Can someone explain armor & evasion to me like I'm an idiot?

Can anyone explain how the Armor/Evasion systems works? Seriously, I need this broken down like I'm about ten years.

I'm apparently too dumb to figure this out, and all the forum posts I can find on the topic seem to use pretty complex formulas that beguile my casual-gamer senses.

I'm running a duelist, and I can't for the life of me figure out what I should emphasize with my gear - armor or evasion.

To complicate this issue, I don't understand how the various skills within one's build effect these stats; skills like Leather & Steel, Iron Reflexes, and Steel Skin - to name the ones I've identified.

Any help would be appreciated - I'm sure others have this question too.

Armour: Your basic physical deffense. Adds physical damage reduction meaning you only get hit a portion of the physical damage dealt to you. EX. You get hit 100 damage but you have a 50% physical damage reduction. You will only take 50 damage.

Evasion: your chance of evading damage dealt to you completely. EX: If you get hit 100 damage but you have high enough evasion you can potentially take 0 damage because you evaded it.


hope that helps any

Jared pretty much summed up how armor and evasion reduce damage, but here's a little bit more about those special cases you asked about, and a few notes on how they compare throughout the game.

Let's pretend your hero has 100 evasion, and 100 armor for everything, because those are nice round numbers.

Leather and Steel says it gives a 24% increase to both armor and evasion, so this one is pretty straight forward.

With leather and steel you have 100+24 evasion and 100+24 armor, or 124 evasion and 124 armor.

Here's a quick description of Iron Reflexes, and then I'll give some simple examples.

Iron Reflexes converts your evasion rating into armor rating, and here's the order it uses: Apply buffs to evasion rating to find total evasion rating ==> Add evasion rating to armor rating, and set evasion to 0 ==> Apply armor buffs to new armor rating.

First example is Iron Reflexes without any other percent buffs:

100 evasion and 100 armor becomes 200 armor and 0 evasion.

Next example is Iron Reflexes with just one Leather and Steel node:

100 evasion and 100 armor ==> 124 evasion and 100 armor ==> 224 armor ==> 224 + 48 armor.
If the last step was confusing, think about it like this 24 of the 224 armor came from the evasion boost, and the other 200 came from basic defense. The armor boost only applies to the 200 from basic defense, so you add 24% of 200, or 48.

Finally the more complicated example is Iron Reflexes with Leather and Steel and Steel Skin:

100 evasion and 100 armor ==> 124 evasion and 100 armor ==> 224 armor ==> 224 +48 +60 armor, which is 332 armor.


That's the math on how the buffs work. Now I'll give you my 2 cents on how to stack defenses, and how they work. The first thing to notice is that if you evade and attack, your armor never matters, because you dodged the attack. Technically this doesn't mean you should ignore if you have high evasion (if you have estimates on how much magic damage you're taking, and have all your current and base defense levels you can make a model for it, but that's getting complicated), but usually it's easiest to focus on one type of defense.

The next important thing is that armor doesn't actually scale that well against high damage. 1000 armor reduces more damage if you get hit twice for 200 damage each than if you get hit once for 400 damage. Endurance charges can make up for this, because each charge gives a fixed 5% damage reduction on top of your armor, so you can end up with exceptionally high mitigation using armor and charges, but your charges need to be up.

The rule of thumb I'm using in builds is use iron reflexes with leather and steel nodes and evasion gear if I want to play a heavy blocking build with unwavering stance, and/or plan on utilizing enduring cry. Right now, I'm considering an evasion duelist or armor/evasion hybrid duelist, because evasion scales really well as long as you have enough hp to survive the hits you take. I'm concerned that it will be too hard to have meaningful armor while keeping evasion high and having enough hp to survive magic damage (which ignores evasion and armor).

Also I guess I should point out that Evasion isn't random. The devs are using a system that eliminates streaks so that if you have a high chance to evade an attack, you won't get hit multiple times in a row due to being unlucky.

A 80% chance to evade (an even level target) still translates into evading 4 in 5 attacks though.

Block is still entirely random though. As is the Dodge mechanic for Acrobatics.

Dodge and block being totally random is actually a pretty huge buff in mitigation for EV characters since they aren't operating on a true random system.

Primarily because Dodge/Block is calculated "after" EV IIRC, which means that you can fail to evade but still dodge/block.

Unless that's changed.

This has been very helpful!

"

Achoros wrote:

Next example is Iron Reflexes with just one Leather and Steel node:

100 evasion and 100 armor ==> 124 evasion and 100 armor ==> 224 armor ==> 224 + 48 armor.
If the last step was confusing, think about it like this 24 of the 224 armor came from the evasion boost, and the other 200 came from basic defense. The armor boost only applies to the 200 from basic defense, so you add 24% of 200, or 48.

Leather and Steel does not double-dip with evasion when you have Iron Reflexes. It gives you 24% increased armor, so your 200 goes up to 248, not 272. It's not intuitive but the devs specifically programmed L&S to be an exception.

"

Finally the more complicated example is Iron Reflexes with Leather and Steel and Steel Skin:

100 evasion and 100 armor ==> 124 evasion and 100 armor ==> 224 armor ==> 224 +48 +60 armor, which is 332 armor.

This shouldn't be any more complicated. Steel skin gives +30% armor, Leather and Steel give +24%, so together that's 54%. 200*1.54 = 308 armor.

i am wrong :) so deleted my post.

"

Leather and Steel does not double-dip with evasion when you have Iron Reflexes. It gives you 24% increased armor, so your 200 goes up to 248, not 272. It's not intuitive but the devs specifically programmed L&S to be an exception.

"

Finally the more complicated example is Iron Reflexes with Leather and Steel and Steel Skin:

100 evasion and 100 armor ==> 124 evasion and 100 armor ==> 224 armor ==> 224 +48 +60 armor, which is 332 armor.

This shouldn't be any more complicated. Steel skin gives +30% armor, Leather and Steel give +24%, so together that's 54%. 200*1.54 = 308 armor.

You're right. I went back to check the post from Mark at ggg that explained it, and it turned out that I'd misinterpreted some of the sample numbers he used and then completely misunderstood the point.

Leather and Steel DOES NOT double dip.

Could you link to that post, Achoros? I'd like to read a bit more about this subject. Thank you.