Duelist Level 30+- Build - Dual Wield Iron Reflex Unwavering Stance - Need opinions/dev advice !

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dreatlan wrote:

Not this again. I have always shot down Iron Reflex builds. My reason is simple. You are a Duelist who has both Strength and Dexterity. Use it. The Armor and Evade, armor pieces are good when you get the Steel Skin and Leather and Steel nodes. I have around 45% Physical Damage reduction and 52% Evade thanks to that system (with Grace on).

If that doesn't satisfy you, get Plate Mail and use the Armor Aura. There is a Unique Plate Mail chest piece in the game that has no sockets but, gives you +1000 life. That may be hard to get due to prices right now so if you can't get a hold of that I have seen some Yellow chest armor pieces with 900 Evade and Armor. That is a lot when stacked with Grace.

Here is how I would build a Dual Wielder. I trade 3 Life Nodes to get this build but, I still have 9 in place plus 3% Health Regen (4-5% with Endurance Charge) and 2% Life Leech to back the build up. Check it out.

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgQBmSu9gavFR35lTYTZbmnEuNX4vqfv42NwNJPSTcAP1e1Y21Pfm4OE73Tteu9gSwUtQKAhYHTxnrkY20OcwYus6tP8704otSjb3-8dymCIVamXtKy64dq_1USesHPstvH0U7sl3xv6pBlbr90NOrOQCvzFZ6CHdkp90O73o2J5Ady-ingNC2F5aMEEVbWezdIhVw3ZYWoeqBjyL2o7IPBE5xznud3vDudSVElfP_ZIjM9QUFhjxtg9_Hy4KS6RzrvtF-r7RSThtxc4llivRmk26GSjg3yoB2eAeEkYTRIgXovP-IcppzD3vg6tFHU67TIJ

While running armor and evasion seems like a great idea. Basically you have to give up one for the other. Stack armor and use grace + arrow dodging as all of your evasion. Stack evasion and use a little bit of armor. You can't really keep both at respectable levels. If you go with hybrid gear you'll get like 2-3k armor and 20-40% evasion, so you are being hit constantly and your DR is too low to absorb any damage.

I've done it and ransagy did it, he put out a thread with his experiences and has basically quit out of frustration (he's a diamond supporter). I'm not even sure it's a situation godly gear could get you out of, you might as well use all evasion gear with unwavering stance, it's about the same feeling as using hybrid gear.

Duelist's options (and all armor/evasion users options) are acro or IR at this time. Evasion sucks without acro and armor is easier with IR.

That was also my thought, I know that the maths favor evasion ... but I tend to die less.
For the guy who has 1400 dps... you must have a hell of an equipment with the passives you have.

That is the beauty of a Duelist Moosifer. You are more then capable of focusing one or the other. I actually could get more armor when using my Hybrid build. Instead I chose to up the evasion rating using Grace. If I wanted more armor I could change to my armor aura. Or I could Get even more by stacking plate with the aura.

Even if I am using Plate Mail I still get armor from the Leather and Steel. It's a flexible system.

When I made these posts I was trying to show you could go more then one way. I wasn't saying go Hybrid armor. That is the advice I always give... Build what works for you and the build you are running. Just don't do anything silly like Iron Reflexes because you make the system less flexible.

Basically the theory behind why stacking evasion and armor fails is that when an incoming attack comes in it checks your evasions then your armor armor. If you evade the attack then all the armor reduction is wasted. If you don't evade the attack then all your evasion is wasted and you still get hit for more. Also just for sustainability the spikiness of evasion hurts you in the long run if you don't have atleast 50% evasion to evade at a constant rate. Also duelist can easily pick up +90% Armor rating passive. I ran the numbers and it would take 30% armor and 30% er to match even 50% armor.

(30% Armor/ER)

10 attacks for 10 dmg.

7 get through for 7 dmg ea.

49 dmg taken.

(50% Armor)

10 attacks for 10 dmg.

10 get through for 5 dmg ea.

50 dmg taken.

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dreatlan wrote:

That is the beauty of a Duelist Moosifer. You are more then capable of focusing one or the other. I actually could get more armor when using my Hybrid build. Instead I chose to up the evasion rating using Grace. If I wanted more armor I could change to my armor aura. Or I could Get even more by stacking plate with the aura.

Even if I am using Plate Mail I still get armor from the Leather and Steel. It's a flexible system.

When I made these posts I was trying to show you could go more then one way. I wasn't saying go Hybrid armor. That is the advice I always give... Build what works for you and the build you are running. Just don't do anything silly like Iron Reflexes because you make the system less flexible.

Well, no. Mara have armor but can use ES or evasion. Rangers have evasion but can use armor or ES. Duelist is meant to be a mixture of both armor and evasion. While you can use both, both together will never match either separate or rather a focus on one or the other.

You have flexibility in deciding what defense to use, sure, but so does every other class. Armor or evasion with ES hybrid gear works great, Bazz has some good armor/ES CI characters and I had a shadow I liked that was evasion/ES CI. I bailed on my armor/evasion duelist because there's just not enough points to make it work. Either you don't have enough life, armor, evasion or DPS, it's an impossible balancing act. Armor with a little evasion is better just using IR for the extra DR. Evasion with a little armor is better with acro.

@spook_e

Armor doesn't work that flat. It's based on incoming damage DR = armor/(armor + 12*damage). While most people assume it will work out how you say what ends up happening is your evasion works according to stat sheet when at level. But if you don't have high enough armor you are only reducing a small amount of damage from small hits and when you don't evade large hits you take the full damage. Because your evasion isn't high you won't avoid those hits often enough, because your armor isn't high you won't reduce their damage at all.

So 30% armor/EVA

10 attacks for 10 dmg will most realistically be
7 attacks for 8-9 dmg each
So 56-63 damage taken

While 2 attacks for 50 damage
Could end up with being hit by both, or avoiding 1 (on average at most) for full damage
50 or 100 damage taken.

And without endurance charges you won't be seeing 50% DR period. On maps that means you need 24k armor to be cutting most white mob damage in half, nevermind unique/rare mobs.

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dreatlan wrote:

That is the beauty of a Duelist Moosifer. You are more then capable of focusing one or the other. I actually could get more armor when using my Hybrid build. Instead I chose to up the evasion rating using Grace. If I wanted more armor I could change to my armor aura. Or I could Get even more by stacking plate with the aura.

Even if I am using Plate Mail I still get armor from the Leather and Steel. It's a flexible system.

When I made these posts I was trying to show you could go more then one way. I wasn't saying go Hybrid armor. That is the advice I always give... Build what works for you and the build you are running. Just don't do anything silly like Iron Reflexes because you make the system less flexible.

Hello there. Other people have come by and tried to be nice to you, but you will not get that from me; instead you will get the had truth because you are spreading misinformation:

You are wrong. You have no idea what you are talking about, largely because you have no understanding of how the game systems function. Stop talking, because you will confuse new players and get hardcore players killed.

Here's how armor functions:

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Damage Reduction = Armour / ( Armour + (12 * Damage) )

Reference: http://en.pathofexilewiki.com/wiki/Armour

What this means is that you need TWELVE TIMES the amount of armor (roughly) as compared to the damage of a hit to reduce it by 50%.

What is ALSO means is that if you don't have a LOT of armor, it will fail you at the times when you need it the most: when you take a big hit.

Here's how evasion functions:

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Chance to Evade = 1 - Attacker's Accuracy / ( Attacker's Accuracy + (Defender's Evasion / 4) ^ 0.8 )

Reference: http://en.pathofexilewiki.com/wiki/Evasion

What this means is that your chance to evade an attack is ALSO a function of the attacker's accuracy, and as you get less evasion and your attacker gains more accuracy, you actually get hit EXPONENTIALLY (not linearly) more often.

Here is why Iron Reflexes works:

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Dexterity also grants certain passive bonuses:

Every 10 dexterity grants +20 accuracy
Every 10 dexterity grants +2% evasion

Reference: http://en.pathofexilewiki.com/wiki/Dexterity

You see that "Every 10 dexterity grants +2% evasion" part? When you have Iron Reflexes your evasion is applied as such:

Evasion is totaled.
"Increased" and "Reduced" is applied.
"More" and "Less" is applied.
The final value is entirely converted to Armor.

This means that when you have Iron Reflexes, you actually don't want any armor with Armor on it; you ACTUALLY want nothing but Evasion, which is then increased by your Dexterity score.

This gives you the possibility of having far more Armor rating than a Marauder, since Strength does not increase Armor rating. This is especially true since pure Evasion armor has higher Evasion ratings than pure Armor armor has of armor ratings. Also, evasion rating naturally rises every level, and THAT free rating gets converted to armor as well.

If you take your utterly off base suggestion of using both armor and evasion instead of focusing on one or the other, you end up with a "middle of the road" build that neither avoids a lot of attacks nor reduces a lot of damage. Why?

Because the damage you reduce through armor is a function of the incoming damage as compared to your armor rating, and the chance to evade a hit is a function of the enemy's accuracy. As enemies get more damage and accuracy (i.e. their level increases) your "middle of the road" suggestion gets progressively WORSE than someone who is stacking Evasion or Armor -- you aren't getting hit twice as often and taking twice as much damage as someone who has double the Evasion or double the Armor that you do; you are actually getting hit FIVE TIMES as often and taking FOUR TIMES the damage (roughly -- in reality the numbers are probably worse since monsters get stronger on a sliding scale that favors the monsters, not you).

As such, please stop talking. You are spreading misinformation.

Wow thanks for the input, truth warrior!
From my experience i get much more armor from a high evasion armor than a mix, considering I got IR.
At which point should Ì consider investing in weapons specific skills?

Take damage passives if you feel like your damage is falling so far behind that it is threatening your survival. Remember that damage IS a form of survivability, in that the DPS of an enemy drops to zero once it dies. You need the ability to pare down large packs of enemies, specifically the "glass cannons" like the Lightning Mages in the Battlefront, or your defenses will be constantly overwhelmed and you will die.

Remember that some boss encounters are damage checks as well, such as the Vaal Oversoul that frequently spawns adds. If you don't have the damage to kill the waves of adds as they arise you will get overwhelmed and will die.

However, you shouldn't take more damage passives than absolutely necessary, and you should respec/Orb of Regret out of them if your damage seems over the mark (i.e. you are one-shotting everything) and move those points to survivability to ensure that you don't die when you encounter a particularly tough enemy.

Remember: if you can tank it, you can kill it.

Also remember: it is MUCH easier to get offense from gear than from passives, and MUCH easier to get defense from passives than from gear.

Zephyrus it isn't mis-information I know that. I understand that the Armor system sorta works like the old D&D Roll System with a few differences. I was using examples. There is a million ways to do what I was typing and I was trying to give some insight.

I don't get hard core players killed. There is actually TONS of Hardcore builds that don't have the luxury of Iron Reflexes.

Also I never said go one way or the other. I was showing examples and saying that I do focus on one or the other because that is my preference.

Their decision to do this, is their decision in the end. I am just showing em my ideas and what I do.

So get your facts right before coming after me Zephyrus99. You clearly do not understand anything I said and failed to check the other Hardcore builds that don't have Iron Reflexes. Stop talking Zephyrus K THX BAI.

I agree Moosifer. I am not good at writing but, I try to relay it in a way others can understand. I do fail sometimes though. You seem to understand me though which is good

"K THX BAI"?

Seriously... "K THX BAI"?

You post some drivel that multiple experienced players tear down. You post some more drivel that I annihilate with the weight of references to actual game formulas and an explanation of how the math works.

Your response is "K THX BAI"? That's... comical.

Don't worry -- we're laughing with you. We promise.

...Back to the point at hand, I forgot to remind the OP to use Enduring Cry and to do their best to stack Endurance Charges as high as possible. Here is my current hardcore DW Duelist build that I am working towards:



This build breaks out like this:

1. Go towards the Ranger side first, first filling out the Duelist core then breaking immediately right after getting on the other side of Golem's Blood. Iron Reflexes is more important at low levels than anything else to give you flexibility in choice of gear (pure armor, pure evasion, armor/evasion hybrid). At low levels, just get the best item you can from any armor that doesn't have Energy Shield on it.

2. Build damage early. All of the important damage notables come very early in the build, every single one taken by level 45. After that is done, the build focuses entirely on building defense.

3. Get all three Endurance charge boosts. Because nothing says "don't die" quite like having the ability to run 35% static damage reduction.

4. Keep the build in a state where points can easily be moved to provide more damage or resistances. As you can see, the build goes right by several big dual wield damage circles and is sitting right at the Marauder resistance branch. This allows you to use Regret Orbs to fill in gaps in your defense or offense as you gear changes.