[Akame]

It's a skill that's been weighing on my mind for a while when it comes to Hit vs. Evade. While they both still aren't completely balanced, Plisfa's Masochism throws the idea of balance completely out the window with little to no counter-play. You can counter Frozen Arrow with silence. This? Not so much.

The best counter-play there is currently is to just simply run away, because even having a Hexer step on your cinders, or traps will cause the deadly curse to be passed onto you, and you'll have but no choice to stand and take 400+ damage. But even running away isn't too effective, because they can refresh the skill immediately when it runs out.

The FP cost also doesn't serve as an effective deterrent to not carelessly spam its use, since Dark Renewal is more than happy to restore the price of the skill while you shred your opponent's HP.

... Don't get me started with Plisfa into Ether Invitation.

I also get Evade can get out-of-hand a lot and it should continue to be looked at, but Auto-hit skills and magic exist to easily put that in check.

A solution would be to only have Plisfa's Masochism only be transferred through the use of a basic attack, or basic attack skill. Auto-hits skills, Spells, cinders and traps will ignore Plisfa. This will force Hexers to actually make use of Silent Spirit - a skill that seems to have been lost to time. It's better than just upright making the skill Main-Class only.

I'm aware Cleanse potions exist as a countermeasure. But those counter everything. I don't really think people should have to rely on an items just to not lose most their HP in three hits. Items should exist as a luxury - an additional good quality. Not a means for balance, or to keep a skill in check.

[Jupiter_Storm]

To weigh in, while I do not agree with every class having an available counter-play for what each class might bring - which in and of itself not only defeats the point of a class system but also isn't feasible in a mechanical system where raw skill alone is insufficient - I do agree that the ease with which these hexes can be applied is somewhat baffling.

Granted, Hexes themselves see far less use than other abilities available to Hexers, which is frankly sad. Though this is less an issue with the Hexes themselves and more with the knowledge regarding efficient build-crafting around them.

Presently, a Hexer built with tanking in mind (and therefore no dodge), has absolutely no reason -not- to use Plisfa's Masochism. The same can be said of Fellel's Fumble which will effectively triple their survivability against basic-attack builds, and 'almost' double their survivability against autohit builds.

Here's a kicker - why does the Hexer begin by hexing themselves? In a lot of OTHER fantasy lore, practitioners of dark magic do so because of the power it offers, but they're rarely so utterly stupid as to actually curse themselves, because they know that if they die - their soul is forfeit. With mystic and ritualistic magics such as this, such curses take a tremendous amount of preparation in order to enact.

So... An argument COULD be made for Hexes being invocations of their own - and yes, I know that Hexer already has five invokes, but I have never met anybody who has ever planned on taking them all. This 9 momentum cost (12 if you include Blinking to apply it) to the Hex will effectively make up for the four rounds it lasts (because you spirited the Hex... Yes? Please tell me you did!) - Returning either a 21 or 28 momentum payout for your investment. You need not apply it to yourself, but rather directly to the enemy like Divine Judgement.

Alternatively, if the lore 'really' requires Hexers to curse themselves in order to curse others (and I honestly have no idea why it would, but stranger things have happened), what would seem like another fair balance would be that the Hex begins with a duration of say, 6... Like a long buff. You apply it to yourself, you get hit, its duration is reduced by 1, and the enemy has it. You then take advantage of this, and hit them in return. Now the debuff is yours again, and its duration is reduced by 1. This will halve the number of 'guaranteed' hits or 'guaranteed' misses you'll enjoy for the 3 Momentum Cost, and you have to be more tactical with its application and your abilities while it is active.

Sorry, Lina - I don't think denying the transfer of hexes through autohits would be very sensible, though - as this presents a counter play available to almost every class ever, and essentially places the Hex in an extremely niche role against a very specific build type that Magic Users can 'already' fight against very effectively.

[Fern]

It's a skill that's been weighing on my mind for a while when it comes to Hit vs. Evade. While they both still aren't completely balanced, Plisfa's Masochism throws the idea of balance completely out the window with little to no counter-play.

The best counter-play there is currently is to just simply run away, because even having a Hexer step on your cinders, or traps will cause the deadly curse to be passed onto you, and you'll have but no choice to stand and take 400+ damage. But even running away isn't too effective, because they can refresh the skill immediately when it runs out.

I'm aware Cleanse potions exist as a countermeasure. But those counter everything. I don't really think people should have to rely on an items just to not lose most their HP in three hits. Items should exist as a luxury - an additional good quality. Not a means for balance, or to keep a skill in check.

Alright, let's go over the available counter play to Plisfa's Masochism once more.

-Wash Away
-Cleanse Potion (I'm aware this one was already brought up.)
-Kiting
-Crowd controlling the other so they don't have a chance to basic attack you (I.E, builds with repeat knockdown.)
-Overriding the Plisfa's Masochism you received from someone else with your own (This is a fairly frequent thing.)
-Having a teammate in a group fight take the curse for you.
-Take guardian spirit, the trait, and have that youkai take it for you.
-Negotiate from Spellthief.
-Gentle Torrent from Priest.
-Enduring the hits until the curse runs out, this is very much possible in the majority of the cases specially when PR-Hi-Potions or heals in general are accounted for.

Curses in general are very easy to counter-play when one packs a Cleanse Potion. I disagree with the idea that the game should be balanced around the idea of counter-playing most things without items. If the game was in such state, then items would prove to be more powerful than they were originally intended to be, and then they would have to be addressed as well.

"I don't really think people should rely on Cleanse Potion to remove status effects (in this case, specifically Plisfa)" is akin to stating "I don't have a counter to silence" and not bringing a Throatopener or Cleanse Potion, which both remove the aforementioned status effect.

I do think curses are fine where they are. Bloody Karma builds in general have all their momentum spent in cursing wasted with the press of an item button. Example scenario:

--ROUND 0--
Olde Evoker John Doe's turn. (7m) (Charge Mind)
Basic attacker hexer's turn. (7m) (Plisfa's Masochism)
Basic attacker hexer's turn. (4m) (Crippling Muysig)
--ROUND 1--
Olde Evoker John Doe's turn. (7m) (Moves towards the other and sets up any other buff.)
Basic attacker hexer's turn. (7m) (Noshka's Famine)
Basic attacker hexer's turn. (4m) (Frailty of Credwa) "I can't really hit this guy without Plisfa, he has too much evade somehow, so..."
--ROUND 2--
Olde Evoker John Doe's turn. (7m) (Evoker Spell w/ Charge Mind)
Basic attacker hexer takes 500 magical damage.
Curses begin transferring.

"Now I can one-shot this Evoker with my Tarnada Ether Invitation!"

Olde Evoker John Doe's turn. (4m) (Cleanse Potion)
All curses are gone.

".................................."
"Well. Shucks."

Someone might think, "can't you just Strangling Etacof the Evoker before they do anything?"

Conveniently, Cleanse Potion also removes that, alongside the Silence. I personally found the change applied to Cleanse Potion a while ago to be very healthy for the balance of the game, as it allows counter-play for essentially 90% of the set-ups in SL2, without being too overbearing as it actually provides a drawback.

"What if the Evoker was slower in this scenario?"

They'd just have to make their enemy end turn in a position where the Evoker can spend 3M doing damage and 3M using Cleanse Potion.

"This is just an Evoker example, it doesn't speak for the other classes."

Fortunately, it does speak for the other classes, as the great majority can utilize the aforementioned strategies. Unless you're a very silly and weird build that happens to be unable to do just that, then that's unfortunately on the player.

"Plisfa's Masochism has no drawbacks. Sadistic Renewal just negates the FP cost drawback."

It does have a few. A relatively lengthy cooldown, Sadistic Renewal is very reliant on basic attacking someone else, and if they're putting up Plisfa's Masochism, it's likely they can't basic attack you in the first place. Imagine running around until they run out of FP by repeatedly spamming the curse to no avail? That's one of the more frequent counter-plays I've personally witnessed.

"You can have 300 FP, it'd take years though."

Most basic attacker hexer builds don't invest into WIL. They stack FP regen to alleviate for their 130-140 FP, such as Kensei's Unarmored Torso regen bonus or Warpaint - Grimalkin prayer. And even then that doesn't seem to help much when you hit 0 FP after spamming Plisfa's Masochism because the other person simply refused to take the curse for a good few minutes.

"But what about the basic attackers that DO invest into WIL?"

Those generally don't have much stats invested into damage, as it's more often than not, not possible. Unless you're a vampire stacking stats, in which case your drawback is essentially having one health bar due to the fact you can't heal most of your HP with a PR-Hi-Potion.

I think it's fine where it is.

[Jupiter_Storm]

Actually this is a valid point, although I don't agree on the role of items as a solve-all to HP issues and status effects. Surely a class should be better at doing what they do than an item is. :Thinking:

... Topic for another thread, but in this instance I think in light of this I'm going to examine Cleanse Potions.

OR, make Hexes of this particular ilk immune to straight-up 'cleansing', considering they're not even physically tangible effects. They're spiritual curses. And then proceed with the Hexer tennis idea which I still think would be wayyyy more fun.

[Lonestar]

One idea I could see is making Plisfa take the fellel's treatment and making it Main Class, but in all seriousness, Plisfa is far from balanced just because it can negate someone's entire build with very to little effort, leading to over 3 hits total without having to deal with RNG.

That alone is more than enough to demolish any glass cannon out there, and Kiting is often backed down as just giving your opponent free hits because they actually can cover the distance by using low momentum movements or high movement from a buff, and Hexer can get that easily with Talvyd.

The length of the cooldown means very little when you can back it with autos if you aren't confident enough on your hit. Then, all you need to do is refresh it again and continue your assault. You could argue about Cleanse Potions, but that doesn't apply only to Plisfa as already mentioned. Having only two classes that can actually remove the debuff with one of them having a more rough trouble if you place a sea of debuffs on them (Negotiate) only to rely on potions as arguement feels... incredibly silly.

You could endure the power, but as a glass cannon there's not much you can do against those hitting you for almost, if not 200-ish damage every hit and completly deleting your HP (This obviously not counting the other things that can happen during those hits). The arguement that you could heal would actually help in serious attempts, but the game barely has those. The most active way to PvP is during spars, and using healing items or magic on them will only grant you judging eyes from all the sides and bad reputation if it's not what you want for that character. It's simply not worth in the end at all for something that should be balanced.

It's pretty much the debuff that completly destroys the fun that is going against the odds in a Evade vs Hit showdown.

[Autumn]

Attempting to argue that Plisfa's is relatively unbalanced right now is completely overdone and quite frankly not really fully correct either, its as if arguing that buster cannon is completely unbalanced because it allows a physical damage dealer to do damage to a tank, same can be said about frigid arrow too.

Plisfa's is strong in a 1 on 1 battle, anything outside of that or when you start bringing youkai and the many -MANY- cleanses to it in the game it starts to become a lot less of an issue, not even to mention that Cobra users have no issue fighting Plisfa's at all, as it doesn't actually increase the hexer's hit chance at all.

There is no fun to be had in not being able to hit your opponent when they've stacked enough evade to force most other builds into 0-10% hit, and yes this is quite possible every single turn right now. (Hello literally any combination of Kensei/Monk/Bonder or Ranger.) And personally I do not want to see Plisfa's get too much touched upon, so much so it'd be become useless, as that would ruin quite a few gimmick builds and probably even subtract yet another class from the roster for basic attackers.

The argument could be made that notable forms of autohits exist for these evade stacking people, but some weapons simply do not deal damage with autohits, they don't obtain high SWA in exchange for having higher critical damage, such as daggers, some mutated weaponry, critical orientated swords and spears, guns and bows; etc.

[Akame]

I see a few points that were made earlier are still being overlooked.
You can still take damage from lingering damage, poison, cinders, frostbite tiles, traps, and the curse will be transferred, making your opponents evade against basic attacks 0, treating them as-if the 60+ stats they put into CEL are nothing, aside from turn order, while you proceed to heavily crit-stomp them.
Running away, or kiting, again, isn't a valid solution, as Lonestar further pointed out.

... And again, no. You cannot say just "cleanse potion". Items have never been considered in balance as far as I've seen, nor has the community offered them as a solution in Balance Fu till now. If we're going to start including them, then:

Let's let Menov's Fang do x2 poison damage again. Just Cleanse Pot it. Just use a poison resist potion.
Let's return Death Knighting to give 10 stats in each. You can just throw a special stone on them and remove the buff.
Eclair and Voltiger should be returned to their former glory. It does too much damage, you say??? Just PR-high the HP back.

Items, in my opinion, have always been icing on the cake, or a luxury as I've stated earlier. Some skills are just too overbearing that are then tweaked like the ones above, and Plisfa is not an outlier.
Sorry if that sounded snarky, but I don't know how else to communicate that.

The methods mentioned earlier, like Negotiate, Wash Away, give no guarantee Plisfa will be removed. It depends on RNG. You're spending 3 momentum of the off-chance maybe that one unbalanced status effect of the many annoying status effects will be removed. If you're so unlucky, then hopefully the hexer is feeling merciful, and let's you live another day. Again, unreliable.
Gentle Torrent from Priest?
Suggesting to "just have a teammate remove it for you" isn't a solution for balance either. Frozen status was given extra counter play, while many so-called valid countermeasures mentioned here could have taken care of it as well.

If your build, that's not currently a gigantys build, is completely ruined by the skill being even slightly touched, that just makes for further argument of how Plisfa should be looked at if it's that much of a crutch.

Honestly. Setting evade to 0 has never been a good thing. If it just reduced LV 15 evade per rank against basic attacks, and then each time the duration went down, they'd slowly get evade back? We wouldn't be here again.

My solution, though mostly unaddressed, still stands. Silent Spirit exists. Use it!
I understand making it Main-Class only is a solution, but I've been avoiding it if I can be honest.
Also Jupiter's ping-pong idea sounds amazing. That would be make for fun situations for roleplay!

It's also worth pointing out that dev said he was reworking hexer in the future, so maybe this thread is a bit pointless. Just hopeful this skill doesn't survive any sort of rework in its current state.

[Snake]

I believe both curses need to be exhausted first before becoming eligible to be transferred. The problem with it being moved around by only damage is... You'll always be damaging your opponent, be it directly with attacks, or indirectly with stat damage or field effect damage. There's no real way to avoid a Hexer's curse.

And even when the Hexer is cursed to shit, knowing you won't try to attack them, they'll start spamming their Invocations to further weight the combat in their favor to the point it's best to just flee, just due to how unfun it becomes to try and face them.

Making the Hexer need to 'miss three basic hits' before Fellel's Fumble can be passed, or 'be hit three times by basic hits' before Plisfa's Masochism is passed, may make it equally fair for both sides. There will be a turn where the Hexer will suffer, then the opponent follows after.

Of course, some "cheaty" methods of ignoring this through potions will also need to be negated, as Jupiter said.