While its not inherently a problem yet in the game, I could very well see it being a problem, culling this now would allow even more evasion increasing effects to exist where ever necessary as well so I feel like this should be addressed now.
Evasion DR increasing effects can be stacked together, this means that with an oracle Verglas/Spellthief you could be obtaining:
Base 30% Evasion
+15% Ice Point Guard Evasion
+15% Ring of Pearls Evasion
+20% from Premonition
This means that I have effectively 80% Evasion DR, even if its not ideal or unstoppable, if more of these effects are introduced in the future it should probably be noted that these cannot stack, it should instead take the highest increase and apply that instead.
On a side-note, a Boxer/Spellthief or Boxer/Verglas can take this one step further, with infighter gi giving an additional 4% effectively and Swaying giving an extra 60% when spirited, you could obtain a whole ass 99% Evasion DR currently.
Something to keep in mind is that for the Swaying example you need to use it every round, which is not particularly a good idea in the majority of circumstances due to it taking up 3M and frequently leaving you with only one other action afterwards. In other words, it sounds kind of ridiculous on paper but is not all that useful in practice - akin to accounting for Painproof + Wraithguard + Evasion reduction and getting a very big number that turns out to not be too effective when one of these skills takes momentum to keep up on top of HP. Semi-different matters, but similar idea.
Rather than Evasion DRs not stacking at all, they should either have a cap or be multiplicative if they really have to change. Evade characters are already pretty low tier, and denying them of decent survivability would essentially be a nail in the coffin. With that in mind, I think not allowing them to stack Evasion DRs themselves in general would be unwise.
(01-09-2021, 09:33 PM)Fern Wrote: [ -> ]Something to keep in mind is that for the Swaying example you need to use it every round, which is not particularly a good idea in the majority of circumstances due to it taking up 3M and frequently leaving you with only one other action afterwards. In other words, it sounds kind of ridiculous on paper but is not all that useful in practice - akin to accounting for Painproof + Wraithguard + Evasion reduction and getting a very big number that turns out to not be too effective when one of these skills takes momentum to keep up on top of HP. Semi-different matters, but similar idea.
Rather than Evasion DRs not stacking at all, they should either have a cap or be multiplicative if they really have to change. Evade characters are already pretty low tier, and denying them of decent survivability would essentially be a nail in the coffin.
Keep in mind the swaying example is a side-note of what I can achieve if I wanted to, this is the maximum possible outcome of the effects that stack together additively, and if you can swaying to assure 99% DR, sure why not? The difference here between Evasion DRs and Painproof/Wraithguard/Evasion reduction is simply that those are all multiplicative and get far far far less effective when you are stacking them, compared to when you are stacking additive DRs
I disagree with this second comment mostly, I don't think having them up to a cap is something that should be done, I mean most general evasion DRs being 15% is already a huge increase, just having 45% Evasion DR + Baseline defensives makes you as tanky as tanks are vs autohits and magic, you have 50%+ DR versus them. I don't think Evade is actually so much weak as it is just riskier, if basic attacks come back into usage then this argument of tank vs evade is going to flip yet again, I've seen this happen so many times.
I think its probably unhealthy to just have additive % increases stacking, we've had this problem before with DEF% with stuff like Weir Kounen and Stand Off and Dog God all stacking together.
The difference between Additive Evasion DR% and the old Weir Konnen/Stand Off/Wolf prayer is that the latter required little to no setup to get going. Most of the current Additive Evasion DRs require more momentum investment in order to keep going, not to mention that they can be dispelled if someone feels like it and you don't have enough buffs to make it less likely to get removed from your status list. Tanks tend to pack far more damage reduction than 45% Evasion DR + any DEF/RES gained from APT since they average on 70%~ total Phys reduction (and usually 65%~ or more for magic) on top of any Armor values they may running.
The average dodge character's DEF/RES ranges from to 10 to 15~ or so. Assuming they had 15 DEF/RES with, let's say, 45% Evasion DR, that would be roughly 62%~ total reduction without accounting for anything else, which is currently much less than the average Badlands Arena tank.
The gap between dodge and tanking is large precisely because of stat efficiency and achieving the same goal with a different amount of steps. Dodge needs far more effort to reach the goal whereas tanking can either do it naturally by existing or by simply being able to fit in 60 scaled DEF/RES without losing out on much. The former relies on buffs or effects like Snake Dancer (the "crutch") whereas the latter only needs a class that gives them damage reduction with Black Knight being the most popular choice.
Additive damage reductions aren't always problematic so long as they're not as easy to get as the old ones were. And currently, the "best" method of getting that going for Evasion is being a specific race, with specific buffs and very few specific classes. That being Oracle with Boxer/Verglas & Spellthief as mentioned. Having the time to set up Ice Point Guard and Ring of Pearls is not always going to be there, specially in the fights that tend to matter the most being group fights. It's part of what makes it different from old Weir Konnen/Stand Off due to the aforementioned just needing you to have them in your skill pool. If someone goes before you (which they are actually likely to if they so happen to be a dodge character themselves) then that setup time's drawbacks show more.
Long story short, I feel this should actually be put into practice (real combat against proper builds) to confirm if it's truly an issue, because as it stands it sounds a bit too specific of a race setup to be a large problem. Some people believed Ring of Pearls to be a godly enchant and it turned out to just be decent in practice. Not to mention that stacking hit rate for basic attacks is often not difficult with the amount of existing classes that provide a lot of it, so anyone going out of their way to stack Evasion DR as much as possible may as well blow up to someone running around with Volcanic (or Blessed if they want to go that far.) People have been getting hit through Spirited Disengage + Acrobatic + Miragewalk with BK almost consistently.
Its a meme at best, and highly unpracticle. Sure if all stars allign you can pull of some shenanigans with it, but its far from unbeatable.
I am with fern here. If it needs to change, which I do not even believe it has to, then give it the same treatment as any other defensive stacking multi.
I haven't tested any of this to see if it actually stacks additively, but my two cents is that if it does, it's going to age poorly. If additive evasion DR keeps coming out over time, it's eventually -- assuming it isn't already, I wouldn't know -- a problem. Without offering an uninformed opinion on whether or not it would leave the current state of things unbalanced, I'll just say I would rather we avoid it now rather than later. Additive DR stacking is just playing a dangerous game with exponents.
It does stack additively, and as fern said, most of the currently existing forms are momentum / upkeep heavy. It'll probably be an issue at some point but not immediately. At worst, one class locked evasion dr setup will have too much tank.
It may be a little setup heavy, a verglas/spellthief would have to take at least 1 full turn to set it up, but at the same time its rather effective as a whole, I do think that this kind of mechanic stacking additively is going to be unhealthy for the game as a whole, we've seen it happen before so many times and to help with making space for more of these effects for other classes this should be heavily considered, there's no reason for them to stack when baseline 45% Evasion DR is Good Enough for a stat that can completely negate damage as well.
The initial setup may be a tiny bit momentum heavy, with ice around you its a full 7m to set up both IPG and Ring of Pearls. But they both have very long durations when specced into as well, IPG is one thing given its interaction with Verglas but additive DR is just way more effective the higher it is, because of JUST how effective going from 45% DR to 60% DR is I think its more than worth that jump in DR for 1 turn perhaps.
Not only does cropping this out erase the possibility of it getting out of hand early, but it opens up new space for there to be more evasion DRs available to some other classes such as with Kensei, Ranger, or changing Snake Dancer to not be toxic, so that it may not be currently class locked like it is.
For the sake of future proving, it could be made a multi instead of additive. It just sounded a bit in the OP that you wanted them to not stack at all and just have the highest work. Thats pushing down on the brakes on a not yet problem a bit too hard.
I certainly agree that it can get silly. At some point in the future we may have to talk about actually capping all DRs to a certain point, though I do not think we reached that point yet.