Making the Case for Dodge Chance

by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

Last week, we saw Vaeus make a case for Dex->Armor being the best thing to happen to Monks and DH’s. While I agree that the numerical benefit that this change provides was something that was direly needed.  A good part of the community is saddened that Monks and DHs will lose the flavor that Dex->Dodge provided us. Many say Dexterity shouldn’t make you outright harder, it should make you harder to hit.

Today I put myself on their shoes and try to make the case for sticking to the Dodge Mechanic.

The Dodge Problem

Dodge had 2 big problems, the first one is that not every attack can be dodged. Elite affixes is what presents the biggest danger to our survival, and some of them just cannot be dodged.

I understand how logical reasoning dictates that you shouldn’t be able to dodge an effect if you are already standing on it. But if you are going to allow Dexterity to give Armor instead, common sense and logic has already been thrown out of the window. There is no reason why we shouldn’t be able to dodge every incoming source of damage.

Maybe it doesn’t make sense to dodge one tick of Molten Fire and then get hit by the next one, or maybe someone can come out with a logical explanation for it. In the end it doesn’t matter, because Dexterity giving Armor doesn’t make sense either so why shouldn’t we stick with the solution that gives us more diversity and flavor?

That’s were our second factor comes in, we also have to consider the RNG factor. Even with a 90% dodge chance, a string of bad luck was all you needed to bite the dust. Maybe failing to dodge 5 straight blows was a 1 in 10000 chance, but it could still happen. So you could be happy avoiding everything and then a bad streak comes and in a few seconds your HP bar suddenly plummets.

Even if we were able to Dodge every source of damage, we are inherently more vulnerable as RNG can dictate that a big part of our defense is ignored when we needed it the most. Also, the interaction with healing should be looked at it closely. If you avoid many attacks you might remain with your health at 100% for long periods of time, losing out on possible Life gains from Life on Hit, Life per Second, and all healing mechanics.

This vulnerability dictates that for Dodge to be a legit option, it should be better than Armor on Average.

But in a way, dodge is already better that Armor or All Resist. Thanks to diminishing returns, the amount of damage reduction that you are going to get from the Dexterity into armor conversion will depend on how much armor you had before it, and everyone has armor. Dodge instead, will start from 0% and provide a bigger benefit.

How Dodge Works and how it used to work.

At Launch,  Dexterity worked just like Strength and Intelligence at least numerically.

The formulas were homogeneous as such:

Dodge Chance = Dex/ (Dex +50*Max Level)

Damage Reduction from Armor = Armor / (Armor +50*Max Level)

Damage Reduction from All Resists = AR/(AR +5*Max Level)

But since  1 Str gave one 1 Armor, and 1 Int gave 0.1 Int, things ended up looking like this.

Damage Reduction from Strength = Str / (Str + 50*Max Level)

Damage Reduction from Int  = Int / (Int+ 50*Max Level)

Dodge Chance = Dex/ (Dex +50*Max Level)

At some point, I think it was 2.0.1, dodge got changed and many thought it got severly nerfed.

Instead of following the simple design of days past, the Dodge formula changed somewhat. My DH’s 8317 dexterity would’ve translated into 70.4% dodge chance. Instead I’m left with 38.3% dodge chance.

Would 70% Be Too Much?

Thanks to a Shield and without counting passives, my Armor reduction on that same DH is 71.62%. On Patch 2.1 when I’m able to add Dexterity to Armor it will jump to 83% damage reduction. I’m going to go from 28.38% damage taken to 17%, if you do the Math you will notice that we will get a 40% damage reduction. That’s not as big of a bonus as Vaeus was getting on his Monk with the same change because of the same diminishing returns we talked earlier. Again, that 40% is without counting All Resist on a later post we will see how All Resist affects our calculations.

In any scenario, 70% dodge would’ve been way superior to 40% damage reduction. The interaction with diminishing returns was likely the real reason that the Dodge formula was changed. Since the rest of your gear gives you armor and all resists, the bonus to dodge would’ve been much larger in comparison.

This makes Dodge way harder to Balance, and it’s no surprise that the developers have prefered to take it out of the game.

How Can We Make It Work?

As long as dodge can apply to all incoming damage sources, the current conversion is not that bad of an approximation. my current 38.3% dodge is going to translate into 40% damage reduction. A small increase on the Dex to Dodge conversion would probably make Monks and DHs pretty happy and pretty durable.

So we need two things.

1. Be able to dodge all attacks
2. Rise the numeric value of dodge just a bit.

Those two steps would be a good compromise and would allow Monks and DH to rise in toughness while still retaining the flavor of being nimble fighters that can dodge a decent amount of the incoming attacks.