[Kameron8]

Tanks pretty much dominate in Player combat, yup. It's a combination of how weapons and elemental attack scale, as well as how easy it is to bypass evade should you so wish. Light investment into evade is meaningless, since it's a feast or famine defense and anyone who needs to hit will get as much as they can.

What we end up with are mages who have to choose between sinking all of their stats in things like Strength and Celerity, or stats like Defense, Resistance, and Vitality. There is no decision to really make. The non-magically inclined will invest into whatever stat their weapon scales off of, and pure defense. Dodge is an impossibility without particular class setups, so it's far more applicable to just roll Black Knight, or Boxer, or anything without caring at all about evasion. Tank stats will -always- help you, there is no RNG involved.

Not segmenting certain stats as offensive and defensive is one of the main issues with this, I believe. The fact that Vitality scales something just as much as Strength seems counterintuitive, since Strength provides no tangible benefits outside of damage and things like Battle Weight. In a pure number sense, 500 health mages with fir and explosion hitting for 200-300 will be inferior to a 1,000 health mage with Parraeta dealing 200-300, and healing them for 150. Nothing should scale with Vitality, Defense, and Resistance. Luck, Celerity, Guile, Faith, Sanc, and Skill are all half as effective at providing multiple benefits along with weapon scaling, with Strength and Will being the stragglers that mostly only benefit weapons.

I have no idea how to address this trend, to be honest. People bulked up way too much in the Great Reckoning, and the %based defense has made it drastically more effective than building strictly for offense. It's essentially a matter of defense being nearly mandatory, even for offensive builds.

To give a random, anecdotal example: I have an archer running nothing but offensive stats, two rebelling 1* Bows, and a ton of Guile. I also have a boxer with a ton of defense, strength, and Sanctity (It's a Dullahan, so that makes it even tankier). What normally critically hits Jammers for 300 damage crit the Dullahan for 80, while the Dullahan walked over and Cold Fronts for 180, and can use any number of Boxer skills for WAY more damage than that. The latter has twice the health, and god knows how much more effective health, than the Archer, and it's a real no win situation trying to combat a wall of defense with just as frightening of an offense.