Fixing the fundamental issue with Evasion

Im making this thread for suggestion gathering purposes.
In my opinion, we need to suggest a fix that is NOT a keynode.
Fixing it with a keynode means something is inherently wrong with how evasion works and that means it needs to be fixed at its core.

I think the main issue with evasion is that it doesnt prevent burst damage.
Evasion currently means that the life of your character doesnt lie in your hands, but rather in the hands of RNG.

Even if you had 90% evasion (which is a ridiculous number), if you face a bad luck streak, you are gonna take a few hits in a row and probably die.
This is just not acceptable in a game that has a punishment for death and a Hardcore mode to go along with it.

We need to suggest something that fundamentally changes how evasion works, because the current iteration is never going to work, no matter how much of it you get (unless you get 100%).

My suggestion is the following:
If you evade an attack, you wont take any damage (nothing changing here).
However, if you dont evade an attack, you dont take the full damage at once, but instead you take part of it immediately, and another part of it over time depending on how much evasion you have.

If you have 50% evasion, you will take 50% of the damage immediately, and then another 50% over 5 seconds.
(amount of damage you take in percentage x 0.1 = amount of seconds)
This means you still take the full amount of damage and have to counteract it by using flasks or lifesteal to survive, but you wont get instagibbed/bursted to death without having time to react.

If you have 60% evasion and are hit by an attack that you didnt manage to evade, you take 40% of the damage instantly, and 60% over 6 seconds.

Now to top it off, we can introduce a new passive skill type in some of the bigger defensive evasion nodes (like the 30% more evasion rating one):
"Increases the amount of time it takes for the damage to settle in by x%".

Lets say you have 50% of that new skill passive, that means at 50% evasion, if you now take a hit, you receive that remaining 50% damage over 7.5 seconds instead of over 5 seconds.


With this change, we dont really take less damage, but the damage is less of a burst and we can actually try to do something about it.

What do you guys think?
If you have any suggestions of your own on how to fix the inherent problem with evasion please do share.

I kinda like your idea but wouldn't armour still be superior?

First of all DR from armour is easier to get in good amounts compared to evasion (at least that's what I'm led to believe by reading other threads, I haven't really tried out evasion a lot myself).

If both are equally "easy" to get and we have 50% DR vs 50% evasion we get the following from a 1000 damage hit:
- Armour user will take 500 damage and that's it.
- Evasion user will also take 500 damage but an additional 100 damage / sec.

If evasion was easier to raise to higher levels I think it would be a fair trade off but as of now I see no reason to pick evasion before armour even with your suggestion.

Edit: I only took physical damage into account. An attack with non-physical damage will obviously give evasion the advantage if the evade is successful. Do you picture elemental/chaos damage to be handled the same way as physical for your evasion idea?

"

tokiih wrote:

If both are equally "easy" to get and we have 50% DR vs 50% evasion we get the following from a 1000 damage hit:
- Armour user will take 500 damage and that's it.
- Evasion user will also take 500 damage but an additional 100 damage / sec.

Yes thats correct, but you forgot that the evasion based character will still evade 50% of all attacks, while the armor based character always gets hit.

Basically all this would do is take the damage you would usually receive when NOT evading an attack, and smoothen out that damage over a longer period of time, so that you cant actually be instagibbed.

As a comparison, right now, having 50% evasion and 50% armor would do the following to a 1000 damage hit.
- Armor user will get hit for 500
- Evasion user will evade half of the attacks, taking no damage, and then he will take attacks that hit for the full 1000 damage, possibly resulting in instagib

"

First of all DR from armour is easier to get in good amounts compared to evasion (at least that's what I'm led to believe by reading other threads, I haven't really tried out evasion a lot myself).

Yes thats true, but thats another problem.
That needs fixing somewhere else, either in the diminishing return formula for evasion rating, or an overall increase of evasion rating on all armor pieces.

As you said, right now you just cant reach the same evasion values that you can reach with armor.
That also needs to be looked at.

My brain is a maze sometimes. I did "forget" about the advantage of 0 damage on successful evades. I was a bit too focused on the worst case scenario. :)

Damage reduction incorporated into evasion has been discussed quite a few times before.

I think GGG's stance is that DR is the realm of Armour, and I think we can all agree that with IR in play, Evasion and Armour are already in bed with each other in ways not everyone likes.

The sheer abundance of 'fix evasion' threads is disconcerting to me but not entirely surprising. And they're not always easy to 'close' as duplicate threads, either, because the conversation tends to morph between them, although the end-result is typically the same.

Quite honestly, I think this is a post Open Beta issue. I love to discuss it, to mull over it, to theorise, but I'm hesitant to bring it up with the devs simply because I know they're focussing on getting Open Beta ready. Anything that can be addressed after the game has entered Open Beta is likely to take second-place to things that can't.

But know that this IS a big issue, not only on the boards but within the development process itself.

"

Charan wrote:

Damage reduction incorporated into evasion has been discussed quite a few times before.

I think GGG's stance is that DR is the realm of Armour, and I think we can all agree that with IR in play, Evasion and Armour are already in bed with each other in ways not everyone likes.

The sheer abundance of 'fix evasion' threads is disconcerting to me but not entirely surprising. And they're not always easy to 'close' as duplicate threads, either, because the conversation tends to morph between them, although the end-result is typically the same.

Quite honestly, I think this is a post Open Beta issue. I love to discuss it, to mull over it, to theorise, but I'm hesitant to bring it up with the devs simply because I know they're focussing on getting Open Beta ready. Anything that can be addressed after the game has entered Open Beta is likely to take second-place to things that can't.

But know that this IS a big issue, not only on the boards but within the development process itself.

Thanks for the reply, however i will emphasize once more that my suggestion doesnt incorporate damage reduction into evasion.

You still take the full damage if you are hit, its just spaced out over a specific time period that is determined by your existing evasion rating.

I specifically suggested it this way, because whats the point in giving evasion pure damage reduction, if armor does the exact same thing, why not just remove evasion instead?

Dying to burst damage is honestly a game killer for me.
I dont want to skill into iron reflexes, but i have to because evasion doesnt achieve anything in its current iteration.

Even if you have 99.9999 evasion.
If you get unlucky, you will get hit by that ranged rare that has increased physical damage and die, thats it.

Evasion is just bad, and the only way to fix it is to mechanically change how it works.

My apologies, I realised your solution but saw the fact that it staggered as a sort of DR. That was inadequate of me. For the record, I suggested once that failed evasions might cause bleeding as well as some DR, which is somewhat similar.

Just jumping in this as a noob:
Why the hack do players expect Evasion to be a competative form of tanking?
Evasion helps reducing the overall damage, that's all.

Correct, you get lucky and live or you might get unlucky and get hit. But this situation is exactly why no one can neglect armor and resistances.

I have two issues with Evasion myself though:
a) Even if having a high number of Evasion Rating, the Chance to Evade is low for higher levels. Getting substential % of armor's physical damage reduction or resistances is "easy" compared to get similar % of evasion.
b) For getting a "tank build", Iron Reflexes is mandatory for e.g. Duelists. With this, the Duelist has incredible armor, matching a comparable Marauder tank build with ease. I don't know if this is intended.

So my proposal for solving both issues:
- Reduce the number of Evasion Rating (e.g. 2/3)
- Increase the Chance to Evade per Evasion Rating point substentially. I would say, reaching for 70% Change to Evade should be possible, even for high level characters without gimping the equipment.

Nordstern

"

Njordstar wrote:

Just jumping in this as a noob:
Why the hack do players expect Evasion to be a competative form of tanking?
Evasion helps reducing the overall damage, that's all.

Correct, you get lucky and live or you might get unlucky and get hit. But this situation is exactly why no one can neglect armor and resistances.

I have two issues with Evasion myself though:
a) Even if having a high number of Evasion Rating, the Chance to Evade is low for higher levels. Getting substential % of armor's physical damage reduction or resistances is "easy" compared to get similar % of evasion.
b) For getting a "tank build", Iron Reflexes is mandatory for e.g. Duelists. With this, the Duelist has incredible armor, matching a comparable Marauder tank build with ease. I don't know if this is intended.

So my proposal for solving both issues:
- Reduce the number of Evasion Rating (e.g. 2/3)
- Increase the Chance to Evade per Evasion Rating point substentially. I would say, reaching for 70% Change to Evade should be possible, even for high level characters without gimping the equipment.

Nordstern

I am almost certain the painful diminishing returns on evasion-->chance to evade% at higher levels will be reviewed. They weren't bad before the last few patches, then we suddenly lost a good 5-8% chance to evade on the spot. It stung like a bitch.

Let me add sth too ;)

My personal opinion on armor/evasion thing is that it all goes to "predictable results".
What do I mean by that ? I will explain it on armor:
In the case of ARMOR, the results you get after being hit ARE ALWAYS PREDICTABLE. If you have for example 30% dmg reduction - you will ALWAYS get hit by less dmg, either from projectiles or melee. Knowing this you can do very stable build that will depend very low "on chance".
On the other hand - you got the evasion, which is very unpredictable. Ok, its not bad - you can evade all the dmg ! BUT... what if you don't ? :) Well, if you don;'t have enough life as your damage-buffer, you will probably die.
[ This is an issue for a class like a Shadow. Atm I'm lev 47 Shadow myself and I know few things about this class already. Shadow has lot of "evasion passives" but almost NONE for armor. That means it is quite hard for this class to depend on armor - and Im refering here mostly to Njordstar's doubts. ]

In my opinion, a class based on evasion is very very VERY hard to play on HC mode. Exactly becasue you have very unpredictable results. Same goes for PVP. If you are lucky - maybe you will even win with a better equipped player, but if unlucky - you can die almost instantly even matching a noob ;)
Thats why I agree with gh0un. His idea is very good imho. You still get the full dmg - because you didn't evade - but you have a chance to counter it somehow and not die by a bad luck. Sth worth thinking about ;)

Regards