[FatherCrixius]

A synopsis of GR2's impact on the game. Ty to all the homies who proof read this for me.

Some thoughts and feelings on GR2. 

Evade Viability 


I have mixed opinions on post gr2 evade. Its existence induces a skill-tax that needs to be taught to newer players due to it's obscurity and reduces the available class pool to 'Only things with hit buffs lest you deal 60 - 100% less damage forever. It is also very misleading as to how it works.

Currently, the game performs two-hit checks. One initially, another if the first misses.

Hitting the first gives you no damage loss, hitting the second gives a heavy 60% DR. 

In practice, this means you have a (HitChance) of doing full damage, a (HitChance * (1 - HitChance)) of doing 40% Damage, and (1 - HitChance)^2 of doing 0% damage. For those of you who get invited to parties:

Starting with a 50% To hit. 25% To glance, And a 25% to miss completely. (0.6 Damage or 40% Damage reduction)

A 30% to hit gives you 21% to glance and 49% to miss outright. (0.384 damage or 61.6% Damage reduction)

And a 10% to hit gives you 9% to glance and an 81% to miss outright. (0.136 damage or 86.4% Damage reduction)

The difference of 20 hit increases evasion from 40 - 61.6%, with 1000 HP you would go from 1666 Effective HP at 50% Hit chance to 2600 Effective hit points at 30% hit chance, and 7352 effective HP at 10%. (Hence the need for 250+ hit)

For people who really don't get invited to parties, here is a spreadsheet of 250 hit vs evade values. 



So what does this mean?

1. For a starter evade is numerically dogshit unless you are Giga-hardcapped or if the other guy does not have good hit.
   
2. You are not likely to see too many Evaded! procs, but the Damage reduction is there. 
   
3. Going below 250 hit is suicide without buffs.
   
4. Evasion dr is not linear. 
   
5. The +50 Cap should be hit as quickly as possible.
   

Mechanically in fights, this forces the 99% of classes that do not have active evasion debuffs (Soldiers flatfoot for example) to simply diceroll every hit check, and for the few classes that have the means to reduce evasion to do so every time it's off cooldown. This is good in that it forces gameplay changes, but in it's current state I feel hit checks should be more conditional with more classes having access to such. Such statuses should also be weaker, as flatfoot is a 15% max evasion nerf, reducing almost 32 evade from a 210 evade build. I feel this system could work much better with a little balancing and implementation. TLDR, The system has promise, but needs to be insanely fine-tuned balance-wise; and needs evasion / hit to be a more active system than 3M Buff -> +X Evasion, more systems like flatfoot and flanking bonuses to justify hit buffs rather than passives would make the mechanic interactable.

Weapon Accuracy - Many skills still do not use weapon accuracy, particularly demon hunters' matador, giving a base 90% when most weapons are pushing 100 + parts. In conjunction with the aforementioned more evade more better point, makes a lot of skills outright unusable vs evasion builds.

Racial Bases - Base stats matter a LOT more now. Average 4 Skill vs Nagas base 8 Cel is CRINGE. You cannot run any low skill (4 or below) without hit buffs from your classes, where higher base skill races are offered more freedom.

Conclusion - The system being as unintuitive as it leads to a very unhealthy mechanic, giving players very polarised opinions on the stat. I believe the system could be cleaned up a lot without gutting it by removing the glance check, and buffing weapons hit by 10 across the board to make up for evasion being buffed. This would keep the damage reduction the same, but make your displayed hit your effective hit. Some changes to general class or gear hit/evade buffs would be nice as well, as only a select few classes have access to enough evasion buffs to hit the cap, and a fair few classes lack hit buffs entirely forcing a black knight subclass crutch. I feel it's current state is misleading as being below the +50 evasion buff leads to players feeling like evasion is MORE useless than GR1 evasion, and being low hit feels like you are shoehorning your build or auto losing vs a relatively inexpensive (But very restrictive) defensive stat.



Class Viability

As of right now, BK is THE subclass of all time.

• Fortitude (Soldier)
  
• 24 Crit evade
  
• 10% Physical DR (20% Feared)
  
• 6 Defence
  
• 15 Hit (Parry)
  
• -15 CE (Feared)
  
• 15 Hit (FF or Fear)
  
• Parry Reduction
  
• Steel Series (Aura)
  
• Board Shaker 
  
• Crescent Rook (V. Good Scalings)
  
• Checkmate (Autohit)
  
• Hanging (Hit bonus)
  
• Forced Move
  

I am of the opinion that BK is a fine class that synergises with itself and has utility. That utility is it's strength. I am referring to it here as a problem because every other class is not BK. Many classes, I feel, need to be brought up to BK. This is most clear with it's hit buffs, as many classes post GR2 legitimately are left without, and without a hit steroid subclass. Some setups outright need BK, Bonder, etc in order to hit a minimum amount of hit (Which in current meta is around 230, but 250 is far more reasonable.) This, in turn, really damages build variety as many people are shoehorned into picking more in-meta classes to be able to damage a percentage of the playerbase -> Dodge is an unequal system and the burden is on classes to remedy this.

Many classes either lack hit or evasion buffs, causing BIS subclasses to be required should you want to do either. For evasion, ST / VA / BOX / SS / BON are almost required to hit the +50 cap reliably, even if you include gear such as windswept gi. With hard-capped SKI and Blessed (Current Meta Enchant), a weapon can be expected to hit 240~ hit, 220 without, where 250 is considered to be a standard. It is, even then, not ideal numerically. Evasion typically reaches 155 - 160 without buffs and gear, and 205 - 210 with buffs. The +50 system only seems to restrict class variety, for both parties. I feel like this could be remedied either by 

• Lowering evasion / hit buffs across the bored 
  
• Giving evasion / hit buffs to far more classes
  
• Reducing the evasion cap and base hit by an equal amount
  

Classes with built in free damage (such as Firebird, Ghost and Bonder) are favoured in this meta due to the SKI TAX, but this will be covered shortly.


Weapon Scalings 

Separate from GR2 as a whole, the weapon scalings update I feel was a mixed bag. On the one hand, GR1 weapon variety was very stagnant, and this change definitely changed what was being used, but I do not think the issue leading to stagnation has changed-- Rather that the current pool is temporarily cleaner. For contrast, GR1 was largely defined by Rebelling 1* weapons for Str based autohitters, 10* or 9* weapons for basic hitters (Largely due to their generally higher Acc / Crit / Power) and Avalon Dynamic tomes for mages. In current GR2 meta, 1* weapons, Rebelling enchants, and virtually 90% of the weapons are outright outclassed by 10*s -- Be it due to higher Accuracy, Power, Scalings, Effects or etcetera, leading to weapons such as kingslayer being 'The best sword' for almost every circumstance. Other weapon types like fists and more uniquely scaling weapons like eternal solitude have suffered the most, fists originally having higher scalings to make up for their inability to be two-handed and Eternal solitudes multiple wack scaling stats to enable shit like VABK Dag / Shield. 

I am not opposed to the greater shift towards 10* equipment, I actually enjoy the sentiment, but as it stands 10*s are not rare. Most weapons below 10* are directly outclassed by the 10* of their respective category. Contrasting an Anchor Edge or a Spine leash (Both basic hitting weapons) to almost any other axe is simply not a competition, In between anchor edges 5% Higher hit, 10% higher base crit, or it's +8 base power on the average axe. Spine leashes' range, 10 base crit or bonus to ice attack. Trying to stat any fist build without a hands of the giant will give you like 115 - 120 swa in an era where Axes can hit 150 pre-claret with relative ease, and now in ski-tax era affording less numerically efficient stats like Strength specifically tends to cost you elsewhere in the build. 

TLDR -- Build variety hampered by lack of diversity in useful equipment, Balance affected by standardization of scalings not accomodating for differences that existed in GR1, sudden importance of hit etc. More forms of 10*'s (Promising from what we've seen of Kovara) or just better existing equipment would be the remedy to this.

This has caused a drift from direct swa scalings towards additive bonuses like claret, crit, and elemental attack scalings (Non-mage) from things such as crescent rook and lift off- Or most heinously substituting damage through summoner. Back when these were implimented, Elemental attack was generally less gouged. Will was less common as were bonuses to elemental attack, but now every class' elemental attack seems to scale better than their raw swa scaling attacks (See Crescent, Asura's fist especially, Lift Off, etc.) 

Attacks that utilise 100 120 scalings, IE 'better spells' as the community sometimes lovingly call them, tends to 55% SWA based 45% elemental in damage. Lift off for example, with 140 swa and 90 Ele atk will end up with a 248 raw, whereas a falcon strike will only net a 198 raw, making physical damage and swa gouging in general far less rewarding. 140% Swa scaling is very standard, and partly why you see physical autohits such as demon hunter's reaver so rarely nowadays -- It's just not viable to hit the 270 swa required to break even with lift off if damage is your goal. Not only that, but physical damage is more mitigateable (Due to armour stat availability, General frequency of % Physical DR's in classes, etc) than elemental attacks unless you are using that elements specific resistance gear.

TLDR - Moves that do not utilise split scalings are falling behind due to numbers creep and general lowering of swa. I believe this could be remedied by either 

• Raising the base SWA % Scalings on non-split moves by 15 - 20%, with exceptions to moves that have multiple sources of damage (Firebird, Ghost etc) and additional focus on typically underperforming damage classes (Such as Demon Hunters Reaver, Monks non-utility skills)
  
• Adjusting the 120 100 skills and allowing SWA to take a larger portion of the scaling. Skills such as BK's Crescent rook or Boxer's Asura's fist completely outperform the majority of their kit by just having higher raw numbers. Lowering each of these by 40%~ and raising the swa scaling on them by 20% would promote SWA as a damage stat, rather than the tangential elemental attack which is typically raised to 70 - 80+ on builds that utilise them.
  

The last point I have to make on scalings is the tragic loss of Eternal Solitude's identity, the scalings being the most interesting part of the weapon in that it was a dagger that needed to be built around. The loss of SWA from fist weapons, as they have maintained identical scalings to sword weapons despite being unable to be two-handed, combined with the general inability to gouge strength without losing all hit / defensive stats have rendered them 25 - 35 SWA below what they used to be, and upwards of 30 swa below two-handable martial weapons due to part itemization. I believe this, in combination with the fact that MA classes are very GR1 Autohit heavy combined with the SKI TAX, has lead to the classes decline in popularity and capacity.


SKI TAX

I have mixed feelings on this too. As a consequence of evasion's changes, skill is now a mandatory stat on 99% of builds -- There simply aren't enough autohits to warrant going lower than 60 scaled: The consequence of this however is every build is effectively 15 Levels down in terms of stat points. This predominantly affects swa based 'autohitters' of GR1 the most, as basic hitters build skill regardless and mages have the stat points available to invest without compromise. This has had the greater effect of reducing most peoples defensive stats by 10 - 15 each, the abandonment of luck and san as stats and Blessed (enchant + talent) to become the staple weapon enchant-- Granting 20~ hit to virtually every build. 

The loss of san in favour of skill and more primary defensive stats has also limited san races greatly, usually only to classes that already utilise stat-less damage (Akin to old-time doomwalls)  or stat-san benefiting races such as the Instinct Kaelenesians and wyverntouched. I don't... really know what to do about this. Or how to react to San being relegated despite being one of the most thematic stats.

I believe the main consequence is classes building skill-- Hexer for example benefit outwardly from every setup being 60 stat points lower on average, which is partially why they are considerably stronger post GR 2 (As with the Guard / DOT change). 

Classes that utilise statless damage; Summoner / RM etc, Are also in a far better spot than previously low ski classes, being able to focus on defences that some class combinations can simply not afford anymore. Summoner is particularly egregious right now as every third person is a Bonder / Something, as while Seiryuu has shitty hit, everyone who has not built to evade has had to skimp out on resistance and defense, and can be increased through synchro summon and fight as one, on top of 60 evasion ignoring damage per target per turn.

I don't particularly know how to fix this, without sweeping nerfs across the board for overperforming classes, as this new system is opposed to most forms of autohit. Frankly, I would just be happy to see less bonders [1 , 2].


RIPOSTE 

Most moves are now riposte-able, some are more riposte-able than others and should be bug fixed I feel, but the fact that skill became mandatory and virtually everything triggers it, Armor of nails, Fang Faced shield etc warrants some damage nerfs on said retaliation sources I feel.


Turn Order

Riposte critting, or any status that ends the enemy's turn but does not end yours causes said enemy to go first. This is basically abusable but is generally considered to be an unfortunate coincidence. Summoners dying cause their minions to two turn the other party, and boxer's geist allows you to send a high initiative boxer to the bottom of the ladder. I definitely feel the new system requires more rigidity, as the current meta and frequency of two turns is unfun to try and workaround.