Question about Armor vs Evasion for BOW user

Hi all,

I am following the ICE SHOT Build with some tweaks featured in TGN Video by Cromar.

Now my question is this:

For the beginning of act1 and act2 in normal difficulty, as a Ranger, should i simply focus on evasion gear?

Whenever I get hit, i get hit hard...

On my other similar build on Duelist im using Armor/Evasion hybrid gear.

I am also considering using the Iron Reflexes keystone but if I have the double evasion for range attacks keystone taken, would the Iron Reflexes nullify such passive?


Im still new to this game so please consider a newbie. Default league settings.

use the gear with the best stats overall. Keep a good balance between evasion, HP and DPS. This gets you through normal easy

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biozfear14 wrote:

I am also considering using the Iron Reflexes keystone but if I have the double evasion for range attacks keystone taken, would the Iron Reflexes nullify such passive?

Pretty much, yes. If you take IR, your chance to evade will drop to 5%, so that's 10% against ranged attacks. By contrast, with good Evasion it's quite possible to have 90%+ chance to evade ranged attacks.

The upside for IR is that you can achieve spectacular Armour totals, even higher than a conventional Armour build (using Grace aura for instance).

Jepp exspecially Grace is very strong for a IR-Build. But the point is, with Evasion you are able to evade projectiles dealing Chaos-Damage or Elemental-Damage which damage isn't reduced by Armor at all.

So high Armor-Builds and High-Evasion Builds both need high hp, not only because of high hitting physical hits but also for Chaos-Damage and some other threatening things.

So the core of most builds is heaving a lot of HP, while Evasion is good for hard hitting physical hits and Armor is good for a lot of low-damage physical hits and both is vulnerable to spells. So... you end up taking lot of health anyway.

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Emphasy wrote:

Jepp exspecially Grace is very strong for a IR-Build. But the point is, with Evasion you are able to evade projectiles dealing Chaos-Damage or Elemental-Damage which damage isn't reduced by Armor at all.

So high Armor-Builds and High-Evasion Builds both need high hp, not only because of high hitting physical hits but also for Chaos-Damage and some other threatening things.

So the core of most builds is heaving a lot of HP, while Evasion is good for hard hitting physical hits and Armor is good for a lot of low-damage physical hits and both is vulnerable to spells. So... you end up taking lot of health anyway.

Agreed with everything here. Try to figure out how each of those mixes with your playstyle and which situations happen to you more often.

Ever heard of failure chance and cost calculations? Say you are have a radar system that detects hostile planes incoming. The 'cost' of missing a solo small fighter plane is low, since it won't do much damage. On the other end, missing a nuke-bomber has a massive 'cost'. So what you want to do is make sure every single nuke-bomber is spotted, but you don't care so much about smaller solo planes.

In the case of PoE, think of how often you let big hitters (rock elementals, brute etc) reach you and how many hits will you take before you can disengage for long enough to heal up. Then think of how often you get swarmed up and how dangerous it is to your character. You will have to answer this for yourself, since PoE is complicated enough that answers are not universal.

Thanks guys. So for a new player until i understand more, a mix of evasion/armor and give up on the IR node would be recommended, along with some health passives etc correct?

I wasn't aware that chaos damage would bypass armor. That is good to know.

I guess ill have to run 2 exact same builds on duelist and ranger to test the waters and start seeing more.

Play style: although I always been a melee toon on every game, somehow i wanted to try a range toon. I occasionally play with a friend but my main concern was when soloing.

as for the build itself, the basic template of Cromar applies.

Skills wise tho theres a slight variation since I have not gone all that high level to obtain some skills:

Ice shot linked to Fork and LMP > aoe

Frenzy linked to Life on hit gain (dropped on a chest) and faster projectile > single target

Poison arrow only for a group of mobs once or twice.

Clarity aura.

Most of the times im at range, but had issues with end of act1 boss as well as Weaver. gear however was nothing special.


Anything else I need to know about survivability? i know about resistances that you need in higher difficulty but do i need to focus much on them before cruel?

Evasion reduces damage a lot more than defense.

Assuming we don't factor in granite flasks/flasks that give 100%evade or dodge


10k eva at level 70 is about a 50% dodge chance.

10k armor however is only 45% damage reduction on a 1k attack.
35% on a 1.5k attack
27% on a 2k attack

Evasions always a 50% avoid chance

doesnt seem many have given you a real understanding of the difference between armor and evasion so heres a go at it.

well first off, each gear type will have specific stat requirements, for pure evasion, its just dex, for pure armor its just str, for a combination of the 2 its as you would guess, a combination of the 2 stats.

since your a ranger, chances are you arent building much str in your passive tree so you'll be relying mostly on evasion gear. unless you get items with +str but that would mean that you wouldnt be able to upgrade those gear choices until you find an upgrade with same or more str on it, so I would advise not to rely on gear for your stat attributes. though its not to say its not a viable way of playing. for a new player I would avoid it until you fully understand all aspects of the game so you have a better idea of how to plan it all out.

the real difference between the 2 defense types will shine in 2 different situation.

1. your fighting a small group of enemies or just a single target such as a boss. so with evasion your able to avoid majority of their damage, giving you time to replenish any health loss when they do hit you (evasion caps out at 95% so no matter what you will be hit and you will need enough health to withstand the hit.) this can be done with a flask or with life steal. though this is also a risky way of playing since there are always a small chance that the enemy can get a few lucky shots in a row and thus you'd be done for. with armor you'll always be taking damage, and you'll watch your health drop slowly, but the key here is that its slow. again giving you time to replenish your health through either means. though since this is consistant, if you dont have the damage to take out the enemy quickly, and your life steal isnt high enough to over come your opponent's damage, you'll find yourself running out of flask charges and thus be in trouble. so here I find evasion to be the better of the 2 since there is usually more time between taking damage for you to heal yourself up.

2. your fighting a large group or a swarm of enemies. in this situation with the same idea evasion will avoid majority of the attacks, but since you have more people attacking, the frequency of you being hit will be a lot higher. thus you'll be taking damage more often than if it was just 1 target. where as the armored player will be used to taking damage constantly it'll just go down a little faster. but at least this isnt something special to them and thus can handle it a lot easier. so in this situation armor will do better.

if you have a combination of both armor and evasion, you have the best of both worlds, just not as high. your evasion will help give you time in between hits to replenish your health, while the armor will help lessen the blow of the attack. though the frequency of attacks will still be higher and the damage lost will be a little faster than a full armor set, but the combination is still fairly nice.

now you gotta think of how your playing, if your melee, chances are those 2 scenarios are gonna be fairly common and you'll get surrounded a lot. going pure evasion is probably not the best idea, though its not like its not viable. just a lot difficult to deal with damage spikes that you werent prepared for. but if your ranged, you'll find yourself in the first scenario more often because your kiting, enemies wont be hitting you as often and chances are you wont be surrounded too much. thus evasion works better for that play style. just make sure you take an ability that will help you get out quickly if you do find yourself trapped.

hope that helps with the defense choice

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DarkenDragon wrote:

though this is also a risky way of playing since there are always a small chance that the enemy can get a few lucky shots in a row and thus you'd be done for.

This never happens with Evasion if you're just fighting one enemy. If you have 50%+ chance to evade against that monster, it will never hit you twice in a row.

Where luck comes in is in critical hit rolls and in which monster lands a hit when taking on many monsters at once.

I was talking more about if you had 5 or 6 enemies attacking you at the same time, and they get lucky with a string of all of them hitting you at the same time. or even if it was 3 of them, sure you have a 50% chance of evading their attacks, but you also have a 50% chance you'll get hit as well. so its not like if 1 hits, the other 4-5 enemies will all miss.