Avoidance vs Mitigation

This is an age old debate that takes place amongst World of Warcraft tanks. Would you rather take less damage per swing or would you rather just get hit less often? In World of Warcraft regardless of the right answer in terms of total incoming damage the reality tends to be you should just stack mitigation and maximum health. The reason is in WoW you have healers pounding heals into you constantly. Depending on the expansion, all a dodge really meant was more healing became overheal. The situation is a little different when you're a lonesome thief in a Final Fantasy game. My only source of healing in combat is to drink a potion which restores such an inconsequential amount that any fight where it could help is by definition trivial. (The 9 pirate fight was a potential exception; I could have hit it at a level where I could burn out 6 of the 9 pirates and then drink to full. Instead I just gained an extra level and killed all 9 pirates with no worry.) So what I'm looking at here is a strict damage prevented amount.

In particular, lets pretend I'm a level 16 thief that failed to scum optimal agility. Fully geared up I have 59 evasion and 6 absorb. I could switch that up and go to 69 evasion and 0 absorb, or to levels in between. Wizards attack twice per round for 30-60 damage a swing. (As an aside, what kind of wizard knows no spells and hits like a truck?) With my gear on, I expect to get hit for 39 damage 77% of the time, for 30 damage per swing. With my gear off I expect to get hit for 45 damage 73% of the time, for 33 damage per swing. So say I stick with the 30 damage a swing setup. They swing twice a round and I have 366 max health, so the 7th swing kills me. I need to have only two show up and then kill them each in two swings to win.

Wizards have an absorb of 16. My attack is 23, so I do between 7-30 damage a swing. I do swing twice, so it is possibly to kill them in two rounds but not likely, especially since they actually have 66 agility for a very high dodge rate themselves.

I actually tried to kill them at level 16 and it felt like I had no chance. I'm sure if I got lucky and crit my first swing on a 2-wizard fight I might be able to win but as it stands I don't have much hope. So my current plan is to level to 20 and hope the extra health buffer, the extra 2-4 damage per swing, and the extra 1.2% dodge will be enough... But realistically, I'm going to need the third attack at level 26 with the bad weapon or level 28 with the good one.