Sil: How much evasion?

[HallucinationMushroom]

This is going to echo something I've repeated about 3 times before on ladder characters, but what is a satisfactory evasion score to dodge the most damaging attacks? I understand protection, and have a good feel for how much I need at such and such depth, but am lost on the flip side of the issue.

Specifically, how much evasion do I need to face-tank a greater werewolf without seeing my gutty wutts spilled out all over the floor? I've always found these monsters trivial, but now that I'm trying to learn other aspects of the game, namely evasion and stealth, these things are demolishing me. My last, and best character, had about a +18 evasion, and 6-12 protection, or something like that. For a 6-12 protection, for example, would a +25 evasion be sufficient? Could somebody ballpark it for me so I can build toward it?

On a side note, I've played a few more stealth characters, each trying differing variations and I feel like I'm getting close to something that is comfortable for my play style and still gets a net use out of stealth. My last character was doing very well until these werewolves showed up.

[HugoVirtuoso]

25 Evasion seems the amount I need for Greater Werewolves. But, for Gorthaur and Gothmog, I need 30+ Evasion to feel safe

[debo]

So the answer is really "it depends" IMO. If you're going stealthy, you probably shouldn't be fighting something 1-1 unless it's already half-dead.

If you were going pure evasion/melee with reasonable protection, I'd probably want +20 to be safe, but again that depends on your own melee score right? Werewolves are hard because they're difficult to hit, so if you take too long to kill them, you will die.

Options:

a) Sneak away from them / don't attract them in the first place. This is very hard. I typically dive as hard as I can from 650' to 900' with stabby guys b/c cats and werewolves are so awful for them (ESPECIALLY CAT ASSASSINS), whereas things at 900'+ are generally slowish and not super perceptive.

b) Only sneak-attack them if you have a clear escape route. Sprinting helps.

c) With werewolves specifically, ZoC and Opportunist are super good because werewolves move erratically, so you get a lot of extra attacks = more chances to kill them. This isn't a great reason to take them with a stabber, but they're generally awesome abilities and it is nice to be able to kill stuff straight up if you mess up your sneaking.

I try not to spend more than 15pts of evasion with stealth-stabbers, less if I can get away with it. This does get tiresome though, as being a glass cannon is only really fun if you get to the cannon part, which takes a long time.

[HallucinationMushroom]

Ok, thanks for the replies! I will consider...

[Patashu]

Whether or not you have Critical Resistance matters, too.

[taptap]

I find greater werewolves one of the more troublesome monsters (and lost several light builds to them directly especially when found early in vaults). I suspect the damage I dish out is more important than evasion, however. Usually the main damage they do is by poison and unless I can kill them fast the poison damage adds up quickly. My findings are 1) Spear of Boldog is a great weapon and I hold on to it now instead of other Doriath weapons (2d14 w/ 2 STR, two-handed is a lot and after killing the first one the others have much reduced moral) 2) with about 50 aggregated melee (melee+stealth+perception/2) they go down in a single round to a subtle shortsword 3) poison resistance matters.

I wonder whether the best way is simply taking riposte. Then "too high evasion" isn't something to worry about and evasion moonlights as an offensive skill. (Although it interferes with concentration.) Afaik debo builds stabbers more for minimal evasion, while I would naturally tend to go for minimal stealth and maximal evasion (although results are mixed so far).

P.S. I only realized recently that Gorthaur = Sauron and while lord of the werewolves, he can obviously take different forms. Never realized this in game.

P.P.S. More on topic: I lost two chars to greater werewolves one had 25 (w. much lower protection), the other 23 evasion (w. medium protection) recently. (Orfirch and Galadriel if you want to look them up.)

[debo]

Tevildo is also Sauron, in his own way