Grimrock

Alternative title: "What am I doing with my life?"


We've heard this time and again. Evasion sucks. Not worth it. Almost Human, buff plz! Don't even need points in Armor to git gud.

Today I put two brave knights to the test. No cheating. No grinding. Minor doping thanks to two Alchemists. (Don't do drugs, kids.)

The highest Protection vs the highest Evasion I was able to reach before the end of the game.


The contestants:
(Potions were added after the photoshoot.)




The judge:
(Graciously provided an abundance of antidote.)




The result:

Number of attacks: 100

Insectinator: Multiple deaths. Applied for an expendable NPC role in Dark Souls 3.

Rat-tan: Exactly one death. Exactly 4 hits taken. Aspires to be a professional Guitar Hero now.


The conclusion:

Evasion still sucks in terms of price-performance. What's the point if I could have gone Rogue instead and obliterated everything before dudes even find a chance to throw attacks at me to evade? Buff plz! Proc a free 3-second Speed Potion on successful evasion or something, I don't bloody know. Something! Anything!


Disclaimer:

No acolytes were harmed in the making of this test. Despite the lack of combat efficiency, the test was also rather entertaining and enlightening. There are still a ton of worthless skills in this game though, for realzies. Thanks for reading~

\i have to disagree. I played log 1 the first time with a knight/warrior w/e and a rogue on the front line with pure evasion..

The rogue saved us. The enemy kept hitting and my warrior died. The rogue was happy in the front line..

IN log 2 the same thing happend.

So.. ye Evasion does work... Beter then armor anyhows..

I must put as extra info. A warrior with full accurecy, critt levels, add thepotions of strenght made by my alchy.... He does sometimes makes critts of 600 to 1100. ( fresh party)

WEll this is my experience with the game. It seems ok.

EDit: All like their own party. But you should try more stuff?:P

Your methodology is flawed! You wore the Braclet of Tirin instead of the Hardstone Bracelet on the protection character. Clearly, the reason protection appears inferior is that you had 173 protection instead of the 176 that was actually possible.

minmay wrote:Your methodology is flawed! You wore the Braclet of Tirin instead of the Hardstone Bracelet on the protection character. Clearly, the reason protection appears inferior is that you had 173 protection instead of the 176 that was actually possible.

Yeah, I got a bit lazy on the brotection guy. I should have played through the game twice as well, so the Ratling Knight could have had three Alchemists providing stat potions. But hey, I also forgot to unequip the Pearl Shield. (●´ω｀●)

trancelistic wrote:Evasion does work... Beter then armor anyhows..

You're absolutely right. This test proves that top end Evasion outclasses top end Protection by a long shot. The problem is that one is effective with zero effort whereas the other gets considerably worse the lower it drops if you don't dedicate your character to it.

trancelistic wrote:A warrior with full accurecy, critt levels, add thepotions of strenght made by my alchy.... He does sometimes makes critts of 600 to 1100. ( fresh party)

TL,DR: Stuff that's already been said before. Skip to TL,DR #2 to save yourself some time~

That's the point. If stuff dies before you take damage in the first place, you effectively have the best defense in the game. It's also a matter of more bang for the buck. While you can just equip the heaviest armor in the game without needing the Armor skill whatsoever, you do need to invest in it if you care about Evasion to remove the penalty that comes with anything but clothing.

This is where efficiency comes into play. Assuming you either have the Crystal or Meteor Set, you get +5 Protection for 1 point in the Armor skill (if the game rounds up generously). That's literally worth a non-exclusive Trait. If you take 1 point in Dodge, you get +3. That's a little more than half of a Trait. Assuming you go with Light Weapons, let's say you're wielding the Bone Blade and put 1 point in Light Weapons. You get 2 - 8 extra damage, the average being 5. That's better than the Aggressive Trait, and it only gets better if you look at dual wielding or Heavy Weapons with a massive 6 - 16 extra damage on the Bane and 4/5 - 14 on the Meteor Hammer, the latter being rather fast and intensely accurate for a Heavy Weapon.

The bottom line is that neither Protection nor Evasion are relevant in Hard mode, but at least Protection can just be slapped on while reasonably effective levels of Evasion require dedication, thus sacrificing your offensive capabilities which in turn forces you to rely more on random number generation than your own proficiency as a player. If you don't go full ham like I did in this test, you would end up with better Protection but significantly less Evasion. Again though, you will be asking yourself why you're standing there, taking or hopefully evading hits if you could have just killed the thing more quickly and reduced the chances of you messing up and cornering yourself, at which point defenses become meaningless because your back row is getting assaulted as well.


TL,DR #2 - Electric Boogaloo. Skip to TL,DR #3 to save even more time~

Yes, you can raise Evasion to spectacular levels. Yes, I only got hit 4 times in the 50 times on average the Ratling was targeted. Was it a fun experiment? I would say so. Was it worth it though? Not really. The loss of power in favor of defense frequently caused stuff to just not die, so I actually ended up taking more damage over time than I did with an aggressive party composition. Even though you can make Evasion significantly better than Protection, it's still not great.

RNG can still screw you over. You can't have two evasive characters either because you don't get two Crystal Shields, and you would be splitting the limited number of dexterity potions whilst simultaneously using underpowered weapons unless you meta your way through the game to reach the good stuff earlier than intended.


TL,DR #3 - As promised:

You put points into Dodge to get a 10% discount on your cooldowns, not for the +9 Evasion. That's hilariously ironic.

TinyZu wrote:This is where efficiency comes into play. Assuming you either have the Crystal or Meteor Set, you get +5 Protection for 1 point in the Armor skill (if the game rounds up generously). That's literally worth a non-exclusive Trait.

that's not really saying much, though, since some traits - such as that one - are garbage
a point of concentration is worth a whole trait (aura), to say nothing of the Strong Mind trait which just gives +10 energy, a little energy regeneration, +4 resist cold, and a tiny chance to resist petrification...
a point of athletics is worth a whole trait (tough), and the Healthy trait just gives +10 health, a little health regeneration, and +4 resist poison...
a point of accuracy is worth more than a whole trait (martial training)

I know, right? Just goes to show how much aggression is favored. Then again, why am I bothered by balance in a single-player game? Oh right, I don't have anything better to do x3

TinyZu wrote:We've heard this time and again. Evasion sucks. Not worth it.

Huh? Who says that? Compared to LoG1 it's a lot harder to build up Evasion in LoG2 but that's about it.
This is a test done one week after game release.

Dr.Disaster wrote:

TinyZu wrote:We've heard this time and again. Evasion sucks. Not worth it.

Huh? Who says that? Compared to LoG1 it's a lot harder to build up Evasion in LoG2 but that's about it.

You nailed it. Evasion has kind of a bad rap among the casual side of players because of this, and that's where the misconception comes from. You need to know what you're doing to make it work well. If you follow the game's progression "as intended", you'll be disappointed for quite some time. That's what sucks about it.

Truthfully, I primarily wanted to find out just how annoying building a hyper evasive character was going to be in comparison to something like, I dunno, a dual-wielding Barbarian who goes face and saves you just as many potions in the end. Turns out it's preddy annoying :,3

In the earlier threads after the initial release of LoG 2, it was stated often that Evasion sucked. The reason typically given illustrates that Evasion was too strong in LoG 1; so lil Zu is correct. I would do a forum search and multi-quote but I'm too lazy lol