Stop spreading the Evasion vs Armor fallacy

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ManOfHonor написал:

You are exactly the type of toxic to the community the OP was referring to. Since everyone else has already corrected you, it saves me the trouble of typing a wall of text.

But seriously... This isn't just directed at you, but everyone spreading falsehoods about mechanics they don't fully understand: not only are you making yourself look really stupid, you are misleading new players actually trying to learn the game. This has a detrimental effect on the community as a whole.

The problem of the world in a nutshell: Too many of those who lack an educated opinion feels the pull of a strange compulsion to voice any ol'[sic] thought that comes to their head. Even worse, people like you voice it with an air of condescension, so sure that you are beyond error.

Holy crap you are dumb aren't you? If a mob deals 1/3 of your hp, its facking plain obvious taht with evasion build you CAN'T tank 3 of them and be 100% sure you will not die. With mitigation, you can. You might start arguing again about stacking HP, but that's my fucking point. Even if mitigation gets down to 10% , still the same pack of 3 mobs that otherwise dealt 1/3 of your hp each will NOT kill you. With evasion, they could. Got it?

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fevgatos написал:

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ManOfHonor написал:

You are exactly the type of toxic to the community the OP was referring to. Since everyone else has already corrected you, it saves me the trouble of typing a wall of text.

But seriously... This isn't just directed at you, but everyone spreading falsehoods about mechanics they don't fully understand: not only are you making yourself look really stupid, you are misleading new players actually trying to learn the game. This has a detrimental effect on the community as a whole.

The problem of the world in a nutshell: Too many of those who lack an educated opinion feels the pull of a strange compulsion to voice any ol'[sic] thought that comes to their head. Even worse, people like you voice it with an air of condescension, so sure that you are beyond error.

Holy crap you are dumb aren't you? If a mob deals 1/3 of your hp, its facking plain obvious taht with evasion build you CAN'T tank 3 of them and be 100% sure you will not die. With mitigation, you can. You might start arguing again about stacking HP, but that's my fucking point. Even if mitigation gets down to 10% , still the same pack of 3 mobs that otherwise dealt 1/3 of your hp each will NOT kill you. With evasion, they could. Got it?

Evasion doesn't work like that in this game. It's not random. You COULD in fact be sure you wouldn't die.

Your scenario WOULD be correct, however, if there were one or two weak enemies together with the strong ones.

I think the bottom line with the whole evasion vs armor thing is that evasion relies more on HP for survivability than armor does, and it is in a section of the tree that has far fewer HP nodes that the section associated with armor.

The center bottom left corner has 2x 30% evasion nodes, 10% ones leading up to it, and heaps of life nodes around there too.

So yeh, thats where I would go to get my eva + hp fix :p

This thread got me wanting a defense calculator for the game, so i went ahead and made a little spreadsheet for it. Not quite finished (need to make it roll the chance to crit properly when you have <5% chance to dodge or >95%), but outside that i THINK everything is working right. I'll update it when i wake up tomorrow probably.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AgtbSbK2Te2PdFhqV1lPSHZiajNhZU51LTBKREtXRXc&output=xls

It assumes that you are always going to get hit the maximum number of times in a row (based on your evasion and enemy accuracy) from the start, so you get a worst case scenario.

If you want to figure out approximate enemy stats for your level just hop into game and input your stats, raise enemy attacks to some absurd number (like 10,000) then adjust the enemies stats until the outcome lines up with your character screen. Its not perfect, but its approximate and close enough for the whites you may fight.

If anyone finds any issues in my math or has a better way to do something, or thinks up another feature (like adding in elemental damages on hits and resistances.... i may do that tomorrow), feel free to modify and post it.

I only see retards replying.
The first reply is the best answer.
Evasion DOESN'T MITIGATE DAMAGE meaning that you will take 100% of damage when you don't evade the attack. GET THAT?

Armor gives you a steady damage reduction while Evasion is on paper better in long runs.
Evade - Evade - Evade - TAKE FULL BLOW - evade - evade - evade. <-- calculate total damage and you see it's uber awesome damage reduction right? WRONG! That full blow will most likely wipe you off the ground, especially from the bosses on merciless. Every hardcore player will tell you that armor is better than evasion, because they don't want to sign a contract for evasion while there will be always a chance that you will take a full dmg blow.

I always used to feel that evasion was inferior to armour, but that was because I kept putting the 2 different builds in the same situations: tanking mobs.

I was then told by one better than I that the purpose of evasion builds is to not get hit, not to tank.

Basically, if you build an evasion character around temporal chains/enfeeble, kite monsters and use whirling blades or other aoe spells linked with blind, it can still work.

Armour builds are meant to tank, evasion builds are meant to not get hit. Trying to compare the 2 kinds of builds using just one style of gameplay is quite unfair to the latter.

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Invalesco написал:

I always used to feel that evasion was inferior to armour, but that was because I kept putting the 2 different builds in the same situations: tanking mobs.

I was then told by one better than I that the purpose of evasion builds is to not get hit, not to tank.

Basically, if you build an evasion character around temporal chains/enfeeble, kite monsters and use whirling blades or other aoe spells linked with blind, it can still work.

Armour builds are meant to tank, evasion builds are meant to not get hit. Trying to compare the 2 kinds of builds using just one style of gameplay is quite unfair to the latter.

That is correct however... if you use enfeeble mobs would do less dmg on avg therefore hitting armor curve where it has higher efficiency so armor itself would be more effective as well. And whirling out of danger is making both builds not getting hit.

Yes its different playstyle. A gambling one. If game did not have xp penalty it would 'maybe' be as useful in SC, it certainly never would be in HC, but you know that better than I do.

There are 2 reasons im gambling, one is well its fun in a way, another is curve at endgame, which lowers armor real efficiency to the point where i believe 50% flat evasion still works and 50% armor gets reduced significantly enough so assuming heavy life stacking evasion might actually pull ahead. And I'm in softcore so eh. But OP is wrong, since new players are not even close to that point of game, even if my theory is going to work, for them in normal diff it certainly is not, and wont be the case for a damn while.

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WingsOfGryphin написал:

I only see retards replying.
The first reply is the best answer.
Evasion DOESN'T MITIGATE DAMAGE meaning that you will take 100% of damage when you don't evade the attack. GET THAT?

Armor gives you a steady damage reduction while Evasion is on paper better in long runs.
Evade - Evade - Evade - TAKE FULL BLOW - evade - evade - evade. <-- calculate total damage and you see it's uber awesome damage reduction right? WRONG! That full blow will most likely wipe you off the ground, especially from the bosses on merciless. Every hardcore player will tell you that armor is better than evasion, because they don't want to sign a contract for evasion while there will be always a chance that you will take a full dmg blow.

If one blow will 1 shot you, and you have built for an appropriate amount of effective health (meaning high enough HP/ES, chances are that a 1 shot from an evasion build is also a 1 shot on an armor build, because armor value is significantly less on high damage attacks.

Ultimately, if you are literally getting 1 shot, armor would obviously be better, but more importantly, life and es would be better still. The degree to which armor would be better in this circumstance is both lessened the more dangerous the attack is (or reversely the higher your HP becomes), and has a very finite range of increased value (enough to stop a 1 shot, but useless again the very point that 1shot is avoided).

I am a hardcore player and I will tell you that armor is not better than evasion. If "every hardcore player" was saying that, then every one of those players that does not use enduring cry is literally moronic, because each endurance charge has an astonishingly higher value in surviving a 1 shot than stacking armor does - and you can use enduring cry as a level 1 gem on any character 19+ with a spare red socket and 48 str.

You don't avoid 1 shot rng by stacking armor - stacking armor to avoid one shots is playing the RNG game just as much as stacking evasion. By stacking evasion you take the gamble that that 1 shot attack happens on a swing that you happen to avoid, and by stacking armor you take the gamble that the hit falls within the range where you wouldn't have survived it anyway by stacking evasion, but that the hit isn't hard enough that it renders your armor ineffective at blocking the 1 shot anyway.

The level of misinformation in this thread is amazing. I just got called "what a casual noob" in general chat by explaining it to a new player how it works.

OP is correct. Fact.

Another mechanic that is easily missed is this:

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Energy Shield
As long as you have greater than 0 Energy Shield, you have a 50% chance to avoid stun.

The life leech applies to energy shield keystone (Ghost Reaver) and Life regen applies to Energy shield keystones are amazing with this in mind. You can keep up a 50% chance to avoid stun easily in the heat of battle and you don't need much energy shield to do it.

Even better imho with evasion (more likely reaver) as you need the chance to avoid stun more.

Also, another thing

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The formula used for determining whether or not a stun occurs is:
stun_chance = 200 * damage / defender_effective_max_life

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If the stun chance would be less than or equal to 25%, it's ignored, so you need to deal more than 12.5% of effective maximum life to have a chance to stun.

So, to optimise your chances of not getting stunned with an evasion build you want a large life pool, some energy shield and block.

I'm currently trying to build a 2 handed Shadow with life reaver with this in mind. Going okay so far, but I think I'll be struggling later on. I think I'll be switching to a 1 handed weapon to get some block too come merciless.