Evasion and non-avoidable phys damage abilities

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Emphasy wrote:

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torturo wrote:

I'm not going to add fuel to the fire, but what allbusiness said is absolutely right.

EVA chars fail at high levels against packs of heavy hitters. Ranged, or not.
Pack of champs with "bad" mods (usually combined with other mobs) can evaporate eva chars with ease. Ever seen how a volley from a blue pack of skele archers kills 5-6K HP char in a sudden?
In a situation, where AR would save life.

And it doesn't matter the amount of eva rating, or multiple layers of defence. Your evasion, dodge and block will just fail simultaneously and you'll take it all. It will happen very very rare but it will.
Been there, seen this.

There's a reason why the experienced HC players avoid building around evasion, or just build hybrid.

Armor-Users fail at high levels against packs of heavy hitters even more^^.

With about 20k Armor a Extra-Damage rare devourer hits my Witch for about 2,5k Damage, more with a Crit. Armor is totally worthless against heavy hitting targets. Evasion however gives a constant bonus. And when I switch Herald of Ash/Ice for Grace there isn't an enemy in the game which can hurt me with projectiles (well in more then 5% of the cases), Accurate or not (maybe Accurate + Accuracy Aura, not sure).

And yes Physical Spelldamage is ugly, but thats it. And with Atziris Step you only get hit by them about half the time and if you really want safety use Rearguard, for some extra Spellblock.

And that is just Archers... using Acrobatics with a Shield makes most things a joke, since it is a good defense against spells, attacks, well basically everything.

To get a reliable 50% Physical Mitigation you need insane Armor + a lot of Echarges. With Evasion you are basically getting it for free and are far saver vs. Crits. But I made the same ranger once with Evasion/Acrobatics and once with IR. Due to not having a Shield you won't get the incredible amounts of Armor, also my Dex gave me about 60% increased Evasion, which is gone with IR, resulting in a Lower Armor, I lose my protection against Elemental Spells (so yes I get a bit of defense against physical spells, but get almost twice the damage from elemental hits or spells). Projectiles are again dangerous.

Armor is better in exactly one situation. That is low-impact rapid physical spell-damage. Big physical spells still ignore your armor due to its calculation, so its good against brutus spikes, not so good against higher levels of rockfalls (you still take considerable damage). However you take a lot more damage from elemental spells and even more from elemental attacks. You need a really high armor to take less damage from physical attacks.

So Armor:
-Better vs. lots of small physical hits
-Better vs. Physical Spells (considering how much 46% Spelldodge and 15% reduction from Echarges is I'm not even sure, but the damage is less spiky)

Evasion:
-Better vs. Projectile Attacks
-Better vs. Elemental Attacks
-Better vs. Big Physical Attacks
-Better vs. Elemental Spells

Actually the higher the map, the better evasion gets. With Enfeeble, Blind or just switching to grace their are so many ways to boost evasion getting a safe and reliable increase in mitigation while armor is screwed when enemies deal massive damage in single hits, exspecially when they crit.

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There's a reason why the experienced HC players avoid building around evasion, or just build hybrid.

Actually there are a lot using Evasion/Acrobatics now. Exspecially since it is the best way to deal with Atziri, since there isn't a lot of physical spelldamage.

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And it doesn't matter the amount of eva rating, or multiple layers of defence. Your evasion, dodge and block will just fail simultaneously and you'll take it all.

Well your not running around with 1 life. If you would always either block/dodge/evade you would be invulnerable. But since Blocking/Dodge resets the entropy-counter you can actually evade twice in a row, even with less then 50% evasion-chance, if you block in between. So with Blocking/Dodging you are almost immune to normal attacks (thats likely due to you only blocking when evasion fails, so if you catch a failed evasion with a block, you will still evade the next time again).

I actually tried this with the Vaal Oversoul and a ranger with a Shield. He had 40% Dodge-Chance, 55% Evasion (not sure if thats right vs. Oversoul though) and 75% Blockchance. The 22nd Smash killed him, all the others before he evaded, blocked or dodged. That was a bit lucky, since on average every 15th smash should hit him, but that shows how powerful Evasion/Acrobatics is with Block. A Armor-based char would be dead in about 4 smashs.

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Wooser69 wrote:

I think evasion and acro are ok for most of the game. It's only the unavoidable phys damage that destroys you. These skills are rare and other than MoM/LC, which any build is capable of using in place of a high life pool, there are no ways to mitigate the high damage.

This whole argument wouldn't be a problem if there just was a specific way for an evasion/acro character to deal with an enemy like perpetus without either 1: avoiding him, or 2: relying on defenses that stretch the character thin. Having a perpetual granite of iron skin isn't enough, so you need to bring in uniques to solve the issue.

Again, it's only these few unavoidable phys damage skills that make evasion/acro bad. If they were avoidable, then there'd be no argument here and evasion/acro would be considered strong. Which it normally is, until you face that one nasty enemy type.

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And what the hell are you talking about evading Vaal Oversoul Smash? That's the biggest load of bullshit ever. You can't evade it.

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First, it's not that evasion is bad. It's just not as safe as armor, as damage is not mitigated and is unpredictable in spikes.

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Hemmingfish wrote:

Spoiler

Disclaimer: I have a level 72 pure evasion ranger in Beyond league

Evasion is terrible at the moment. The overabundance of "cannot be evaded" and physical spells make me wish again and again that I went straight armour. I'll just pick apart this list someone compiled on page 3

Evasion:
-Better vs. Projectile Attacks

Sort of. Projectile attacks are very few in number and they don't deal very much damage, making them also trivial for armour with regen to simply walk through.

-Better vs. Elemental Attacks

All two of them in the game.


-Better vs. Big Physical Attacks

Until you get hit once and then it's bye bye character.

-Better vs. Elemental Spells

Less life and no access to +max res nodes is not worth the 30% spell dodge. While it is more effective in PVP to have spell dodge, it's not something I'd count on to save me in maps.


I've survived this far with lots of luck, flask mashing and being overlevelled. 66 maps are dangerous - a single blackguard charge takes out the majority of my hp and it's only pure luck I haven't been hit by two evangelist spells at once yet. Evasion really badly needs an additional form of damage mitigation, unlike armour and ES. No wonder Iron Reflexes is so popular!

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ElricOfGrans wrote:

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deathspenalty wrote:

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ElricOfGrans wrote:

There are no movement skills for a low-Int Bow user ;)

Lightning warp+reduced duration dont require more than 58 int ;) And you should have more than that for your support gems anyway, unless you dont use any int gem at all, wich i find hard to believe.

I do not know how to do it, but I believe you can view people's characters through the forum. I use only Green gems on my Ranger, and no hybrid Dex/Int ones either.

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Emphasy wrote:

The thing is... you can do Atziri with about 2,7k HP without a death if you use Avoid-Mechanics and Evasion is one of them (and not even IC was used). Avoid-Mechanics by nature get stronger the more you have. And no you don't need Lightning-Coil. There aren't really many rapid firing physical spells. There is the occasional Bear-Trap, Vaal throws a few rocks at you but all of this so so rare. Not to mention that all the rogue exiles or vagan who use Resolute Technique are Melees, which means two things:

1. You are ranged and they are easy to kite.

2. You are also Melee and likely have a shield in addition to dodge, which still screws them completly.

Not to mention that the normal player-killers are unavoidable Elemental spells, where Evasion, exspecially in combination with Spellblock is really strong (although not so much Evasion, its Acrobatics). So lets take a look at physical Spells:

1. Vaal Rockfall -> easy to counter with IC, since it doesn't work that long, though it doesn't do that much damage anyway, since the rocks rarely hit, and you still have Spellblock.

2.

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And what the hell are you talking about evading Vaal Oversoul Smash? That's the biggest load of bullshit ever. You can't evade it.

It used to be a Spell, it is an attack now like Dominus Touch of God and can be evaded and blocked. Just to get that one out of the way.

3. Bear Trap -> again you are either range... so don't step into it or have Spellblock which makes it unlikely to hit you since it is so unfrequently used... oh and you can still mitigate it completly with IC.

4. Ethereal Knives -> Thats likely the only problematic one. But again there are only a few Enemies that use it repeatedly, the most notable two actually deal a big amount of chaos-damage with it (the guy from the Dominus/Museum trio), so people are often screwed over by not having chaos-res. In the other cases it is the same as above, a Melee with a Shield and Spelldodge is as likely to die from it as any Armor-user, but it is likely the most problematic one.

5. Evangelist explosion -> since they nerfed Evangelists by only putting a few of them between Aristocrats and reduced the duration of their shield heavily they aren't really a thread anymore. I used to fear them with evasion... but no not anymore.

6. The big devourer explosive thing -> that one screws everyone, with Spelldogde you have at least a chance.

On the other hand Evasion can completly ignore some of the most devastating enemies. Devourers are cute little pets, since their projectile is an attack and their normal attack... is an attack. So you are a lot saver against them and basically all other projectile attack enemies. Some of the nastier bosses are completly easy with evasion. Yes evasion requires life (well as much as armor) and the tree lacks this on the dex-side, which isn't the fault of evasion, if you go to the scion-wheel you normally still get enough life and evasion.

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First, it's not that evasion is bad. It's just not as safe as armor, as damage is not mitigated and is unpredictable in spikes.

Also thats not true. Evasion is actually less spiky then armor. Since armor is based on the amount of damage you receive and has no additional mitigation against critical damage, a crit does not only deliver more damage due to applying the crit-multiplier the increase in damage also makes armor a lot less effective. Evasion on the other hand not only works always the same, since it only uses a few mechanics that directly provide physical reduction it also avoids critical hits.


And yes if you view it in total physical spells are the weakness of Evasion/Acrobatics chars. But there aren't that many and those are rarely the things that kill you. I'm fairly sure the largest amount of deaths are still accumulated by Elemental Damage or simply playing wrong. Using Evasion-Equipment and the Dex-Part of the tree provides a lot of Mobility to your char, which is further increased with the skillset of Evasion-based chars. The best defensive mechanism Evasion-chars have is their good movement-abilities (or the fact of being ranged if they use a bow).

I could agree if people argue that Evasion-based 2h-Melee builds suck, because they surely do. But Archers and 1h-Melee builds are quite strong and basically everyone plays a Puncture Evasion-Archer now, since they are just insanely strong. They don't only use the Avoid-Mechanics they have in there stats they double it with the avoidance they get from their mobility. If you play an Evasion/Acrobatics Char like you do with an Armor-based char you likely fail, because thats not why Evasion/Acrobatics is so strong.

I'm also not sure most people seem to be witches, likely with EB/MoM since it is still incredible strong or rangers in which case I assume a lot of them are Puncture/TS with Acrobatics. There are a few Shadows in between which I guess use the still incredible strong daggers or EK. But I can't see a lot of chars that clearly identify as armor-users, because armor basically sucks. It doesn't help against elemental damage at all, it doesn't help against huge hits of physical damage and it doesn't help against crits.

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CharanJaydemyr wrote:

Sorry, you kinda do anyway.

Elric is choosing to play a certain way, and if that means 'only dex gems on the dex class', so be it. His claim that there are no movement skills for a low-int Bow user is correct, and something GGG should rectify. Technically the great movement skill for dexterity is Whirling Blades, but obviously a bow user can't access that. Elric COULD keep a dagger or two on weapon switch just to use Whirling Blades but that's quite cumbersome.

If any class/style deserves a movement skill, it's the Ranger/Archer. Her movement speed is supposedly so significant that it's brought up by at least one NPC (Nessa).

That said, if Elric also means 'only green supports', then I officially declare him insane, and BLESS HIM FOR IT.