[Ranylyn]

I don't know if this thread is a topic about evasion or a suggestion for a new class. I simply wanted to share my experience from another game that had a really cool evasion mechanic that I feel could be adapted into SL2. I'll leave it up to the discussion to decide what direction to take this in.

Game: Dragon Age Inquisition Online Multiplayer
Character: Isabella

In DAI, rogues came in two types: Twin Daggers, and Archers. The dagger rogues are honestly kind of berserker-like; high damage output but frail as hell. Unless they have barriers from a mage ally (DAI has no magical healing; mages instead cast temporary barriers enemies need to break down - think of them like Painkillers in other games) dagger rogues are one hundred percent dependant on attacking from stealth, or they just die. (Unless you were like, really clever with traps and such; and while there were skills to quickly move and all, but you can only set so many skills and using those ate away at offensive options.)

Enter Isabella, a dagger rogue without Stealth. She instead had something much, MUCH better.

Depite having the usual two daggers, she had a third weapon at her hip: A miniature crossbow. This crossbow would mark targets, and dagger skills would then consume those marks to give her stacks of "Evasion." She could hold a maximum of three stacks, and would either lose one when getting hit, or could consume them with a powerful attack. An attack that triggered an evasion stack would do no damage, effectively making her still frail as hell in the hands of an inexperienced player, but potentially solo god material in the hands of a master, as she could survive hits that would kill any other character outright, if she had even a single evasion stack handy. You just had to micromanage her stamina and skills.

I was thinking that a similar mechanic could be implemented in SL2, if done right. Part of what makes Evasion so powerful is how you can stack Evasion with Defenses. So why not some kind of mechanic that builds up stacks of something based on tactical play, but in exchange basically makes you take double damage if you don't have them saved up? I was thinking we could call it something like "Cunning" and have it represent staying a step ahead through tactical decisions.

- If this was implemented as a change to rogues, we could make traps give Cunning if triggered, or something similar. Or perhaps something similar to Archer's Trap Mark, with different skills giving different amounts of cunning when consuming marks.
- Alternatively, it could also potentially be an idea for a duelist promo, to stick with the "mark with one weapon, consume with the other" mechanic that inspired this post.


Anyways, just a random thought since I'm planning to replay DAI soon.

(DAI Multiplayer also has a really fun musician mage I could make a thread about, too, if people wanted to see a bard class that actually plays music as a mechanic instead of only knowing a bunch of preset songs like any other class has skills and spells.)