Should Iron Reflexes be avoided?

I have from the start been heading for Iron Reflexes with my Ranger. On the way I took Arrow Dodging and always planned to repsec that point when I got to IR. However I have been reading all over the melee forums that Armour is generally not good as damage mitigation because the figure you see in the you char is never anything like the actual reduction in practice (it's much higher than the real amount).

Thus far I am very happy with Arrow Dodging, so I am starting to think I should skip IR after all. Anyone make that change recently and can report on the general results?
Did you know level 91 is the halfway point to level 100? This means that a softcore character dying ONCE at level 85+ can lose many days of progress.
Armor is better than evasion for the purpose of avoiding death because if you don't have a fair bit of armor, certain things will one-shot you. Evasion might be better for reducing overall damage taken in a sequence of attacks, but it's more erratic and prone to spikes as you might still take several consecutive hits. If you're playing softcore and can suffer the occasional death, evasion is fine. Hardcore players pretty much always take Iron Reflexes in order to minimize the risk of one-shots.
Last edited by Jakabov on Feb 4, 2013, 8:49:06 AM
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Jakabov wrote:
Armor is better than evasion for the purpose of avoiding death because if you don't have a fair bit of armor, certain things will one-shot you. Evasion might be better for reducing overall damage taken in a sequence of attacks, but it's more erratic and prone to spikes as you might still take several consecutive hits. If you're playing softcore and can suffer the occasional death, evasion is fine. Hardcore players pretty much always take Iron Reflexes in order to minimize the risk of one-shots.


this

after picking up IR i was able to take 2-3x as many hits. wish I would have done it sooner
I stayed evasion on my first ranger, lost him at lvl 47 to leaping spiders in the Weavers Chamber :/ This time around I took IR, and while I am still in act 3 normal the differnce in damage taken this time around is insane. Completely surrounded by mobs a single life flask use has been outhealing the damage. The downfall of armor is that evasion has a chance to avoid crit, while armor does not, so you can still take some damage spikes, but nothing like what you would see with evasion. Been playing around with enduring cry and warlord's mark to keep enduance charges up, and hitting a far higher damage reduction number than I ever saw chance to evade.
I'm running a softcore Ranger with pretty easy access to IR if I want to. It seems IR is an obvious YES in hardcore, but do you guys recommend it for softcore?


Yes most definitely. You won't die by chance anymore (if you are at 50% hp, you will be at 0% hp in the same time interval roughly - instead of staying at 100 until something cranks up the RNG power to just one-shot you).

Also, since one death = one hour of slow XP farming undone, you can play a bit more relaxed, and as an added bonus, it synergizes well with a blood magic build with lots of hp nodes and HP regen, in turn removing all mana problems while making you more survivable than an evasion based build.

Especially since Unwavering Stance is just a short leap away, and the keystones go exceptionally well together.

I am running a lv63 ranger in Softcore and all my deaths are because of lack of attention, unlike before I took iron reflexes.
Last edited by Thalanor on Feb 4, 2013, 9:43:00 AM
I am currently level 50 with evasion and acrobatics. The only way I made it this far is with high elemental resists. Anything that melees, I have to run away from or pot while using frenzy on them with 2% life leech. So far I believe I can probably get to the final boss with evasion only, but the next difficulty, I am not so sure, because I have invested heavily into hp nodes and hp gear as well.

I am definitely going for iron reflexes as soon as I find some good evasion gear to swap it over.
Last edited by Sizzlebuzz on Feb 4, 2013, 9:46:35 AM
Thats weird, dont know what people are talking about with not being able to tank anything with Evasion build

My evasion Ranger with Acrobatics is in Act 3 cruel at the moment and I can still stand in the middle of a mob and outpot the damage... Stuff like Weavers Chambers was incredibly easy as well

And the only evade nodes I have are the ones right at the start of the Ranger tree , since Ive been focusing mostly on getting really high hp first... Later Ill get the ones with 30% which should give me a huge boost to survivability

And yeah its hardcore btw, havent had my hp drop below half yet, and nothing I couldnt tank either (including stuff like Brutus, didnt even bother running, just stood there and potted until he died)

Lets see how she does in Act 3
Thanks for the replies. I am wondering why the melee tank builders are so down on Armour then?
Did you know level 91 is the halfway point to level 100? This means that a softcore character dying ONCE at level 85+ can lose many days of progress.
Thanks for the info everyone. Seems like there isn't a totally clear winner at this point, though I suspect IR + lots of life is best for the endgame. Well I guess you need lots of life in any case, apart from CI builds.

I'm grabbing IR, worst thing that can happen is I need to use 2 refund points as I'm grabbing the nearby Celerity and mana nodes anyway.

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