Lets talk about Armour, Energy Shield, and Evasion.

No you really need to just max out evasion as high as it'll go... assuming the system will let you, you need like >75% ideally. Then run away all the time ;P

I don't think a non-ranged Ranger is viable.

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zeto wrote:

Then run away all the time ;P

Well, I'm good at that. :P

Guess I'll start building up the evasion passives then.

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Thecla wrote:

If a HC ranger is going to prepare for higher diffulty lvls, what should she do. Sounds like evasion isn't the way to go, but are there viable alternatives?

My current Ranger uses a good amount of Duelist gear so that I have a decent amount of damage reduction in addition to a pretty high evasion. It helps quite a bit and the damage reduction has saved me on quite a few occasions. Using a shield helps a lot too because you simply block 25-30% of all attacks and then if you failed to block an attack you still have the chance to evade (and then if you fail to evade the damage reduction will kick in to reduce the amount of damage you take). It's like defense in depth. Really what it comes down to is knowing which enemies have the potential to kill you with one hit and making sure to stay away from them when you can.

Hmh, I have a different approach (= As I said earlier I went and created a HC ranger today, think she stopped at lvl 21 in act2. I'm close to 400 hp (which is a nice buffer in itself against anything including elemental attacks), ~35% runspeed, ~100 energy shield, and quite low evade of only ~35% (no evade passives at all). All that in almost plain white gear with a blue weapon. Plenty of dex for the highest bows I can use, enough int for dex/int gear. Feeling invincible and killing fast so far, but I know its gonna change by Cruel...or when I feel like doing something really stupid ^^ I might get back and report on the progress once I get more time to play again...could be after tomorrow.

The point's already been made in this thread, but let's distill it down:

Given enough time, the RNG will screw you over. RNGs are like that. So Evasion is worthless for HC.

Also, Energy Shield sucks compared to regular armor. Yes, it's better than Evasion because it can soak a few lucky crits. It also goes down much faster than an armored Marauder, there's no pots to refill it (an Energy Shield pot would make a lot of difference), and it's no good when you're surrounded, spamming Frost Wall like crazy, and just trying to get the hell out of there. So it only really works when you don't need it. If I want my health to regenerate, I'll spam pots (which is what I find myself doing whenever the horde gets too close).

Here's an idea: Give Evasion a huge anti-crit boost when facing the enemy, give players some options in damage-reduction when it comes to Energy Shield, and give ranged attackers some better options in battlefield control/mobility. Teleportation, more Wall options, more distractions to cast, half-second invisibility to get the monsters on new targets...

Actually crit evasion sounds really good, except I wouldn't want evasion classes to be immune to them. I pretty much agree about e-shield, unless potions are significantly nerfed, it's just worse health with no mass DR options.

Personally in it's case I'd love for it to have built in DR but struggle against certain elemental attacks (like how getting set on fire currently ****s your energy shield in the anus). The fact that chaos damage already bypasses eshield (is there anything that bypasses straight DR?) is a sort of good start, as long as it doesn't mean eshield users get sodomized by sections of the game that make their damage-absorbing ways useless.

Just a quick thought, and probably dumb, but what if evasion effected damage percentage, kind of like DR, but also like the ES, so almost a combination of the two. I know in 'real life' when you dodge something, sometimes you will end up getting grazed or something just hitting you barely. So instead of taking full damage and no damage, you would take variable amounts from full to 0, not neccessarily based on the stat, just random chance.

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DemonicGoblin wrote:

Just a quick thought, and probably dumb, but what if evasion effected damage percentage, kind of like DR, but also like the ES, so almost a combination of the two. I know in 'real life' when you dodge something, sometimes you will end up getting grazed or something just hitting you barely. So instead of taking full damage and no damage, you would take variable amounts from full to 0, not neccessarily based on the stat, just random chance.

This would have it overlap with DR as it is, only adding an unwanted random factor for random RNG screw-overs.

How about some passive deep in the dex tree that gives a chance to avoid death if damage is close to 100% of your max hp or something. Or some kind of on kill charge that would give you 100% to avoid the next hit you take.

I just got to Cruel difficulty, so i am not the best person to talk about it, but I do feel that Evasion is lacking.

Actually, there's one fundamental thing that needs to be addressed further. Evasion and eshield were made when GGG said "Let's make separate types of armor for ranged attackers who don't get hit very often."

The problem is that armor that only works for people who don't get hit very often is useless for when they do get hit.

I'd be happy if eshield numbers were doubled or tripled above what they are now, and I'd be willing to pay high costs (slower regen, longer delay, you name it) in order to have it. Armor made for glass cannons is no armor at all. I want to be able to survive. As it is, it makes a lot more sense for me (as a Witch) to find +life items and real armor with a low str requirement. Sure, I'll never have the DR of a Marauder, but 25% DR with 300 life is mathematically the same as 100 eshield, and can be regenerated with pots. The only advantage the shield has is the no-stun thing, but one good crit will toss that right out the window.