Stop spreading the Evasion vs Armor fallacy

After months of us testing it badly, and the devs laughing at us, I dont see how any of it is in question anymore.

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tramshed написал:

and the devs laughing at us

Not sure exactly what you're saying, the main point is worded to be a bit unclear.

But anyway, no, they didn't just laugh at us. They gave us 6% additional dodge chance. That might not seem significant, but it amounts to 10% more effective healing.

That's having a huge effect. I did endgame A/PA both before and after that change, with both ranged and melee. The acrobatics buff is huge.

I don't think A/PA is designed particularly well, especially compared to all other keystones, but I can agree that it is more powerful than most players give credit.

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My own theory, which I think Zakaluka's math supports, though I don't want to pin my opinion on his work - but just take my theory as one that's rather simple:

Armor and evasion both have soft-caps.

You simply, not even under the best circumstance, even with the best gear, the BEST OF THE BEST OF THE MOST PERFECT -- in under ideal, impossibly ideal conditions - reduce a Brutus crit by any significant margin. The amount of armor required is 100k++! And even if you can attain such levels of armor, there is no way you can do it consistently, it's going to require 24/7 granite flasks, Determination, and crazy future synergistic mechanics or uniques.

So, if it's impossible to use armor to mitigate burst damage, why try to stack armor? You only need enough armor so that you're taking 20-40% less damage against the mundane monsters you're worried about. You can get enough armor rating through granites, endurance charges and hybrid gear to reduce damage.

The same can be said of evasion - the curve for evasion gets very, very steep at 50% chance to evade. While it might be suggestible that increasing your chance to evade by even 1% is actually very powerful, the amount of evasion required to do it is immense. In the same train of thought, why stack evasion? You only need enough of it to get 50% chance to evade. If Brutus crits you, he's not gonna do it a second time in a row, your evasion chance is going to buy you some time to drink flasks or run away.

Block chance is relatively easy to maximize. Get a good shield. Get a lot of block nodes. Attack-damage-monsters have yet to be able to penetrate block.

Stack that maximum life. Obvious, right? Maximum life doesn't have a soft cap, it just keeps going up at a linear rate, so just keep stacking it.

Life regen works just like maximum life, get as much as you can get with your passive points.

Movement speed has no soft cap, same thing.

If you have 20-40% DR, 50% chance to evade, 75% block, tons of life, tons of movement speed, tons of life regen - you've maximized your defenses. Could you try and get 60% chance to evade for 25-45% DR? Sure, but you'll give up most of your evasion or block chance in order to do it, likely.

Of course, players are welcome to build how they wish to, but the way the current defenses are set up, trying to suggest that armor is some-how superior to armor+evasion is absolutely silly and suggests you haven't looked at the numbers. Is an extra 10-15% DR on trash monsters worth 50% chance to evade? Even 10% chance to evade? It's not.

This is only further reinforced by the plethora of hybrid defense nodes, which are extremely efficient especially compared to the joke called the Marauder starting area (why does the Marauder suck at stacking armor?).

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anubite написал:

The amount of armor required to get 50% damage reduction is much harder to get than the amount of evasion required to get 50% evasion chance, by the way.

Can't confirm that really. I tried lots of rangers but non of them were able to get to 50% evasion at high levels. Its mor like below 30%. If i took armor with the same gear i took much less damage. I noticed, that in the beginning when evasion is really high, like over 50%, its very good, but if you fall below that, the mercy of god shall be with you.

I also took acrobatic once which should have given me like 60% dodge chance combined with evasion but it was no way comparable with ironreflexes. I just still got raped with like 2,3k life and 120 liferegen per second at lvl 65. Same gear with irongrip and 50% armor node, and you facetank 3 yellows together.

Edit: Ironreflexes i mean, not irongrip ;)

I worded it quite clearly, the devs have stated multiple times that evasion is the best option. I dont get how you misunderstood that.

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anubite написал:

You simply, not even under the best circumstance, even with the best gear, the BEST OF THE BEST OF THE MOST PERFECT -- in under ideal, impossibly ideal conditions - reduce a Brutus crit by any significant margin. The amount of armor required is 100k++! And even if you can attain such levels of armor, there is no way you can do it consistently, it's going to require 24/7 granite flasks, Determination, and crazy future synergistic mechanics or uniques.

Just out of curiosity, what exactly is Brutus' damage?

With "ideal" gear I can easily get 40k+ total armor(Without Flasks), That's with 95% Increased Armour, Grace(IR) and Determination. I can easily get an additional 60% Armour, as well as add a Iron Skin Granite and the 30% buff increase nodes. Which would bring me to 90k+

I have no idea what Brutus' damage is, but lets assume its 2500,

Even with just the 40k armor. I'm reducing a 2500 hit by 57%. Assuming Brutus' crit does 150% damage. His 3750 damage is now reduced by 47%. Even if the crit was 250%, that's 6250 damage. Which my armour would give me almost 35% reduction.

Is 35% or 47% not considered a significant margin?

This is also disregarding any Endurance charges which will add additional 15%+ DR.

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anubite написал:

Armor and evasion both have soft-caps.

No they don't. Please don't spread misinformation. The Effective HP curve for armor is completely linear, just like life. Evasion's EHP curve shoots up early and then becomes close to linear, its marginal value decaying by 20% from 11,000 evasion to 32,000 evasion.

the logical answer its given alrdy : armor.

why? simply because 90% of the time u will fight swarm of non-boss monsters. we alrdy stated that armor is better when swarmed.
so if u can play armor before bosses then switch to hybrid/evasion thats the best possible option but i dont see that happening

So, for the big brains in the room...

Is it obviously better to stack either armor OR evasion, and avoid duelist gear altogether? Or does the damage mitigation from mid level armor and mid level evasion approach the level of a pure armor or evasion build?

Assume high amounts of life nodes, picking up at least one of the +ar/eva nodes and arrow dodging.

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Strill написал:

The Effective HP curves for both armor and evasion are completely linear, just like life.

Er, this isn't true. Life is the *only* linear system.

EHP vs evasion plots as a fractional root, with diminishing returns.

EHP vs armour (with endurance! should be a reasonable assumption that every armour build has at least 4 endurance, right?) is increasing hyperbolic. With increasing returns.

But, here's the kicker: you can't compare the two curves side by side. The two systems have completely different defense profiles. They defend against different kinds of damage.

I challenge you to develop a plot of effective health versus armour, in context - which means with endurance charges. Nobody makes an armour build and neglects endurance, precisely because of the scaling I'm describing.

Ah, by the way, here they are.




Remember: as I said earlier, you can't put those two pictures next to each other and draw any conclusion. Like, if you think by looking at that, that armour is obviously better - it does not follow. Because evasion defends against more incoming damage than armour does. There are many elemental attacks, few physical spells.

@anubite, I disagree somewhat on the soft caps thing. I'd say:

evasion has a threshold at 50%. Passing that 50% mark is very valuable in terms of predictability, but it doesn't add any numerical value to the system. Go much beyond that and the diminishing return on EH becomes pretty unbearable.

armour does indeed have a "soft cap" - but the way I name the armour soft cap is different. If you can granite against a particular attacker, and be pegged to 90% reduction, you're soft capped on armour. This concept is pretty imprecise, though - and it also places said "soft cap" at around 80% reduction.

cheers.