[Autumn]

A class having all the solutions to its own problems inbuilt isn't good for balance. There's a reason Kensei works SO WELL. Even if someone has crit evade after you strip 30 of it with passives, you then also have Wazabane to effectively lower it by another 15. Not to mention it's used in countering evade in case god forbid, lowering their evade by up to 30 wasn't enough already.

I already mentioned as to why Wazabane is balanced and thats by its FP Cost alone, more often than not it'll chunk through 15-20% of any duelist's FP pool, not counting the FP Regen they can get, not only that but its SP cost is pretty substantial, you have to sacrifice something to get it, I don't need to mention anything else here since I'd be repeating the same thing.

There is no counterplay. You get silenced. End. The most common opener in any PVP battle in the arena is 'Walk up and Absolute Fear' because it's that good. Hesitation and Fear decimate melee's ability to hit you and the silence requires at bare minimum a sacrifice of 10% maxhp to counter. It forces EVERY mage to bring a screamer or some similar counter to silence.

Sporting crit evade...Like that thing you can negate up to 60 of. Which completely negates an entire stats worth of Crit Evade (Equivalent to 60+ luck).

Planning for and preventing someone walking within three tiles of you and dropping a unresistable silence on you is a bit of a tall order don't you think? How would you suggest a non-wind mage counter this opening gambit with status resistance doing nothing to it?

That is not at all the most common opener for any pvp battle because that just gets you killed super easily, I can assure you any kensei just walking up and touching absolute fear is just going to get demolished by anyone with a brain, because you've approached the enemy, therefore they do not need to approach you, and you've exhausted an important cooldown in the face of someone who could simply be an autohit build or be packing one of the MANY silence counters already prevalent in this game, including a new skill very recently that would absolutely destroy anyone performing this strategy on a would be mage, lets move onto an actually good point.

Crit evade being at 60 is not really enough, the typical amount you'd be aiming for to stop duelist shenanigans is around 85-100 normally, and anything beyond that is icing on the cake, the value of boneheart over giant gene is staggering when facing a duelist, as if you can even prevent 1 critical hit check you've already received more effective HP from that enchant.

No I don't think its a bit of a tall order, mages should absolutely be prepared for silence in some way, whether that's sporting one of the MANY MANY MANY ways to counter it, which would include:
-Whispering Can't
-Silent Prayer
-Screamer Tome
-Cleanse Potion
-Throat Opener
-Heron Feather
-Glykin's FAI passive
-Simply just being faster than your opponent initiative wise. (Better if you have a heron feather, as this would COMPLETELY remove abs fear's silence.)

I can suggest a non wind mage invest into a heron feather and possibly Silent Prayer or Whispering Can't or Negotiate, as all 3 of these would help against silence severely, remember it has a 3 round cooldown but a 2 round silence, meaning it can never permanently silence you unless the kensei is faster than you and you're not sporting any form of fighting silence, which is what most casters should be sporting.

A heron feather brings that 2 round silence down to a measly 1, this means that you're stuck doing no magic for 1 round (you can use this to prep curses or charge mind, or better yet you can just use whispering can't to cast.)

What I'm trying to say is, even if you don't have any of the listed silence counters, you can spare 1 accessory for heron feather just to have a much easier time against these threats, or hell pack a throatopener I guess.

And as for fear immunity/removal that much is easy, you have several skills that cure it, one that gives an immunity after curing it, red cape, being a shaitan, cleanse potions again, liquid courage etc.

Actually, Evade is almost solely tied to Cobra dodging, Kensei has never been the main focus of evade builds. Now VA/ST Cobra builds do it best, the issue is that Kensei gets so much of it for free with no investment or buffing strictly required. A build with only 200 Evade can easily negate 300 hit with Kensei passives while most Cobra builds aim for 250+ to do the same. Fear immunity is rare, cures cost momentum for something they can just re-apply, and Autohits will still get evaded for 30% less damage and, though I didn't mention it here because this is about Kensei, not Duelist, Flottement stacks.

What even is this kind of assessment? Evade being used for Cobra dodging is a thing sure but you have to hardline invest into it to get the most out of it, I don't even know what you're talking about when you say 'actually evade is tied to cobra dodging', No? For as long as the game's been around its existed as an alternate form of defense, originally versus basic attacks which was all physical damage was back a long time ago, now it serves as a huge damage mitigation tool against autohits, both physical and magical, which makes it widely diversified in what it can do, hit builds however see that they can usually end up hitting through evade builds.

Veering back on topic, yes a Kensei can reduce someone's hit by up to 70, which is super substantial, but that doesn't mean all hit builds are fucked regardless, I'd like to share a screenshot here, of a hit focused build rather than crit focused, with bloodhunt or blessed you can reach absurd amounts of hit, to the point where even a Kensei sporting well up to 300 evade can't even stop you.



So so what if a Kensei can stop -some- people from hitting? Is there not allowed a class that can do that?

Kensei isn't about Class Synergy. There's a reason why its ONLY class weapon is the sword. You are going on the path of the blade. Commit or look elsewhere. If you want to synergize it...Guess what? You can offhand a blade just fine. You can, in fact, do everything in Kensei while using an offhand sword and a main-hand gun or even a bow like a real Samurai.

I don't think you quite understand the point of the multi class system to start with, we are not limited to one prospect as that'd completely fuck with the dynamic of character creation, and taking away tools that allow creativity in build crafting (which I don't perceive to be at all broken) is just not a good thing for the future of the class, you -CAN- pursue the path of a classic Kensei, you -CAN- go Katana and wave it around like a dork, you -CAN- pair it up with a bow to allow yourself to be more similar to the classic warrior.

But you can also pair it up with any other weapon and be creative about it, its an RP game after all.