Act 4: evasion sucks

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

EV/ES is a defence/structure combination that struggles with spells. Period. More so than any other defence/structure combination, including armour/es and armour/life, because neither are relying on the idea of 'avoiding damage until regen kicks in'...

armour + es has to avoid damage until regen kicks in, pure es has to avoid damage until regen kicks in, and neither have a way of avoiding spells that is not also open to ev + es.

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Rusery wrote:

Main points for SnorkUK again:

1) ES doesn't regen when being hit by spells/attacks.
2) Physical spells = pure death.
3) DOTs are almost pure death, 1% Health Regen on east side of the tree.
4) EVA = death on a big hit
5) Life is limited on the east side of the tree
6) Block is limited on the east side of the tree

Now compare these points to the West side of the tree where relevant.

1) Armour doesn't care about ES. Its an extra life pool, not a defense mechanic (Templar).
2) Physical spells are mitigated by armour.
3) DOTs are mitigated by sufficient Health Regen, abundant in the west.
4) Big hits on Armour aren't as bad vs Evasion big hits. You can argue this, but the math is there, however small.
5) Life is abundant on the west side of the tree.
6) Block is decent on this side of the tree, especially templar and duelist.


We aren't really comparing this to Armour, we are looking at the reality of its "viability" as a play-style to which it was *intended* to be used.

ok these are thoughts on evasion in general, not evasion es in particular, and a lot of them are fair. I was not commenting on just evasion but rather evasion + es compared to just es and armour + es.


You cant really call duelist part of the left side of the tree and count his benefits as a left side benefits that are not part of evasion, hes as much evasion as he is armour, hes dead center. All my evasion using characters have at least 3.6% life regen as they take the duelist and ranger regen. Theres just as much block on the right as there is on the left. Im not saying you dont have valid points but treating duelist as part of the left and discounting him from the right is the sort of bias, unrealistic way these things tend to go that I have an issue with.


Evasion on its own is crap, I know that, Ive been saying that forever, armour on its own is crap too. Its not that Im claiming everything you are saying is wrong, far from it, and I think evasion does need a little looking into, ondars nerf was too much, pure ev needs more than lightning coil to deal with phys. I think boems idea of having % of physical taken as elemental should be a rare chest armour affix, not on coils level but maybe up to 15% or 20% for a chest slot prefix, thats a good idea for the game right now.

Heres the thing though, 3 months ago these threads were about armour, how shit armour is, its terrible, evasion is so much better with this long list of reasons why. Nothing has really changed that makes that much of a difference, at all. People think armour is great now, its not really great, its shit, evasion wasnt really great back then either, it was shit, theyre both still shit thats nothing new, thats been the case sicne open beta. As a layer in a huge pile of defenses stacked together theyre great, they were always great when used like that, theyre still great when used like that. Nothing has really changed that much except the over reaction, bias way people used to say armour is shit has now changed to saying evasion is shit in the same sort of over the top fashion. Its not that people dont have a point, I think theyre shit too, Im just being real about it and saying armour is also crap, Im not trying to make out that theres a massive difference here as people always seem to do.


How do my characters that use lots of evasion deal with dots? I have at least 3.6% regen, bare minimum because that is the amount on the right side of the tree and I get it all, and then maybe get more by going to the marauder start. How do they deal with physical damage? They either have coil + taste of hate or massive amounts of armour + endurance charges. I would never play evasion without those things. But I wouldnt play an armour build without massive amounts of evasion or a coil either, thats also really bad. Im not saying act4: evasion sucks isnt true, pure evasion sucks in 2.0, sure, and it sucked in 1.3, 1.2, 1.1, 1.0 and in open beta, and pure armour sucked in all those too, thats where I feel the general thoughts of this thread have lost touch with the reality of the situation. People are acting like something massive has changed in 2.0 when its the same situation that its been for over 2 years.

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AxxiusEQ wrote:

I've just finished a playthrough on an evasion based character, twinked. And I must say: something needs to be done about several encounters OR the evasion mechanics. The game is fine until the end of Act 4. But then your main defense mechanic becomes simply useless.

The character was reasonably twinked: lv 68, 4.5k evasion, 3k hp, 44% chance to evade, 40% chance to dodge, 30% chance to dodge spells (Phase Acrobatics), max elemental resists, no chaos resist. You cannot really expect much more by the time you get to A4M.

The game was all good until the 2nd half of Act 4. Evasion is awesome against the Path of Exile that we used to know and love before 2.0. Dodging hits is really fun. My twink was never in any danger because it by far outgeared the content.

But then I ran into the fights that bypass evasion:

1. Torchoak Grove. It bombards the ground with a huge amount of splash damage. Good luck dodging that. I ran around it avoiding the magma balls for a while, but there was almost no time to dps it! You get bombarded off screen. The range and speed of its attacks is ridiculous. And you can't dodge them all. Eventually I ran out of flasks, said FUCK THAT and ran past it. Yes, you can maybe hit it a few times, port to town to refresh the flasks, come back to hit it a few more times, etc. But this is just stupid.

2. Maligaro. He pops chaos degeneration ground under your feet and throws chaos bombs all over the floor. Evasion is useless. Can't dodge, just run around, but there are too many bombs eventually. This is where I actually died. Switching gear to buff chaos resist just for 1 boss sounds unreasonable. Flasks have only so many charges, there are no adds to recharge on. And the char was already a twink. What's a normal char supposed to do - suicide zerg it and die 50 times? I don't even want to think about trying this on a HC evasion based char. Meanwhile, when I did this on a CI char, I laughed in Maligaro's face and rolfstomped him. Such disparity between otherwise viable builds is not right.

3. Malachai. Again, he attacks the ground, not you! Evasion does NOTHING. Your main defense stat is completely useless. You run around like a chicken, popping flasks when you can't avoid the ground damage and hoping to recharge on the adds when Malachai is busy moving or doing his tentacle thing. Oh wait, that's when you are supposed to dps him! Good luck with that! This 1 encounter takes forever because, again, your evasion is meaningless and the char is greatly underpowered without its main defense.

Please do something about the ground damage vs evasion. We need a way to evade ground damage in these encounters. Or tone it down. You can't diminish one of the 3 primary defense mechanics like this. It works fine everywhere else in the game. Act 4 is no fun at all for evasion builds.

I can shorten this. Block, Dodge, and Evasion are all great until a an attack gets through and you fall over dead in one hit. And it's a given that sooner or later an attack will get through and you will be dead in one hit.

Even if you use some combination of the 3 and stack Arctic Armor, Mind Over Matter, and Endurance Changes on top of them, and are at full Life/ES that equates to 5K+ combined... sooner or later an attack will get through that will kill you in one hit... which is complete BS to me.

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Galtrovan wrote:

I can shorten this. Block, Dodge, and Evasion are all great until a an attack gets through and you fall over dead in one hit. And it's a given that sooner or later an attack will get through and you will be dead in one hit.

Even if you use some combination of the 3 and stack Arctic Armor, Mind Over Matter, and Endurance Charges on top of them, and are at full Life/ES that equates to 5K+ combined... sooner or later an attack will get through that will kill you in one hit... which is complete BS to me.

Ayup, if it's an all-or-nothing defense then the nothing side of it will come up sometime and smack the character down/dead.

But the catch is due to the investment required in mitigation and the diminishing returns with it, it's often more feasible to put some into mitigation/soaking and some into avoidance mechanics. But even then you still have to pray that the mitigation will be enough to stay alive after a huge hit.

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

Note I said 'EV/ES', not 'Avoidance/ES'. I've already made that distinction. Avoidance+ES is actually a lot of fun. It's not viable, not by the standards of most, but I've also done some pretty funny things with it. Hell, I was doing it before lockstep, because I'm crazy. Vaal Discipline was and remains key to any Avoidance/ES style.

When I talk about the clusters and the Shadow's supposed forte defence/structure-wise, I'm speaking specifically of Evasion as an avoidance measure and ES as a structural integrity here, deteego.

EV implies avoidance, so I am not sure what you are going on about. The whole point of Evasion is it completely avoids damage. Using something like WB ontop of Evasion is just increasing its effects (i.e. min maxing)

The latest patch helped a lot in regards to avoiding damage