Stop spreading the Evasion vs Armor fallacy

This is requried reading for anyone giving advice to new players:https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/11707/page/1

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1. Armor is no less prone to "RNG" than Evasion.

Armor is not a flat damage reduction. Armor is significantly less effective versus critical strikes. Monsters critically strike randomly. It is possible to take random spikes of damage while in armor.

2. Armor is actually more prone to spikes in damage taken than Evasion.

Evasion has psuedo-RNG. The same monster CANNOT hit you in long consistent strings, if a monster hits you X times, your evasion rating will FORCE a miss after a certain number of landed hits. Go read the mechanics thread. Evasion also has a hidden mechanic of reducing enemy critical strike chance.

Monsters in POE do not have random spurts of accuracy, they have a constant accuracy rating that can only be modified by auras/mods. Armor, on the other hand, will often take random amounts of damage because of sudden lucky critical hits from monsters.

3. Evasion is not a substitute for life. Neither is armor.

I'm tired of people saying that evasion sucks and that all dex classes must go iron reflexes. If you have a decent enough maxmimum life, evasion and/or armor are good. Evasion is best against single hard-hitting targets, like rares and bosses. Armor is best against swarms of enemies, where you're frequently surrounded and struck many times in a short time.

Stop convincing new players that evasion is "RNG" - it's not. You will not take some random burst of damage under evasion that kill you any more often than if you were using armor. If you're being one-shot in evasion gear, you would have been one-shot in armor - Brutus landing a crit on either defensive spec is going to hurt massively. Make sure you have a sufficient amount of maximum life.

Spreading misconceptions is toxic to the game as it gives the developers the wrong impressions about game balance and makes new players think like they have "no choice". New players also spread these misconceptions unknowingly. Stop influencing them.

Actually you are wrong. Simplest example ever

50% damage reduction vs 50% evasion with 300 hp vs 100dmg attacks from 3 monsters

With damage reduction you are eating 150 dmg per hit (3x50). With evasion, there is a 12.5%chance that you will eat 300dmg and insta die.

Evasion needs considerably more investment in +hp nodes / gear than armor does and that's for the simple fact that no matter how much hits you are evading, when you are NOT you are eating the full damage, which may very well exceed your max hp. In Normal ACT 3 mobs were hitting for 100 against my shadow which had little armor reduction. If I tried to tank 3 of them I would die every time even though I had the best possible gear at that point (500 evasion armor at 28 level is awesome).

With evasion there is a much lower cap of enemies you can actually tank against. In my first example, you cant tank more than 2 enemies without a chance to die if you with evasion. With armor reduction in that same example you could tank 6. It wasnt hard was it?

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anubite escreveu:

If you have a decent enough maxmimum life, evasion and/or armor are good. Evasion is best against single hard-hitting targets, like rares and bosses. Armor is best against swarms of enemies, where you're frequently surrounded and struck many times in a short time.

truth.

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fevgatos escreveu:

Actually you are wrong. Simplest example ever

50% damage reduction vs 50% evasion with 300 hp vs 100dmg attacks from 3 monsters

With damage reduction you are eating 150 dmg per hit (3x50). With evasion, there is a 12.5%chance that you will eat 300dmg and insta die.

Evasion needs considerably more investment in +hp nodes / gear than armor does and that's for the simple fact that no matter how much hits you are evading, when you are NOT you are eating the full damage, which may very well exceed your max hp. In Normal ACT 3 mobs were hitting for 100 against my shadow which had little armor reduction. If I tried to tank 3 of them I would die every time even though I had the best possible gear at that point (500 evasion armor at 28 level is awesome).

With evasion there is a much lower cap of enemies you can actually tank against. In my first example, you cant tank more than 2 enemies without a chance to die if you with evasion. With armor reduction in that same example you could tank 6. It wasnt hard was it?

No with evasion every other hit will miss, the evasion roll isnt for every incoming hit, its based on an entropy counter. if you take a hit that counter goes up until it reaches the chance to evade at which point it will start over.

Also armor doesn't reduce by a flat amount it reduces based on the reduction formula. This would only be true if those monsters hit for the exact same amount everytime, which does not happen.

Let's say in the above example monster two crits.

Armor gets hit for the 50, then they get hit for the crit, which deals 150, but according to the armor formula you wont take 75 it'll be more like 100, not sure because you need to know the armor rating, the damage reduction 50% doesnt mean anything(its based on average hit of white mobs for you're level versus your armor rating) so the armour guy takes about 200 damage

Armor and evasion take the about the same damage in this situation because 50% evasion evades the second hit every single time.

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fevgatos escreveu:

Actually you are wrong. Simplest example ever

50% damage reduction vs 50% evasion with 300 hp vs 100dmg attacks from 3 monsters

With damage reduction you are eating 150 dmg per hit (3x50). With evasion, there is a 12.5%chance that you will eat 300dmg and insta die.

Wrong. There's a 0% chance to get hit for 300 damage, literally. There's 50% chance you'll take 100 damage, 50% chance you'll take 200 damage. If there were 4 mobs, you had a 100% chance to take 200 damage and no other possibility existed.

As stated above by Anubite, Armor is not a flat damage reduction. It is actually based on the damage taken. This is why Anubite stated that Armor is better for tanking multiple weak monsters than 1 big boss.

The misconception is that going Evasion will innevitably get you killed. But, just like Armor, you HAVE to build for Life. New player's believe Evasion is bad because they think that by dodging attacks they won't need a high amount of Life, but that's just false. Every melee character is this game needs a high amount of Life and/or Energy Shield.

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fevgatos escreveu:

Actually you are wrong. Simplest example ever

50% damage reduction vs 50% evasion with 300 hp vs 100dmg attacks from 3 monsters

With damage reduction you are eating 150 dmg per hit (3x50). With evasion, there is a 12.5%chance that you will eat 300dmg and insta die.

Evasion needs considerably more investment in +hp nodes / gear than armor does and that's for the simple fact that no matter how much hits you are evading, when you are NOT you are eating the full damage, which may very well exceed your max hp. In Normal ACT 3 mobs were hitting for 100 against my shadow which had little armor reduction. If I tried to tank 3 of them I would die every time even though I had the best possible gear at that point (500 evasion armor at 28 level is awesome).

With evasion there is a much lower cap of enemies you can actually tank against. In my first example, you cant tank more than 2 enemies without a chance to die if you with evasion. With armor reduction in that same example you could tank 6. It wasnt hard was it?

Your example is a poor one, because there are no monster packs in the game that do 100 damage a hit (Brutus is a boss and does not come in packs) when you have sub 400 life.

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. It is common even for pure-armor users to be sub 35% damage reduction, even with incredible gear. This is especially true end-game. Of course, endurance charges and granite flasks can bring you up to a high amount of damage reduction, you can also use those things with evasion, although to a lesser extent.

My point is, that armor and evasion are comparable. Neither is necessarily better than the other and both are weak to "spike damage" under unfavorable circumstances. Burst damage is only countered by having a sufficient amount of maximum life.

If monsters are doing 1/3 of your life per hit, you do not have enough life and you will never have enough evasion or armor to mitigate that particular fact.

If you want to disprove my point, use real numbers, like how much life YOU have at level 50, with how much armor you have at 50, with how much damage you do/would take from a common level 50 monster. And then ask, "What if I dodged half the time instead?" That is a more fair analysis.

This post is seriously incorrect. I'm at work or I would take the time to vigorously debunk it. Perhaps later.

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fevgatos escreveu:

Actually you are wrong. Simplest example ever

50% damage reduction vs 50% evasion with 300 hp vs 100dmg attacks from 3 monsters

With damage reduction you are eating 150 dmg per hit (3x50). With evasion, there is a 12.5%chance that you will eat 300dmg and insta die.

Evasion needs considerably more investment in +hp nodes / gear than armor does and that's for the simple fact that no matter how much hits you are evading, when you are NOT you are eating the full damage, which may very well exceed your max hp. In Normal ACT 3 mobs were hitting for 100 against my shadow which had little armor reduction. If I tried to tank 3 of them I would die every time even though I had the best possible gear at that point (500 evasion armor at 28 level is awesome).

With evasion there is a much lower cap of enemies you can actually tank against. In my first example, you cant tank more than 2 enemies without a chance to die if you with evasion. With armor reduction in that same example you could tank 6. It wasnt hard was it?

Why do people with no clue post like they know what they are talking about?

Seriously, go read the mechanics thread or something.

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AhlenS escreveu:

This post is seriously incorrect. I'm at work or I would take the time to vigorously debunk it. Perhaps later.

In what capacity is it wrong?

So far, anyone I've ever debated evasion/armor with has only proven to me they've never read the mechanics thread and mistakenly think they actually get 50% or more DR on most enemies. I hope you'll read it before attempting to use up your time.

If you could consistently get 60% or more DR on all enemies in the game, POE would be pretty easy to play because all you'd need is 3-4k health and 60% DR and nothing could kill you (that was purely physical, anyway, but that's a whole other issue).