[RedtailPinny]

I feel as if Boxer as a class is slowly becoming as antiquated as Spellthief, Arbelast and Demon Hunter are, what with all sorts of new skills, spells and systems put in place that've been outright ignoring the core features of Boxer.  My current woes with Boxer are twofold, and everyone is welcome to pitch in and provide their own thoughts and opinions as well:

Geist, in its current form, is "too good".  Similar to Dodge currently is.  What I mean by that is when it works, it works REALLY well (ie, you trigger geist, your opponent just lost 3-4M, you took no damage, you're very likely right in their face, and you now potentially have 10M to do whatever you want).  But when it doesn't work, it's pretty much useless (you're closer to the enemy, you take full damage, nothing happens) So what do people do?  Similar to dodge, they just ignore the mechanic entirely.

I personally feel like one of two things should happen with geist:

1. Geist shouldn't have so many attacks these days outright ignore it.
2. Geist should get changed to not completely negate an enemy attack, but instead provide a large damage resistance bonus for guessing the correct action the enemy uses against you.  That way, you aren't "ruining" the fun of whoever you're fighting, but you're still being rewarded for predicting the flow of the battle, which is what Geist is all about to begin with.

On top of this: Clumsy as a status effect.  Holy shit, did you know Board Shaker from Black Knight ignores geist completely, then applies Clumsy, which turns off like every single freaking skill martial artist and boxer has?  Similar to other classes, Clumsy completely neuters Boxer by removing almost every form of offense and defense the class has.  But this thread isn't about how certain status effects are too strong, that's for other threads (like Amber's State of GR2 thread)

Also, it goes without saying, but you can almost completely counter a boxer by staying within 1 or 6 squares of them, since their geist severely limits where they can move to without losing strum.  So, two potential options I see for that would be:

1. Geist becomes a 1-6 targettable line.  That keeps them as a line based class, but also helps them catch up with people with say, winged serpent, or the occasional cheeky guy who stands juuust out of reach to force you to lose 2 strum using Movement, Orkan Drahern (if you even have it), or any other non-boxer ability.
2. Basic Movement no longer causes you to lose 2 strum stacks.
3. Geist no longer counts as a movement ability, to get around Clumsy.  This is a double edged sword, since that also means it wouldn't proc Mirage Walk.  I don't feel comfortable allowing Geist to just get past EVERYTHING and having zero downsides to it.

Also, a random aside, perhaps Fighting Pace should be changed in some way, to justify Ending your turn with 3+M?  Right now at max rank you gain 10FP for ending turn with 3M or more, which is hardly enough for a max rank Felhook at 14FP.  Maybe it can get changed to 10% of your FP if you end with 3M or more, instead.