Surviving with pure Evasion build?

I know this question has been asked before, but the answer seems like it should change with the availability of new items, gems, passive tree changes, etc. That said, what I know about it so far is...

Evasion: Your Evasion vs enemy Accuracy, with entropy that causes it to eventually fail
Dodge: Rolled % chance to hit or miss if Evasion fails
Block: Rolled % chance to block damage entirely if Evasion and Dodge fail

Layered defenses help when RNG fails you...

Damage Reduction: Endurance Charges, Granite Flask, Basalt Flask, Lightning Coil (and similar conversion effects), Fortify, Arctic Armor
The problem with most of these is that they are only physical reduction, so spells still wreck you.
Further sources of Dodge can help to a point, but the problem remains.
Resists capping at 75% still leaves me in/near one-shot territory for many boss attacks.
Spell Block is hard to get a lot of, and gets wrecked by Acro/Phase.

Acrobatics/Phase Acro would be really good, but the reduction to armor/ES/block forces you into a life build, and it's hard to get enough life on that kind of build while still having enough damage.

Overall, I just feel like there's something I'm missing about this, because I've seen other people who can do high tier mapping with Acro/Phase builds, but I'm not sure what they are specifically doing to make it work. Most of my attempts at these builds end up struggling to get past early maps (tier 3 or less).

Well, if you are going with pure evasion and plan on using arctic armour, then why not use The Perfect Form? Arctic armour will be completely free (more room for dps auras/heralds/grace) and you get Phase Acrobatics for free. Combine that with Atziris Step and you have some nice chance to dodge spells.

That's a decent suggestion. Thanks.

I'd like more in depth info about these kinds of builds if anyone has that available, though.

Well one thing about Perfect Form/Atziris Step is, that you need other sources of resistances. But it shouldn't be too hard, depending on your build. There are some nice evasion/elemental resistance nodes in the shadow area.

What character are we talking about? If it is the ranger Comeoneveryone, then that skill tree looks very bad...

people not mentioning enfeeble as a damage reduction technique is a pet peeve of mine

enfeeble is really, really good with evasion and blind. like ready good. yes, even on bosses.

I have a fair few builds that use evasion and can do high maps, find it pretty easy.

I dont rly find spells a problem with them, the life ones just have life pool, phase acro and an extra bit of spell dodge from avatar of the veil in the raider tree. Some are ci and do not use acrobatics, they just have large es pools.

regarding getting the damage and enough life, you just got to get all the life you can get, whatever damage that leaves you with is what it is. youre gonna have more damage than an armour style build regardless because you are crit with a load of frenzy charges, even if you starve yourself of damage nodes its still better damage than other life builds that find it easier to get the life pool up. It just becomes a necessity.

and yes, lightning coil + basalt + 3 endurance charges + taste of hate, sometimes also with arctic armour. I dont find elemental spell damage dangerous, its pretty consistent regardless of map mods, theres very few damage mods on a map that boost elemental spells and very few sources of ele spell damage that require your respect. I feel like I know them when i see them and play accordingly.


cwdt enfeeble for me is a constant on virtually every character.

You can go for armour+evasion+block+dodge at the same time. The real question is not "can you survive?", of course you can. The question is "can you kill everything with it?". And the answer is "no." for most of the pure evasion builds. Because it needs so much effort for defense = less dps.

At this moment, 3.00 is completely "kill or die" meta and because of that i think you should focus on some "tricky" one shot builds instead of defensive waste of time.

Personally i prefer complex and mechanic builds. This meta really sucks. I'm not playing this game atm because of that one shot anime bullshit meta.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1999557

This may be your build of the decade than^^

Pure Evasion/Dodge-Builds can easily bee viable and clear all content. Getting past 300k Shaper-DPS is doable as well.

evasion right now is in a great spot.

damage is so high right now that the best means of staying alive is damage avoidance over mitigation, and then leech as fast as possible to full before being hit again, which varies in timeline depending on your avoidance levels.

evasion can get to great heights. blind plays a strong factor in this as well. you can virtually get to max avoidance (95%) pretty easily with evasion, blind, dodge.

i have a char using queen of the forest chest with stibnite and jade or reflexes flask. not much more evasion than that, not even a 1600+ evasion shield, but as a raider with avatar of the chase if i have onslaught up my pure evasion is hitting 91% melee evade and 84% proj evade. acrobatics goes on top of that, as does blind.
sure, im basically immune to physical damage at that point with onslaught/flasks up, but the spell mitigation/avoidance is just not there, and that is what will kill you end game. it always has been.

i'd like to see more ways to get spell avoidance.

what spells are you guys finding dangerous? Because Im just not seeing any real danger in spells.