Why would I ever not take Iron Reflexes as Evasion?

I'm lv. 61 in Beyond and doing a Ranger RoA build (basically standard Phys/Crit tree), I haven't played PoE since Onslaught. Back then basically everyone took IR, but I understand they've changed Evasion a bit. I get how it works, but at the end of the day if you don't take IR you're still going to get hit.

I'm running two CWDT, Enduring/Immortal/Duration with one and Decoy/20% Enfeeble on the other. Thing is, even right now, lv. 59 white mobs hit me for ~500. How am I ever going to live through a map Oak hit?

I have zero experience with Evasion builds, but from what I can see it makes no sense not to just take Iron Reflexes and have ~7200+ Armor (that's my Evasion with Grace). Looking for anyone with some HC experience to shed some light on this for me.

EDIT: Just noticed Acrobatics decreased armour by 50%, I assume this includes armour from IR. I could just drop these nodes, gain 5 skill points, and sit with 7k+ armour.
Last edited by sircuddles on Aug 30, 2014, 11:44:28 AM
Evasion can make you pretty much immune to projectile attacks (Ondar's) and combined with block and/or Acrobatics you pretty much never get hit, especially if playing ranged.

With 4-5k life, getting one-shot would require taking a huge hit which would probably kill you anyway with armor too due to how armor penetration works and the big hits are usually (at least partially) elemental damage.

Flat physical reductions (endurance charges, MoM, Lightning Coil, AA) are all available for evasion builds aswell.
For Rangers going the true Evasion-Route is a bit harder since they lack access to good block (the only option is one quiver). So they can only combine it with Acrobatics. If you are a Melee-Char however you can easily get about 50% Evasion, 60% Block and 40% Dodge which means that only every 8th hit will connect.

It is the highest mitigation you can get in the game, however the problem is that whenever you get hit, it is propably a good portion of your health, but with the use of Endurance Charges (although you might need to manually cast them, since you evade too often to use cwdt) it is doable.
Armor only effectively mitigates small to moderate physical hits which are not much of a threat in the first place. When you get phys critted by anything in merciless or maps your armor will mitigate much, much less than what is shown on your character sheet, as you've noticed.

Evasion does not have that diminishing effect. It also:
-protects you not just from physical, but also elemental and chaos attacks
-protects you from on-hit effects like curses or chill
-reduces your chance to get critted by attacks
-mitigates physical and elemental reflect from attacks
-makes you near-immune to all ranged attacks including your reflect damage

Armor on the other hand:
-protects you from bear trap and ethereal knives
-unless they hit really hard
-is weakest when you need it the most

For any evasion-based build, ondar's guile and acrobatics are obvious keystone picks that greatly increase survivability for just a few points, there is nothing like this synergy for armor.
Capping block is also easier than ever and creates a beautiful layered defense for evasion characters, whereas if you stack armor and block it just makes the armor mostly obsolete.



We've come a long way from life+armor stacking with kaom's, endurance charges and old IR. I think armor is now the weakest defensive option, far inferior to evasion+acrobatics+block and EB+MoM+arctic armor.
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Last edited by Torrenz on Aug 30, 2014, 1:13:22 PM
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I'm running two CWDT, Enduring/Immortal/Duration with one and Decoy/20% Enfeeble on the other. Thing is, even right now, lv. 59 white mobs hit me for ~500. How am I ever going to live through a map Oak hit?


Why would you use immortal call as an eva based char ? The strength of evasion is to avoid subsequent hits and the use of immortal call is the same. (EC/IC/Cwdt avoids subseqents hits as well)


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For Rangers going the true Evasion-Route is a bit harder since they lack access to good block (the only option is one quiver). So they can only combine it with Acrobatics. If you are a Melee-Char however you can easily get about 50% Evasion, 60% Block and 40% Dodge which means that only every 8th hit will connect.


Not all Melee players are chickens with shields, you know ? :P


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Torrenz wrote:

....
-mitigates physical and elemental reflect from attacks
....



Well, "besically" you are right. It does have some mitigation...but if you look on eva/accu tables, with 2.000 accuracy and 20.000 Evasion, you only evade 31%...which is way to less for reflect.

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Last edited by Astarte911 on Sep 2, 2014, 3:43:27 AM
If you are only stacking evasion than IR is a very good choice. If you have layered defenses (block + dodge + evasion) than you are better served without IR. Acrobatics reduces your armour by 50% anyway.
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Why would you use immortal call as an eva based char ? The strength of evasion is to avoid subsequent hits and the use of immortal call is the same. (EC/IC/Cwdt avoids subseqents hits as well)


Immortal Call in my opinion is the single greatest defense skill in the game. I use it on absolutely ever character I've made. Why would being evasion based have anything to do with wanting a few seconds of physical immunity after taking a big hit?

Besides, it also helps protect against your own damage :)
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sircuddles wrote:
I'm lv. 61 in Beyond and doing a Ranger RoA build (basically standard Phys/Crit tree), I haven't played PoE since Onslaught. Back then basically everyone took IR, but I understand they've changed Evasion a bit. I get how it works, but at the end of the day if you don't take IR you're still going to get hit.

I'm running two CWDT, Enduring/Immortal/Duration with one and Decoy/20% Enfeeble on the other. Thing is, even right now, lv. 59 white mobs hit me for ~500. How am I ever going to live through a map Oak hit?

I have zero experience with Evasion builds, but from what I can see it makes no sense not to just take Iron Reflexes and have ~7200+ Armor (that's my Evasion with Grace). Looking for anyone with some HC experience to shed some light on this for me.

EDIT: Just noticed Acrobatics decreased armour by 50%, I assume this includes armour from IR. I could just drop these nodes, gain 5 skill points, and sit with 7k+ armour.


If it would 1 shot you with an eva character (i assume some nice hp here) Thats 4.5k hp i was taking into account.

So the enemy has to do 4.5k in 1 hit.

Dmg migitation = 7200 (armor) / (7200 (armor)+ (12* 4500 (dmg)))
Dmg migitation = 7200/61200
Dmg migitation = 0,117 So around 12% from what i know. 540 dmg.

Wich you might think is good, but on the other hand every single swing will hit you. So you will need a loooooot of health recovery to make up for that. An evasion char, especially coupled with blind will get hit for simmilar dmg, but will have a much bigger grace period of not getting hit afterwards.
Good practices say you'd better get IR. It's safer against creeps and reflect, just a good leech is a must so you can stand your ground. Pure eva archers suck big time out of a party.

Another way is to use hybrid gear as an eva char. Get 1-1.5k armor from gear besides evasion, it's night and day.
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Last edited by torturo on Sep 2, 2014, 4:56:33 AM
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torturo wrote:
Good practices say you'd better get IR. It's safer against creeps and reflect, just a good leech is a must so you can stand your ground. Pure eva archers suck big time out of a party.

Another way is to use hybrid gear as an eva char. Get 1-1.5k armor from gear besides evasion, it's night and day.


Something tells me you never played a pure eva character.

I have a easy time as pure eva out of parties, as i never get hit ever. I can actually see mobs, what a bonus to solo play.

IR is the short road to getting stunlocked. The thing a lot of people dismiss is how hard its on a character to get hit every single time a monster takes a swing at you.

Especially archer volleys, or beyonders spawning on top of you.

Also with 90% accuracy, and pretty high critchance, i can fire blindly into reflect packs atm, even tough i have only 4k evasion. And my hp does not take a dip. Its as if reflect does not exist for me.

Eva + ondars > IR for reflect, unless you have the absolutely perfect bow, wich would put you at like 10% crit and 540 phys dps (perfect harbinger bow). And manage to scale your dmg so high , that you do 571.428k dmg per shot (thats if you evade 95% with ondars). Or 28.5k of the dmg you do has to hit you back to 1 shot you at 4k hp.

Its pretty ridiculous for an evasion character, but for a IR character that will get hit every single time its easyer to kill himself.

Also considering Eva + ondars reduces both the phys dmg and elemental damage while IR makes you get the ele dmg reflected back at you 100% (almost everyone uses herald of ash or hatred or both).

And you can always slap on cwdt+IC to avoid getting 1shot by reflect anyway.

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