Act 4: evasion sucks

Well, that makes pure evasion trickier.

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

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demon9675 wrote:

In order for this to work, you must be a ranged character, you must have a golem as a decoy and a lot of mobility, and you must have a lot of DPS. It goes without saying that you must also have really good gear. Having armor flasks/rumi's helps a lot too. Basically, it's viable for a somewhat glassy ranged build.

Ah, alright. So in order to use the Shadow's targeted defence/structure combination, you need to be a glassy ranged build.

AWESOME GUYS!

This is precisely why I said don't respond until you read up until the third paragraph.

My entire point was that EV/ES is "viable" but doesn't actually make any sense as a choice compared to, like, anything else. Ironically, GGG probably also only read the parts where I said it could work and then ignored the rest, so they think it's totally fine.

Please, please, please read entire posts before responding, and please don't isolate paragraphs that seem to say the opposite of what my point actually was. It makes me look more inept at PoE than I actually am (which, granted, might be a low bar).

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

My apologies, I do tend to single out what I feel to be the summary of the point, and when I see the word 'viable' I'm like a fucking bloodhound.

I think you're creating a false dichotomy. I admire the shit out of it and I wish it were true, but it's just not. For something to be 'viable', it 'has to make sense as a choice compared to other things'. That's not me talking. That's NOT the guy who was doing Whirling Blades builds before we had Lockstep or was determined to make Arc work before GGG even touched its damage numbers. That's me channeling what I've been told dozens if not hundreds of times.

In a game like this, something MUST make sense as a choice compared to other things to be considered viable, and in this, let's say 'viable' means 'doesn't need emergency surgery to get it out of ICU'.

Your aptitude or ineptitude at PoE is not my concern, nor did I mean to call it into question.

No worries, man! I just wanted to make sure people understood what I was saying in the first place. You're a popular poster, so I was concerned other readers might see that quote out of context without seeing my original post.

I also totally agree with you that in a game as hardcore/powergamed as PoE, any choice that is even somewhat less efficient than its neighbor will be completely tossed out the window. I was just trying to illustrate my theories on why GGG doesn't prioritize balance as much as I strongly believe they should - they may have a different definition of "viable" than you and I. If this is true, it would expose a major disconnect between how the devs see PoE and how dedicated players see it.

I'm basically on your side in this discussion.

some really strange things being brought up here


evasion has a problem with spells?.... why? What does armour do against spells? Nothing, its a completely invalid point.

Oh but snorkle, physical spells, theres phys spells in the game oh dear... ya and how many phys spells are there compared to elemental attacks which evasion protects against and armour doesnt? Hardly any, for every phys spell you get hit with in endgame u probably get hit by 50 elemental attacks.

evasion doesnt help against dot? What dot does armour protect against? Completely irrelevant, makes no sense, most dot damage is chaos, chaos resist isnt an armour or evasion thing, elemental and physical dot, still not protected by armour.


evasion works better with es than armour, because of recharge needing not to get hit and because it has a massive life pool which is exactly what evasion needs to deal with that big one hit that everyones afraid of. Evasion + Es is better than just Es on its own, armour only becomes better with es when u bring 1 unique, aegis into play.


Acrobatics is for bow users who dont have a shield, its block for bows. Theres ev/es node sin shadow... and life nodes, and phys nodes, and attack speed, and cast speed, and elemental nodes, and dagger nodes, and claw nodes, and mine/trap things... yes and acrobatics are we saying all these nodes should be taken together and must work together or the shadow doesnt make sense as a class because theyre all there in the shadow zone? A/PA is not meant for energy shield builds. Wheres the 30% spell dodge/block node in the armour zone? It doesnt exist, talking about it like not being able to take it makes evasion es bad, well doesnt that make armour bad too? Apparently not, because we are just pulling nonsense out of a hat where it suits an agenda that we want to be true rather than talking sense, at least thats how it seems to me. Oh no I have to get block... the same way an armour or a pure es build would have to get block, thats why evasion is bad compared to armour and pure es? That doesnt even make sense.

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RogueMage wrote:

I dont agree with any of that

tl:dr

We are generally bringing larger issues here, and you are reminding me some thougts i had awhile ago. I will derail(sort of), but in case of ES generaly, as many people have pointed out and complained(mostly closed beta players) is the fact that ES has become identical to HP. What most closed beta players always supported, is to remove ghost reaver and zealot's oath, and just buff the ES% and gear back to closed beta levels.

In principle i agree, but there are several problems with just adopting this approach. For starters incoming damage have increased dramatically since then, and there way more AoE damage dealers, covering pretty much the whole screen. Still it might work just fine for ranged characters, but CI melee will definetely become unplayble. Yeah back in closed beta we had CI melee characters without ghost reaver or zealot's oath, like the legendary Invalesko Crit dagger build. However nowadays it will be really hard due to my first point. And then, the already -very much- gear depended CI will be even more, since you will be desperately trying to get the biggest ES pool possible.

What's the problem currently? For me it is mainly that ES recharge is neglected, and ES players just try to get as much ES as possible, which is sustained by leech(mostly pre 2), and regeneration(currently). Also pure ES builds tend to be vastly superior than hybrid ones, with either armour/eva or HP. Yeah there are niche builds that CAN work to a degree, like Snorkle mentioned, but Snorkle is a good player with good gear, and still i beleive a well built pure ES build will still be superior.

So what i propose? I agree that Ghost reaver and Zealot's oath should be removed, but they should make ES recharge to really matter, in order for both CI melee, and ES/eva/armour/hp hybrids to be viable. My idea is that they should introduce a system, where through passives ES recharge should not be interrupted unless more than a certain amount of damage is dealt during a period of time(let's a assume within a second). Doing this per hit will have many problems, since light hitters might not be able to touch you. As about how much damage you should be able to receive before ES recharge is interrupted? It could be a flat amount, or a %amount of your total ES pool. This helps both pure ES builds, especially melee to survive without leech or regen mechanics wich are associated with life, and also helps hybrids. Amour/EV through mitigation could reduce the amount of intaking damage so the recharge mechanic will be more effective. ES/eva even if the do not avoid all incoming damage could still have a chance for their ES to actually recover. The problem with this idea is that is difficult to balance. It's easy to either be useless or break the game, but i guess that's true with most mechanics in PoE.

To put it in a box, my ideas about rebalancing ES in general to not be identical to life, and make ES hybrid builds (more) viable are:

1) Remove Ghost Reaver and Zealot's Oath.

2) Buff ES passives. Not to close beta levels, but higher than now.

3) Introduce the recharge mechanic i mentioned in the last paragraph.

4) Make status effects for CI builds to be calculated at around 40% of your total ES(or whatever %). The current system of how your life WOULD have been if you HAVE NOT BEEN CI is just plain stupid. This point is the least important one though.

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

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Jennik wrote:

Charan, it doesn't seem like any of your posts in this thread are coming from a hardcore perspective. I don't think balance discussions related to survivability are very useful if you're not focusing on hardcore leagues. From the perspective of a character that absolutely can't die a single time, evasion is far inferior to armour.

I've played somewhere around 6 characters to maps this league. Only one was armour, one was MOM, Cloak of Flame, and Endurance Charges, and the rest were EV and Acro. They were all various flavors of casters, so they got hit by roughly the same amount of attacks.

The Evasion characters were smashed super low constantly, since they took the full strength of any hit that connected. The armour character almost never goes below 90% life, and never has close calls. This is with only a 50% armour rating and no other significant mitigation going up against same level content. The EV characters had roughly 50% EV plus 40% dodge.

The only build that actually felt safe was the armour build. The rest felt sketchy at all times, and all but one of them ended up dying to a hit that armour likely would have prevented from being lethal. A higher investment in defenses for EV based characters results in a lower chance of survival than armour would give.

Both forms of defense are garbage compared to Lightning Coil, Taste of Hate, and Fortify, but that's an entirely different problem. Evasion's simply not very good right now. Energy shield's terrible until you get to a gear level where your numbers are ridiculously high. The only one of the three major forms of defense that you can currently rely on to keep you alive somewhat consistently is armour.

The below has been edited at Support's request, but make no mistakes: you really pissed me off.

Deepest apologies. I didn't see the 'hardcore players only' sign on the door.

Why don't you just accuse me of playing as though I don't care if I die at all next time? Do you think just because a person doesn't play hardcore that they're just some death-wishing zerg who doesn't give a fuck if they die? I could easily counter and say HC is just for alt-f4 twitchers who cheat the system to avoid death but I'm above that. I don't assume a person isn't trying their hardest not to die just because they're on this league or that. And that's what I think you've done here.

And did you miss the part where I said my avoidance-heavy melee ranger defeated Mirage of Bones at level 61 with no portals?

Screw it. You're right. Armour uber alles. Evasion sucks. Etc.

Eben -- best I can do, sorry.

Whoa, where'd the defensiveness come from?

edit* don't worry, just answered my own question in reading your other posts. Seems to be your default stance.

Avoidance based melee in a game that throws hordes of 20+ monsters at you and that pushes the player towards minimizing the down-time "out of combat".

Yeah...what a brain-cracker...

Peace,

-Boem-

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

Like so many others, snorks, you've started on the wrong foot and just kept charging. EV/ES struggles with spells, and I explained very carefully why and how. Evasion/avoidance in itself has acrobatics, life pool, etc. It's got nothing to do with what armour does better, because I'm not comparing Armour and Evasion here. 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'...and fuck, now I'm just repeating myself.

It doesn't matter. I've taken this discussion up in more effective channels.

Just a tip, snorks: try to write as though you're writing, not as though you're talking. Your posts are super hard to read because they try to simulate dialogue but the result is they're all over the place. And the more effort it is, the less likely people are to read it.

I'm outs. I don't see this going anywhere, and you're just not getting it.

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.

This thread has derailed. I don't even know what people are discussing anymore.

How did CI balance show up in here?

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

It doesn't matter. I've taken this discussion up in more effective channels.

Welp, guess that's it folks. Charan has taken his ball and gone home. Close thread.

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Ceryneian wrote:

This thread has derailed. I don't even know what people are discussing anymore.

How did CI balance show up in here?

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

It doesn't matter. I've taken this discussion up in more effective channels.

Welp, guess that's it folks. Charan has taken his ball and gone home. Close thread.

More like pissed his knickers.