Some doubts about melee evasion.

Hey guys, so with The Awakening on the horizon, I was thinking about trying some kind of melee evasion toon.
The concept would be something rogue-ish (DS, Flicker, LS, not sure yet), probably using the Shadow staring point with a new toon or just making use of the skill reset on my Ranger, we'll see. In short words the idea is using dual daggers, no block full eva gear, maybe except for a Belly (too much HP there). Some tweaks here and there, but that's the core.

I would appreciate if someone that has used a melee evasion toon could share his/her experience with it, maybe some advice? :)

Also, if anyone has a link to a 2.0 calculator to share, that would be sweet.

Cheers.

Well its pretty viable, i havent used flicker strike but you can use abyssus and lightning coil, ondars guile wont be worth it anymore since its a +20% to melee dmg taken (in beta at the moment) this was my one handed build with reave i had 270000 ttdps powercharges up (350pdps dagger) with loath bane 380000 ttdps.

You don't want to go pure evasion like 0 armor or you will for sure get recked even with coil. Instead you want a bit of armor to at least soften the big blows a little. Best way to get it is with a high armor shield and shield defense nodes imo. I know acrobatics works against stacking block and armor but your going to need at least some of both most likely.

Are you asking this for a hc league btw? Because eva melee in a hc league is basically asking to rip.

Also one thing you have to keep in mind is physical spells like ek / beartrap / cascade cause they will reck you if your pure evasion no armor.


The other option for this is also to go CI with grace if you can get 10kish es it's not as bad to just face tank physical.

Indeed using Ondar's, on it's current state, is out of the question. I'm not too worried about projectiles either, it's the big bad slams that frighten me. Been playing Ice Shot lately, but being on melee range is a rather different experience I bet lol

I was thinking about trying out this style in softcore for a bit, designing a skill/gem setup and if it feels right then taking it to leagues/HC. Still the main idea is the same (4k+ HP, 40% dodge).

I do have a decent shield and an Aegis somwhere in my stash, but dual wielding was something I wanted to try for a while now. We'll see about that...

Thanks for the replies. Also Reave is now added to the "experiment with" list :)

Well this is etups one month (hc i think, all gears in standard now) build. http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1228254/page/1#p10334990 hes stacking a ton of life and not using abyssus plus bino regen is pretty amazing i find my evasion/acro cyclone dual dagger build is easier to keep alive then my ts ranger. Anyway gl

Ranger evasion melee has been stabbed by GGG so many times I feel it is a Sisyphean task to keep trying to build a strong evasion melee build that can do end-game content.

To the OP - you cannot survive anymore in end game as melee with just pure evasion even in current PoE. Monster damage has been increased. Even just looking at Atziri her damage numbers have been doubled. So if you want to do end-game maps (Courtyard, Palace, etc) you cannot survive on pure evasion as melee.

You cannot use CWDT + IC anymore. IC now has 3s cool-down. You cannot self-cast IC - max duration for level 20 IC with 4 ECs and ICD is like 3.5s.

You cannot use Ondar's Guile anymore.

If you want to do Acro + Phase Acro -> you are no better off than a bow user that takes Acro and Phase Acro. In fact the bow user will have more DPS than you for AOE and will be at range while you take enemies in your face. The bow user has an easier time doing bosses because he can kite at range, again you are stuck in melee taking damage to your face. So why would anyone play Acro melee ranger?

If you want to go block -> you cannot get decent block without Rumi's flask. I prefer this approach because at least you do not have to use any points on the tree for block and can get close to max block and max spell block, but it requires specific gear that many people cannot get.

If you want to go dual-wield and survive on leech only, well that won't work - GGG has changed leech so that it will be more useless against bosses:

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The goal is to have leech be as effective as it is on the live servers, if not better, against packs of monsters, while being more difficult to get to the same levels of survivability and sustainability against single powerful monsters such as strong rares or bosses.

People suggesting Fortify - this is the exact same problem we had with CWDT. It helps armor WAY more than evasion. 25% damage reduction is not going to help much for an evasion toon with no other mitigation. So now you are required to REMOVE a gem from your skill to put in Fortify support gem. Or rely on Vigilant Strike which has a nice and juicy 4 SECOND cooldown and takes up another socket.

Sure you can stack Lightning Coil + Taste of Hate + Fortify - but honestly guys if you want that much mitigation it is WAY MORE effective to be as armor with those same pieces.

Here is the beta tree. At the top go to "Skilltree" drop-down, you can then choose "Passive Skill Tree" link or use the "Skilltree Analyse" link to analyze it.
http://cb.poedb.tw/us/index.php

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Hey guys, so with The Awakening on the horizon, I was thinking about trying some kind of melee evasion toon.

Skip the evasion and just get acrobatics / phase acrobatics. I am a dual claw melee ranger in the 1M HC currently lvl 75. People say you can't be melee. You can check my build in my sig if your interested. It works and it;s damn fun and abuse of Life on Hit.

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So if you want to do end-game maps (Courtyard, Palace, etc) you cannot survive on pure evasion as melee.

If you have a 6k health pool yes you can survive big hits I can even facetank vaal slam. if you can tnak that you can tank anything. I tank every boss except for bosses in +30% dmg maps. But then again just don't get hit.

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You cannot use CWDT + IC anymore. IC now has 3s cool-down. You cannot self-cast IC - max duration for level 20 IC with 4 ECs and ICD is like 3.5s.

The new fortify support gem I heard its great for melee + enfeeble + uniques like lightning coil. You'll pretty much be immune to physical ROFL!

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25% damage reduction is not going to help much for an evasion toon with no other mitigation.

ARe you kidding me? 25% reduction is massive and pretty much all you need. right now I just run enfeeble and that is enough reduction. Enfeeble + fortify will be more than enough.

Thanks for the calculator link man, it'll come in handy.

Regarding Fortify... just watched Ziggy's video about it, and yeah... I'm not so convinced. Having to throw in another support for your main attack kinda forces you to have a 6L, wich is a bit out of reach for some of us.

What does sound rather interesting is maybe playing around with something like CWDT-Vigilant-Increased Duration? Or just supporting Whirling Blades with Fortify. Damn I need a Beta Key >.<

How long does Fortify currently last?

6k life is a stretch. How can you do that without Belly or Kaom Heart? Ranger barely has much life nodes. That is not an evasion build with those chests. Even with 6k life I'm pretty sure you can still get oneshot on regular Atziri map from Vaal.

Ok guys - let's get real.

Fortify will not help much because monster damage is UP. All mobs now hit harder. Atziri bosses (Vaal, trio, Atziri) damage nearly doubled.

Again to use Fortify you will need to remove a gem from your skill. So now you have lost gem slot for your DPS. Enfeeble damage reduction is pitiful on bosses - they have 60-70% reduced curse effectiveness.

If you want to build mitigation just build those same items with armor build - it will be way way more effective.

Yeah you can build Acro melee and it will work - my whole point is that you have the same exact defense as a bow guy who can fight at range. You are taking extra risk for being melee - for nothing. Bows have much higher AOE dps too. On top of this you now have to worry about projectile attacks too so why would anyone trying to make efficient build make Acro melee over Acro bow now.

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Ceryneian wrote:

Atziri bosses (Vaal, trio, Atziri) damage nearly doubled.

You sure about that? Poedb site for beta has same number for uber and normal Atziri, which looks like normal dmg is messed up. Or maybe they buffed normal Atziris dmg to uber lvl(without the 100% increased life/dmg map mod). Also if these numbers are correct, they also gave normal Atziri 10% fire pen instead of 8% for double flameblast.

I have not played beta so I have no idea if this is just error, or is the dmg really that high in normal Atziri.


edit: I'm pretty sure it's error on the site.