Isn't Armor (Determination) plus Evasion (Grace) better than Iron Reflexes?

Isn't it better to have 30-50% damage reduction from armor and 30-50% evasion chance (using Grace and Determination) than getting maybe 60-70% reduction from using the Iron Reflexes keystone along with those? Since the lower end of the stacking is easier, you can get decent armor from wearing armor/hybrid gear and taking a few passives and then take care of the lower end of evasion using Grace (and maybe a couple passives here too). I'm wondering this because of 2 things:

1) Armor Degradation: Huge armor is terribly inefficient in PoE. The higher you stack armor, the harder it is to stack it even higher still. Also, higher damage numbers pierce through armor like a hot knife through butter so why bother running yourself ragged trying to reduce them by 1-2% more with huge armor?

2) Leeching: Assuming you don't take Vaal Pact (which quite a few people don't now after the nerf), leeching takes time. And so having some evasion (especially with its entropy system) will stagger the hits a bit so your leech will be able to actually do something while in combat. And we all know that having good life/ES to spare is the best defense in this game. Block/Dodge would serve this purpose well too, but I'm talking about the usual huge armor aura combo (Grace + Determination with IR) and we don't yet have any auras concerning those (excepting Tempest Shield which gives a paltry 4% additional block for 25% mana reserved)

So wouldn't it be better to stack different kinds of defense like this than to ramp one of them up?

Answer is a surprisingly simple yes, though I'm sure this thread will devolve into several pages of people who don't understand how armor scales against big hits or how evasion is calculated arguing that EV is useless and more armor is always better.

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Answer is a surprisingly simple yes, though I'm sure this thread will devolve into several pages of people who don't understand how armor scales against big hits or how evasion is calculated arguing that EV is useless and more armor is always better.

Physical damage from spells sends you best regards :)

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Astarte911 wrote:

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Answer is a surprisingly simple yes, though I'm sure this thread will devolve into several pages of people who don't understand how armor scales against big hits or how evasion is calculated arguing that EV is useless and more armor is always better.

Physical damage from spells sends you best regards :)

VERY few monsters use physical spells (like Perpetus and new Hailrake with Glacial Cascade and a few others). That's mainly a pvp worry. And the majority of your pvp battles won't be with EK/Bear Trap users simply cos there's so many other non-EK builds out there. Of course, RT builds would also be a problem. But anyway, this is more a pve doubt, not pvp.

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Exile009 wrote:

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Astarte911 wrote:

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Answer is a surprisingly simple yes, though I'm sure this thread will devolve into several pages of people who don't understand how armor scales against big hits or how evasion is calculated arguing that EV is useless and more armor is always better.

Physical damage from spells sends you best regards :)

VERY few monsters use physical spells (like Perpetus and new Hailrake with Glacial Cascade and a few others). That's mainly a pvp worry. And the majority of your pvp battles won't be with EK/Bear Trap users simply cos there's so many other non-EK builds out there. Of course, RT builds would also be a problem. But anyway, this is more a pve doubt, not pvp.

Undying Evangelists any beartrap.. etc.

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It's pretty much the same as saying Armour is also useless because Elemental and Chaos Damage ignore it (Evasion can defend against Elemental/Chaos Damage). Every defense type has a weakness.

You are right, armour doesn't help against ele damage. But beartrap, EK and stuff is much more burst damage then any ele damage, imo. Or did you ever had problems against ele dmg mobs? Shrine piety comes to mind..maybe..

Evasion is terrible

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ancalagon3000 wrote:

Evasion is terrible

And MonstaMunch was proven right! :P

First of all, you're using the "X% damage reduction"...

Huge armour is terribly inefficient in PoE? Stopped here.

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Exile009 wrote:

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ancalagon3000 wrote:

Evasion is terrible

And MonstaMunch was proven right! :P

Oh I know how it works ... entropy and all.

It is just bad, for any build that can get block, evasion is in every way inferior as an 'avoidance' buffer (you lose more hp to 'max' evasion than block, terrible vs reflect because it uses your own accuracy - hello RT, less armor than a block build for when the hit gets through, etc). Pro evasion builds tend to be glass cannony, the build users themselves admit it in the starting post of their guide under cons and then when I bring it up they deny it - funny really. And for other builds, ie bow and 2h, getting more armor than going evasion or a mix is still superior. I had this discussion a million times, so that is just my opinion and I am not looking for a 10 page egofest.

Evasion needs a buff / tweak / workaround to bring it in line with the other defenses. I would love to make an invasion / hc league build with it if it proves powerful at endgame.