Armor/Evasion/Block/lifeleech optimal proportions

in reply to Natharias long post:

From what you are saying, I can only assume you never played a successful evasion character, let alone melee.

You seem to use the same logic for all hits (trash mob pdps hits and boss hits) when it comes to armor which is completely false.

evasion is worse than armor in a borderline scenario where a big hit lands which will kill you if you are eva but will be substantially mitigated with your armor. This case is very rare if you build properly. It is also worse against pdps spells since eva and normal block can do little against them. In all other instances it is superior in my book. And I have tried both in all game content apart uber Atziri.

In your long post you explain all in such detail like I am a moron who fails to understand simple mechanics with even a tone of sarcasm. I believe this would not be the case if you just "estimated" my IQ close to yours, and perhaps read what I wrote and not what you wanted to read.

I agree with raics last post.

With proper end-game gearing and use of secondary defenses, evasion is still superior to armor.

I've stopped trying to convince the traditionalists... they will shout armor's praises till they are blue in the face, despite all logic. It's only a matter of time till their leader, Tinko92, comes in and craps all over this thread.

The sad part is, many builds (including many of my own characters) are forced into armor due to how the distribution of armor and evasion nodes are throughout the tree with respect to life nodes and other popular keystones.


example: it's near impossible to play an evasion mara, templar, or witch which pretty much kills off half the viable builds in the game.

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demivion wrote:

The sad part is, many builds (including many of my own characters) are forced into armor due to how the distribution of armor and evasion nodes are throughout the tree with respect to life nodes and other popular keystones.

example: it's near impossible to play an evasion mara, templar, or witch which pretty much kills off half the viable builds in the game.

That, and I'd also like to see at least one secondary defense that favors evasion over armor. Dodge is considered eva-aligned only because of specific drawback of Acrobatics keystone, a drawback that other sources of dodge don't share. Dodge as a mechanics works equally good with armor, same goes for blind, block or MoM, all others have armor synergy, none with evasion.

And maybe, like in that dragon age analogy of mine, this was meant to be and we should stop trying to compare them. Maybe armor was meant to be a requirement for tanking and evasion just a way to survive a couple of attacks before retreating to the safe distance again, its unique entropy mechanics and existence of ondar keystone can only enforce that view.

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raics wrote:

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.

Damn those physical spells. They were usually what got me when I played my Evasion archer. Heavy hitting bosses like Kole and Brutus (plus their map clones) weren't hard because I could hit them with Puncture and run away, and dodge most of their attacks since they were slow there is less evasion/dodge checks. Piety was super easy because I could stand there shooting her and her ice arrows would miss all the time with Ondar's and her melee attacks usually missed. I just had to move out of the way when she uses her lightning attacks.

I quite like evasion characters, but if I played PvP then I would go with armor because of RT.

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demivion wrote:

The sad part is, many builds (including many of my own characters) are forced into armor due to how the distribution of armor and evasion nodes are throughout the tree with respect to life nodes and other popular keystones.

example: it's near impossible to play an evasion mara, templar, or witch which pretty much kills off half the viable builds in the game.

This is kind of true. There are more accessible life/armor hybrid passives than life/evasion ones, and the life/evasion ones only give 4% to life instead of 6%. Plus it's easy to just take Iron Reflexes and convert your evasion to armor. I guess though that the thinking behind Acrobatics is that it's kind of like converting armor into evasion (I know dodge is not evasion, and that they're separate things with their own checks when hit. It's just a loose way of looking at it.)

@Starxsword:

If you only have 3,000 hit points and a boss would one-shot you without critting, then whether or not they crit is completely unimportant.

If you have 99% chance to evade, the crit doesn't matter. If they hit you, you are screwed.

If you have armor, that small amount of evasion might just prevent it from critting, and this is when it would matter. The whole point of armor is to be able to survive the hit after taking it, and avoiding a crit would help guarantee that.

@Stiglitsz_:

Yes, you can get a ton of life, but I haven't seen one build with no physical mitigation (below 7,000 combined hit points), be able to tank a boss hit. Sure, they avoid a lot of them, but when that hit finally comes, they all died. I see this because they whine about desync and lag.

Also, if you have 9 endurance charges, that only accounts for 36% flat reduction. I'd guess you need to reduce boss hits by at least 50% in order to survive a hit. At least 75% to avoid dying to a crit.

Note that raics is pointing out how RT and armor are better. Evasion is useless compared to it.

@missuse:

No, I have a CoC character that uses Cyclone, so that accounts for a melee character. I've buffed its life to just under 3,500 with about 42% evade, 40% dodge, 30% spell dodge, 75% block, and 63% spell block. It nearly dies to melee hits from rares.

Getting 4,350 armor from a Granite Flask makes a huge difference and I rarely see a rare deal a considerable amount of physical damage while it's up.

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missuse wrote:

evasion is worse than armor in a borderline scenario where a big hit lands which will kill you if you are eva but will be substantially mitigated with your armor. This case is very rare if you build properly. It is also worse against pdps spells since eva and normal block can do little against them. In all other instances it is superior in my book. And I have tried both in all game content apart uber Atziri.

In your long post you explain all in such detail like I am a moron who fails to understand simple mechanics with even a tone of sarcasm. I believe this would not be the case if you just "estimated" my IQ close to yours, and perhaps read what I wrote and not what you wanted to read.

I agree with raics last post.

Perhaps you should re-read raics post and what you just said.

I'll save you the time: It's contradictory.

It's you who should actually read posts, since I already have been.

Either way, "properly" built evasion characters will still die to that one hit. Properly built characters with armor and other mitigation will survive the hit when it does land.

Also, you should know that "properly" built characters use non-defense methods of mitigating damage. One of which is kiting. I'll let you figure out the rest.

None of Atziri's flameblasts deal any damage if you aren't in them. You could solo her with 0 armor, resistances, block, and dodge if that's all she did. Kiting sure is powerful.

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Natharias wrote:

Perhaps you should re-read raics post and what you just said.

I'll save you the time: It's contradictory.

Not at all, we agree evasion is essentially no worse than armor but is kinda in a bad spot currently, too many soft and hard counters, too little dedicated synergies, it has nothing to do with the way evasion works.

So, to make the long story short, evasion is probably better than armor as a mechanic but has gotten worse as a basic defense choice.

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Natharias wrote:

Either way, "properly" built evasion characters will still die to that one hit. Properly built characters with armor and other mitigation will survive the hit when it does land.

What about the hit that lands on an armor character the next second? If you're talking about a hit that would 1-shot an evasion character, it would also kill an armor character in the next hit. If you're truly getting hit by enemies that hard armor is no better than paper anyways and you will die. This is why you mention kiting and "other" defenses i'm assuming, but that has no relevance in this conversation as all characters kite and all characters have access to "other" defenses regardless of their primary defense choice.


We can throw a bunch of "what if" statements around all day but they still don't prove anything.

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If you only have 3,000 hit points and a boss would one-shot you without critting, then whether or not they crit is completely unimportant.

could just as easily become:

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If you only have 3,000 hit points and a boss would do 2,999 damage without critting, then whether or not they crit is VERY IMPORTANT.

the reality of the game is that you have to figure in overall performance over time, not just that 1 hit that will kill you, because when that situation comes, armor characters will get killed too.

You will get killed if your damage taken over time exceeds either:

1) the amount of HP you leech back per second

or

2) the amount of total HP you have.

You're accounting for situation #2 but you fail to acknowledge that armor characters can get overwhelmed with large hits (which don't kill them outright) because they aren't mitigating enough damage over time for their leech to keep up. Evasion characters get hit harder but have more time to recover between each big hit. Assuming neither character gets 1 shot but is still in a potentially life threatening situation (which to be honest is most of the time) evasion comes out ahead.

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raics wrote:

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Natharias wrote:

Perhaps you should re-read raics post and what you just said.

I'll save you the time: It's contradictory.

Not at all, we agree evasion is essentially no worse than armor but is kinda in a bad spot currently, too many soft and hard counters, too little dedicated synergies, it has nothing to do with the way evasion works.

So, to make the long story short, evasion is probably better than armor as a mechanic but has gotten worse as a basic defense choice.

So you didn't post:

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raics wrote:

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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.

...any of that?

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Panini_aux_olives wrote:

Why would have I only 3k hp with an evasion buid? Heck, there's more life on that side than on the other. It's easy to get 4k, and fairly easy to get 4.5k without even having life on all pieces of gear (and that's with a bow build).

If you get one shot by a 3k hit, having say 5k armor instead (which I agree is garbage) instead of evasion, will only prevent 365 damage, that won't change much. With 20k armor (ie. 5k + good flask), you'll prevent only 1k, and you'll still die if you get hit twice in a row, which is very possible with an armor build, much less with an evasion build because of entropy mechanic.

I agree that hard hitter are scary though, at least as a bow ranger. But imho it's much a problem of having or not having block rather than evasion vs armor.

We aren't assuming perfectly rolled rares or good drops. If you played the game, it would take some grinding to get 4.5+k life.

Also, the argument of whether block/evasion or block/armor is better, not armor/evasion. 75% block is a lot, and that's when you need to actually mitigate, so you'll almost never have two hits hit you around the same time. Especially with most builds and some bosses.

@demivion:

Read above.

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Natharias wrote:

So you didn't post:
...any of that?

Sure did.
So, as we say around here... what's so cornersome about it?