ELE LIGHTNING STRIKE - ALL T16s, Shaper, Uber Atziri, HOGM, Chayula, Elder

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Kirielis wrote:

Your thoughts on Aegis Aurora?

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Ceryneian wrote:

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Necropotence wrote:

Thanks for the extensive answer :)

What I meant by Acro vs. block/life is that with 6 points you could get let's say 3 block nodes and 3 life nodes (or 6 block/6 life nodes) and compare that vs. 30% dodge/20% spell dodge. Thing about block is that it doesn't care about attacker's accuracy while dodge does. Hmm I'm thinking about making a graph as I'm also really interested in this.

Necro thanks for the question. I've written a reply that has turned out to be quite long - TLDR is at the end.

I think I see how you are looking at Dodge. Are you seeing it as an effective increase to your health? Let me know if that is how you are thinking about it.

Here is an example (ignoring evasion, block, and damage mitigation) with only Dodge:
- 1000 HP
- With 30% Dodge this translates into ~1429 HP - which is a 43% effective increase to your health
- Rationale: 30% Dodge means you avoid 3/10 attacks, so on average you get hit for 7/10 attacks which you can match against your health pool of 1000HP. Thus your total effective health can take 1429 damage (i.e. effective HP is 1429) since 30% of that damage will miss and only 70% (= 1000 hit points) will get through.

However when you combine in Blind, Evasion, and max Block - damage avoidance will be very high (making our effective increase to our HP also very high) and thus the extra increase to avoidance that 30% Dodge can give will be very small. Here is how I am thinking of it:
- 1000 HP
- 50% chance to evade - implies enemy has Chance to Hit of 50%
- With Blind, Chance to Hit is reduced by 75% - so new Chance to Hit is 50% x 25% = 12.5%
- Now assume max Block of 75%
- Total Chance to Hit is now: Chance Not Evaded x Chance Not Blocked = 12.5% x (1-75%) = 3.1%
- If we incorporate Dodge as well the above formula will be:
Total Chance to Hit = Chance Not Evaded x Chance Not Dodged x Chance Not Blocked = 12.5% x (1-30%) x (1-75%) = 12.5% x 70% x 25% = 2.2%
- As you can see Dodge does not seem to be adding much to our damage avoidance as the difference between 3.1% and 2.2% is incredibly small and does not seem to justify 6 points.

Please keep in mind this is an approximate calculation - I have not factored in Ondar's Guile, Enfeeble and that the bosses typically have much much higher accuracy and chance to hit than regular mobs.

The same can be said for Phase Acrobatics (however to a lesser extent) - 20% spell dodge will not give that much increase to damage avoidance if you have 75% spell block. Here is my math reasoning:
- Max Spell Block only of 75% gives a 25% chance to avoid Spell Damage
- Max Spell Block with 20% Spell Dodge - gives a 25% x (1-20%) = 20% chance to avoid Spell Damage
The difference between 20% and 25% is a decent amount - but not that large. However it is still worthwhile for a 1 point investment - the downside is that you have to go through 5 points of Acrobatics to get to Phase Acrobatics.

The interesting thing is that Dodge would be worthwhile in early game for those who do not yet have max Block (or are playing ranged characters that do not need high block). However based on the above math, once you have max Block and high evasion - Dodge adds very little to our defense to justify 6 points - at least on paper.

Also - Dodge is just a random roll and does not take into account enemy accuracy like evasion. It probably works like this: random number generated between 1 and 100, if this is greater than 30 (your Dodge chance is 30%) - the hit is not Dodged.

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Necropotence wrote:

With regards to stun, at the moment I'm playing a 40%eva/30dodge/75%block with no ES ranger with 0 stun recovery/evasion and I rarely get stunned or go into block motion, have you tried without stun recovery/evasion? You also have ES which means your chance to get stunned/block animation would be half of mine.

Good question about the Block/Stun Recovery - with a high evasion/dodge/high block - you will hardly see stuns in regular gameplay. However - if you play on a Vulnerability map - you will see some stun/block recovery from physical damage. If you play against a high-end spell boss like Piety / Mageara - you will see a lot of stuns/block recovery from spells. This is when you will find stun avoidance really helpful from Heart of Oak/Energy Shield.

mvm pointed this out earlier - the problem with stacking stun/block recovery is that you do need a lot of it for it to become effective. In this case, on a high evasion build, because we avoid so many hits, it would be more important to avoid the stun when it gets through, rather than to have quick recovery (since consecutive stuns will happen rarely - and thus recovery is not that crucial).

[I actually need to rework the HC section of the guide to reflect my new findings].

Important note: Stuns from spells are more tricky to handle than stuns from physical damage because we do not have any evasion against spells - we rely only on Spell Block (and Spell Dodge). The problem with Block is that you will go through Block Recovery on a hit if it would have caused a stun - even if you blocked it, whereas Evasion and Dodge do not have to deal with this. Thus high spell damage bosses can cause you to undergo Block Recovery a lot - which can be annoying as you cannot attack/leech life when you are block/stun recovering.

As you point out - Energy Shield is great because it gives a 50% chance to avoid stun which combines with our 30% chance to avoid stun from Heart of Oak. (This is why I recommended Ghost Reaver to dessloc in his build a few posts back as a way for him to keep his ES up at all times)
Interestingly, Heart of Oak and ES are NOT additive - the total combined chance to avoid stun is 65% and not 80%. These are the mechanics:
- First regular stun avoidance is checked, and then if that fails - ES has a 50% chance to ignore stun if it was not avoided (Source: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/464831/page/47#p4108429)
- Chance to not avoid stun = Chance stun not avoided by 30% from Heart of Oak x Chance stun not ignored by Energy Shield after stun avoidance failed = (1-30%) x (1-50%) = 35%
- So our total chance to not get stunned is 1 - chance stun not avoided/ignored = 1-35% = 65%

Sorry for the long post, but I find all these mechanics very interesting.

TLDR:
- Dodge tapers off late game, but is very useful early to mid-game when you do not yet have high block as it gives a large boost to effective health
- Block/Stun recovery is usually a non-issue except for: Vulnerability maps and when facing high spell damage bosses such as Piety and Mageara
- Stun avoidance from Heart of Oak and Energy Shield are incredibly useful. However they do not stack additively, and combined give a total chance to ignore stuns of 65% for any hit that gets through all your defenses and has a stun attached to it