Convince me why Armor + Iron reflexes beats acrobatics.

Hey guys.

Ive mostly built acrobatics characters. But never reached high level (60+) because even if my acrobatics characters feels extremely powerful - I have lost them to desync, crashing and death while loading into a new area with the game not closing etc. So never in combat.

Here is the deal:

With acrobatics, block, evasion and blind you rarely get hit. The argument from anti-acro people is: But WHEN you get hit, you get one shot! However, with 4-5 endurance charges, the low armor youll have already (5-15% as for the -50% armor)and enfeeble. Youll have around 50%-55% reduced damage taken even if you get hit.

So...

Acrobatics/evasion/blind/block/endurance charge/enfeeble: Almost never EVER get hit, but if you do - still mitigate HALF THE DAMAGE.

Iron reflexes + Armor: Youll have what? 80%+ reduced damage? But youll get hit my almost all attacks.

It seems to me that 60% evade, 75% block, 40% dodge, 30% spelldodge and spellblock /w enfeeble and endurance charges is VASTLY superior in EHP vs only having like 80% damage reduction but get hit by all attacks.

So what am I missing?

Hardcore leaves no room for chance.

It doesnt in Standard, it does in Hardcore.

You really want to take the risk of that one big hit coming through when only having 1 life?

Acrobatics are bad just because you waste about 10 skill points for the same mitigation that you can get from armour+evasion alone. Armor + evasion could give you more mitigation then just armor from iron reflexes math wise, but you'll probably need some balanced gear for those that most builds cannot afford.

"

Ouroboros226 wrote:

So what am I missing?

Your mission Jim, should you decide to accept it

Implemented your theory in a real build. Then you do a not-theory comparison between those two builds. Come back and tell us your conclusions.

As always, should you or any of your I.M. Force be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions.

This tape will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck, Jim.

"

nynyny wrote:

It doesnt in Standard, it does in Hardcore.

You really want to take the risk of that one big hit coming through when only having 1 life?

Pretty much this. If it weren't for reflect, I wouldn't be so quick to agree,, but since it does...

I run a pure evasion/acro ranger in standard, and she is amazing. I almost never get hit, and even really hard hits get soaked up by the amount of life I have. Reflect completely fucks evasion though, especially if you use a lioneyes or run RT. Really wish GGG would reconsider their decision to base reflect accuracy off of player accuracy. I think that was a horrible choice they made.

So the damage of reflect is mitigated by armor, but has a 100% chance to reflect damage to you? Meaning that even with 99.999% avoidance, reflect will always do full damage towards you, which only armor can mitigate?

Pardon my ignorance as Ive never reached merciless act2+ with a hardcore acrobatics character. But if this is true, I fully understand why acrobatics isnt viable lategame.

what works best is some armor and lots of evasion

you need capped resists in both cases. you need lots of HP anyway - why? because you dont want to be frozen/shocked all the time. you can dodge some spells, block some more, but many WILL hit you and if they hit you dont want to get frozen and zerged

what also is quite unfun is blind/enfeeble. it is boring to know at lvl 1 that youll use both of these 100% of the time. say what you want - for me this is boring. also - enfeeble is so powerful that i expect a nerf sooner or later. this is by far the best curse available

also. with spell block etc - afaik elemental component from physical strike (like sword swing) from a monster in maps with 'added 95% dmg as fire' cannot be blocked. so if that first hit connects - all dmg phys and elemental counts. and if you dont know yet - this is source of most brutal scaling in this game. high phys dmg monster with added elemental dmg on -max, -resist map. you NEED hp buffer for that.



there is also bleeding and stun - both very painful with low armor. and while you 'granite up' when fighting bosses or rares you rarely do it fighting trash mobs. one crit punture and you are gone.

sadly ev/ar combo gear is expensive because people buy it for iron reflexes (evasion rolls are higher than armor rolls in general) so dont expect to find something like this cheap:




BTW one huge issue - Cast on Dmg Taken. with high ev/acro/block it hardly even triggers

It's not like Acrobatics are worse but ...
with IR you probably get access to more endurance charges, bigger freedom in gear, can stack grace and determination, full benefit from molten shell , arctic armor etc...

But the most important thing is with armor you see what damage you take and you can more or less tell how much you can take. With evasion you take spikes and while entropy ensures even average its much harder to tell.