Counter-attack Gems vs Evasion

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When is the last time you saw someone pick up a carnal armor/sadist garb and be like "oh man, just the base I was looking for to craft my ultimate armor piece"?

I actually did (and now I have a 6L carnal armour). I played for long time a CI - aegis aurora - IR build. In that set-up evasion>=armor gear (and +% armor > +% evasion in skill points). In fact in every IR build evasion>armor.

Just to be clear. I agree with you; nevertheless some build still opt for hybrid evasion+ES gear.

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Daniel_GGG wrote:

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CharanJaydemyr wrote:

PS I'm not sure about 'on dodge' conditions. They might exist/be possible.

Nope

#PoEngine

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entalpia wrote:

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When is the last time you saw someone pick up a carnal armor/sadist garb and be like "oh man, just the base I was looking for to craft my ultimate armor piece"?

I actually did (and now I have a 6L carnal armour). I played for long time a CI - aegis aurora - IR build. In that set-up evasion>=armor gear (and +% armor > +% evasion in skill points). In fact in every IR build evasion>armor.

Just to be clear. I agree with you; nevertheless some build still opt for hybrid evasion+ES gear.

In that case you may be using the actual ES/EV piece, but you're really AR/ES. You'd get the same benefit from a saints hauberk or a holy chainmail (probably more, since you aren't wasting your dex bonus).

I have seen that video, the build was pretty impressive. Guy was literally invincible. Don't think he could do atziri today with that build though.

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CharanJaydemyr wrote:

Okay, this is all starting to sink in now.

The new either/or for melee appears to be without counter attacks, relying on high evasion+acrobatics (shield optional), OR high armour/es+block. The potency of a dual wield riposte is likely why dual wield block has been hit so hard.

I didn't know how these new skills work (because GGG's communication skills are as excellent as ever), but now that I've seen it (equip gem, purely reactive on block/damage taken, WITH a cooldown), I get it.

Block and evasion have been effectively made a choice now. The old 'damage avoidance jigsaw puzzle' of block+evasion+dodge has been scrapped, give or take.

Choose the counter attack route and you're sacrificing a fair bit of damage avoidance for damage output. Dual wield riposte is especially potent there.


Choose the passive avoidance route and you're not benefiting from the new gems.

What this has done, for me, is made the game harder BUT skilldrasil planning easier, since you no longer benefit from hitting quite so many nodes (block, acrobatics, evasion%ers). You simply choose which of the two suit you best and go from there.

I'll iterate: the counter-attack gems are the reward for going non-evasion style. Thematically, if you evade/dodge, you should be able to counter, but I guess that's an 'active attack' in PoE's terms. But if you block (or parry, as I see it if you're dual-wielding), then you are immediately set up for a counter attack.

It makes sense, but only if you squint and think like a GGG dev.

...Sorry if this is bleeding obvious to everyone else, but I am glad I finally get it.

Edit: block and evasion can still play nice but you'd need a lot of block nodes to make it really worth not taking that 40% dodge, or to deal with the block reduction.

Now, Phase Acrobatics is a whole other story...

I can see how the counter attack gems are useful for softcore characters, but in hardcore, the point is to pretty much straight up avoid damage, especially once you start progressing towards mid level 70 maps as the damage escalates to a point where it's not safe to face tank.

In theory you could run Vengance on top of a second counter attack gem and pretty much stand there and tank if you get enough procs, but that's risky as hell.

The whole point behind the counterattack gems was to buff armor, block, and melee.

Armor via vengance, block via riposte and reckoning, and melee in general via all three.

Most melee builds either focus on lot's of block, or lots of armor, or both. So the skills fit in just fine with melee and make them actually rewarding to get up close and personal with enemies.

Most would say melee has needed a huge buff, in general, especially with what has happened to block, but now these gems highly reward melee characters for getting up in the enemy's face, something that other builds don't get.

I did a caster trapper. .. after some theocrafting I come to conclusion that at level 85 he would barely hit 2k hp, low regen and low leech... actually llv 74 3.4k ES and 1.2k hp, able to go low life...

The "Hidden"evasion shipped with poe is manual dodge:
For exemple when I see a pack of leapfrogs, instead of poping my granite and my sapphire (ill still do desync is your friend) il just po my quicksilverlay some mine and decoy totem

A contrario, when I see a large pack of TTBs or or frenzied chimera I just run in the middle and let reckoning clear the whole pack.

You quickly kniw what monster you can play and what you canno play with... like playing with 71 brutus with an eva char... he hit you..then usually he willl miss 2 times.... or you hit him, he miss, you run away then rinse and repeat

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CharanJaydemyr wrote:

Okay, this is all starting to sink in now.

The new either/or for melee appears to be without counter attacks, relying on high evasion+acrobatics (shield optional), OR high armour/es+block. The potency of a dual wield riposte is likely why dual wield block has been hit so hard.

I didn't know how these new skills work (because GGG's communication skills are as excellent as ever), but now that I've seen it (equip gem, purely reactive on block/damage taken, WITH a cooldown), I get it.

Block and evasion have been effectively made a choice now. The old 'damage avoidance jigsaw puzzle' of block+evasion+dodge has been scrapped, give or take.

Choose the counter attack route and you're sacrificing a fair bit of damage avoidance for damage output. Dual wield riposte is especially potent there.


Choose the passive avoidance route and you're not benefiting from the new gems.

What this has done, for me, is made the game harder BUT skilldrasil planning easier, since you no longer benefit from hitting quite so many nodes (block, acrobatics, evasion%ers). You simply choose which of the two suit you best and go from there.

I'll iterate: the counter-attack gems are the reward for going non-evasion style. Thematically, if you evade/dodge, you should be able to counter, but I guess that's an 'active attack' in PoE's terms. But if you block (or parry, as I see it if you're dual-wielding), then you are immediately set up for a counter attack.

It makes sense, but only if you squint and think like a GGG dev.

...Sorry if this is bleeding obvious to everyone else, but I am glad I finally get it.

Edit: block and evasion can still play nice but you'd need a lot of block nodes to make it really worth not taking that 40% dodge, or to deal with the block reduction.

Now, Phase Acrobatics is a whole other story...

Only a full month and laughing and belittling people who already understood it prior to you, because they try to explain it.

Praise be our mighty ruler.

Peace,

-Boem-

(i would reference to your thread, but . . .)

I think you guys are not only overthinking GGG's processes but you're also thinking in the wrong actual direction. I highly doubt the logic that went into this gem design was "counter attacks are the result of a block IRL, whereas evasion benefits direct attacks IRL". I'm not saying GGG isn't crazy enough to think that way, it's definitely a possibility.

Granted, I have no real basis for this opinion, but as someone who has done some coding I'd think the devs look at the game from a coding point of view. They needed to add gems that would only benefit melee to "buff melee" when they nerf block (because melee was already struggling to survive). The only real scenario where this happens is when you rely on melee attack damage to do the work - any other route and you enable ST and dagger/scepter/staff casters to benefit from the same buff. So it makes sense for the gems to behave the way they do, triggering melee attacks upon certain scenarios.

The problem with this logic is melee never had issues dealing damage or proccing CWDT. They already take shit loads of damage to the face and they have plenty of damage-dealing options as well.

The problem is, and always has been, that the mobs in this game can scale damage just as easily as the player can through multiple stacking mechanisms - crit, haste aura, added damage aura, significant added damage aura, plus curses, plus all of the same on a map mod doubling all of those stacks. It can get really stupid really fast, and there are some modifiers that nobody will survive if they run into the wrong combo. This is where ranged benefits the most, as they can safely one-shot mobs from off screen before they even have a chance to react. Melee don't have this option.

What these gems SHOULD have done, is deal damage and then provide a defensive component based upon that damage.
IE, riposte - when you block an attack, you counter attack, and the damage you deal is added to your character as a defensive buff similar to ES. This allows melee to mitigate some of that extra damage they are forced to take, and won't benefit casters really at all. ST will still get some bonus, but much of their modifiers are projectile mods so they won't benefit quite as much.
Same for vengeance - you get hit, maybe in the case of vengeance it provides an automatic amount of instant life leech based on weapon damage. This would improve melee survivability in those facetank scenarios, and again wouldn't benefit ST or caster as much or at all.
For reckoning, since this is a shield-based skill, maybe you counter attack and then some component of damage dealt is added to buff your next chance to block. Or maybe it adds the damage to your shields stats somehow. Idk, shield is a tricky one, easy to trigger, difficult to balance. Maybe just do life leech again.

Bottom line, these gems needed to add a defensive buff of some kind (one that would only benefit melee), not an offensive or trigger/utility buff. The biggest problem with this concept is spectral throw, it really fucks up any attempt to balance melee anymore.