Evasion vs Armor itemization

Last thought, as to the proposal for a stun threshold increase.

An intrinsic that raised your actual stun threshold would be overpowered. Stun recovery would be alright, stun threshold increase wouldn't. That's because reduction rating already raises your stun treshold indirectly just by reducing the damage you take per hit.

Stun threshold increase and armour rating would wind up having a multiplicative effect. You'd actually just never get stunned unless you were facing a terribly menacing champion pack. Maybe that's what you're going for there. You can already accomplish nearly total stun prevention in a reduction build; you're proposing a change to make that possible in a pure life build.

"

Zakaluka написал:

An intrinsic that raised your actual stun threshold would be overpowered. Stun recovery would be alright, stun threshold increase wouldn't.

Yeah, you're probably right, although I was thinking low values here. Still, with the way armor formula works, when you're fighting a strong yellow/blue mob, your pure armor guy with his 40% average reduction (non-IR) has very low effective damage reduction, which means more stuns. That's what I was shooting for. Too many bad memories of fighting yellow bears or perma stuned from a pack of blue zombies.

Zak, what do you think of my IR idea ? See previous post edit. Also, when's your next wall of text "let's analyse this" post? I enjoy reading these so much :)

"

Thalandor написал:

Zak, what do you think of my IR idea ? See previous post edit. Also, when's your next wall of text "let's analyse this" post? I enjoy reading these so much :)

I did one the other day in a recent evasion thread. I'm glad not all my breath is wasted, thanks for the encouragement. Although they do get rather tiring, and my job is keeping me from spending so much time on PoE these days.

As to your idea, the problem is armour scaling in general with endurance charges. The only reason armour is worth more at high values is because of endurance. Without endurance, armour is purely linear; with endurance, armour scales EH hyperbolically (and steeper as you collect more endurance charges). There are a few ways to flatten the curve a bit, but they're all complicated balance changes to game-wide gear progression.

1: Nerf the value of an endurance charge by 1% or 2% and add enough armour to base gear values, keeping reduction ceilings in place.
2: Change how endurance figures into reduction. For instance, change endurance into a separate multiplicative source of reduction rather than an additive one. Again, you have to go back and re-scale all values of gear with armour on them to keep reduction ceilings where they are currently.

#1 maintains increasing returns on armour against endurance charges, for effective health.
#2 would make armour a linear-returns system for absolutely everyone. In that case you could even buff the value of an endurance charge significantly. The issue I have with this approach is that you wind up significantly buffing life builds, while nerfing reduction builds at the same time. Do not like.

There's no easy change to systems and gear scaling that solves the issue, other than the one I proposed. But my proposal doesn't ring clear on a thematic note; it's kind of artificial. But then, if we can't put in an artificial fix because we want to preserve the themes in the game? Delete the offending keystone. Take it away, charan.

Well, I know what you're talking about and I've long thought for a long time that #2 should be how it's implemented in the game, but still, I think my IR idea is pretty awesome.

Pure armor guys are already running Enduring Cry or Warlord mark, so the small chance to get a charge from their ~10% evade chance is of no consequence. At best, they'll get their charge timer reset once in a while.

For hybrids armor/evasion, who usually have ~35% reduction from armor and maybe ~%40 evade, this keystone would mean they would get these endurance charges very often, and due to their lowish damage reduction, it wouldn't be overpowered. It'd also be a way to get endurance changes without necessarely investing in the STR requirements of Enduring Cry or Warlord's Mark.

The downside to this keystone, by the way, is the need to maintain a balance between armor and evasion. Too much armor gear means you rarely get a charge. Too much evasion gear means these charges offer little benifit.

Edit: sorry Anubite if the topic has derailed a little, although it's still related to armor/evasion :) I promise no more after this reply

Actually I owe anubite the apology. Albeit in jest, I derailed this one, even if my...solution would have the byproduct of fixing anubite's. ;)

Make your case in a new thread, Thal. I think there is discussion worthy of it.

It's fine. I know stun recovery isn't that thrilling of a stat. People probably don't want to fight hard so that stuns last a millisecond or two less while wearing steel :P -- I do like the other idea I thought of, "avoid cast interruption%" though that wouldn't apply too much to melee fighters, unless they're using molten shell, phase run, or some other thing while in close combat.

--

As for one poster who remarked that evasion has its own downside -- that a chain of lucky hits can result in death -- I think that downside is irrelevant. Armor has its own downside too - if you get hit by big hits, it's useless. My point is:

Leather
+Reduces damage taken or lets you avoid damage
-Slows you down

Steel
+Reduces damage taken less effectively than leather and can't let you avoid damage*
-Slows you down even more

Leather can do what steel does, but is simply better at it. The only reason to use steel is if you have no other choice.

*Yes, you can still evade attacks with steel, but it this is also the case with cloth as well, so it doesn't really count in my eyes.

There are many ways to make steel better, but I think the least intrusive is just adding more indirect value to steel, rather than taking away value from leather, or reducing the value of leather-builds - which I don' tknow is fair or correct. In my experience, taking things away reduces the complexity and depth of choice which hurts a game. We could add value to steel by simply letting it grant more armor, but we have no idea what implications this might have on a whole slew of builds. It could make them overpowered, though I'm sure we could find a good number to add to steel to make it fair/balanced, it would just be easier to add indirect value to steel by letting it have its own implicit upside.