[Lolzytripd]

I would like to provide some viewpoints and grievances on how we got here instead of providing a list of changes that I'd like to occur. I believe this might help in identifying a solution given that the crit evade meta is mostly driven by several factors. Excuse me for the ranting I might do.

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Critical Evade currently is the strongest form of "Defense" in the game, given that most physical damage aside from critical hits are not very threatening, I would chalk one of the reasons being the skills that run purely from SWA aren't quite as relevant as they were before, among a few other reasons.

We do need physical damage that feels threatening without needing to crit just to exploit builds that would for-go defense in favor of crit evade sources, mainly the best "SWA" attacking classes currently in the game are Kensei and Firebird, both are duelists and are considered more of a hybrid attacker, and lack the defensive utility that something like soldier might provide, leaving people who want to swing a sword and do some damage kinda stuck with those classes.

Namely classes like Black Knight, Demon Hunter, Boxer and Monk lack the up front damage or SWA increasing tools to really be considered SWA attackers atm, and they won't threaten the 0 DEF setups enough to make them consider the flaws in their own defensive structure, as critting does way more damage than them, that said:

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Critical hits are insanely strong, like they are legitimately the best form of offense in the game gated behind a consistency issue primarily, I'd go as far as to say they are straight up better than spells given that single target damage in pvp is generally better than AoE damage, especially now that the Cross is a thing. When it comes to single target damage this is just the way to go, its fun, its very good damage, and it allows you to play around with your most important resource: Momentum.

You can see why basic attacking is vastly more popular than SWA attacking, without specials having the previous reliability they did in the old evasion system, SWA attackers are forced into prioritizing hit instead of SWA, meaning they're playing the exact same game as basic attackers but are losing for it given the lack of extra momentum available from their attacks.

I don't believe that the current form of critical evade is very healthy for the game either, but I can see why it is so vastly popular to have critical evade, if you're playing a mage and you get rushed down by John Duelist hitting you 2-3 times a turn for over 300-600 damage, while you're casting spells once or twice at them and just can't seem to keep up for whatever reasons. (This is not to say Spellcasting is bad, far from it, spellcasting is consistently good, its about what SWA attacking should be.)

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Critical Evade's numbers compared to Critical Hit itself is simply too high, the most straight forward nerf that could nullify all my grievances with the system would be just to nerf primarily Boneheart and/or buff Crit for classes like Duelist and just move on with it.

Boneheart is the main problem, the stats that grant you crit evade are set up in a way to be more niche-ly sought after and are inconvenient to each other, LUC and FAI don't synergize the same way that LUC and SKI do, not even close. Also they're set up to be slightly higher in total value than SKI and LUC, which should be kept because weapons obtaining massive crit upgrades offsets this by a lot.

But I don't think this will be a fundamental solve to the issue, as soon as critical hitting becomes more consistent again, then people will just move back to trying to fit in shit like Pierce/Slash resistance and DW install into their builds.

The problem primarily lies in crits, sure Crit Evade (primarily boneheart and maybe FAI) needs a nerf, but critical strikes in this game are the base problem that should be addressed later.

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I know I said I wasn't going to provide a list of changes that I think should occur, but I am just going to talk about this for one second.

I think Critical Evade should be moved to a system that reduces critical rates far less (about by half) and instead decreases critical damage received, given that the momentum portion of a critical is way more important to keep consistent, than the damage.

Well said autumn, well said on every point here, the only point I feel that needs considered in addition to all of this would be "the power of a critical hit" which is  at the moment nebulous due to the amount of variance in critical damage from one crit build compared to another.

• A rebalance of crit vs crit evade that ensures the chance is fair, without either side fully capable to wall out the other.
  
• A refactor of the value of a critical hit, perhaps a squish or normalization of critical damage or perhaps a fullblown return to a single static crit modifier separate from guile.
  
• A look at the value of scaled weapon attack skills that do not critically hit to make them more worth the consistency they provide.