Lets talk about Armour, Energy Shield, and Evasion.

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Drb00 wrote:

I'm not sure why you'd want to go melee with a "Ranger" the name alone says that you should be using "ranged" weapons to kill stuff.
Is kiting stuff really not a viable option at higher levels? Do the mobs get faster? or is there something I'm missing here? Since I've been able to kite pretty much everything, with the exception of a few monsters.

Just as small point, the term ranger does not come from using ranged weapons. It was originally used as a term for gamekeepers in medieval Europe but more generally is used to refer to someone who travels (ranges) across large tracts of land. For example, gamekeepers were given the responsibility by a nobleman to oversee hundreds of square kilometers of land that the nobleman would use to hunt on. The gamekeeper had to be constantly traversing the land to track the movements of the game animals and to keep out poachers. More specifically, the term 'ranger' is derived directly from the term 'range' as in 'a mountain range' so in the most literal sense a ranger is someone who crosses mountain ranges.

Anyway. Kiting stuff is definitely viable and necessary in higher difficulties but sooner or later you're going to get hit by an enemy. There's no avoiding it. Most of the time when you're attacked you can evade it or the enemy may not deal much damage but on a fairly regular basis an enemy will get a critical hit (or it'll just be a really strong enemy) and you'll be dead.

would appreciate if someone could explain the differences in armour and evasion, i've found both with my ranger. i'm using the one with armour now because of the others stats it has.

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vorlon wrote:

would appreciate if someone could explain the differences in armour and evasion, i've found both with my ranger. i'm using the one with armour now because of the others stats it has.

Armor gives you damage reduction. If you have 25% DR then every time an enemy hits you it deals 25% less damage. Evasion rating gives you an evade chance. If you have a 25% evasion chance then any time an enemy attacks you, you have a 25% chance to dodge the attack and take no damage.

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tpapp157 wrote:

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vorlon wrote:

would appreciate if someone could explain the differences in armour and evasion

Armor gives you damage reduction. If you have 25% DR then every time an enemy hits you it deals 25% less damage.

Just a small clarification: armour (damage reduction) only affects physical damage. Elemental damage ignores armour.

This may sound silly, but why not have Evasion rate also give you a chance to avoid the first hit or two of a mob if you have not been struck in awhile. Effectively meaning a single blow literally is no threat to the ranger, but if he gets mobbed he would still die cold and alone. Even make it a skill like "awareness" or something.

I am now dipping a little in Strength to wear Duelist armor, it really helps in Ruthless, but it should not be the ideal choice I suppose.

Try fighting Rhoa's on Ruthless with Dex gear. they shield charge you untill you have no charges left in your flask and you die.

EDIT: I play a Ranger, if that wasn't clear :)

Well I clearly understand the problem here, but just like the opening post explains the problem is burried deep into the class mechanics, but I cannot see those being changed dramatically. Giving rangers huge hp (just think about it, something like 5-10% boost wouldn't really change a thing, you would need a LOT more to make a difference) would be completely awkwards and makes no sense.

Now obviously this is no biggie in Softcore where going all offensive will ensure that 99% of the time things are dead before the RNG decides to make a bad joke with you.

As for HC I would expect a player picking the challenging game mode to actually realise that going the straight forward way might lead you to quick death. Instead exprimenting with what the other skill trees offer would be the best option, I do believe theres enough freedom to make a ranger live all the way through HC difficulties.
Despite of what some think HC actually IS a different game, not only you live once, but the game often makes you to take different approach to how you play it. And PoE gives you the freedom to do so.

My impressions might be a little off, since I've played a lot of HC in D2, but I've only spent my first day of Beta running through normal softcore with a witch (somehow I managed to forget I'd be converted to SC upon death when creating the character...I blame D2:p). It felt too easy and unsatisfying and I do feel the itch for HC again (= So I'll start a new character today...think I'll try a ranger for the challenge (:

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zeto wrote:

marauders and their 75% DR + elemental resist + huge hp = invincible

You wouldn't be saying that if you'd played a marauder through merciless.

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Rory wrote:

That's kind of how Energy Shield works, in a round-about way. We'd like Evasion to be a very different mechanic, though it seems to be the least favourite of the defensive values. I'll have a word with the others about improving it, maybe so it has a smoother reduction, and the large damage spikes are infrequent, and more manageable.

As I said in my earlier post, evasion itself is not necessarily inferior.
Most people are talking about rangers (probably specced mostly into damage), rather than evasion itself. The thing is rangers don't really have any extra defensive options on top of evasion (marauders have endurance charges, witches have minions, icewall)
Witches and marauders also end up with a higher total HP pool (from +life and energy shield respectively), which reduces vulnerability to one-shot kills.

I do not think it would be a good idea to bring pure damage-specced rangers up to par defensively with other characters that are using active defensive skills, and have invested heavily in defensive passives.

Admittedly, just adding more HP is more of a band-aid than a solution as it basically copies some ES functionality rather than being its own unique mechanic (though ES would still have the advantage of built-in stagger protection and refill, I suppose).

But I'm having serious difficulties coming up with something better here within the confines of what's already there since it's really the Ranger that is the odd one out when the big hits start rolling in.

Sure, as a player you can partly alleviate the problem by e.g. picking up ES/Evasion gear instead of going full Evasion, but as a designer, to promote that as the solution would basically be to concede that (at least as far as HC is concerned) Evasion sucks compared to the other two defense mechanics.

The split between Armour, Energy Shield, and Evasion represents one of the main and most visible mechanics of the game (and certainly one of the most important ones if you're playing HC), so I'd say that all three of them should be able to stand on their own feet.