Hardcore evasion ranger feedback

I recently made an evasion ranger on hardcore to see if evasion is a viable defence. Usually I play on default, but I decided to play on hardcore instead because defence actually matters in hardcore. Since I don't usually play on hardcore I didn't have any items, I only used items I found or traded for. I made it to level 67 before I gave up on evasion and respecced into iron reflexes.

Evasion seems okay in theory, but what I discovered is that certain enemies counter evasion pretty hard. Here are some examples:

Rhoas.

When rhoas charge they completely ignore evasion. This is because rhoas use shield charge, which cannot miss. I don't think phase acrobatics even works against them, but I'm not sure. Evasion is supposed to be better than armour at mitigating damage from large hits, yet charging rhoas are the hardest hitting non boss enemy in the game and evasion doesn't work against them.

Not only that, but if a rhoa charges you it always stuns, and evasion characters are very vulnerable to being stunned. I'll talk more about this later.

This isn't much of an issue until you get to maps. Skeletal rhoas only exist in an optional area, and mudflats is a pretty easy area. The rhoas in ship graveyard were pretty dangerous though.

Projectile weakness skeletal archers.

Arrow dodging is a pretty decent keystone, and the only good thing about evasion builds I think. Unfortunately there is a certain type of skeletal archer that casts projectile weakness. I noticed once while I was passing through waterfall caves level 1 that the archers there were doing a ton of damage to me. I tested it a bit and without projectile weakness on me they were only hitting me about 10% of the time, but with projectile weakness on me they were hitting me 90% of the time. This is probably because of how accuracy scales, and how cursed targets have 50%+ ''less'' evasion, which is multiplicative.

This wasn't much of an issue as I played through the game, these skeletons only exist in waterfall caves level 1 and there are no other ranged attackers there. But this can probably be lethal in maps, and makes arrow dodging completely unreliable. What if I'm tanking a bunch of ranged enemies and suddenly an off screen projectile weakness skeletal archer casts that curse on me?

Maybe it's possible to out gear this curse, I don't know. But with average gear it's pretty devastating.

Long range chaos snipers.

You know the ones. They cast a projectile spell that does 50% physical damage and 50% chaos damage, and attack from far off screen. Evasion is the only build type that takes full damage from these enemies. Armour builds reduce the physical portion of the spell, energy shield / life builds split the damage between energy shield / life, chaos inoculation builds are immune to the chaos portion of the spell. Evasion doesn't really have any defense against this enemy type, except for the spell dodging keystone or granite flasks. I'll talk about this later..

Poison arrow skeletal archers.

With arrow dodging, its pretty easy to get 90%+ evade chance against ranged attacks. Unfortunately, poison arrow always hits. Even when it ''misses'' and does no damage to me with the initial arrow, it still leaves a poison cloud at my feet which damages me. I don't understand why it works this way. This sucked for my build, because there isn't any life regen in the ranger area of the tree, so I couldn't mitigate this damage with passive regen. This also isn't much of a problem until maps, poison arrow clouds don't do much damage until then.

Oversoul falling rocks + chaos minions.

I only came close to dying twice before entering maps, once to ruthless oversoul and once to merciless oversoul. Both times were to being stunned by chaos minions and then being hit by lasers / falling rocks. Because I had to put so many points into defence, my damage wasn't very high and I couldn't kill the oversouls chaos minions before he came back. Evasion does nothing in this fight, except mitigate damage that the melee minions do, which isn't very useful.

Rare + magic monsters with Increased Accuracy and Increased Accuracy auras.

Why do these mods even exist? All they do is make evasion even worse. Why not add some more mods for monsters, like ''All physical damage ignores armour'' or ''Does 200% increased damage to energy shield'' to bring other defences more in line with evasion.

Diamond totems in maps.

If they work like diamond flasks then they cause all attacks to hit 100% of the time and ignore evasion. I'm actually not sure if evasion would even reduce the crit chance or not. I only noticed these after I gave up on evasion and respecced out of it so I wasn't able to test it. This is just another mechanic that (maybe) ignores evasion.

Groups of flicker strike enemies.

Evasion sucks at mitigating damage against these enemies, especially if there is a rare boss in the monster pack, because of how evasion entropy works. I'll talk about this later..

Before maps, just playing through the game most of these things weren't that big of a deal, though I'm sure it would of been easier with armour. But once I got to maps and I was being charged by rhoas while chaos snipers shot at me from off screen and skeletal archers were casting projectile weakness on me, evasion pretty much fell apart.

Also some other evasion passives / mechanics that don't work very well:

Evasion entropy.

From the mechanics thread, Mark explains what this is and how it works:
Keep in mind there isn't an entropy counter for each enemy attacking, there is just one counter for the person being attacked. Here is an example of how this works out in game:

Two monsters are attacking me, I have 50% chance to evade.

Weak enemy attacks me for 100 damage, I evade.

Strong rare enemy attacks me for 1000 damage, it hits me.

Weak enemy attacks me for 100 damage, I evade.

Strong rare enemy attacks me for 1000 damage, it hits me.

Weak enemy attacks me for 100 damage, I evade.

Strong rare enemy attacks me for 1000 damage, it hits me.

Weak enemy attacks me for 100 damage, I evade.

Strong rare enemy attacks me for 1000 damage, it hits me.

Total damage: 4400. Damage mitgated: 400. With 50% chance to evade, thats less than 10% mitigation.

Because of this evasion is completely unreliable when being attacked by more than one enemy. This becomes a big issue when a large pack of flicker strike enemies with a rare monster in it attacks me, I often can't kite flicker strike and the hard hitting enemy can potentially hit me multiple times in a row with zero mitigation, unless I use a granite flask. It's really an issue everywhere though. This mechanic was added to make evasion reliable but it doesn't work.

Acrobatics vs granite flasks.

This keystone is terrible. It takes a ton of points and the defence I gain doesn't make up for the defence I lose. I have to lose a bunch of passives that would better be spent elsewhere. It's so much better to just use granite flasks.

What it comes down to is an RNG defence (acrobatics) vs a reliable defence (granite flasks) and granite flasks provide better mitigation against most enemies in the game.

When I initially got this keystone I respecced out of it shortly after. During the short period I had acrobatics I only went through mudflats once, and I never noticed a rhoa charge not hitting me. I'm really curious to know if it even works against charging rhoas. Though granite flasks work better, anyway...

Stunned.

Armour builds have enough mitigation that most attacks can't stun them, or they can just get unwavering stance with no downside, ES builds have 40% chance to not be stunned just for using ES, or they can use eye of chayula to become stun immune with very little downside.

Evasion characters have six passives that barely do anything. There are four 8% chance to avoid being stunned nodes, and two 8% increased stun / block recovery nodes. I think the % is too low for these to be worth getting. Although evasion does prevent stuns simply by evading attacks, evasion doesn't work against charging rhoas, which always stun. I found stuns to be more noticeable on this character. This might be because I use unwavering stance / eye of chayula on all my other characters though.

Arrow dodging + Evasion vs Iron Reflexes.

Most evasion builds are only 3 or 4 passives away from iron reflexes, and there's really no reason not to get it, armour is so much better than evasion. After I respecced into iron reflexes at lvl 67 the game became a lot easier.

Armour is better at mitigating melee damage, the only exception is chaos damage. But the enemies that do chaos damage also do partial physical damage, so armour still mitigates *some* of the damage, while evasion will get hit by the full amount when the hit lands. Except for viper strike, which most armour builds can passively regen through.

Evasion is decent at mitigating ranged attacks, arrow dodging is the only strong point with evasion builds. But it's completely countered by projectile weakness, and most ranged attackers don't do a lot of damage and armour can effectively mitigate their damage anyway.

There are only two exceptions: Poison arrow archers and chaos spitting snakes. Unfortunately, as I've mentioned previously, even when poison arrow misses it still leaves a poison cloud. So that only leaves chaos spitting snakes. That's basically the only non boss enemy in the game that evasion is better against. Unless you're cursed with projectile weakness, in which case armour is better.

Dex evasion bonus and evasion passives.

Both of these bonuses are additive with each other, and most evasion builds are already going to have a lot of dex. This makes the evasion bonus from passives have less of an impact. I was originally going to try and get some evasion passives with my evasion build, but then I realized they weren't very useful.

In conclusion, evasion is mediocre throughout the early and mid game, and folds like paper in the end game. Here are some suggestions to improve evasion:

Change the rhoas charge so that it doesn't always hit, so that evasion works against it.

Change projectile weakness. Make it gives 50% reduced evasion, instead of 50% less evasion so that it doesn't ruin arrow dodging, or nerf it some other way.

Change the projectile spell that the long range chaos snipers use into a projectile attack, so that evasion works against it.

Change poison arrow so that when it misses it passes through its target and doesn't leave a poison cloud.

Change the oversouls falling rocks into an attack, so that evasion works against it.

Remove the monster mod ''Increased accuracy'' and the monster mod ''increased chance to hit/crit aura'', or add mods and auras that are also effective against armour and energy shield.

Change how diamond flasks and diamond totems work so they they don't ignore evasion. If they already are affected by evasion, never mind.

Add an evasion entropy counter for each enemy attacking instead of having one evasion entropy counter on the person defending.

Acrobatics. I don't even know. Consolidate all the passives into one keystone at least. I still wouldn't take it but it's a start.

Improve the stun defensive passives in the dex area. Increase the two 8% ''increased stun / block recovery'' nodes to 25% each, increase the four 8% ''chance to avoid stun'' nodes to 15% each.

Improve the evasion nodes in the passive tree. Maybe add 4% increased life to the 10% evasion nodes, and 10% increased life to the 30% evasion nodes. Maybe remove some of the billion 8% life nodes in the ranger area to compensate for this.

Mmm interesting. Tell me, on a coin, how do you feel evasion is WITHOUT acrobatics?

We've disagreed on some points but damn that was a good read. Excellent points, so far I've only heard "evasion sucks" or "evasion is fine." Glad I can finally see it fully broken down without having to go build one myself.

Thank you.

Good read. As a person that tried a melee CI claw evasion shado, a melee life acrobatics shadow and a melee life acrobatics ranger I agree with most of your suggestions. Note none of these characters even got to merc act 2 (some due to dying in HC and not being played anymore).
I would especially endorse Oversoul rocks being attacks and chaos damage snipers being attacks.

What you didn't tell us is if this character was melee or ranged and if he used a shield. You mentioned kiting so I would guess ranged but I used to kite with my melee evasion characters as well.

Diamond flasks don't guarantee a hit, you can still evade, and you can still negate the crit through that second evade roll.

In other words, if you have 50% chance to evade and your attacker drinks a diamond flask? 25% of the shots will hit, 25% will crit.

Test it out in pvp, but make sure you actually calculate your opponent's hit chance and effective crit rate. The character screen isn't right. effective crit rate = hit^2; effective hit rate = hit - effective crit rate.

Otherwise, for the most part we're in agreement: the only thing wrong with evasion is that too many mechanics in the game seem designed to bypass it. Vaal and shield charge being the two biggest culprits. Other things you've mentioned are valid, but feel less threatening than these two. In the current state of beta, an armour character can manage against vulnerability/increased crit/increased physi, etc. Anti-evasion mechanics seem far more deadly.

I will say flicker mobs.made me run my Ranger run like a little girl. I mean, shes female, but this was just embarrassing. Had to exit some.maps because of it.

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SL4Y3R написал:

I will say flicker mobs.made me run my Ranger run like a little girl. I mean, shes female, but this was just embarrassing. Had to exit some.maps because of it.

Flicker actually seems most manageable to me on an A/PA character with block and high evade.

How is your setup different from mine, slayer? My shadow in endgame has: 55% chance to evade, 34% block, 30% dodge, 2500 life.

I'm not saying those flickers are EASY, just that I seem quite resilient against them compared to any of my other characters.

Dunno. Had 3k HP, using chain with ele hit.

Problem was how they would just jump on top in mobs. While playing, I tried to keep distance. I mean, I could take enough hits that I wasn't worried about instagib, but I liked having a little wiggle room. An escape route as it were.

Without escape route, depending on their affixes,.meant bad news.

Edit: ah, the difference was bow + quiver. So.no block. Just dodge and about the same evade. Maybe a little more.

yes, the block makes a tremendous difference. Flickers felt impossible on my bow eva ranger too. Not sure how to tackle that one other than some kind of defensive control, and resisting the urge to run.

Ever try conversion trap as a defensive control? ^^