How much evasion do I want/need? (Ranger)

[Tinzy]

Just curious if there's a cap, and what sort of number I should be aiming for? (Currently sitting on 4400 evasion at level 49)

[Vegan_Velociraptor]

As far as i know there isnt a cap on the actual number of evasion but there maybe a cap on the actual evade chance that it gives, It's not really about the amount of evasion you have but more about the chance to evade it gives. I'd say you want at least a 50% chance to evade but you should aim for more, you also have to remember that if you have a base 50% chance to evade you can briefly raise that with jade flasks to 60-70%+ when you know your about to get hit by something big and painful (e.g Kole in the lunaris temple). There is no specific number to aim for it's just a case of the more the better, you just want as much evasion as you can get your hands on and it's exactly the same with armour. Don't try to get all of your evasion from the passive tree though because you'll end up with a character that either has very little life or has very little dps

[CidDaBird]

Originally posted by BloodThirstyWarmonger:

Don't try to get all of your evasion from the passive tree though because you'll end up with a character that either has very little life or has very little dps

Nailed it.

[Tinzy]

Alright, cheers folks. Will keep in mind about not burning passives on evasion also, thanks.

[Neriakied]

jade flasks are also great if you know you are about to get hit a lot

[Tinzy]

Will keep in mind about the jade flasks. Mind you, currently I'm getting hit fairly often and when I do, its pretty brutal - only in act 2 of cruel.

[Psyringe]

Originally posted by Muzzle:

Will keep in mind about the jade flasks. Mind you, currently I'm getting hit fairly often and when I do, its pretty brutal - only in act 2 of cruel.

Go to Menu -> Character Screen and click on the "Defense" tab. It will show you an estimated chance to evade attacks.

Important: Don't underestimate Life. Evasion in this game works like this: The attacker's accuracy is checked against your evasion, which results in a chance to evade the attack. If the check succeeds, then you avoid the attack completely. If it fails, then you take full damage. Even with very good evasion, you will get hit sometimes, and some of those hits will be critical strikes.

Your life pool needs to be high enough to handle those crits. Otherwise, you'll get to a point where pretty much every enemy can kill you in one hit (I made this mistake with my very first character I ever made for this game).

Make sure that your gear gives you +Life bonuses to give you a good base, and take nodes in the skill tree that give you percentage bonuses on that base.

Additionally, evasion does not help against spells. Spells will always hit you, and you will always take full damage from them. The way to mitigate that damage is through high resistances, and (again) by having a life pool that's large enough to handle the remaining damage. The "Defense" tab also tells you your resistances, the cap is at 75%. Your resistances get lowered in Cruel difficulty, so they may not be as high as they should.

Also, regarding evasion, try to get defensive gear that gives you both a flat and a percentage bonus to evasion, those will stack. This in addition to the life and resistance bonuses that I mentioned earlier, so won't get all of those on one item, but try to select gear so that you have everything covered. If you can, use the masters in your hideout to craft missing bonuses onto your gear.

[Apocalypse]

Restiance, armor and hp can be summerized has effective hp, they are your buffer, while evade and dodge (acrobatis) are your avoidance which negates damage complettely.

To reduce incoming dps best and survive as ranger you need usually enough buffer to withstand the damage when you get an unlucky series of hits while maximising your avoidance.

Mathematical there might be a point when adding armor to increase ehp might become more effective than adding hp. Unfortuanlly I am to lazy to calcucalte if this point can be reached with a reasonable ranger build and I have not seen anyone theorycrafting this either. As long as you have acrobats I would assume stacking raw hp and evade should be the most effective way to increase your ttl (time to live).

Resistance should always aimed to be capped, which is another reason for stacking raw hp should be done as resistance are capped at 75% and your ehp only increases at that point by adding more hp.
Keep in mind here that the going from 50% resists to 75% resists will double your ehp. Going from 0 to 75% resists will qudrable your ehp and ttl.

[Tinzy]

Wow, some nice info above, thanks much Psyringe and Apoc.

Having had a look my resistances were a complete mess. 80 odd % fire resistance, 50% cold, 8% lightning and negative figures on chaos.... lol. So yeah, I'll tend to that fiasco and see how I get along.