AO-Universe

I've seen plenty of these on the MA profession forums on the official site forums, but still, I wonder about it myself as I play.

A while back, my solitus MA was about lvl 90. maxed evades, had the COH collar adding another 30, implants added about 80 more to evade close-combat, and good sense/agility stats. Body/Legs of the Servants of Eight, plus the MA gloves from TOTW added about 12 more. So I'm in a mission with mobs about 10 lvls higher than me. Find an eagle rift and see the nice numbers: +315 to all evades. How nice. Total reached a bit more than 920 for evade close combat.

With the aggression bar 3/4 toward defense, I start attacking a hellhound. Wow. Dodging rate was less than 50%. Hmm, what crappy rates, I thought. So I try another one, and virtually the same thing. I found one of those android mobs and the dodging rate was a bit better, I'd estimate 60-65% evading attacks. Not exactly satisfied, I find another eagle rift and test again. Still rather bad dodging. So I shrugged it off in semi-frustration as I finished the mission.

A few levels later, around 95, I'm soloing a team mission. I reach the level before the dyna mob and find an eagle rift. "Good, I'll save it for when I fight the dyna." So I did so, healed up, and went on down...and saw some unpleasant numbers

"195 melee damage"
"405 projectile damage"
"200 melee damage"
"354 projectile damage"
"425 melee damage. critical hit!"

BAHHH evil...

The mob was 10 or so levels higher than me, one of those battle droid mobs (I think that's what they're called). Hmm, I'm understanding since my dodge-ranged is lower than close combat, but still, I dodged roughtly 1/3 of the hits, and I think for 800 evades in dodge ranged that's...bad.

Even without perks, are we MA's supposed to dodge that bad?

Is there a way to calculate percentage chance of getting hit based on one's evade, enemy's attack rating/defense bar, etc? Just frustrated that one of the MA's strong points....isn't that strong. =P

at lvl 95 you're probly reached titlecap thats why you feel a bit gimped because a lvl 105 mob is relatively much stronger that you than say a level 70 mob when you're level 60. add to this the fact that hellhounds have very high attack rating... ;\

when you're near a new title level, every new level makes you more gimp.. that's just the way it is.. but after reaching the new tl you can put ip to your skills again and you will feel the difference. repeat your test at lvl 120 at full def! you should see a big difference. and enjoy your greatness while you can, you will feel much more gimped at lvl 189

btw i'm a lvl199 sl ma now, got like 2.4k evades with acrobat on and a lotta mobs still can hit me (200+ slayer bosses are nasty..) but it would be pretty boring if nothing could hit you wouldn't it?

i usually go 60% agg to keep the 1/1 speed but if i'm in trouble i'll immediately go to full def which usually helps. but if the mob is way higher than you then don't expect you will evade much of his hits.

if you go full def and the mob still hits you almost all the time then you'd better go a bit more agg to keep 1/1 and kill the mob faster. at least it usually works for me

At the risk of oversimplifying, evasive skills are almost worthless unless either A) they're buffed well through the ceiling (did someone say Fixers?), or B) you're fighting at or nearly at full DEF on your AGG/DEF slider.