[FatherCrixius]

The return of the bi-monthly evasion thread, happy to see you all again~

I will keep my cliff notes short, but the rest of this post will be a WALL. 

Evasion will always be either too strong or too weak, but I do not believe that is the problem. Fights becoming overly mechanical is however. Having to press the same button over and over makes for terrible rp, regardless of how the balancing aspect changes the state of the game. It just sucks. It is my opinion that these threads should concern less over making the game competitively balanced, as SL has never been good at this, but rather focus on making the part we all play for more enjoyable.

To that end, I think a reversion to GR1 evasion is the only way this'll get any better. Numbers can change, metas can shift, but this'll be the same problem however far down the line we go.

Now, the rest of my thoughts, spoiler'd to not take up the entire thread.

 

Unfortunately this post is going to need to go over history more than numbers.

The reason why GR2 happened initially was due to dissatisfaction with the way evasion was working at the time. You got 30% Damage reduction if you dodged the sole hit check, and barring cobra this was all the reduction you got. The dissatisfaction arose from the fact that people that build to hit you always hit you, and that people who did not build to hit you typically out damaged you with superior numbers.

It was, at the time, my opinion this was not an inherent issue with evade but class balancing instead. A Kensei had no reliable DR if not to equip Ogatas and dodge. A mage bonder could have 64 / 60 pre shared pain, and will naturally do more damage than what a Kensei can do per turn simply due to mage scalings. It was not fun for anyone, but it was not a Evasion vs Tank issue -- Merely this was where the problem was at it's most brazen.

My proposed solution before the rework was to just raise the Level cap by 10. 40 More points was enough to front actually usable DR on the highly underperforming classes at the time, but could only afford the stat efficient class meta either faith or Sanctity, neither of which really performed on their own. They could not build hit due to how Luck was also necessary, nor were they generally below hard cap on defensive stats.

This obviously did not happen, and instead we've been in an evasion v hit arms race for the past year or so, and I do not know if my solution would still be true in lieu of the new classes, mechanics, etcetera. 


I will now go onto the bulk of this post, mechanics ob:

 
Depicted above, GR2 evasion. Semi self explanatory, but I'll go over it anyway.

• Hit is hit, evasion is evasion
  
• Base is the hit chance % / Dcheck one is probability of a glance
  
• DCheck two is the chance for an outright miss.
  
• DR is the then adjusted average reduction provided
  

Contrary to popular opinion, it is not difficult to play evasion. It is not worse, either. FAR more limited in build, as you will need hardcap evasion and each singular point of evasion amounts for much more DR wise than individual points of defence or res, and the minutia of classes able to support evasion in a momentum friendly way can be counted on one hand. But it's still GOOD. Unlike tanking it

• Negates on hits, momentum refunds from fleur etc.
  
• Negates status inflictions, like glancing a wretched oil.
  
• Restores no FP on chivalry, etc. (Minor)
  
• Denies a lot of combo setups like rising tide -> chaser.
  

Where it's damage reduction applies, it beats out both defence and res. Mechanically, this would mean that anything that does not achieve permanent 60+ hit chance would not be viable, save for the handful of moves that enable builds to ignore evasion outright. That would be grapple -> Checkmate, Falcon strike, Steam sear Lords flame etc. 

There is an iota of counter play, fire res on your dodgies, do not fight the firebird, etcetera etcetera, but fundamentally this is unfun mechanically and I obviously will not be using a move with a 0% chance to hit in a fight. This makes the RP into very spammy slap matches.

I do not believe these moves are inherently toxic, strictly because most classes were not designed with current evasion in mind, nor have they been retroactively changed to suit it. GR2 was a band aid fix to a greater problem, and it hasn't really helped in my opinion. 

Classes

Classes like Monk, Boxer (Were it not the highest hit class in the game now), autohit ghost, DH All suffered from the loss of Evasion! This is more an issue of magic damage being straight up superior than what they have in their kit, but they in particular have lost numbers from everywhere. These classes were stat-tight before GR2, before the reductions to defence and res, and certainly before the scaling nerfs to most martial weapons. Reaver DH for example, a cherrypicked example from a terrible class.

• Rising tide is it's highest swa scaling skill at 130%. This fucking sucks. Crescent rook, next class adjacent, trades 30% swa for 120% elemental attack scaling with tile-creating prospects, an interference and a teleport.
  
• Has no bonus hit in it's class, meaning you either need a CRUTCH mainclass or to sacrifice a firstborn son and a leg to hardcap skill. If you aren't using howling handshot you will want to rip your cock off.
  
• The only elemental attack scaling in the kit is on elemental rave, at 120% 40% across 4 10's. Without an enchantment, this will be across four stats you likely only have two of.
  

It is rare for a DH to have significantly more than 130 - 140 swa nowadays, even rarer to see a dh hitting harder than 170 physical for 3m, where a crescent rook would hit for 25% harder without twohanded. It is unreal how done dirty some classes have been by GR2 and prior scaling nerfs. Monk would be a good example of this too, the lack of two handed not being accounted for with the general scaling changes that came with GR2, and with each sub 110 swa fist I see ran on a boxer an angel cries in heaven. 

I do not want to write a full eulogy for everything dearly missed from GR1, because I have already done that and nought came of it despite the totally real 3000~ views. Just my opinion that this game sucks mechanically and will continue to suck for as long as people truly care about the competitive viability of x / y / z. Just make it fun dawg, give me buttons to press and do not deny them categorically. That should be the real criticism of GR2, it is not as fun.