Defensive Skills: Evasive Skills (D/A/E)

For more information on the amazon's passive/magic skills, please refer to the amazon's passive/magic skills section of the Arreat Summit.

Dodge (1 to 12 points)

Clvl: 6
Prerequisites: None.
Effect: Grants a chance to move out of the way of a melee attack while standing still.
Properties: Works against all melee attacks while standing still or attacking.
Synergy from: None.
Synergy to: Valkyrie: as per skill description.

Dodge and Avoid give an amazon a chance to avoid a melee or missile attack, respectively, while standing still or attacking; Evade works against all attacks while moving. This is indispensable for a melee-based amazon, if for no other reason than these are prerequisites to Valkyrie, because a single point in any of them is worth literally thousands of points of DR, but its importance to the bowazon is diminished by Valkyrie and Decoy: when they're taking almost all the hits for your bowazon who should be attacking from a distance and constantly moving into the best positions available, then what's the use in being able to dodge them?

Avoid (1 to 7 points)

Clvl: 12
Prerequisites: Dodge.
Effect: Grants a chance to move out of the way of a missile attack while standing still.
Properties: Works against all ranged attacks while standing still or attacking.
Synergy from: None.
Synergy to: Valkyrie: as per skill description.

As a general guideline, if an attack can be effected by Slow Missiles (skeleton mage attacks, all physical missile attacks including potions, Bone Spirit, charged bolts from LEBs, lightning bolts, oblivion knight elemental attacks, poison spit, red mana burning lightning from ghosts, regurgitator corpse puke), it can probably be avoided. AoE attacks and others are generally not missile-based and aren't effected by Avoid. This includes auras, Blizzard, Charged Bolt, curses, Fire Wall, Inferno, Meteor, Diablo's red lightning, any nova-type attack and Bone Spirit. Skill point allocation to Avoid is a matter of personal preference: no bowazon should stand still for ranged counter fire and with Slow Missiles, Decoy, and Valkyrie, it's child's play to manually avoid most missiles.

Evade (1 to 12 points)

Clvl: 24
Prerequisites: Dodge, Avoid.
Effect: Grants a chance to escape any attack while moving.
Properties: Works against all attacks while moving.
Synergy from: None.
Synergy to: Valkyrie: as per skill description.

Evade works against any attack (including AoE attacks), making it possible to run relatively unscathed through a fire wall or blizzard. Use of Freezing Arrow, Guided Arrow, Multiple Shot, Strafe, Plague Javelin, and Lightning Fury involves herding monsters, which involves running circles around them to find an optimal attacking position. This could justify four or more points in Evade. Note that Evade's animation does sometimes kick in when your amazon successfully dodges an attack: this is called Evade Lock.

— Arreat Summit

I tend to invest one point in these skills, then use +skill items to buff them up; with the constant danger of lag spikes, others feel more points are necessary because a +50% chance to dodge all attacks is a good safety net. D/A/E is indispensable during corpse retrieval as your amazon has substantial defense without equipment.

For Hardcore, one might want to consider a flat 50% in D/A/E. This is a 31-point investment, but you stay alive, so it's worth it. Also, because synergies work off base skill points, you'll have to actually invest points if you want your valkyrie to share your D/A/E, but my argument is that a high-level valkyrie with a ton of life and more steel than a mechanized cavalry needs D/A/E far less than your bowazon needs…say, bigger and better arrow skills. My advice would be to use +skills items, beef up your amazon's other passive skills, and save your synergies for your offense.

Note that there is no way to speed up your amazon's D/A/E animation of 8 frames.