[InsainArcaneBirdbrain]

Alright, I've been labbing and running a bunch of lightning focused builds in the past few weeks, and I'll have to say lightning is feeling like the weakest of common magic elements you can build right now outside things like elemental augment tessen setups. The reason for this can be attributed to the nerfs Luck as a stat it suffered with the loss of hit/eva. While said nerf was necessary for GR2 balance, it has made luck one of the least desirable stats to build, even on basic attackers. To explain, let me list out a quick list/comparison to stats in a typical build real quick:


Weapon Scaling Stats: STR=WILL=GUI - Each also comes with a benefit of building other things as well such as HP, FP, or crit damage. Mandatory based on weapon.

Defensive: VIT>CEL=DEF/RES - Keeps you alive (hopefully). Most builds either lean into evade or tank stats, meaning these stats get invested in near universally.

FP Stat: WILL=FAI=SAN - Most non-basic builds fit in one or more of these stats. Will provides the most per point and gives ele atk, Faith provides blessed hit and crit eva, Sanctity gives the least amount per point, but also gives hp, status res, ele res, and fuels many racial effects. 

Hit: SKI>FAI - SKI is the only dedicated hit stat, mandatory on every build pretty much. FAI also fits in here as it provides considerable hit with blessed enchant. GUI could also technically fit in here alongside FAI for the purposes of flank.

Crit: SKI>=LUC - Skill provides 2 hit/.5 crit per scaled point, while Luck provides 1 crit/1 crit eva per point. Even though skill only provides half as much luck, it is also a lot more valuable in the hit increase it provides whereas luck's other effect only provides a boon against other basic attackers. (Yes, luck does buff drop rates marginally, but that part is a non-factor in pvp/event pve).


Crit Eva: FAI > LUC - Faith provides crit eva at 1 per scaled point, just like luck. FAI absolutely wins out as a stat here though (unless you need the crit), since it can function as a supplementary or even main fp stat while also giving more blessed hit rate. 

With that listed out, it's not hard to see why Luck is in a bad spot currently, since it loses out to FAI in crit eva value for being less useful, and is only built on basic attackers/lightning evokers since it's still a good chunk of crit. The thing is though, with luck being so undesirable, most of the successful meta crit builds don't even build all that much luck, only around softcap at most. That's because it's more effective to put the points in other non-luck stats, and just make up the crit with massive crit buffs like Northern Wind, Veil Off, Bloody Karma, Fight as One, etc. 

How does this effect lightning mages you may ask, considering luminary element exists-  and well, it doesn't really work in the context of how lightning works most of the time due to lightning criticals requiring a crit check. Since weapon crit isn't applied to lightning crit chance, you really need to stack as much crit as you can to make the most of it...  which makes skipping luck pointless for evokers and lightning impacts.

As for using luminary for non-crit lightning, you don't have much choice in spells. The only lightning spells which don't rely on lightning crits are: Rectifier, Black Static, Quetal, Elemental Rune, Thunder Bolt, Holy Spark, and Pinpoint Electro. Not really a whole lot of options, and they are often inferior to their lightning crit alternatives for damage. To add insult to injury, even if you go and build crit to use lightning crits, you end up with a -25% fire weakness, a death sentence with all the Explosion and Falcon Strike spam around currently (Which forces lighting users to run an even more limited selection of gear to offset that weakness). 

With all these issues lightning faces, it has to be good in its identity as utility via "huge damage potential", right? Not really in GR2, since ice is by far the highest damage element due to how absurdly high people stack skill, combined with things like Fox Stance Verglas damage completely overshadowing any lightning build in damage with less setup and fewer weaknesses. A thread was made a few week backs about how luck needed love after getting hit/eva removed, and the symptoms show as I've pointed out above. Adding more crit/crit eva to luck probably isn't the solution here, as lightning would still suffer the same symptoms outlined. Open to ideas and discussions on what Luck could do to make it less painful to build (preferably something pvp applicable).

[Lolzytripd]

I think you got the hierarchy a bit wrong.

Guile has crit damage > Will has elemental attack > Strength just has hp, which cannot be leveraged offensively like the other two.

Vit>Def/Res>Cel in its current state due to how things are, Pure vit builds work, Def/Res builds can work, Cel builds can be actively ignored.

I do agree with you that Luck needs some love. But I personally think the solution to "how much love?" needs to come after some other stats get changed.

Guile, needs kneecaped. Strength needs to be made equal to whatever guile is kneecapped to. Cel needs to be worth it, that should probably be started by removing half of the new ignore evasion crap, while also making glancing not as problematic.

As to how to fix luck after that.... +2 crit per 1, a few more traits to allow for Luck% stuff to occur, a Luck% to add scaled luck to any rng check.

[InsainArcaneBirdbrain]

When I brought up the other stats, I was moreso trying to demonstrate how little luck actually affects things in comparison, not really trying to talk about stats vs each other in general. GUI is the strongest basic attack main stat yes, but it's pretty worthless for a non-basic attacker who won't benefit much from it outside flank hit/slots, and I'd take WIL or STR over it any day in that case. Evade, glance, and evasion ignore is another topic as well, but not one I'll cover here. 

The two reasons I want to avoid giving more crit to Luck is one, people had concerns about devaluing crit eva in the last thread which I can see to a degree, and two, it wouldn't solve the issue of making luck on non-crit builds feel terrible. Let's say I want to use a lightning custome with its 70 will/40 luck scaling, and I'm not using lightning crits. What is luck really providing me in this context outside elemental attack and a marginal amount of crit eva that will probably not matter? Yes...  I Could just use another tome alongside luminary, but it seems pretty silly to have no real reason at all to use luck-scaling weapons outside basic attackers.

Trickery style effects on attacks for luck could be interesting, though I'm not really sure what skills you'd tie that to, and there's fact that if you're not using those skills, that Luck buff does nothing for you.

[Senna]

Well for Luck, we might as well add two more effects to it to increase its viability. As it is, it's only the crit stats and so on.

But I'm sure Zerg explained all those points better in his post. I'd suggest two things for Luck and its effect on Lightning/Impact itself.

Luck: Actively increase the chance to resist or Inflict chance base status based on a percentage of Luck. Since Luck itself is all about RNG, odds, and so on, I believe it's fitting it also affects other RNG/Chance options in the game.

Lightning Luck: Whenever someone scores a Lightning crit, there is a Luck% chance the Crit ignores armor and magic armor as well as a Luck % chance to score a Chain effect that zaps around within a close range of the target based on Lightning Atk + Scaled Luck and spreads around. Effective if the foes are grouped together. Soak increases the spread range.

Of course, these are just ideas. Tuning and adjustments are always open and on the table.

[Snake]

Luck could always give you a chance to either perform a 'Perfect Dodge' (nullifies damage similar to Body of Isesip) or a 'Perfect Hit' (ignores enemy evasion for that damage instance only).

At a 1% + 1.5% per 10 LUC base chance, which gets doubled if your Luck is higher than your attacker/target's Luck.

[Balor]

I'm not too fond of the idea of adding luck back into the evade/hit equation after the adamant desire to remove it wholesale. I feel we've sort of bled that pig.

However I think upping crit to 1.5% per level would be a substantial enough change to get more value from it as a stat if we need to change it's base worth.

Moreover I think that with how luck overall has been devalued you up it's viability by increasing the potency of lightning crits to some degree. Likely some talent changes to amplify their damage and or frequency would be a start.

I also want to say I'm against kneecapping stats in general, when I think the point should be to bring he value of points up rather than down.

[InsainArcaneBirdbrain]

I'm not too fond of the idea of adding luck back into the evade/hit equation after the adamant desire to remove it wholesale. I feel we've sort of bled that pig.

However I think upping crit to 1.5% per level would be a substantial enough change to get more value from it as a stat if we need to change it's base worth.

Moreover I think that with how luck overall has been devalued you up it's viability by increasing the potency of lightning crits to some degree. Likely some talent changes to amplify their damage and or frequency would be a start. 

I also want to say I'm against kneecapping stats in general, when I think the point should be to bring he value of points up rather than down.

Upping lightning crit potency is a possible route, though the main issue with that is the fact that not every lightning spell can lightning crit (Most cannot in fact). As for lightning crit chance itself, since weapon crit mods aren't factored, lightning critting without evoker can be rather difficult against another basic attacker's crit eva (and Liches even if you have Evo) taken into account. Raising the base amount of crit given by luck does bring up the concern of devaluing crit eva a fair bit, though how much this matters is a bit hard to say given the number of varying scenarios and builds one can have. 

The primary issue I feel with luck currently is that it's too build-specific in its current form, as in literally only helpful for crit builds whereas every other stat gives a minor bonus that can be taken advantage of in general use cases. To elaborate with the non-defensive stats:

STR scales a lot of weapons, but it also gives a minor HP bonus and BW buff everyone can use.
WIL gives FP, ele atk, scaling, inflict, AND skill slots. Every build can take advantage of one or more of these.
SKI is needed for hit, but also gives status inflict, crit, and skill slots.
FAI gives blessed hit, is the non-luck crit eva stat, gives FP, gives status res, and increases devotion DR. If you just want crit eva, you build this and not luck.
GUI is mostly just for basic attackers and gun/dagger users, BUT it still gives skill slots and flank hit for everyone. It's a bonus usable by everyone, and is a niche no other stat fulfills.
SAN fuels racials, but even races that don't benefit don't mind having it as the largest per point source of status res, and a bit of extra HP/FP.

LUC provides crit (and is a basic attacker's main source usually), and crit eva. As you can see, there's almost no reason to run this stat on any non-crit build, as the one other utility it provides in crit eva is so completely overshadowed by FAI. Even for basic attackers, they avoid running more luck than they absolutely have to these days as the stat itself provides such little value per-point for investment past softcap that it's just a tax stat for basic attackers.

While Luck shouldn't be tied to hit/eva at all, since that conficts heavily as we saw in the past with the glance system, I believe it's in need of something that's universally helpful to all builds in some capacity rather than just crit-attackers. Whether that be inflict/status res, or something else completely is up for debate though.

[Snake]

What kills more is Electrical weapons, that can't avoid having LUC. SKI is now what LUC was, but the gaping hole left on the stat leaves a lot to desire out of it.

At this rate I'd see it granting a very generous amount of Status Resistance, since infliction is always super skewered towards success than resistance is. (You'd often see people casually having 150+ infliction, but resistance lies on the mark of 30-50.)

[Poruku]

I honestly find luck isn't too bad considering how useful crit evade is in pvp nowadays

But the sad part about luck is getting like, so little crit and missing all your crits on any bk building luck or faith