[KhalidtheGrey]

Implying you can't adjust and tune Accuracy Vs Evade down to near perfection. It's a hell of a lot easier than 'Auto hit, yes/no'.

[Ranylyn]

Except, due to the modifiers, you can't even remotely approach "near perfection" with a nine-and-a-half foot pole. In fact, "near perfection" should be struck from internet vocabulary completely. One person's idea of perfection is another person's idea of a total fustercluck.

For example. Blessed gives + Hit equal to your scaled faith. Say you have 40 faith. This means one of two scenarios: If you CAN hit decently (Say 50-60% chance without blessed) without faith, Blessed basically invalidates dodge. If you CAN'T hit decently (say, 0-20%) without it, then you NEED it and/or other modifiers to even land a hit at all. But you know what? This is FINE. It lets people specialize in different things, like dodge and hit, if they so choose, but doesn't actively punish them for NOT doing it since against opposing non-specialists, they're still in a decent spot. Against someone with 4 Celerity, that +40 hit from blessed is wasted. And that's the cost of a build; good at some things, not at others.

That said, on the topic of rounded builds, Autohits are an essential evil. Without them, dodge becomes the god status and the instant meta. Or, if dodge is nerfed, then boom, instant tank meta and no one ever tries to dodge again. That said, the issue stems entirely from their current power; unless you have a crit-ccentric build, they very often do more damage than your hit rolls. While the overall nerf to crits in favor of Guile boosting crits was a very interesting change that allows people to specialize in crits, which is cool, it also helped indirectly buff autohits since you need to sink a considerable amount into both luck and Guile before skills that perform basic attacks are as viable - stats you could have poured into your defenses or stats powering your autohits.

A lot of moves that are currently autohits, I do believe should be changed to be non-autohits. Such as Mad Chop (Let's face it, there's plenty of ways to boost it's accuracy to make it good against all but the most specialized of dodgewhores) or Thousand Stab (It's so pathetically weak right now, giving it the ability to CRIT would still leave it weak, but at least remotely useable if you can't hit with your other skills at that angle?) As well, many autohits need a drop in power purely to make it so a crit outdamages them and makes basics worth using; some extremely gimmicky autohits, such as Engineer Flamethrower, sound intense on paper but not so much in practice (90% fire attack + 100% scaled weapon attack = even with a mutated gun Narcus and 80 str you're not doing insane damage and can outdamage it with crits. Crystal rose is in a similar boat for raw power but it's AOE makes it more useful than Flamethrower) but some others, especially those veering into the territory of 150% scaled weapon attack, can get kind of absurd.

In my own personal opinion, the perfect place for autohits is in between Basic Non-Crits and Crits; not weak and only remotely useable when you can't hit, but not your FOOS (First-order-optimal-strategy, or the concept that if A is a more accessible and immediately viable option than B, then you just use A nonstop. Such as when Shinken could doublehit, that saw a lot of spam.) As well, you don't want to hand an automatic win to the dodger who needs to be hit with autohits either, if the autohits are a weak and poor option.

Personally, I suggest the following global changes to autohits in general:

- 1 turn cooldown (You can use it on the next turn; this basically makes it so if you can't hit something, you need to rotate autohits, and can't just slap that one "best" autohit in your list as insurance.
- A change in power, reaching no higher than 125% at Rank 5 for a 3M move (Things with higher momentum costs are fair game for more power.) Again, better than normals, but can be outperformed by crits without too much guile. Weapons scaling with partial weapon and partial elemental are not as guilty of being absurd. Usually, but could probably stand to have a minor nerf as well.
- "Projectile" Autohits, such as shinken, nitrogen drop, crescent rook, wretched oil, etc, are easier for evasion to proc against than "instant" autohits, like sear. Perhaps -5 Hit per tile?

Just my opinion. I realize very few people ever agree with me.

[KhalidtheGrey]

I would be happy to go through and propose any number of changes to anything you have a problem with in the matters of Hit vs Evade (Example: Blessed doesn't add hit for Faith as normal, it instead makes faith count for hit instead of Ski, or one of them for half value.) There's so much room to balance a spectrum of numbers than there is a for auto hits. No one in there right mind is going to say or think this can be done in one, even two patches, by the way.

All that aside, I more or less agreed with everything you said after that Blessed bit.

[Snake]

Evasion would make a nice trait. (20% on unarmored, 10% on light armor, 0% on heavy armor.)

Rogue's 'Evasion' passive skill could be renamed to 'Evader'; to make the Trait 'Evasion' reduce more damage in the logic of Eviter. (If attacked on face, a major and very significant reduction (+60% on unarmored, +30% on light armor, +0% on heavy armor), sides or back, lower. (+30% on unarmored, +15% on light armor, +0% on heavy armor))

This way Rogues can still be a special snowflake at reducing autohit damage, and all other classes can enjoy the free reductions if they meet the X base Celerity for the trait.

But eh, whichever is the easiest to implement. Sigrogana Legends shouldn't be a very 'complicated' game imo.

[Rendar]

Honestly.

I tried to PVP for the first time against someone who was actually using auto-hits (Reaver scum). Know the kind of damage I took from one combo?

500. I lost 500 of my 830 HP in.. what. 9 momentum? Something like that, of nothing but pure auto-hits. If they didn't use execute on me, I would have taken (about) the same amount of damage, been knocked down... AND had other nasty shit applied to me. If I had just dropped my Evade, I could have had like.. 20-30 more def/res *and* gotten my evade as a pure constant... Evade is fucked right now, and I pretty much agree either Auto-hits need to go, or Evasion/Evade needs to just start fucking shit up.

[Akame]

After more thought, auto-hits should definitely not be removed. Evasion perhaps can stay as a Rogue exclusive, too. (Even though I reaaaally think it should be a 30 or 40 base CEL trait after Afterimage.) What just needs to happen in a huge tone down on most auto-hit's scaling. As I read earlier, someone stated that auto-hits should be stronger than non-critical basic attacks and weaker than critical basic attacks, which I definitely agree with.

That being said, I believe all auto-hits should have max-scaling of 90% to 115% at rank 5. They can scale bit less if they also scale with any elemental ATK, and a bit higher if they require the target to be knocked down, or any other specific target status. The current Monk class' auto-hit scaling would be a nice staple for all auto-hits, in my opinion.

[KhalidtheGrey]

Alright. Why? Why do autohits need to remain so common? I've never seen an actual reason why aside from 'less work', which I suspect is why they are so common in the first place and why we are in this mess here and now. I've already said why I think they shouldn't (Evade vs Acc is easier to balance, this is not my opinion, this is demonstrated across a LOT of games, and there's a reason it's such a common mechanic).

[Akame]

Their existence can be toned down as well, but that's not going to be so well-received. I think focusing on lowering their scaling is the first step.

[KhalidtheGrey]

I wasn't aware this was a popularity contest or a democracy. An immediate change to weaken them would be fine as a temporary fix but they really do need to go.

[Chaos]

I wasn't aware this was a popularity contest or a democracy.

You're right, it isn't: Dev's opinion is the only one that matters here, and judging by his 'autohit salt' remark, I'd say your chances of having that arrogant statement backed up are slim to none.

I highly doubt destroying all of evade's natural counters in the game is any sort of 'balanced'. (protip: Evade builds often have anti-magic skills, so don't bet on mages being able to sidestep a ceaseless lockdown of 'you miss') Especially when failing to evade something still leaves all of your defensive values for the attacker to go through. Imagine trying to hit someone with Shinken ten times as a pure damage build, and on the one time you actually hit, their defenses reduce it to 30-ish damage.

This all being said, an autohit scaling adjustment across the board might be a step in the right direction, even if I believe that people who rely solely on one defense are opening themselves up to get screwed over via counters.