Armour and Evasion

Is it just me or does anyone else thing that armour and evasion notable nodes just suck? Even then i feel like it just sucks as a defensive set up unless im running surrounded and scavenge plaiting just to get enough of both stats so i can be okay to run it.

Yeah, I agree for a few reasons.

1) No matter how much secondary defenses you stack (Armour and Evasion), end-game bosses will 1-shot you, anyway. GGG wants you to dance the boss mechanics. In that case, why bother getting defense? Just go full offense.
2) I find primary defenses, like move speed and HP/ES a lot more helpful. Just get out of the way.
3) Even tertiary defenses (Stun Threshold, block, etc) seem a lot better, in terms of skill tree. 2 nodes for ailment threshold often saves you from getting frozen or shocked, but you could get like 6 nodes of armour or evasion, and just not feel their effect.

IMO evasion and armour are kind of pointless in this kind of game, and they should be taken out.

Can’t speak for evasion


armour though is in a great spot


Energy shield and it’s mechanics are just over the top. Which the devs acknowledged prior to league launch in ziggys interview.

I agree that armour is an great spot, but im not talking about armour as your sole main defense(excluding other layers of defenses). Im talking about armour AND evasion hybrid builds, because those comparatively to ES/Eva and Armour/ES,it really has nothing that makes it worth while picking up. I even go as far to make that comparison that running one of the 3 defenses solely is still better than a hybrid armour/evasion set up. Aside from using unquies to get it to function in the first place,i feel it just needs more in its hybrid nodes that would make it okay to use on its side of the board. The only node I see that is a must have is Leather Bound Gauntlets. Everything else is either a side grade or becomes irrelevant in end game. One in particular is completely useless because it requires you be on low life which is terrible for that type of build.
I feel im incentived to use armour or evasion because I get more out of that, than I do going into a hybrid build of it. Where as in other hybrid builds that does not feel like the case at all.

I found hybrid AR/EV to be extremely strong, but I did play on Witch Hunter with 4 ascendancy points into Sorcery Ward, as well as on a Warbringer with 75 block chance.

Felt very tanky.

Worth getting life regen on gear - DoTs were an issue otherwise. The nodes that make you immune to either poison or bleed based on your helmet rolls are worth taking. Stun charm is also literally a lifesaver. Would probably pair with dousing and bleed/poison - whichever one I'm not immune to from that one node.

I also tested out Glancing Blows - works pretty well if you're going AR/EV with a shield. Between block and evade, you end up avoiding most damage despite having unlucky evasion, and you can get some pretty decent deflection chance happening. If you have some decent recoup or life-on-block it really gives the "glancing blows" feeling that you're just shrugging everything off. You also still get to use "raise shield" if you want to make sure you avoid a hit.

I'll also add that with high enough evasion+block taking the Bulwark node removes a lot of the punishment from mis-rolling away from boss slams and I think people really sleep on it. The node specifies that your dodge roll doesn't automatically avoid hits anymore but you take 30% less damage while dodge rolling.

For normal mobs you still will block/evade while dodge rolling so it doesn't really feel much different in those instances - sometimes it is better if you're trying to keep up any "when hit" buffs actually - but where it shines is actually on the unavoidable boss slams that you are trying to dodge roll out of but miss, or panic dodge-rolling away from something chaotic. So you end up being much safer in the moments that might actually kill you.

So high enough block and/or evasion is a requirement for the Bulwark node though - or insanely high armour I guess - because you really will notice dodge roll not avoiding automatically otherwise. You'll experience things like getting frozen/shocked/projectile shotgunned kinda often.

I also liked how much easier it was to get reduced damage from critical strikes going AR/EV - more accessible on tree and it rolls on shields. The tree felt more flexible in this area - I could get +max resistances on my shield or take the nodes that gave it to me under certain conditions. I was also immune to shock from the tree.

A nicely rolled Dastard armour and with life, strength + decent AR/EV rolls on all my gear, I had 3100 life and a tremendous amount of Sorcery Ward for the witch hunter. The Warbringer had higher block, and an additional 10% reduced physical damage reduction from Jade Heritage, and used glancing blows - had like a 90% deflection chance, and still a 1/3 chance to evade on top of the block.

They both died the same way so I'm pretty sure I'm gonna call it a build weakness I should have prepared for: They died on maps I used 2+ Abyss precursors on with increased %damage, chance to bleed, and reduced life recovery - I had +2 rare mobs from abyss, and I'd get ganked by 3+ abyssal rares and bleed out while trying to run away. One time there was a Shadewalker involved, the other had one of those Soul Siphoners and I was using an Xbow and basically disabled my own ability to attack. Bleed charm was out of charges since the whole map had bleed chance. Need to find a bleed immunity if I'm gonna remake some version of them another time if I want to push them 95+ in hc.