Monster Projectile attacks vs Spells: Phase Acrobatics or Arrow Dodging?

A new thread for a new concern. I still don't quite understand the math behind dodge and evasion, but I've come to realise that maybe Acrobatics/Phase Acrobatics is/are inferior to Arrow Dodging.

Even with 'max' A/PA, I was being pummelled by the skeletons in act 2. 24% chance to dodge is pretty lame. Okay.

But when I hit the forest and beyond, I realised that an even bigger threat (given lack of resistances) are the chaos-spitting snakes and the vaal constructs. Now I assume, since they're not actually emulating a player's skill gem, that these are projectile attacks. In this case, wouldn't Arrow Dodging be of great value?

The problem with this reason is the skeletons also use 'spells' that aren't emulating player spells. The fire skeleton has a fire bolt; the ice skeleton, an ice ball. Neither is a player spell as far as I know.

So I suppose the big question is, what's a projectile attack and what is a spell as far as monsters are concerned? Easy enough to say with players: anything that involves a weapon is an attack, anything with cast time and doesn't require a weapon is a spell. I'd like the same clarity for monster attacks/spells.

As for Arrow Dodging, 'Doubles chance to evade projectile attacks' is a mighty improvement over Phase Acrobatics' rather paltry 24% base chance to dodge spells. I assume Arrow Dodging taps my existing buffed evasion and goes from there.

...This is far superior to Phase Acrobatics, unless Arrow Dodging actually only affects enemy attacks that are fired from bows, i.e. are clearly arrows. The keystone definitely says 'projectile attacks' however.

The 'worst case scenario' is if the chaos damage from the spitting snakes is a spell and not a projectile attack, in which case I settle for the 24% chance to dodge it and hammer those red flasks...

the vaal constructs(not the snakes) are actually spells, and as such go through evasion and armour I believe, but I do not know about the snakes, which I assume are normal projectiles and can be dodged(but would need further testing to see if it does work like that)

I've restarted my Ranger to test it at any rate. With early act 1, of course you encounter far more projectiles than spells -- the sand spitters, rock throwers, etc. This would hold for the higher difficulties as well, I assume.

Anyway, thanks for that bit of feedback. It definitely helps.

Woohoo, thank you for that clarification!

But how does this all get calculated?

Is it dodge% + projectile% + spell% if it's a projectile spell?

is dodge% applicable to spells at all? or do they only get dodged if you have the keystone, and only by the spell dodge %?

It would be good to get clarification on all of this, and if spells can not be dodged, then evasion needs to apply some sort of spell reflection or spell resistance instead of dodge... there's no point in dodging 95% of physical attacks if someone can kill you with a 500 dmg fireball - every time they cast it.

Spells can only be dodged with phase acrobatics. Dodging is completely separate from evasion and block chance, and works similar to blocking, just a % chance to dodge which is unaffected by other stats. Unlike blocking, dodging does not cause you to enter hit/block recovery if the dodged attack/spell would have caused a stun.

In short, blocking, evading, and dodging are all independent of one another. AFAIK dodging is checked first, then evasion, then blocking.

Considering that dodging is derived from evasion, and that they're synonyms of one another, I think you might be wrong there.

So if dodge, projectile dodge and spell dodge are all different, does this mean that your evasion only affects your melee dodge? projectile dodge does not include dodge from evasion but only the 20% you get from the keystone? and spell dodge the same, only 20%?

If this is the case, then surely spell dodge and projectile dodge are either done completely wrong, or they need a bit of a buff, such as using the melee dodge rate to apply a damage reduction to projectile and spell attacks.

Still, my question wasn't answered, so i'll wait for someone else to explain.

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stephendbrown wrote:

Considering that dodging is derived from evasion, and that they're synonyms of one another, I think you might be wrong there.

He's not.
In order, you can dodge something, evade something, block something, or failing all that, get hit in face (and the damage reduced via resists (or armor if it's physical damage)).

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stephendbrown wrote:

So if dodge, projectile dodge and spell dodge are all different, does this mean that your evasion only affects your melee dodge? projectile dodge does not include dodge from evasion but only the 20% you get from the keystone? and spell dodge the same, only 20%?

There's no such thing as projectile dodge. There is:

Acrobatics: lets you dodge attacks
Phase Acrobatics: lets you dodge spells

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does this mean that your evasion only affects your melee dodge?

As I explained in my last post, dodging and evasion are completely independent, evasion rating has no effect on your ability to dodge. Whether or not you dodge has no effect on your ability to evade.