[Maksimum_Fire]

@crixius- I love your post and a lot of things it elucidates, thank you for dropping in.  I don't completely disagree re: your comments on turn order,

@spo

I'd argue that evasion being effective doesn't necessarily imply celerity is good.  Word from dev himself is:



And this shows.  Celerity does give us two evade per point, so it's more effective than Luck at granting evade....  But, particularly with Evasion, that's not necessarily that beneficial.


(Extensive evasion discussion)

As an example; why don't I just run Ghost/Ranger, using a Haunted Soul Weapon?  Let's look at the numbers I get assuming I have a bow and a spear(so no locking guard) and a Spirit on Disengage.  To make things even more simple, we'll use a pretty generic armor like Ninja Armor, and of course, we'll use Miragewalk, the current gold standard for evade.

Let's assume we're a low base cel race.  2, to be exact, though I don't really know what race that'd actually be- it's lower than the cel of pretty much any race you'll be using for dodge.  We won't assume racial buffs to evade.  And we'll assume 3 base luck, another low number.

From the minimum APT needed to make an effective build(due to def/res/vit/will investment being very helpful even on dodgies), we get 8 CEL and 9 LUC.  Let's assume the cat stamp, as well, since most players take the short time it takes to fill that quest.  Black Blood quests also give plenty Legend Inks, so we're going to assume that Cel and Luck are both inked to make up for those low bases on an evasion build  We're also going to invest another 34 into Luck to hit the point right before diminishing returns.

That means we have 44 luck and 9 celerity, which gives us 62 evade.  Pretty low numbers, but we'll get there, don't worry.

Ninja Armor, now.  That's 15 evade.  +9 evade from upgrading at the blacksmith for 24.  +5 evade from Breezecloth material.  +4 evade from Trimming Scissors.  33 evade.

We're at 97 evade now.  We're still not really going to dodge anyone, especially anyone who stacks skill.  But what happens when we use our skills?

Reasonably, if enemies are getting into close range, then you flip shot, activating acrobatics, activating Miragewalk, kiting an opponent, and striking an opponent.  That fear infliction from Haunted Soul gives a -30 hit penalty, so we'll count it as an effective +30 evade.  Acrobatics is +30 evade.  Miragewalk is +25 evade for one attack-  But, in fact, it doesn't decay on autohits, so for the purposes of Evasion, we have no trouble holding onto that.

In one action, we've gained 85 evade.  182 evade, without a single point of directly invested Celerity.  This is already a significant enough range that autohitters begin to struggle-  For simple reasons.  Strength is needed for most weapons to scale and do damage, so strength gouging is important.  To use those skills that deal damage, you need FP, so autohitters invest in Will, and sometimes Faith or San too- though those have become less common over time.  This leaves a lot less room for Skill than what dedicated hitters can run, with weapons that scale mainly off of other stats- like will, or skill, or guile- or builds that can easily sustain FP.  and even if they do invest skill,o get above a 50% chance of not proccing evasion, an autohitter needs to get 232 hit.

But that's not all.

I mentioned Spirited Disengage.  In a ghost/ranger build, Flip shot into another skill into Disengage is a perfectly standard combo.  While it's only for one hit, the miragewalk use I mentioned remains there for disengage.  Disengage gives you a whopping 60 evade, bumping up your evade number to 242.

242 evade.  That's a funny number, to me, since 220 evade is what people say you need to run in order to be able to handle yourself as a dodgy.  At this stage, an autohitter needs 292 hit in order to 50/50 evasion procs.  The solution to this feels like basic attacking, since 'well, I'll get rid of 85 of that evade if I just get close and basic attack!....'  And you know, in a situation where you can afford to dogpile on this no-cel dodgy?  maybe that'd work.  But in any sort of situation where hands can't be spared, you typically have to

>close in with a mobility option
>basic attack, often missing(using 300 hit as a standard) and losing your ability to combo.

Which uses all of your momentum up in a situation....  That the no-cel dodgy just sort of brought about naturally while doing chip damage(flip shot), and sustaining(60 heal from disengage), and using those moves to zone.  What's more, they'll typically also access a third action during that turn, letting them overwhelm that sort of option.

Now.  This specific example is counterable.  Its counters are bows, which have no trouble stacking 300 hit and have a long range, allowing them to use only 3m to drop miragewalk/disengage-  But that pigeons you into Ranger, typically, and then it's down to a mirror match essentially.  Then, sniper rifles- which get bonus hit from Steady(20) and have a decent range, though not as much as bows.  And multishot guns. though the damage output, lack of teamfight utility, and shoddy range have shoved the latter out of the meta more recently, imo.

Even more than that....  This build is bad.  There's so much we're just choosing not to account for, and we're literally sitting at 44 luck.  How often do you see a dodgy- or even a basic hitter- with only 44 luck. We've also chosen not to consider Fortune Wind(27 evade), which can be pulled out in matchups where it feels like your evade might not be enough; or cherry tree, which would provide us another 10 evade from buffing Cel.  We also blatantly avoided using swords, which can give us even more evade up close.  There's also Rising Game, which will buff our evade by 2 with each level.

This isn't an 'only ranger' or 'only duelist' thing, either.  Verglas builds can reach silly amounts of evade, and Rogue's +30 evasion passive is very kind to tanks looking to reduce all damage they take by 30%.  There are lovely setups like this around the class board, some more janky or unreliable than others, regardless of where you look...

...And what's most important to discuss.  This is all done.  Without CEL.  Not a single point was taken away from some other stat in order to boost CEL.  This leaves us perfectly free to beef up our def/res to our heart's desire....

But that's not a squishie anymore.  That's literally just a tank that's just as good at dodging as dodgies are.  That forces the sort of second-guessing and misplays that dodgies do, without sacrificing anything, without building any CEL.  That's what I think is unreasonable, and I hope you understand that much, Spo.

Evasion is great.  Evasion's never been better; for tanks. It requires investing into certain setups, but it works.  Meanwhile, for a dodgy who does build cel- They can go for these setups, but the only benefit they get over a tank is being able to dodge basic attackers more consistently.

Evasion's never been better.  Cel's never been worse.  Thanks for coming to my ted talk.

>"some items and" line
Yeah.  Yet those reworks didn't come out when turn order changes went live.  Those things should already be reworked because they're intimately tied with turn order, yet from what I can tell, they definitely haven't been.  I agree with you though.  It's essential that they are.

>"turn order is more balanced this way" line
The biggest reason that dodgies rushed to go first in the past was for Lantern bearer, so that a player could grant immunity to certain status effects to their team before any rushdown builds got involved.  Rushdown was never really much of a problem, though, since usually what would happen is
-Rushdown player goes in, looking to CC and damage enemy team heavily
-they do so
---Either, they immediately die because the rest of their team wasn't rushdown
---Or, the rest of the team is rushdown, and once everyone on their team acts the opposing team just sort of rolls them since they actually did the smart play of building heavier defensive stats and are going to be perfectly fine if they get rushed for two rounds.
Deployment mode made this disparity become even larger, since if teams coordinated whatsoever, 90% of rushdown builds no longer had a turn 0 play.
So, new turn order does these things:
-prevents rushdown, already falling in the meta, from existing
-doesn't stop lantern bearers from immunizing their whole team before the battle starts- in fact, now no-cel lantern bearers can immunize their whole team before 75% of the enemy team can act, due to turn order.
There's also a common complaint about 'meta-designed teams' that all act on the same initiative order.  But I'm going to call something out about that because it's really silly argument.
-This means they go after at least some members on a team, or all of the teammates build super high CEL.  I don't think I need to elucidate why everyone having wack cel is a negative, but I'll touch on the former part.  The former means that, in some ways, the opposing team can usually still react before the 4-man block acts.
-Second, the opposing team ALSO acts in a four man block???  They might be split up, but if you have two of your team's actions at the end of the round and two at the start,  that means by turn one any sort of advantage from having that 'exact initiative' setup team has faded.

I do understand liking new turn order more than old turn order.  But new turn order hasn't really changed much.  The 'issue' of people double turning or being double turned also still hasn't been fixed, even in 1v1s, as has been established by everyone helping out to show the issues to Dev.  Maybe one day it'll be more balanced, but right now there are too many kinks for me to give a 'fair' evaluation of it like that.


>skip tech
Skip tech is wack.  And it sounds like it's still doing essentially the same thing it has been before, forcing opponents who don't play very safe around it to get bent over.  It's my understanding that the core reason for the turn order changes was to shift that being the case.  That said I think it's cool, I just imagine one day someone will properly document it and talk about it on the forums, leading it to be quashed immediately.

>youkai
Yeah, I agree.  Youkai should be minor units if this turn order is to be reasonable.  Snow Crow and Firefox need to be looked at in wake of those kind of changes, also, as their firefall and snowfall functions fall under 'effects that suddenly suck majorly with new turn order'.

tl;dr I gave my response to spo re: all points, agreeing on about half of them but disagreeing on Cel being strong enough right now; I gave a very detailed example of why evasion can be good when Cel isn't.  Similar examples aren't hard to harvest, and greater examples are certainly out there.

but hey i should probably leave that sort of talk to people who dont build cel since im biased because i build cel right