Finally caved and took Iron Reflexes

After almost 60 levels of trying to make Evasion work on my main, I finally caved in after being frustrated with how often I was being hit.
I respecced some points and picked up Iron Reflexes and instantly I had like 75% resistance to damage and my survivability went through the roof.
This really pisses me off. It is basically the game telling me that, "Yup, the best way to make evasion good is for it to NOT be evasion. Shoulda taken armor!"
This must drive armor users crazy too, I mean, I have more damage resistance than my friend who is specializing in armor!
Anyway, I know this is all old news and there has been threads about it but I really hope they seriously take a look at Iron reflexes. Don't tweak it, just get rid of it. Replace it with another keystone.
You shouldn't have a keystone that just flat out changes one defense type into another. What is the point?

Iron Reflexes isn't the problem, it's Evasion. Has been for a long long time.

I think they're aware, by now, that evasion's just awful and nearly unusable in the endgame. (If they're not, I'd be pretty worried...)

I'm hoping for some sweeping mechanics changes for evasion, because right now I wouldn't even consider going anything but IR on a ranger or Duelist or pure ES for a Shadow. The conversion isn't the problem; it's that what you're converting from is so godawful there's realistically no choice but to convert it.

Very much agreed.

I used to like my old claw and Iron Reflexes build so all that life leech with claws and skills didn't feel redundant...

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Psomm wrote:

Iron Reflexes isn't the problem, it's Evasion. Has been for a long long time.

Right but I wanted to mention Iron Reflexes specifically because if evasion were fixed and was awesome. I don't think Iron Reflexes belongs in the game.

Evasion itself isnt the problem, its how people are using it. I have a sword and board ranger who im building to be super evasive, only im not relying on it fully. I've learned that i can build her with Energy Shield and lots of life to go hand in hand with evasion, its pretty nice.

Even when surrounded by enemies my high evasion will let my energy shield keep recharging. As well as the chance to evade im stacking the chance to block with my shield. Enemies never touch me and even when they do my energy shield/life regen takes care of it.

Primary Defensive Stats
-Life
-Energy Shield (but not at valuable as life unless built for it)
Secondary Defensive Stats
-Armor
-Evade
-Block
-Regen
Tertiary Defensive Stats
-Life on Hit
-Life Leech
-Stun
-Freeze
-Blind

I'm playing an evasion melee character and I think I'm doing quite well but my build has direct access to Iron reflexes and Unwavering stance. After I read this topic I think I will respec these two points and see...

I find the issue is that it's sort of hard to 'buff' Evasion without accidentally buffing Iron Reflexes as well.

This is why most of the evasion 'fix' suggestions are post-calculation: dot rather than damage, damage reduction, that sort of thing.

I think right now I'd be happy if the diminishing returns on chance to evade wasn't so dismal. I have *extremely* high evasion for my level.

And pretty crap chance to evade.

If I convert that to armour with IR, my damage reduction skyrockets.

There's something wrong with this.

Well evasion is supposed to be good against lower number of harder hits. And it it's very good against it. My evasion rangers had 0 problems just standing and watching oak, merveil and other boss monsters swing around me. But 90% of the time you're facing a horde of monsters.

I also have to agree with Charan that evasion has a kind of soft cap. at higher levels pushing to get past estimate 50% evasion need a very significant investment. And even then monsters with higher than average accuracy still wreck you.

I just use evasion as secondary form of defense for my sword and board ranger. Simply because 71% shield block is easier to achieve than similar evasion and that makes me a bit sad.

"

Charan wrote:

I find the issue is that it's sort of hard to 'buff' Evasion without accidentally buffing Iron Reflexes as well.

This is why most of the evasion 'fix' suggestions are post-calculation: dot rather than damage, damage reduction, that sort of thing.

I think right now I'd be happy if the diminishing returns on chance to evade wasn't so dismal. I have *extremely* high evasion for my level.

And pretty crap chance to evade.

If I convert that to armour with IR, my damage reduction skyrockets.

There's something wrong with this.

Right, that is definitely the issue. If the best way to utilize evasion is by converting it to armor. Why not just get rid of evasion altogether?
I know a lot of people keep mentioning that they offset it with shields, but I use a bow ranger so I can't do that. However, even pushing my evasion up to 60% on merciless, which itself felt really hard to do.
I still get hit constantly, and by the heavier hitting bosses, its often for 75% of my life or more. Granted, my life is lower than it should be for late in act 2 merciless with only 1k.