[Perdition]

It’s no secret that the meta for a while has been autohitters that use as few stats as possible while still getting large amounts of SWA and being able extremely tanky. It’s a no brainer. You will always mitigate damage. You don’t have to proc evasion, you don’t pass any hit checks. Your mitigation is always there. 

Let’s look at basic attacks next. These can get just as much damage as auto hits if not more. Volcanic basic attack builds can dish out absurd amounts of damage currently. However, that damage is inconsistent. If you come across someone that eclipses your hit, that damage source is nullified. That’s when you fall back to auto hits.

Finally, there’s evade. You can avoid those devastating basic attacks, but in exchange you’re given Evasion! which is a fixed DR against auto hits if you surpass their hit chance. 

Now, both basic attacks and evading have one big thing in common: inconsistency. Your basic attacks can be dodged. You can be hit without enough evade... etc.

Auto hits and tanking also have one thing in common and it’s the opposite of that: consistency. You will always tank damage (outside of armor or defense shred obviously) and your auto hits will always land (outside of cobra). So, obviously the consistent choice will be the most optimal.

The current compromise for evade strategies is giving them Evasion! Which is a DR associated with your armor type that procs when you would evade an auto hit. This is flawed, because it’s just tanking with extra steps. Rather than taking 30 def and res, you’re building enough evade stats that you can proc Evasion! for that same value. And that proc isn’t guaranteed either. It’s diminished by 15 if you’re knocked down. Some skills ignore it entirely or with charge weapon effects, and sometimes honestly autohitters can get enough hit through skill stack, magnetize and other means to just hit you anyway.

Things like Verglas “solve” this by offering ways to enhance your Evasion! DR but again, it’s just an inelegant solution because at the end of the day players are doing the same thing with different stats, except one is inconsistent and the other isn’t.

On the other hand, if you allow evade strategies to actually dodge everything, that just makes them the best thing in the game. Negating damage is always better than mitigating it. The game would come down to what build can stack the most evade to dodge all incoming attacks and whatever builds can manage enough hit to actually connect any damage.

So my suggestion comes down to a couple of different changes. The first being to delete evade and evasion outright. Spicy take, I know, but hear me out.

Balancing for one form of defense is easier than balancing for two, especially when those two are always inherently going to be unequal. Also, in addition to this change, it is also suggested that you get rid of all form of offensive scaling from defensive stats. 

Now look at my current proposed design. There’s no evade stat. However, those stacking 60 def and res aren’t getting any damage. Earth attack would no longer be something received just from taking defense. There would be no defense or vitality or res scaling on weapons. So looking at these tanks in this game state, they have the same level of tankiness you see now but with none of the damage. If you move previously defensive scaling things such as earth damage, water damage, vitality scaling weapons etc. to other things that imposes a choice on players.

Do you want to be a doom wall so badly that you’re willing to have negligible damage? Sure, your mitigation may be as oppressive as it is now but you don’t have those devastating auto hits behind it.

On the other hand, stacking up that kind of damage comes with the sacrifice of taking less defense and resistance or vitality because these things no longer contribute to anything that would provide you damage. I think this also gives room to different play styles. You can have tanky supports, either in the form of healers or those using utility skills such as those from tactician. 

Ideally speaking, elemental attacks in general would no longer simply scale off corresponding stats. Instead, there should be an offensive stat that gives you an allotment of points to spend toward your choice of elemental attacks. There would be diminishing returns here of course. For example, every scaled point of strength would also give you separate points to spend on elemental attacks to raise them at the user’s discretion. 

This is a vast and sweeping change, but I think that it’s a lot better for balance as a whole. There would be kinks to work out and growing pains, but if you build off the foundation of this idea I think we can come forward with a more balanced game.