The secret to balancing evasion

Ok, took your advice and finally compared the two trees. I'm going to ignore duelist as it shared between the two so I came up with two builds, one as a ranger and the other as a mara the only purpose was to get as much life within their areas.

mara - 320 flat life (from flat life + str bonuses) and 268% increased life
Ranger - 197 flat life (even went with claw's 25 flat life passive over the others which only give 12%) and 292% increased

Assuming lvl 100 - 800 life
Assuming perfect gear - 720 life (with a shield)

That's 1520 flat life for both.

So rangers end up with 6731 life and maras have 6771.

Now some factors to consider. Ranger spends 74 points compared to mara's 69. Ranger has more hybrid nodes, giving evasion, damage or str. Mara's have 30 % life passives and they average 9% each, while ranger has 28 averaging 8.3% each.

So far pretty close. But, armor gear can roll str while evasion cannot. So that's potentially 250 additional str for mara (I'll ignore weapon and jewelry) for another 125 flat life for a total of 7231 life compared to ranger's 6730.

These are unrealistic numbers for the most part.

For practical use, mara doing this build will also have 5.1% regen, 6.3% w/ 6 end charges (again, ignore duelist) for 455.5 life regen a second. Let's say they have a conservative 10k armor (which isn't unreasonable with a shield and determination but I'll leave the bonus from determ out of this). Using an iron skin granite gives them 26k armor. So against brutus's GS, using the 4k value you gave, they have a 35% reduction, plus the 24% DR from end charges for 59% so they take 1640. Which would take 3.6 seconds to recover from w/o a flask, 2.8 seconds with a white hallowed flask.

The ranger, assuming 50% evasion (Kole's accuracy is unknown and I'm pretty sure uniques have higher accuracy than normal mobs, ignoring the level difference) and 30% block so kole has roughly a 1 in 7 chance to hit. Ranger has 1% regen for 67.3 life per second same flask puts her at 187.3 taking 21.4 seconds to recover from the hit. During that 21 seconds she will be hit 3 more times unless other measures are taken.

While ranger will out perform mara over the long term, in the short term they can't handle too many hits in a row because they can't recover from them quickly enough. Kole's normal hits/hook will do nothing to an armor user, their passive regen will pretty much cover it completely. A ranger on the other hand, even in perfect life roll gear, they get hit 2-3 times too quickly together they are dead.

Both can be one shot, but armor users can help reduce it sometimes and they can recover quickly most of the time. Also a 1.6k hit to 7.2k life from my example, is much less threatening than a 4k hit to 6.7k life.

Evasion users WILL be hit. Either being unlucky against a boss or being overwhelmed by a pack of shield chargers or something similar. They don't have the health pool to sustain it also they don't have the little stuff like elemental adaption to help with elemental damage, which again, is the biggest threat in the game at this time.

My numbers might be wrong (I'm not the best with math) but these are exactly the experiences I've had when using armor and evasion. It's not so much whether armor or evasion is good, it's the trees. Armor users get higher base life and huge regen to recover from the hits, while evasion doesn't get the same regen and can't achieve the same life totals.

edit:

To be fair, you'll probably mention enfeeble and 3 end charges for ranger. Meaning she'd take 2184 damage and need 11.7 seconds to recover. Mara could afk in front of kole and never die. Ranger, in perfect life gear, lvl 100, would need to kill kole or die.

What I'm taking from that giant text, which kudos for sitting and doing the math, is that the difference is more or less "Armour will just regenerate"

So... make the relatively reasonable assumption for a strong build that both of them are leech capped for the combat and suddenly that 4k hit is a lot less scary. Of course there are several more assumptions that can be made, since you've already determined that the Ev character isn't more likely to get one-shot. Such as the ranger having a build that trades what is essentially a very small amount of "on hand" life for more effective mitigation (via acrobatics).

You're right, those numbers are unrealistic. You're right the Ar character is safer in the short term, and safer sooner than the Ev character. But nothing there says "evasion is bad" it just says "evasion isn't armour".

Also, you should *always* assume that every character has full endurance charges for a reasonable build. Shared mechanic is shared.

I will concede that armour has more life, though to what significance that makes is debatable. I will concede that the Ev character is going to feel more dangerous.

I will not however agree that Elemental Adaptation is essential for survival. Nor will I agree that the guarantee of being hit has any effect on the Ev character ability to sustain in combat, there's more to combat than just saying "this is how much life and how fast you get it".

Happy you actually bothered to do the math. Not in agreement as to your conclusion that evasion "cannot sustain" the combat. A reasonable build uses roughly 85-100 (depending on what you consider a reasonable mapping level for higher level maps or starting maps) points. The mara has more points to spend, and there's a considerably more effective defensive set of points for the ranger (very considerably, trading 7 points elsewhere for acrobatics drops Kole's chance to hit to 1/11), nor did you bother to consider a full defensive spectrum (as your edit points out). Nevermind that trash is trash against both those builds (seriously), shield chargers would be less than threatening against that Ev build outside of some seriously damaging map mods.

Though assuming "maximal defenses" in a hardcore character is reasonable.

Edit: I am of the opinion that the life wheel added with 1.0.0 is a direct affront to balance. Evasion and Es both got their defenses... Ar gets a wheel of universal defense, instead of a wheel of Ar. Presumably because the Es wheel would be "too powerful" otherwise... Except that the Es wheel was already in the tree, while the life wheel was added specifically for the patch (the Ev wheel was in the tree too). that needs to be converted to Ar.

I've never had a problem with evasion, ever. OP doesn't understand how it works to begin with, so I suspect that is the problem.

@Moosifer: I believe your entire premise there is flawed. There isn't really anything stopping that Marauder from getting sufficient Dexterity to run Evasion gear, and likely be better off for it; you can get plenty of Evasion off of hybrid gear if the affixes line up right, if getting 200+ Dex is too big of an issue. You're comparing areas of the passive tree, not the actual defenses themselves.

And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the Marauder area of the tree is stronger than the Ranger area, considering the massive amount of regeneration available.

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Autocthon a écrit :

What I'm taking from that giant text, which kudos for sitting and doing the math, is that the difference is more or less "Armour will just regenerate"

So... make the relatively reasonable assumption for a strong build that both of them are leech capped for the combat and suddenly that 4k hit is a lot less scary. Of course there are several more assumptions that can be made, since you've already determined that the Ev character isn't more likely to get one-shot. Such as the ranger having a build that trades what is essentially a very small amount of "on hand" life for more effective mitigation (via acrobatics).

You're right, those numbers are unrealistic. You're right the Ar character is safer in the short term, and safer sooner than the Ev character. But nothing there says "evasion is bad" it just says "evasion isn't armour".

Also, you should *always* assume that every character has full endurance charges for a reasonable build. Shared mechanic is shared.

I will concede that armour has more life, though to what significance that makes is debatable. I will concede that the Ev character is going to feel more dangerous.

I will not however agree that Elemental Adaptation is essential for survival. Nor will I agree that the guarantee of being hit has any effect on the Ev character ability to sustain in combat, there's more to combat than just saying "this is how much life and how fast you get it".

Happy you actually bothered to do the math. Not in agreement as to your conclusion that evasion "cannot sustain" the combat. A reasonable build uses roughly 85-100 (depending on what you consider a reasonable mapping level for higher level maps or starting maps) points. The mara has more points to spend, and there's a considerably more effective defensive set of points for the ranger (very considerably, trading 7 points elsewhere for acrobatics drops Kole's chance to hit to 1/11), nor did you bother to consider a full defensive spectrum (as your edit points out). Nevermind that trash is trash against both those builds (seriously), shield chargers would be less than threatening against that Ev build outside of some seriously damaging map mods.

Though assuming "maximal defenses" in a hardcore character is reasonable.

Edit: I am of the opinion that the life wheel added with 1.0.0 is a direct affront to balance. Evasion and Es both got their defenses... Ar gets a wheel of universal defense, instead of a wheel of Ar. Presumably because the Es wheel would be "too powerful" otherwise... Except that the Es wheel was already in the tree, while the life wheel was added specifically for the patch (the Ev wheel was in the tree too). that needs to be converted to Ar.

What I would hope was taken from my argument is that evasion is lacking the large health pool to absorb the hit or the means to recover quickly from it.

Koles 4k GS ends up taking 23% of the mara's life while it takes 33% of a rangers. If ranger made up for mara's DR through additional life they could handle this shot easier. The other solution is giving them more regen. I know I put a lot of focus on regen but I don't think any evasion user who is complaining about being one shot would feel so vulnerable if they had 20-30% more life (through flat life, or % bonuses).

For mara to have 6 end charges and all his life he's in for 73 points, while a ranger getting acro is in for 81 points. That's a giant EHP investment. Both end up in areas that allow for DPS gains but 27 passives vs 19 is pretty huge.

And you need to stop with not understanding how dangerous elemental damage is in end game. I did crematorium this morning which the only physical damage mob was shield chargers, they did nothing to me. The 4 extra projectile lightning/fire skeleton mobs shotgunning me did easily peal off 3-4k life in combat. Then there's the boss that can ramp up and do 3-5+k damage in a matter of seconds, through a ruby flask and +2 max from purity. I faced dominus on resident map and his minions exploding are no joke, 1-2k damage each (there's a video of a guy on reddit with over 4k life being 2 shot by them) and that lightning spam he does will blow through any advantage you get through phase acro.

This is why I keep pushing for more life as how evasion functions as a mechanic is great but it does fuck all against elemental damage. In many situations if I could convert armor/evasion into life I would w/o question.

@scrotie, that's my point though, that it isn't a discussion of whether armor or evasion is better, it's more due to the trees. Having higher life and regen is by far the best form of EHP in the game. That's why 11k life builds were so popular at the beginning of OB, then the shift to CI + ZO + GR with the life nerf and once the dust settles with release nerfs CI will probably take over again because all they lost was the ability to be invulnerable to reflect.

I've been saying that DEX should be the life tanks and str DR tanks for a while now. I think the strength tree should be brought down in total %life while ranger gets brought up quite a bit. I don't think ranger needs more regen but buffing vitality to a usable % would be nice, as 60% reserve for what is basically 1 passive is pretty insane.

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Moosifer a écrit :

I've been saying that DEX should be the life tanks and str DR tanks for a while now.

Don't you think the current situation is closer to the opposite? Evasion isn't chopped liver at DR, I actually believe it's superior to Armour, all other things considered. The only snag is keeping your life high enough to survive burst damage, which is a nice check on a DR build's power.

I wrote about it a long time ago and even talked to qarl about it when they did the big evasion patch, that when I have a large health pool with evasion I feel way better than I do with armor.

IMO, armor formula should be dropped from 12 to 8-10, add a few more good armor clusters and lower STR users total life % (from my estimates above from 23x% to 180-200%. They have much higher DR, still have ele adaption and end charges. They take way less damage so therefore need less life. High end bosses will still deal hard physical and elemental damage will be more threatening.

DEX tree gets 30-50% more increased life, preferably by raising some of the 8% values up, I assume the ones near shadow so it's hard for duelist to go mara and shadow for the benefits. Also having a couple spell block passives would be nice but I think the extra life would go a long way.

I'd say the reason a lot of people don't run pure evasion is because of physical spells and traps.

If my tree took me into the evasion node areas, I would run evasion...since it doesn't, I run armor.

Either way is a successful way of defense.

I'm currently liking my character with Acrobatics quite a bit but like many others I would agree with the lack of life around the ranger area. I would love to see more nodes that give 12% along with flat life or strength and I wouldn't mind seeing the 4% life 6% evasion nodes go up to at the very least 6% life 6% evasion.

I think if ranger area had more effective life nodes it would help them alot. I think if ranger area had every life node buffed by a minimum of 1% so all 4% would go to 5% and so on. I think there's about 20 or so % life nodes in ranger area that aren't tied to a weapon. Another 20% would mean that with a base HP of 1500(previous example was something like this right?) you would get an additional 300 HP which is actually not bad at all.