Effective Evasion: Listening to the Game
Don’t flail against the world, use it. Flexibility is the operative principle in the art of war.
How do you know when a hero’s time has come and gone? How do you know when a hero has lost favor with the developers? The beauty of this game lies in the complex movement of a hero’s relative power. Sensing and reacting to the shifting meta is key to victory.
Each new hero release shifts the balance of power in the game. Each rank increase allows the developers to balance heroes by choosing badges to fill the hero’s rank. Each badge will change each hero’s relative statistics. Few changed statistics are impactful as changes to evasion.
Why is Evasion so important?
If we do not wish to fight, we can prevent the enemy from engaging us even though the lines of our encampment be merely traced out on the ground. All we need do is to throw something odd and unaccountable in his way.
When a single attack can wipe a team, the only defense is prevention. Disables and debuffs are the natural defense against any attack. Tenacity limits the impact of debuffs, and evasion avoids them entirely.
Tenacity reduces the length of stuns and disables a hero receives.
Each point of Tenacity above the enemy skill level reduces the
length of a stun or disable by 1 percent up to a max of 90 percent reduction.
Evasion gives heroes a chance to avoid enemy disables. Each point of Evasion above
the enemy skill level increases your chances of avoiding a disable by 1 percent up
to 90 percent. If a disable is avoided, any other effects on the skill
still resolve.
If a Dash or Shego is dangerous, a Dash or Shego that you cannot stun, freeze, or silence is unstoppable.
How do you stop the unstoppable?
You don’t. The game does. Evasion and Tenacity are both level based. This means that if a hero’s evasion stat doesn’t increase with the level cap, their ability to avoid disables is eroded. Consider this theoretical example.
evasion - enemy level = % chance to avoid disables
- Enemy Skill Level / Server Level Cap - 280
- Hero Evasion - 284
- Effective Evasion / Chance to Avoid Disables - 4%
Imagine that your hero does not get a badge that increases their evasion stat in the next rank increase.
- Enemy Skill Level / Server Level Cap - 285
- Hero Evasion - 284
- Effective Evasion / Chance to Avoid Disables - 0%
The sting of inflation has cost your hero any chance of avoiding disables. By tracking the effective evasion of a hero we can see how the ability of any given hero has changed over their history. This leads to some interesting insights. Each of the following charts starts at Orange 8 and flows through Yellow 10 calculating effective evasion of a hero at a rank with badges equipped, but not enhanced based on the maximum server level at that time. I may update as I have time.
List of Heroes with ANY Effective Evasion
This list is from Yellow 9 + Equipped Badges / Yellow 10 without Badges. I still haven’t figured out how to shoehorn tables in here so the list is [hero name] - [evasion]
- Vanellope - 391
- Captain Amelia - 388
- Russell & Kevin - 387
- Helga Sinclair - 382
- Yzma - 379
- Belle - 376
- Emperor Zurg - 376
- Rex - 372
- Nick Wilde - 371
- Frozone - 369
- Hank & Dory - 368
- Yax - 368
- The Rocketeer - 366
- Honey Lemon - 365
- Ron Stoppable - 364
- Flynn Rider - 362
- Stitch - 357
- Jack-Jack - 356
- Pleakley - 355
- Vinny Santorini - 354
- Calhoun - 352
- Zeus - 348
- Shego - 348
- The Evil Queen - 347
- Mike Wazowski - 346
- Quorra - 344
- Kim Possible - 341
- Gaston - 341
- Dr. Bunsen Honeydew & Beaker - 339
- Ursula - 334
- Cheshire Cat - 332
- Dash - 328
- Mr. Big & Koslov - 328
- Judy Hopps - 328
- Syndrome - 327
- Jessie - 325
- Kermit - 325
- Disgust - 317
- Simba & Nala - 301
- Powerline - 301
- Peter Pan - 300
- Ducky & Bunny - 300
- King Louie - 299
- Magica De Spell - 296
- Lock, Shock, & Barrel - 295
- Pocahontas - 295
- Bo Peep - 295
- Captain Hook - 289
- Finnick - 286
- Rafiki - 284
- Mulan - 281
A Hero Scorned or How You Cancelled Mulan
Mulan peaked at 84% effective evasion at Red 8 and then received no evasion increases until a minor bump at Yellow 4. If you ever wondered if the developers listen when you complain that a hero is oppressive or overpowered, this chart is your answer.
Cheshire - A more gentle taming
Cheshire’s dominance was tempered with a much more gradual curve.
Koslov & Dash - Evasion Twins
I’m not sure why these two are on the same evasion maintenance schedule, but they are! It looks like they are targeting a 50-60% effective evasion stat.
Randall - Lost and Forgotten
Alas, Randall’s time was prior to the birth of evasion.
Shego - On the Way Up!
I’m not sure that Shego needed a buff, but they have been maintaining her.
Kermit - They killed Kermie!
If you feel like your little green frog is a little less effective you are right.
Yzma & Vanellope - Evasion Champs
It looks like around Yellow the developers decided that Yzma and Vanellope should have max evasion stats. I’m not sure this has translated into real-world use, but it does buff some older heroes.
Helga - Evade or Die
Helga seems to be built in Beast’s image. Key to that is being able to avoid disables. I feel like this could lead to Helga eventually being in the more mainstream meta.
Evil Queen and Kim Possible - Battle Badge Buddies
Evil Queen and Kim Possible are an interesting use case. The enhancement on both of their Battle Badges adds 40 evasion. 40 evasion is a significant increase. It means that heroes that have middling evasion hit max evasion when they hit Yellow and get their Battle badge enhanced. You can especially see the spike when Kim hits Yellow.
Rex - A Maverick
I love Rex. Rex is such an interesting hero design. His Red Skill is probably the best in the game especially in combination with his enhanced Battle Badge. Someone at PerBlue loves him. Beyond that though he breaks the mold for Tanks. GENERALLY evasion stats are for “small” heroes and tenacity is for “big” heroes. NO TANK HERO HAS SIGNIFICANT EVASION EXCEPT REX. It is crazy and it is beautiful. 
Belle - Consistently Evasive
Belle suffered a bit in late Red, but she’s always been pretty evasive. It hasn’t translated to real world effectiveness sadly.
Nick - Skill Power and Evasion
Nick is primarily useful because of his Purple Skill, but he has gotten more evasive lately.
Russell & Kevin
So it seems that Russell & Kevin have basically been at maximum evasion (90%) for their entire released life. It makes sense as to why whenever I see a decent lineup with R&K I think “Uh-oh”. There was a particularly nasty lineup a couple wars back that was like R&K, Fairy Godmother, Jim, Carl and maybe Zeus. It was pretty brutal.
Captain Amelia - Late Bloomer
This is an interesting one. I’m throwing Kim in here too. They are the only heroes with significant evasion that I’ve charted so far that waited until at least Red 4 to pick up ANY evasion stat. Captain Amelia also has dodge which might explain why there was a shift in hero design. Obviously they are both damage heroes who are normal damage specialists. If this was a MOBA they’d be ADC. Potentially PerBlue was afraid of them being overpowered and resisted giving them high evasion. However, both of them suffered “failure to launch” and later evasion was added. Really interesting hero design, and hopefully the reworks don’t end up being too little, too late. I’ve seen Captain Amelia in one decent war lineup lately, but Kim has mostly been relegated to study lineups.
Zurg
Zurg is an interesting hero. He will always remind me of Filadae’s death lineup. It was an entirely Red Skill based lineup that remains one of the cleverest war defenses I’ve ever seen. Baymax, Li Shang, Zurg, Nick, Tron. He kept a couple of them Red even into the days of Yellow and that lineup tripped up a TON of people. It’s a fascinating combination of skill power scaling and energy gain. Filadae has since been poached by one of the top tier guilds, but I’ve been building around that lineup and trying to get other heroes to work ever since. It looks like he’s received pretty consistent evasion updates.
