[Cat15]

Currently, only primary stats (str, wil, cel, etc.) are subject to diminishing returns. While that does help prevent min-maxing from being quite as powerful as it could be, the existence of many buffs directly to derived stats (hit, crit, evade, status inflict, etc.) and lack of any sort of scaling upon them still leaves it quite bad. It's very possible for someone built for a good amount of hit to fight someone they have a negative hit chance against. On the opposite side, if you're not playing a class that literally allows for 150+ extra crit from buffs, distributing your stats for a moderate amount of evade can still leave you with no chance to evade, resulting in said points being completely wasted. Status inflict and resist tend to also be terrible offenders.

Where there are a few ways to change things to make this more balanced and min-maxing less mandatory, I believe the simplest is likely to place a scaling curve on several secondary stats. Boosts from equipment and some from class abilities may be fine to apply after scaling, but gains from primary stats and most buffs should be slapped with diminishing returns. I'll give simplistic examples of the curves I believe could work, but I highly encourage input on other rates of scaling that could work. My point is more that something to this effect needs to be added than this exact implementation.

For Hit/Evade:
Hit and evade each get a stacking -0.1 per point each 'tier' of 50 points. At 50, one would have 50 scaled hit/evade. At 100, it would be scaled to 95 (50 + 50 * 0.9). 150 scales to 135 (50 + 50 * 0.9 + 50 * 0.8), 200 scales to 170, 250 scales to 200, 300 scales to 225, 350 to 245, 400 to 260.

Of course while this would allow moderate levels of evade to actually be useful, it wouldn't help with hit vs evade. Which is why I believe that weapon accuracy and evade from armor should be added post-scaling.

For example, without that being the case: Combatant A makes a basic attack at Combatant B. A has 300 hit, B has 300 evade (both achievable, high amounts in the game currently). Whether these stats are scaled to 225 or remain at 300, A has a 0% chance to hit B with equal stats.
With everything except equipment scaled: Combatant A makes a basic attack at Combatant B. A has 300 hit, including 100 weapon accuracy. B has 300 evade, including 30 armor evade. A would have 200 hit scaled down to 170, plus 100 for a total of 270 hit. B would have 270 evade scaled down to 210, plus 30 for a total of 240 evade. A has a 30% chance to hit with equal pre-scaled stats, which is still low, but reasonably possible.

For Status Inflict/Status Resist:
Status inflict and resist each get a stacking -0.1 per point each 'tier' of 25 points. At 25, one would have 25 scaled status inflict/resist. At 50, it would be scaled to 47.5 (25 + 25 * 0.9). 75 scales to 67.5 (25 + 25 * 0.9 + 25 * 0.8), 100 scales to 85, 125 scales to 100, 150 scales to 112.5, 175 scales to 122.5, 200 scales to 130.

Like with hit, status inflict should be given some unscaled boost to help prevent 0% chance situations (And before someone says it, yes Hexer has things like Payback and Black Bubble, but it isn't the only class that has status inflict checks). Perhaps if the ability that causes the check uses a weapon, it either adds 25% of the weapon's accuracy to status inflict, or 100% of the weapon's critical chance (For clarification, strictly those of the weapon itself, without anything from buffs, stats, or abilities added in.). For abilities that don't use a weapon, there could be a flat boost somewhere in the range of 10-25%. If using a spell without a casting tool, or a skill with only bare fists, said boost wouldn't apply.

For Physical Def/Magical Def
Even though the two DRs aren't opposed stats like the others mentioned, they're currently in a spot where many agree they can become far too strong. A recent thread pointed out that it's possible to achieve 100% physical DR. Primarily, basic physical and magical defense come from the Defense and Resistance stats, respectively. Even though those two stats themselves are scaled, and the other means of additive DR are few, the amount achievable still leaves them as disproportionately powerful stats. If it were the case that Defense and Resistance only provided DR, and that putting copious amounts of points into them left one offensively weak, it might be fine. However, they each are a source of an elemental attack stat, and several weapons scale heavily on them. As such, it's not really the case that this would directly be scaling Defense and Resistance twice.

Physical and Magical Def would each get a stacking -0.1 per point each 'tier' of 10 points. For each of them, at 10 they would reduce the corresponding damage type by 10%. At 20, it would scale to 19% (10 + 10 * 0.9). 30 scales to 27% (10 + 10 * 0.9 + 10 * 0.8), 40 scales to 34%, 50 to 40%, 60 to 45%, 70 to 49%, 80 to 52%, 90 to 54%, and 100 to 55%.

If this total DR is too low, perhaps armor could add part of its armor/magic armor to Physical and Magical Def, depending on armor type. Unarmored could add 50% of its magic armor rating to Magical Def, Heavy Armor could add 50% of its armor rating to Physical Def, and Light Armor could add 25% of its armor and magic armor to the respective DRs.

For Critical/Critical Evade:
I'm uncertain these need to be scaled, since there is a relatively limited amount of each one can obtain compared to other opposed stats. I don't believe one can typically get either of these vastly over 100, and critting also requires a hit check (with the exception of lightning crits). I may be wrong on this, or perhaps someone else has a suggestion to make things more balanced. Regardless, if crit is scaled, I would suggest, like with my suggestions for other stats, that weapon critical rating be applied after scaling.