either 2) or 3), which is fine.

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knac84 wrote:

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Athoy wrote:

I wouldn't compare the number of people using Vaal Pact vs the number of people building around crit as Vaal Pact basically requires a character to be CI as it's very difficult to survive without pots/life regen, and basically impossible to make a perpetually sustainable RF build without any regen.

Thus, I am willing to bet that there are more crit-based builds than Vaal Pact based builds since it doesn't require CI.. I also suspect there are more crit-based builds than you realize. Not sure why all this really matters though to be honest. If people want to not go crit, then don't and if people want to go crit, then go crit. The goal is to balance the game so that both options are viable and not necessarily have one dominate the other.

Not if you are playing hardcore, as your character is dead by now if you are not using Vaal Pact / totems and use crits in any meaningful way. Anyway, my point was, that the only way rare bow users could compete with LG users (talking about end-endgame here) is if you build highly around crit (mean stacking lots of multiplier & chance), otherwise LG still is BiS despite implied changes in the patch, which to start with, are more of a boost to RT/LG users lol.

Wait. I am confused here again. You do understand that in order to use Vaal Pact, you basically (I am sure someone can come up with a few very, very rare exceptions...) have to be CI and not life-based right? What that means is that if we were to just guess, just purely guess, there's likely more crit-based builds than Vaal Pact-based builds because crit-based builds can be seen in both life and CI users and even Vaal Pact users as you've mentioned how important it is to be using it in HC apparently--not stating whether I agree/disagree with you, but it is your own point.

I haven't done the calculations to determine whether a rare bow has to stack crit/crit multiplier to outcompete LG, but you may be right. Though I can't agree or disagree with you without examining the evidence and numbers and the best rare bow in the game doesn't really exist yet, which is another problem.

Do note that this patch was meant to improve accuracy and evasion of players and to buff the currently terrible ranger tree. It wasn't meant to be a patch to nerf LG.. that's only a collateral bonus. If at the end of the day LG is still overpowered in GGG's eyes, then perhaps they will somehow nerf it in the future. But we have to do things 1 step at a time. No worries.

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Accuracy and Evasion values on monsters at higher levels have been heavily reduced.

At what level is monster considered high level? Evasion becomes extremely lack-luster as you progress into Merci. I am hoping the new changes take effect at that point or before.

Iron Reflexes may or may not become nonmandatory for acceptable level of survivability in maps.
As a result, will there be a free respec of some sort?

This one dexterity node between ranger path and new Life/evasion node (posted in this announcement) seems to be so much useless. Such a useless node not linked to anything but other dexterity nodes doesn't happen for any other char starting area.