Evasion vs Armor : some feedback

Evasion is not the counter to armour. This false notion apparently exists due to IR existing. Evasion is the counter to mitigation. Even the last line is not entirely true as GGG design is more about life vs evasion than mitigation against evasion.

Attributes of evasion:
High life
Quick heals (flasks/ high leach)
Evasion + Dodge

Comes in the form of:

Life nodes

Dexterity
Evasion Rating (also from lvl-ing up)

Avoid stun/ status ailment (too many ailments, requiring too many nodes. The nodes are strong, but due to: burn, shock, freeze, chill, stun the investment is too costly. This elemental avoidance clsuster is a direct reflection of the Diamond skin cluster at Marauder side).

Acrobatics (dodge)
Phase acrobatics (spell dodge)
Flask recovery


Attributes of mitigation:
Decreases physical incoming damage
Decreases critical damage
Decreases elemental damage

Comes in the form of:

Elemental resistance
Elemental adaptation
Reduced extra critical damage
Armour
Life regen
Life leach (in regen form)
Life on hit (low quantity)
Life on kill
Base life
Endurance charges


There is no significant difference between the amount of life in the dex vs strength area. In fact for build variation (free movement) The left side or strength side is better getting raw HP.

The reason why armour or mitigation is better is because the life there is enough for mitigation to work out and the life pool for evasion is far too small. This partially has also to do with how enemies are designed. End game they hit too hard and crits are far to deadly. It is not only they hit too hard, but the too hard hits are bundled on top of each other. There is 0 monster creativity in encounters. Go into a zone and you face maybe up to 3 different monster types? Want some rhoas, here is a map full of them in groups of 3 up to 6. The coves has the most interesting monster combo, but pretty much everything spawns in bundles of their own kind.

Now things have been improving, monster dmg was lowered and you can evade rhoas. However the lifepool being lower hasn't done anything for evasion w.r.t. the hit amount. The other thing that is improved is how evasion is working against enemies (faster, accurate, higher crit enemies), but this was a change needed to get evasion to work more properly.

On the mitigation side there could be love for more forms of mitigation and emphasis on mitigation rather than life. On the evasion end there could be more life, a lot more life in the sense that you can skip life nodes in favor of build variation. Simple logic would also make it so that if you grab all the life and have 15k life you do at max 1k dps. The open lay-out and freedom of skills is preventing this part from getting balanced out.

If you got 10k ES and hardly no life (assume 650k from being lvl 100) than ailment avoidance becomes very interesting, which is subpar to resistance, which is taken into account of the ailment calculation and damage, while avoidance only treats damage. Which shows that avoidance works with large numbers, the same game is true for evasion, it is why both are in the dex area. Perhaps the status ailment system is flawed (at the core). Ideally resistance should be about the damage, while suffering from dangerous ailments and avoidance takes the damage, but evades the dangerous ailments. Too bad you need resistance for evasion too and resistance is what comes on gear and endgame you want all 3 maxed out. A bad resistance design, d3 and torch light 2 do it better.

You have to up the life in the dex area, it is a start, but a start that requires a massive overhaul due the dex area being connected to the rest of the tree. Minor result can be booked and stay balanced, but I don't seem room with the way things are to allow big changes.


As a longtime devmoon follower his evasion characters haven't been long lived and quite a few builds are more than frustrating to play long term (for a hack n slash too much micromanagement). The best I've seen is lvl69 maps and that is with rather insane gear and some people like me giving him bro deals on pieces (actually just how prices should be). He isn't building endgame pwn builds, so it not a flaw of him. He tries to play different, but if a whole game mechanic is so under powered compared to other mechanics the design is off. Too bad it isn't just one thing but a myriad of things.

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ancalagon3000 wrote:

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Autocthon wrote:

It's not whether I'd play Evasion in a nasty map, it's whether I'd even bother going in. And I wouldn't, I'd trade it to someone who has a death wish because its just not worth running a map with a good chance of killing me regardless of evasion or armour

You dont even see your logical fallacy here? Saying its just as good as stacking armor when you wouldnt even bother try it because you know it will get you killed. The whole point of going tanky is for those maps, you can survive random maps and lunaris runs with low evasion, low armor, low health if you know what you are doing. Shit, you just proved you have no idea what you are on about and you have been theorycrafting all along.

You've COMPLETELY ignored what I have been saying.

That crazy ma

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Autocthon wrote:

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ancalagon3000 wrote:

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Autocthon wrote:

It's not whether I'd play Evasion in a nasty map, it's whether I'd even bother going in. And I wouldn't, I'd trade it to someone who has a death wish because its just not worth running a map with a good chance of killing me regardless of evasion or armour

You dont even see your logical fallacy here? Saying its just as good as stacking armor when you wouldnt even bother try it because you know it will get you killed. The whole point of going tanky is for those maps, you can survive random maps and lunaris runs with low evasion, low armor, low health if you know what you are doing. Shit, you just proved you have no idea what you are on about and you have been theorycrafting all along.

You've COMPLETELY ignored what I have been saying.

That crazy ma

Yes I have, and you are not making sense

'evasion is just as good, if not better, than armor. But I would skip the tough modded maps an armor character can face. Derp'

Stop trolling my ass, and instead of throwing math and circle jerking me, show me actual proof of the power of evasion.

I did not say "I would skip the tough modded maps an armour character can face."

I Said "I would not do that tough modded map even with an armour character". They are COMPLETELY different statements.

I say "I wouldn't do this with anything" you say I say "I wouldn't do this with evasion" and try to use that version of the statement as an argument against me. There are several people currently leveling Evasion based characters so we'll see what they say in a few weeks. I have a hybrid character to level to show the effect of Enfeeble +EV/AR gear.

And finally:

Evasion doesn't tend to get tested because teh gear barrier is higher than for armour. That's a side effect of having a lower OHKO threshold (also why CI gets taken late when you have already great gear to put on for it). Once gear is at high levels EV finally reaches the point where you're reliably dropping enough incoming attacks for safety.

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Autocthon wrote:

I did not say "I would skip the tough modded maps an armour character can face."

I Said "I would not do that tough modded map even with an armour character". They are COMPLETELY different statements.

Yeah but its been proven that stacking armor lets you face such maps ... kabancheng, nastakanoth have absurdly high amounts of armor and will do any map. Both play hc / onslaught.

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Autocthon wrote:

Evasion doesn't tend to get tested because teh gear barrier is higher than for armour.

orly? thats why? the rich streamers playing hardcore dont take evasion melee characters there because of that reason? d3rp

give me a friggin break man

For your own sake, if you are going to present an argument, refrain from such absurdities in the future.

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ancalagon3000 wrote:

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Autocthon wrote:

I did not say "I would skip the tough modded maps an armour character can face."

I Said "I would not do that tough modded map even with an armour character". They are COMPLETELY different statements.

Yeah but its been proven that stacking armor lets you face such maps ... kabancheng, nastakanoth have absurdly high amounts of armor and will do any map. Both play hc / onslaught.

Absurdly. High. As in you have to be rich and pure gearing for it to accomplish it.

Hardly proof that Evasion doesn't work. Only proof that stacking absurd amounts of Armour works.

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orly? thats why? the rich streamers playing hardcore dont take evasion melee characters there because of that reason? d3rp

give me a friggin break man

For your own sake, if you are going to present an argument, refrain from such absurdities in the future.

The rish streamers playing hardcore don;t level EV characters because until you're in best of the best gear survival is a crapshoot (40% evade sucks so much worse than 50% it's not funny). And if you've ever payed any attention to the way they level they level using proven efficient tactics, and then switch to proven builds (CI tank). Why would they ever bother testing Evasion when there's a build they know works?

There's a few high-level streamers who do use EV builds. Devmoon was running an EV acrobat for a long time before the EV buffs. Don't know what he's doing now.

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Autocthon wrote:

Only proof that stacking absurd amounts of Armour works.

Because thats totally unlike what I am trying to get accross! lol

To get something like 40k armor you dont need to spend tons of exalts... Do I have to do the math as well?

Now you are making it into a gear issue ... its not like evasion doesnt need evasion gear.

You really like to one shot your arguments.

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Autocthon wrote:

The rish streamers playing hardcore don;t level EV characters because until you're in best of the best gear survival is a crapshoot (40% evade sucks so much worse than 50% it's not funny). And if you've ever payed any attention to the way they level they level using proven efficient tactics, and then switch to proven builds (CI tank). Why would they ever bother testing Evasion when there's a build they know works?

There's a few high-level streamers who do use EV builds. Devmoon was running an EV acrobat for a long time before the EV buffs. Don't know what he's doing now.

Those players can get the best of gear, period.

Checked this devmoon's profile, he has one armor duelist and one evasion ranger **being levelled**.

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ancalagon3000 wrote:

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Autocthon wrote:

Only proof that stacking absurd amounts of Armour works.

Because thats totally unlike what I am trying to get accross! lol

To get something like 40k armor you dont need to spend tons of exalts... Do I have to do the math as well?

Now you are making it into a gear issue ... its not like evasion doesnt need evasion gear.

You really like to one shot your arguments.

You haven't actually proven your arguments. You've consistently attempted to put words in my mouth, and not actually spent any effort on showing that Evasion is unviable.

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Autocthon wrote:

Those players can get the best of gear, period.

Checked this devmoon's profile, he has one armor duelist and one evasion ranger **being levelled**.

Think he rerolled at some point. He was around level 70 last I checked.

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Autocthon wrote:

Think he rerolled at some point. He was around level 70 last I checked.

one can only wonder why

Some update with my character.

She's at lvl 70, I managed to finish the third act thanks to new pieces of equipment :


I already tried some low-level maps, Dried Lake and Dunes, and it didn't end badly as I expected ^^
But for now I'll stay at Docks until level 74-75 because I need more life and I would like to find better weapons.
Basically, I can take some hits without dying, and the Life Leech helps a lot not to die.

With my AOE Dual Strike I can deal around 3k of damage, and 5.8k with the single target version.
Defensively speaking, I have 2.5k life and 50% chance to evade (I have the same chest since lvl 50...).

When I'm against dangerous monsters Enfeeble is my best friend, I don't feel (yet ?) the need of Endurance Charges.