[Senna]

HELLO!

I was going to post this on my other thread BUT I couldn't find it until now.

I've made many of those points before however, I'll make this one quick. Evasive at the moment needs some type of support. I've already made my points here: https://neus-projects.net/viewtopic.php?...dge#p38711 as the same thing I've mention, is happening at the moment.

With the shift in Meta, it seems the Weapon Scaling as getting out of hand (People are reaching 140-200 SWA casually), With the additions of a lot of Autohits, combine with the SWA stacking, to truly survived, you MUST run certain classes or run a tank. Even through evasion proc, you'll find yourself taking 140-200 damage per hit. Though my points have changed since, and how I view the current state of the meta, I couldn't help but wonder if there's really no way to save evasive builds from completely losing play.

There are many factors to consider when running evasive
- Really high SWA to compete against.
- Abilities that do quite a lot of damage and ignores/bypass Evasion.
- The need to run specific classes such as Ghost, DH, Summoner, and Monk. (Hopefully I'm not missing anything)
- Knockdown while within range of the enemy
- Glowing effect
- Frozen effect
- Curses
- Etc

While the evasive build is all about dodge basic attacks, not many people will run that gamble and choose to use auto-hit instead until they've built up enough hit via passives or enchantment to strike basic wise. Cobra helps, however, it's quite easy to work around it (If the ability isn't bugged).

As I've stated in the previous post, Tanks excel in each or just a more safe option. While they have counters, they only well common counters are Vorpal (if RNG is against them) and Rampage/Acidity. The problem with the tank weakness is that they're quite easy to adjust against. From cleansing potion to different abilities that could remove them. As for Vorpal? They can merely build just enough crit-evade lowers that odds even more.

As far as it goes, I'm only aware of Shatian Claws with Grapple and Divine eye (When done right) are the main two abilities that are consistent against them.

With all of that explained, how would I suggest going about this;

I've heard many suggestions and some of them seem quite reasonable. In my case, I'd suggest these two for evasive.

First: While you're building evasive, you'd find yourself putting above the healthy amount of points into Cel and Luck just to reach the standard amount of evade needed avoid basic attacks and trigger evasion. That efforts went to waste whenever someone either bypasses evasion via many different hit stacking methods and the different methods to completely ignore it altogether. How to help with this?

This is a similar suggestion; adjust the amount Cel gives in evade. From 2 evade per 1 Cel to 3 per 1.

This will adjust it a bit, allow people to put their extra points into defensive stats as well. While it won't add it to too much, it will certainly grant evasive build just enough points to add upon their reductions to compete and be considered a viable option outside of the given classes. Of course, players will choose to over stack their Cel or put their points somewhere else however by doing this, they'll merely fall victim to the current reason why this post was made; auto hits and really high SWA.

The second suggestion is similar to the one I've made in the other topic. While this works differently, I'd suggest a chance for damage insurance upon triggering evasion. While Evasion is triggered, via a certain odds (Hopefully not too low), the person has a chance to double the evasion bonus. This will maintain that gambling aspects of building dodgy.

Now, suggestions to fight against tanks.

As it stands, tanks are slowly but surely getting a little too out of control. From stacking armor, reduction and so on. You haven't felt despite until your attacks began doing zero-damage, literally. While they have counters, they're easy to bypass/patch. Suggestion to bring them down a little?

While they are only two consistent way to fight them, I'd suggest the many different classes obtain abilities that grant reduction negating properties. Rough example: Such as a slash attack (Or elemental magical attack) auto-hit, with a fair enough scaling, a cooldown similar to falcon strike but the ability ignores half of the target's armor and base reduction.

Any many more options for such nonetheless but I'd like to see what's on the other's mind about this topic/suggestion.

[SolAndLuna]

Agreed on this, honestly. One thing that isn't noted here that might be important, though, is how difficult it is to even use evasion compared to defense, actually.

Under normal circumstances, the average person will have... maybe 200-220 evade if they're building for it. On the other side of things, someone using basic attacks normally will have roughly 270-300 hit if they can manage it. So, in a best case scenario, you'll have a 50% chance to dodge a basic attack (and by extension, trigger Evasion against autohits) and almost no chance of evasion in a worst case. Fortunately, there are numerous skills, as well as the Miragewalk enchant, to help with this, so after about a turn, people can be at close to 300 evade nearly consistently. However, it doesn't completely protect them from autohits, which they will still get hit by, albeit with 30% damage reduction on top of the 10 or so Defense someone might have. In addition, there are some classes that can reach 350 or even 400 hit if they know what they're doing, so even then, despite everything, it's entirely possible for someone to focus on evasion and still get hit consistently by basic attacks.

By comparison, the Defense and Resistance stats will normally reduce damage by 40-50%. Then they have the advantage of Armor that the majority of evasive builds are unable to use, lowering damage by a flat amount. Then they get further bonuses to their damage reduction from equipment like the Turtle Shell, making for roughly 60% damage reduction without any additional preparation. Then they have various skills that they can use to further lower the damage taken to them, like Wraithguard or using Shared Pain with a youkai. Then there's resistances, if the person has those. At the end of the day, the amount of damage taken becomes negligible at best compared to the 30% reduction Evasion gives. They're weak to Vorpal Strike, but that's a 10% on a critical hit, and it's entirely possible for a tank to have enough crit evade to avoid that altogether against a decent number of people. There are also methods to lower defense or increase damage dealt to an opponent, but those are few and far between, and oftentimes work better against evasive characters, with the exception of a sufficiently high power weapon with the Rampaging enchant or a Buster Cannon, which very few can reliably use without harming their character in other ways.

To summarize, tanks need no preparation to reliably reduce damage, while evasive characters do. Despite this, evasive characters regularly take more damage than tanks due to the prevalence of autohits. The only real option is building with additional defensive options - at which point, aside from wanting to play a wind mage or just a particularly fast character, what's the point of building for evasion when you're trying to add some defense already?

[Hanzo]

What I would want to see, is that 'advanced evasion', or whatever it is called to come into play. Tank builds get exactly how much they invest in, while we get a picture of a former friend and jury duty.

On a roleplay note: If you are building your character like a tank, be a decent human being and look the part. I want to see some beefy plate. If you build yourself tanky, and have your character come against me with a coat, or a sweater - know that you have surrendered your immortal soul to the fiery pits of hell. God have mercy on you.

[Lolzytripd]

The solution To hit chance and Evade chance is .....Diminishing Returns, or more a bell curve system where Hit can never exceed 100% or fall below 0% (barring specific statuses like blind still being able to.)

[Fern]

I would advise against making hit cap at 100%/0% at this point. Autohit builds far exceed basic attack builds in most cases due to their easy damage reduction/SWA stacking and there shouldn't be more reasons for people to not play basic attacks.

The issue is not hit stacking since hit stackers building to whack people precisely should have an advantage against evade, to me. I find tank damage reduction stacking with nuke buttons to be more problematic.

The more optimal tanks tend to forego critical evade and stack as many reductions as they can while using a class efficient at dealing lots of damage (I.E, mage classes, ghost, priest in some cases). Normally the things that keep those in check are DR debuffing abilities (Wear Down, Buster Cannon, etc.) or Vorpal Strikes.

Having more ways to remove damage reduction from someone should MAYBE be fine, I feel, but not too many. The point isn't to make tanking completely invalidated after all. Changing the Burn status to affect armor too would be a start, and the only change I'd personally suggest.

[FaeLenx]

Agree with Fern. You're focusing on the wrong angle of the problem.

If you create more ways to reduce somebody's defense stacking, you create more build options and strengths to choose from that would help combat the superiority tanks can sometimes field. The only reason tanks feel so oppressive is because the common methods of getting rid of evasion (knockdown, freeze, that one hexer curse) are all really common while one of the only ways to get rid of defense reliably (arbalest buster cannon) is so off-meta that you'll never see it used.

Percentages are going to be better than fixed amounts. If the burn status reduced defense by 20% then it would knock a solid 10 defense off of someone building with the usual 50 or so. That's 20% extra damage on your attacks. If there were more guard break effects, that 10% extra damage reduction people just slide right in there would not be quite so annoying.

[Senna]

A hit check isn't the way to go, no. That's not the problem at the moment. Even with a hit check, that doesn't matter when the person will just simple SWA stack and auto-hit you to death. It like running from death but death can chase you across the map just as easily. Death that can casually punish you for 120-200 damage a hit for being Evasive and on the same battlefield as them.

And yes, the Vorpal problem, due to the changes in strength providing health, a lot of tanks seem to be using Bleached Fang to reduce the Vorpal factor. (And Black Knight is just as common)

Changing the Burn status to affect armor too would be a start, and the only change I'd personally suggest.

This is a good start yes. It defeats one problem however, they can simply remove the status if they care enough about it but it's a nice step forward to help reduce the armor portion.

Percentages are going to be better than fixed amounts. If the burn status reduced defense by 20% then it would knock a solid 10 defense off of someone building with the usual 50 or so. That's 20% extra damage on your attacks. If there were more guard break effects, that 10% extra damage reduction people just slide right in there would not be quite so annoying.

There is also a status that does exactly that. The fact you mention burn should do that only proves how little of an impact that status has. The status is Acidity. Base on the technique, it will reduce the stats or reduction percentage. The problem is, this status doesn't have a decrease in them too much. At best, you can reduce up to 10% or 6-5 Def/Magic.

Bustercannon is a good option that's off-meta yes but one of the reasons why not many people use buster cannon because of the current meta. You have tanks that either able to completely remove it within the next turn or avoid taking damage until it's gone, or even stack themselves up on a lot of Items, In battle (Like guard, Golden aura and etc) and class reduction (Wraith guard, Matador, class passive that increase reduction since there are a few and Etc.) whereas even after using buster cannon, they still have a lot of reduction at their fingertips. (Or just cleanse potion and all it a day)

Even with some of the suggestions, I can see small optimal ways of them adjusting around to fix them. We can adjust the armor yes but reduction stacking is still here. From Items, battle to even Class bonuses. And then we have SWA stacking which makes it almost impossible to out-DPS the walls. The fact they can also improve this reduction via parrying skills. The person that understands what they're doing can simply hug the wall or anything on the map that could protect their back and pervert anyone from even getting close enough to back attack (Forcing parries). They're oppressive because they're very flexible with little solid weaknesses. As I've stated in my other topic, they can do almost anything an evasive build can do but better.

It is part of the reason why I suggested skills that don't exactly ignore their reduction all together but instead, bypass some of it. Or even use their reduction or health against them. Though that may be asking for too much, just anything that can't simply shrug off the following turn or ignore all together works.

[Autumn]

There's already so many methods of chipping away at defenses, the physical reduction stat at this point isn't as much a problem as it used to be, I would instead attribute it to very powerful armor stacking and torso options such as Turtle Shell.

I've really only noticed this on builds that existed before mostly on DR% only, not really standing up to the sheer amount of damage people can pump out right now, sooo I'm kinda leaning on maybe a partial fault also being attributed to just how much damage people can do these days.

I will also mention that most tanks are packing huge forms of sustain, which only increases in effectiveness the more DR someone has. Avalon's incredibly large HP Regen does contribute to this somewhat.

Increasing raw evade will not be the solve to this issue, hit vs evade is in a pretty fair spot right now, the issue with that specifically is not all classes synergize with evade, while all classes kinda synergize with tank very well.

[WaifuApple]

I really do not think the structure of this is very easy to understand, it feels like you're rambling quite a bit and not laying things out consistently. Layout gripes aside, though, I'll throw in my two cents:

Cleanse potion is a detriment to all status effects, so it's not a thing that solely benefits tanks. I do not believe it's the removal of statuses that keeps people from playing Arablest, as for some reason that class just doesn't get much love - even before cleanse potions and it being easier to remove the effect (which I think is balanced, buster cannon should not be a death sentence)

In that vein, I think it should be about smaller reductions in tankiness, not bigger ones. Ways to chip away at defense rather than invalidating it completely are ideal, because despite tanking being "out of control" it is very much not far in front of quite a few basic hit builds, and you need to be careful not to make those already super competent builds much better than they already are.

Things like acidity and burn. They're rarely used because of the lack of ways to inflict them. More fire abilities need access to burn for sure, as it feels much rarer than it needs to be. Looking at underworld flame, too, it really got shafted as an ability for hexers. I can stand for a buff to burn and more abilities having access to it. We have plenty of things using cinders that could just inflict burn instead, imo.

Kensei and VA also have ways of reducing armor, and Geldoren also exists. (admittedly locked behind autohits.). Give rogue a base class basic attack that reduces defense to give rogues more avenues to weaken tanks, base class rogue needs more love anyway. Ghost, I think, does not need more going for it so I'll refrain from suggesting for that at all.

And if they cleanse potion any of this stuff, just reinflict it. You can keep doing that, but they can't cleanse potion forever. And a lot of tanks won't have access to alternate, non-cleanse potion nulls.

Keep in mind that Dev did express wanting to reduce gains in defense from 1 per 1 to 0.8 per one, too. I think that's a bit extreme, personally, but if nothing else is enough that's my best suggestion. But don't turn something from too good to not advisable, because I think the state of tanks here is being overplayed.

[Senna]

I want to believe the rambling is there to explain the points a little more than just leave it at that. Some suggestions have been stated and points on where to focus on as well.

The re-inflict situation; that's the problem. The cost of inflicting the status is sometimes greater than the cost it takes to remove it via cleanse. And indeed, tanks aren't the only set that uses it but it's certainly more effective on them due to the nature of evasive build as Sol stated in their post.

Noone would like to know they've wasted 1-3 rounds or put themselves at risk for the person to inflict something only for someone to shrug it off and remove it.

(Is it part of the reason why people are slowly looking away from Arbalest since reload exist)

Also, yes, Geldoren is a good option however, because it attacks the stats instead of the percentage, the reduction won't be as noticeable due to the existence of diminishing and reduction stacking.

Indeed, adjusting and granting more burn and Acidity options are always good. Void Assassin's and Kensei's Fray are helpful but at that point, SWA stacking exist. With both, unless you yourself are a tank, you're merely putting yourself in danger. So in the end, it isn't fully worth it

Unless the enemy is the one that stands within range to get fray off safely which doesn't happen that often.

Ghost is ghost; we're not here about that today.

I don't believe the point drop in reduction is the way to go. While it will certainly nerf them, I don't think that sucker punch is needed. As Spo stated, it's best to look at the Torso/Reduction (Maybe class) bonus items as well as armor stacking. Perhaps their sustainability as well but this is a reach.

The armor reduces via burn or just more options to reduce armor, I can get behind. More Burn/Acidity options is always good. Adjustment of the diminishing effect on items that grant reduction is always pretty well. Though these are stuff focusing on the tank situations, I want to believe Evasive builds still need some adjustment too. (As Spo also stated)