How come no builds take evasion passives?

I have looked at many a build posted in these forums, and while I'm modifying mine a little bit, there are several things in common with may that are up here. The thing I find really odd is that I don't see any of them taking evasion passives.

There are two clusters that are very easy to reach. One contains Celerity, and would give 44% evasion and 9% movement speed. This seems immediately beneficial, and yet crafters don't take it. The other contains Survivalist, and would give even more evasion (48%) and elemental resistances. I can see why this might not be as good as the Celerity cluster, because one can max out resistances anyway, but still, another 48% evasion seems odd to skip.

I see a lot of builds stretching far into Shadow and even Witch territory for a little extra damage, but these evasion nodes are *right there* and add up to a good bit. I would think they'd be more important than others seem to, but this is why I'm asking. Can anyone shine some light on why these should be passed over?


-VG-

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VideoGeemer wrote:

I have looked at many a build posted in these forums, and while I'm modifying mine a little bit, there are several things in common with may that are up here. The thing I find really odd is that I don't see any of them taking evasion passives.

There are two clusters that are very easy to reach. One contains Celerity, and would give 44% evasion and 9% movement speed. This seems immediately beneficial, and yet crafters don't take it. The other contains Survivalist, and would give even more evasion (48%) and elemental resistances. I can see why this might not be as good as the Celerity cluster, because one can max out resistances anyway, but still, another 48% evasion seems odd to skip.

I see a lot of builds stretching far into Shadow and even Witch territory for a little extra damage, but these evasion nodes are *right there* and add up to a good bit. I would think they'd be more important than others seem to, but this is why I'm asking. Can anyone shine some light on why these should be passed over?


-VG-

Evasion is not reliable in a game where phys damage is so high. It is far better to take life or damage instead of padding on a little extra evasion which will fail sooner or later.

Hard mitigation like coil and arctic are far better for surviving.

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Nephalim wrote:

Evasion is not reliable in a game where phys damage is so high. It is far better to take life or damage instead of padding on a little extra evasion which will fail sooner or later.

Hard mitigation like coil and arctic are far better for surviving.

Well, I could see this. What gets me about it is that there are few life nodes in the area, and so I would assume to just take them all (perhaps minus one 4% node), and there is good damage around, but once you get out past Shadow start you're really taking a lot of extra nodes in order to get to any more. Is it really worth it?

We're talking about 9% speed and *92%* evasion for what amounts to 5 nodes (you can use Survivalist to work upward, and save a dex node that might be used if going through the life cluster below that).

Is there a flaw in the evasion mechanics? I mean, I know that if you get hit, you get hit hard, but that's a lot of increase to not getting hit, is it not? I'm not sure how 92% translates to chance to dodge, but it's got to be something fairly significant.


-VG-

Because stacking inc. EV rating has diminishing returns. The more you try and get the harder it becomes to meaningfully increase your EV% (which is derived from the EV rating)

Getting enough inc. EV rating to meaningful improve the EV% chance will use up a lot of points.

As an example I once had 45K EV rating which gave me a 75% chance to evade. Using a Jade flask with +3000 EV rating and 99% inc. EV rating, increased my EV % to 80%. If you had 45% chance to evade instead - the same flask would boost you to ~65% EV chance.

The better way is to scale EV % chance directly (not the EV rating) through supports and keystones that give % more chance to evade (Blind, Ondar's, Raider's Chase, Tricker's Shade), or use Dodge / Block (which are easier to scale) to complement the EV.

Evasion really sucks compared to armor. The damage mitigation from armor is ALWAYS there and will never fail. You WILL FAIL to evade a hit, and in a game with such high damage spikes that can one-shot a player with 5k+ life, that failure can be league ending.

I don't foresee a future in this game where a pure evasion character can ever be anything except something to play in standard soft core.

I know your question is why not take more evasion nodes, but the real question is how can GGG make evasion something useful in this game?

My Dreamfeather Ranger has some words for you.

No, it's true. Except in some very rare circumstances (like with Dreamfeather + Queen of the Forest), taking non-pathing evasion nodes is a waste. Even in special cases, you never want to go out of your way for evasion (like with the terrible Scion evasion wheel; steer clear of those useless 12% nodes). Evasion takes a lot of investment to make great, and most of that greatness comes from gear and Grace. It's just more efficient to spec into life or damage than to spend points on Celerity, and there are quicker ways of getting around than passing through Survivalist.

its what Cery said. to try to support your evasion rating beyond a point is pointless. your best bet is to just use a jade flask IMO. you get such a huge evasion boost for such little investment its extremely beneficial.

getting upwards of 75-80% chance to evade takes A LOT of investment. usually QoTF, highest EV gear you can find like alpha's or devoto's or a 1k rare EV helm + atziri step + a massive EV shield with inc defenses to shields. it essentially is not worth it for what you get.

the more and more i think about things, the more and more i find flasks to being the answer, honestly. want a quick fix on block? flask. what evasion? flask. what resistances? flasks. want physical mitigation, instant leech and massive DPS boost? flasks.

evasion is a great layer for defense, even if you want to stick with armor and phys mitigation. why? well people underestimate evasion. it isn't used to avoid all damage, block and dodge are better for that again because of their ways of stacking and easy accessibility. no no...evasion is great for not taking critical strikes. essentially critical strikes are rolled against evasion twice.

IMO iron reflexes is the worst possibly defensive layer you can add to your character. also one of the biggest nerfs was to ondar's guile becoming arrow dancing. arrow dancing is still good, but just nowhere near as good as ondar's was.
having such high evasion vs ranged characters is so amazing for everybody but especially melee characters. as melee some of your biggest threats is to projectile because you're likely to take a lot of damage before you can even reach them to kill them. projectile attacks also make up some of the fastest mob hit rates in the game, like titty-bitches for example. this brings on more on hit effects, stun, etc.

your best bet is not mitigation, but avoidance. however if you get hit yes obviously mitigation is needed/most desirable. though to make it so you cannot avoid means you're always taking on hit effects, status ailments, DoTs, stuns, interruptions, etc.

All Ranger Phys Bow builds use a decent evasion rating. The important stats for a rare chest is Life > Evasion Rating > Resists.

It does help for damage mitigation in general and Reflect as well. For Uber Atziri Arrow Dancing and a decent evasion rating is quite important.

For rare helmets evasion rating is important as well.

I will not comment on Melee Ranger since I never play them, but overall: Evasion is an important stat for the most standard bow builds.



Total 204% increased dex (dex, armor and evasion + evasion nodes). Completely standard passive setup.

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Frankenberry wrote:

overall: Evasion is an important stat for the most standard bow builds.

Yes, but not on the tree. The only time you take evasion on the tree is when the nodes happen to be paired with life.

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Tempada wrote:

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Frankenberry wrote:

overall: Evasion is an important stat for the most standard bow builds.

Yes, but not on the tree. The only time you take evasion on the tree is when the nodes happen to be paired with life.

For a few reasons:

A) You need to balance your stats. The marginal benefit from evasion becomes smaller for every point. That means the more you invest, the less benefit for each passive spend on evasion.

This table is not updated for lvl 82 content but still does a good job of illustrating this point:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArsB7KohOhhpdFJucWQyUGdOXy03cXIyMzBVZDRWZFE#gid=2

So if we have around 200% increased evasion and fairly good gear you can easily hit those 10-13k evasion (depending on gear) which with arrow dancing is quite good. If you had another 2k due to having another 50% increased evasion you wouldn't gain much. However we would loose at least 3 passive points which gives us other better stats.

B) There isn't that much life in the right side of the tree so you have to grab as much life as you can while also getting your damage and crit nodes. This leaves you with very little wiggle room.

C) The evasion nodes are mostly combined with the all res stat. For a lot of players two points spend into Cloth and Chain would actually be worth (even players with quite good gear - I constantly see people who never take the all res nodes and +30 str / int nodes but instead gimp their gear into obliviton) but at some point your gear becomes good enough that you no longer need the all res from passives you max out your resistances. So the nodes bring nothing else to the table besides evasion. The evasion wheel is far away.

Finally just my 2 cents in general on evasion:

A lot of players hate on evasion. They find it silly that you need to combine it with other defensive mechanics for it to have an effect. Well the point is: It becomes that much stronger when you combine it with other mechanics. Vaal Grace or Lightning Coil or Taste of Hate (or a combination) really makes evasion Shine (It also works just fine with ES and Armour).

In PoE you always had to have several layers of defense. Just stacking 1 defensive stat was never enough (for the wast majority of builds).

I like Evasion for Ranged characters (again I don't play melee, so I cannot really comment on those). Both in Softcore and Hardcore.