How to make evasion build viable in hardcore?

So, I've been killing some time with musing what character to start playing the game (again), and I really liked Colbycheese's Quill rain build, however, the evasion build seeems so risky - either you take all of it or nothing - every so often I would have to take a shitload of damage, which I wouldn't be able to handle.

What are some other mitigations for evasion characters?

Besides capped resists (which is a must have for everyone), how can I lower incoming physical, spell and projectile damage?

My idea is to play lightning warp with high movement speed and always play on the edge of happenings (worked really well on my previous character, but it's not full proof).

Thanks

I've actually been theorycrafting high Evasion, specifically Ondar's Guile.

Ondar's Guile is a great keystone. However, it's even better when it can be used effectively as reflected damage mitigation while using projectile attacks. Unfortunately, this isn't normally the case, because reflected damage uses your Accuracy Rating. For example, if you're attacking level 70 monsters with a 90% average chance to hit, you'd have about 1800 Accuracy Rating. If you had a 48% average chance to evade against monster attacks at that level (6718 Evasion), you might think Ondar's would help you significantly with reflected damage, but against 1800 Accuracy that's only a 19% chance to evade, doubled to 38%... which isn't very good mitigation against reflected damage. To get to a 48% chance which is doubled to 95%, you'd need 54497 Evasion, which is a ridiculous amount.

So the question becomes, how can we lower our Accuracy and still effectively hit monsters with projectile attacks? I believe the answer to that question is the Projectile Weakness curse. A level 16 Projectile Weakness reduces enemy Evasion against projectile attacks by 60%, which greatly reduces the amount of Accuracy needed to hit them effectively; instead of 1800 Accuracy for a 90% hit chance, you only need 865 Accuracy. Against the 6718 Evasion you'd normally need for a 48% average evade against monsters, you'd have a 30% chance to evade doubled to 60%; you'd "only" need 20738 Evasion to get a 95% chance to evade reflected damage, which is still a very large amount of Evasion, but it's orders of magnitude more achievable than 54k.

So if I was going Evasion, I'd try using Projectile Weakness as my main curse, grab Ondar's Guile, and try to moderate my Accuracy Rating to prevent it from getting too high. By effectively nullifying reflected and enemy projectile damage, the only main concerns would be melee monsters (the Projectile Weakness knockback helps here) and spells. Although, admittedly, all of the above would be experimental.

Speaking of spells, Evangelists are a problem for the inexperienced Evasion character since their AoEs can't be evaded and deals Physical damage. The solution is to keep moving; it telegraphs and takes a while to hit, so simply don't make attempts to tank it, and you should be fine. Even in desync'd situations you can normally predict the pattern and move in such a way that invisible casts still won't hit you, although obviously that's more difficult. Having sufficient movement speed really helps in that department; your boots are probably your most important gear slot for handling the Evangelist threat.

Yeah, I'm going with Critical weakness, because I'm crit build, and I deal damage with spells (one of which will be Arc) which are not projectile.

I was thinking more in the lines of Arctic armour, but I'm already stretched out to the max trying to cap resists with Thief's torment and Quill rain, so I can't possibly sustain that much of regen.

Large life pool is good, so you don't die from big damage spikes. Also decoy totems and other distraction methods are good when used correctly. Plus having endurance charges most of the time if you don't already do so is good for the damage reduction. For Evangelists, and try to lead one or two away from the pack to kill, instead of taking them all at once, or you'll die quickly with them all casting their spell at you.

Arctic Armor, Lightning Coil, Endurance Charges, Immortal Call, Block, Spell Block, Acrobatics, Phase Acrobatics and last, but not least - as much HP as you can have (true for every build, of course). Oh and if it moves, you Enfeeble it.

Evasion is really scary.. until you try it for yourself and see that it actually works.

as long as you don't get 1-shot you will have good survivability with evasion.

the trick is to have other defenses to reduce the damage you take

1) MoM

2) AA

3) Lightning coil

4) endurance charges

Any combination of those 4 will do very well at increasing your EHP without resorting to armor.


of course you still don't want to get hit that often, which is where block/spell block and dodge come in.

So what's the most effective way for a ranger to get endurance charges?
Cwdt with enduring cry seems dodgy, as my plan isn't to be near enemies.

Sure, I'll get in close contact with some, but that isn't quite reliable, since my main plan is escaping and shooting them from above.

Unfortunately, build goes with Voll's protector (I hate it) which essentialy says - get 6 power charges and nothing else.

if you're evasion acrobatics/phase acrobatics is a must. this already creates a pretty good layered effect vs physical. ondar's guile is of course a must.

other amazing additions is of course block, but you're using quill rain so unless you can get that one block/spell block unique quiver (which is AMAZING btw) then that is out.

so vs physical blind is available, either by gem or by smoke mine. utilize it. also enfeeble is a great curse to both lower physical dmg accuracy as well as dmg in case you do get hit. also useful vs spells because again the lowered dmg.
more physical mitigation is of course a CWDT set up including immortal cry. you will benefit most from this against physical damage spells, and well it pretty much negates them totally.

vs spell damage, since spell block is basically out (since it all scales on normal block) use atziri steps. 46% spell dodge, amazing.
there really isn't much else you can do in this case. theres 4 ways to mitigate spell damage
1. spell block
2. spell dodge
3. resistances
4. health pool

last and not least, if you're ranged use your range to your advantage.

another thing you'll want is decent sustain either by massive regen or by leech. when you get hit yes it'll be for more dmg (not devastating) and you'll have time inbetween hits to regen to full hp, so long as you have a way to do so.


now to quickly touch on some of the advantages to an evasive build.
1. chaos dmg isn't a problem. majority of chaos dmg is projectile, which ondar's guile will take care of.
2. no stunlock. you won't be getting hit very often, even if you get stunned every time you do you'll never get stunlocked.
3. on hit effects. you won't even know what punctured is, and while this is an advantage it is a disadvantage if you're ever eventually punctured because it will take you off guard. you do still need a flask for it just in case.
4. titty bitches. now they just look good.

"

Komle a écrit :

So what's the most effective way for a ranger to get endurance charges?
Cwdt with enduring cry seems dodgy, as my plan isn't to be near enemies.

if you're not near enemies then you won't be taking dmg to begin with. the only people that will do dmg to you is by spell dmg, or by melee attacks, period.

JunKx, that is some badass advice, thank you for taking the time to write them down.

Never thought of blind, will try to cram it in there.

You also gave me an idea of throwing a totem in the mix.