Armor/Evasion/Block/lifeleech optimal proportions

So I have decided to go with all of these defenses for my duelist. What kind of proportions would be optimal? More armor than evasion or vice versa? Should I get 70% block or 78% block? How much lifeleech is best? He will use reave.

That's pretty ambitious, good luck.

armor - get a crapload of it plus endurance charges or go home
evasion - any amount works well but it faces severe diminishing returns on high evade percentages, moderation is best here
block, on the other hand gets more and more efficient the higher you go, so grab as much as is realistically possible (that 8% difference in block chance would mean 12% less damage taken if you go from 30% to 38, but it would mean 27% less damage taken on going from 70% to 78 block chance)

Optimal leech amount is easy to calculate for reave as it behaves like single target attack.
get you lech rate by dividing your max health with 5
get your reave attack time
calculate how much health can be transferred at your leech rate between attacks
get your physical damage per attack
calculate how much leech percentage you need to get that amount by one attack

It seems lot of people forget about Life Gain on hit. After life leech rework it is now often superior if used with high attack speed AoE attacks like Reave.. consider giving it a try

evasion works well with any ammount, but if you plan to get high evasion, not using Ondars Guile is a waste

Armor is much better than evasion. If anything, you should completely dump evasion and go for armor only if you plan on using max block.

The reason for this is evasion in entropy while armor and block aren't. Evasion won't always work while armor/block will.

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Natharias wrote:

Armor is much better than evasion. If anything, you should completely dump evasion and go for armor only if you plan on using max block.

The reason for this is evasion in entropy while armor and block aren't. Evasion won't always work while armor/block will.

this is completely misleading

entropy (in terms of poe evasion) means that if you get hit by an attack you are less likely to get hit by the next attack. It has nothing to do with any superiority armor has compared to eva.

I for instance think armor is crap unless you have a lot of it. While evasion is ok even in moderate amounts. Evasion rly starts to shine if you take the acrobatics cluster and have a lot of block.

everyone says evasion does not work well against big hits that one hit KO you, armor does not work well either unless you have 50k+ of it.

evasion works on all attacks (pdps and elemental) while armor works only on pdps
evasion is great for block characters since block counts as a hit which subsequently lowers the chance you will be hit by the following blow (entropy system)
armor % shown on character screen are completely misleading, they indicate the avg trash mob hit reduction.
even if you are hit, if you are an evasion char a 2nd roll is done to determine if it was a crit. Which means you will get hit a lot less with crit strikes as an evasion char.


in conclusion:

if you want to have armor, go full armor and stack at least 20k of it unbuffed.
if you want to go evasion, mix it up with block and acrobatics, don't need to go over 10-12k evasion to be effective.
if you do not plan to stack armor or evasion, evasion is superior, especially if you are a block character

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missuse wrote:

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Natharias wrote:

Armor is much better than evasion. If anything, you should completely dump evasion and go for armor only if you plan on using max block.

The reason for this is evasion in entropy while armor and block aren't. Evasion won't always work while armor/block will.

this is completely misleading

entropy (in terms of poe evasion) means that if you get hit by an attack you are less likely to get hit by the next attack. It has nothing to do with any superiority armor has compared to eva.

I for instance think armor is crap unless you have a lot of it. While evasion is ok even in moderate amounts. Evasion rly starts to shine if you take the acrobatics cluster and have a lot of block.

everyone says evasion does not work well against big hits that one hit KO you, armor does not work well either unless you have 50k+ of it.

evasion works on all attacks (pdps and elemental) while armor works only on pdps
evasion is great for block characters since block counts as a hit which subsequently lowers the chance you will be hit by the following blow (entropy system)
armor % shown on character screen are completely misleading, they indicate the avg trash mob hit reduction.
even if you are hit, if you are an evasion char a 2nd roll is done to determine if it was a crit. Which means you will get hit a lot less with crit strikes as an evasion char.


in conclusion:

if you want to have armor, go full armor and stack at least 20k of it unbuffed.
if you want to go evasion, mix it up with block and acrobatics, don't need to go over 10-12k evasion to be effective.
if you do not plan to stack armor or evasion, evasion is superior, especially if you are a block character

^this

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missuse wrote:

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Natharias wrote:

Armor is much better than evasion. If anything, you should completely dump evasion and go for armor only if you plan on using max block.

The reason for this is evasion in entropy while armor and block aren't. Evasion won't always work while armor/block will.

this is completely misleading

entropy (in terms of poe evasion) means that if you get hit by an attack you are less likely to get hit by the next attack. It has nothing to do with any superiority armor has compared to eva.

I for instance think armor is crap unless you have a lot of it. While evasion is ok even in moderate amounts. Evasion rly starts to shine if you take the acrobatics cluster and have a lot of block.

everyone says evasion does not work well against big hits that one hit KO you, armor does not work well either unless you have 50k+ of it.

evasion works on all attacks (pdps and elemental) while armor works only on pdps
evasion is great for block characters since block counts as a hit which subsequently lowers the chance you will be hit by the following blow (entropy system)
armor % shown on character screen are completely misleading, they indicate the avg trash mob hit reduction.
even if you are hit, if you are an evasion char a 2nd roll is done to determine if it was a crit. Which means you will get hit a lot less with crit strikes as an evasion char.


in conclusion:

if you want to have armor, go full armor and stack at least 20k of it unbuffed.
if you want to go evasion, mix it up with block and acrobatics, don't need to go over 10-12k evasion to be effective.
if you do not plan to stack armor or evasion, evasion is superior, especially if you are a block character

What's misleading is what you've posted.

Armor will work 100% of the time. Evasion will work 100% of the time until an enemy has missed so many times that entropy will guarantee their next hit.

Armor will actually reduce damage, while evasion will only prevent the whole hit from dealing damage.

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everyone says evasion does not work well against big hits that one hit KO you, armor does not work well either unless you have 50k+ of it.

If you are stacking armor and only armor, yes. Besides that, you'll be getting a ton of life and other defenses so 20k armor will suffice.

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evasion works on all attacks (pdps and elemental) while armor works only on pdps

Yes, by making the whole attack deal zero damage. This is useless if you have no way to mitigate it.

Armor is better since it actually reduces damage. This is also why people will use Endurance Charges.

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evasion is great for block characters since block counts as a hit which subsequently lowers the chance you will be hit by the following blow (entropy system)

But that one hit that does hit you will kill you. Armor is better in all instances.

So what if you have 99% block, 99% spell block, 99% dodge, 99% spell dodge, and 99% evade? You'll be killed by any physical boss. All they need is that one bad roll.

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armor % shown on character screen are completely misleading, they indicate the avg trash mob hit reduction.

It's not misleading. Note that it says "estimated physical damage reduction", not "physical damage reduction".

Perhaps you should look up the definition of "misleading"?

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even if you are hit, if you are an evasion char a 2nd roll is done to determine if it was a crit. Which means you will get hit a lot less with crit strikes as an evasion char.

Doesn't matter if it crits. The physical boss will deal enough damage to one-shot you if you don't have any reductions.

Edit:

You seem to be under the impression that evasion is superior and works well with block, but I'll point you to this:

Order of defenses

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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raics wrote:

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Ludvator wrote:

e: maybe AA ond abyssus switched?

Yup, 'increased/decreased damage taken' goes after mitigation but before AA.

Incorrect. Both AA (flat subtraction of damage taken) and shock/abyssus (% increased damge taken) happen at the same stage as both modify damage taken. As always in PoE, flat additions/subtractions from a value are handled before % increaeses/reductions.

Avoiding the hit (Evasion, dodge).
- If this fails, you've been hit.
Blocking the Hit (block chance).
- If this succeeds, you're still hit, but the attacker's passive on-hit effects and damage are prevented.
Modifiers to how you take/mitigate damage (Lightning Coil, etc)
- Obviously has to happen before mitigation to matter.
Mitigation (Armour, resistances, etc)
- This determines the amount of damage taken, which can then be modified.
Modifiers to amount of damage taken Shock, Abyssus, etc.

That's everything that can prevent or modify the damage you take. Then you actually take damage, which will come from ES first if possible (and non-chaos), then if you have MoM some will come from mana before life, with all the rest coming from life.

As you can see, evasion is checked with each hit and will eventually mean nothing to at least one hit every now and then. Sure, you have block and your non-armor, but that won't be enough.

I can clarify what the other poster is saying by using an example.

For critical hits.
Boss attacks, rolls critical hit threat.
Boss rolls a hit, you are hit.
Boss rolls a second hitroll to land critical hit. Success, critical hit.
You have 2 chances of avoiding a critical hit.

For evasion entropy + block:
Boss attacks, rolls a hit, you are hit.
You roll to block, success.

Boss attacks second time. Entropy favors you this time.
Boss misses, no need to block.

What this means is, assuming you have 75% block. For every hit that you are going to take, block will give you a 75% chance of stopping the hit and of course allowing entropy to favor you afterwards.

Note: none of this matters if you use armor, as it is just straight reduction. Critical hits are inherently more dangerous, because your odds of rolling to avoid it a second time with evasion are very low as an armor character.

As you can see, blocking will make evasion better, because of how it works with evasion.

Not sure how evasion interacts with dodge, if dodge happens before evasion, then evasion doesn't synergize with dodge. But if dodge happens after evasion, then, like block, evasion will synergize with dodge.

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Doesn't matter if it crits. The physical boss will deal enough damage to one-shot you if you don't have any reductions.

Wouldn't that depend on the multiplier critical hits get? For example, if critical hits are say 3x multiplier, then, that goes from 6k damage hit to 18k damage hit.

The whole armor vs evasion debate is pointless. One is not better than another because it's largely situational, personal preference, and the player's playstyle. Evasion is going to suck for the guy who wants to charge into the middle of a mob and tank a boss or tough rare. Armor is going to be inferior to evasion for the player that likes to play more carefully and move around the field a lot.

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If you are stacking armor and only armor, yes. Besides that, you'll be getting a ton of life and other defenses so 20k armor will suffice.

You can get a ton of life and other defenses with evasion too.

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It's not misleading. Note that it says "estimated physical damage reduction", not "physical damage reduction".

It's misleading to the person who doesn't understand how the game works or what the difference is in the wording. It's precise to the person who knows how armor and the game mechanics work.

It's estimated damage reduction because the damage reduction is not the same on every hit, but is actually worse the bigger the hit. So that number isn't how much the damage a Vaal-smash is going to be reduced by.

I think the idea behind evasion is that if you have a big enough health pool (and endurance charges) even though you will get hit from time to time, you're getting hit less often and can leech/regen that life back.

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Armor is better in all instances.

No, it's not. They do different things and aren't better than each other. You're pretty much just pointing out how evasion sucks at reducing damage from hits. Well no duh. You could compare armor with evasion at how well armor is at avoiding hits, and it would be just as ridiculous.

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Stiglitz_ wrote:

The whole armor vs evasion debate is pointless. One is not better than another because it's largely situational, personal preference, and the player's playstyle.

Sadly, it was that way long ago.

However, with much greater number of physical spells in the game, inherently 'accurate' rogue exiles and bosses, and now vaal skills that ignore evasion, I'd say it started to lag behind armor a bit too much for my taste. To top it off, due to the way it stacks with mitigation, endurance charges work much better on an armor user than an evasion user and you definitely want to use those these days regardless of your primary defense of choice, now that they work against bleeding. Same goes for 'converted damage taken' on uniques or flat physical reduction effects like AA, much better effect with armor.

The game started to remind me a lot of dragon age, you could make a great 'evade' tank that relied on high defense rating to almost never get hit, however once you get grappled by a mabari, spider or an ogre you're dead, it needed very, very careful playing. Armor was the best way to build a tank and that's that, evade was at best a nice extra.

Same as resolute tech, now that we got a lot more enemies that use blind it became just a shade too convenient.