[Shujin]

Nah, just Skip GR3 and make GR4. It will fix the problems of GR2 and GR3!

[FatherCrixius]

Seeing as a bunch of nerds above me did all the math, and I agree with basically like 99% of what everything everyone said above, I'll try to keep my contribution to the discussion on the shorter end of things.

I think one of the big issues with GR2 comes down to consistency. I remember talking about this once on the Discord, where I mentioned that potentially missing all the time wasn't fun, and Dev replied saying that, in return, the character who's dodging is probably enjoying themselves, which is a perfectly fair argument. In competition, the one who's winning is probably generally the one enjoying themselves, and that's hard to move away from. And to be entirely fair, at the end of the day, dodging is basically another form of DR, as 50% chance to avoid something is effectively 50% DR over a long period of time (please refer to Goose's fat ass chart for actual numbers I'm just simplifying). Everyone talks about how polarizing the Hit vs Evade game is, which I absolutely agree with, but I think one thing a lot of people haven't quite pinpointed on why the game feels the way it does is just how fast fights can go.

To explain a bit further, it feels to me that fights in GR2 have been, in general, shorter than in GR1. The hit to Def/Res that came to GR2 drastically reduced the value of those stats at high values, which certainly helped to reduce hyper tank builds, but I think it has had a further unintended consequence. Between the stat tax of needing to build Skill at a minimum, the reduced value of Def/Res at high values, one of the places people can pull points from is their Def/Res which even further reduces the average staying power in fights. Not to mention dodge builds, who are recurringly some of the point stretched builds out there, used to generally shuffle some of their free points into Def/Res no longer have that luxury anymore, and now often rely almost entirely on their evade to survive. This has, essentially, turned a lot of PVP, even for tanks, into a game of rocket tag. Everyone has less staying power, and fights are much quicker as a result. This, in of itself, is not a bad thing, as there's something to be said about matches being resolved in very short times, but this is part of what I feel to contribute to that consistency problem.

Dodge DR is an AVERAGE. You only really get to see averages over a long period of time. When your average PVP match lasts for probably 5 rounds or less (unless you are in a match up against someone who kites, heals, or a build that counters your damage type), you really don't get much chance to see this and fights where you rely on evade seem much more like a game of Russian Roulette where you're gambling on whether or not the next hit is what blows your brains out. 

In GR1, the hit/evade game was there only for people who WANTED to play it. Otherwise, you could be slapped by an auto-hit and have a reliable 30 DR from evasion in the vast majority of cases. A bit on the low end, and evade builds were still regularly considered a bit underpowered, but this seems like a simple enough fix by upping the evasion DR as someone suggested above, maybe to 40 or something. However now dodge builds often times get nothing at all save for the RNG check for when they get tagged, and that sort of RNG swing is felt much harder over a smaller amount of rolls compared to a larger average.

I will continue to stand by the idea that GR1 was a healthier version of the game (though not all the changes in GR2 were negative). However, if the intention is to stay with GR2, one potential fix I would suggest would be to increase the amount of HP every player has. Perhaps increasing the amount of HP investing a single point gives you from 1 to 2, or maybe even 3. Since players have 240 stats to invest at level 60, this increases HP in 240 increments, and making fights draw out a bit longer might help with that "feeling" of consistency I mentioned.

10000%. One of the biggest things I failed to address was the overall feel for evasion vs hit, mostly on the grounds I feel that I would have a biased portrayal of the mechanic due to my own personal preferences and builds. Consistency, how that DR applies, etc- Are the biggest complaints of evasion right now. As a consequence of evasion being so punishing -- 60 / 100% DR's, Having a CHANCE to evade is mad dr. This has the effect of making evasion look redundent 90% of the time, making evading an attack exceedingly rewarding and rare.

Numerically it works as DR, though it's damage reduction is not linear with amount of evasion and becomes exponentially more valuable as you approach the enemies hit value, but thematically it feels like you invest into a stat who's main goal is to mitigate one attack every four, and it needs a lot of investment.

As both Fern and you have noted, fights are now shorter than in GR1-- I would argue this is more due to the stat tax mitigating defences moreso than damage than the 10% nerfs to Resistance And Defense, combined with skills like crescent rook and skills with additive damage taking the hit on behalf of swa. This does not necessarily hinder evasion, as even hardcapped evasion is cheaper statwise than tank stats, but can render unoptimal setups dead before they have an oppertunity to buff evasion -- And forcing players to gouge and stick to META to make an archetype playable is awful for RP.

Regarding the solution you gave for evasion DR, The issue initially was that not all evasion was equal;
Classes with an excess of stats can simply put in enough evasion to dodge autohitters, as many mages / summoners / general meta classes had the option to, whereas Little Timmy playing kensei was fighting for every point trying to maintain a critical balance between Hit, Crit, Evasion, Swa, Damage and Survivability -- One that is ultimately impossible without compromise. The solution I provided then was to raise the level cap by 10, affording everyone 40 more points, said 40 affecting the F tier stragglers of GR1 the most -- And stat efficient setups the least. How that would work in GR2, I do not know, as Luck being detatched from hit makes viable hit far more affordable. I am all for general survivability buffs though, such as the 2hp per invested point change.

I agree in that increasing overall survivability might be an option too. Fights end way, way, -way- too quickly compared to GR1 fights. The rocket tag was kind of funny in GR1 because it wasn't as common, but now it's a thing for a lot of fights because of the damage reduction nerfs and evade being so easy to hit combined.

It's actually a pretty realistic occurance in PVP for an evade character's fight to end in about 3 rounds nowadays. And that's not even an exaggeration.


I don't think this is because damage is too high across the roof, I think this is because of the overall DR nerfs (including Evasion being made much easier to hit) making damage seem a lot higher than it used to be. And I feel that if the route to nerf damage across the board was taken, you'd see Zerg's example of "the rich are barely affected, the poor suffer" in that the meta classes end up just fine and the non-meta stuff is screwed over more.

Imagine a Black Knight versus Evade matchup in a world where damage is overall lower with the current system. Seems pretty 10-0, IMO.

Fern

2000 - 0 With flatfoot, But yea, hard agree.
I do not think SL2 needs to be a mechanically perfect game, In fact I would say bad balance could work in it's favour provided we have some semblance of variety, and that is variety we do not have right now. The winners and losers of GR2 are too clear cut, and too few new gimmicks have come of GR2 given the loss to the viable class pool.

There are many walls of text in previous posts, so I'm not going to repeat everything that's been said previously just to add my two cents onto the end. What I will say is that I agree almost entirely with Crixius' talk on the current issues that exist and the potential solutions. My only difference in opinion is with the solution to the problem with current evasion mechanics where I'm of essentially the same mind as Fern, so I'll focus on that instead.

I've been vocal about my sort of 'dream solution' to the evasion problems now since the GR2 dust settled. Something to the effect of reverting the system to GR1 evasion, but with a higher evasion DR to support what was lackluster evade build survivability at the time. Secondary effect avoidance would also stick around in some capacity, to maintain a separate identity to tanking for dodge builds as Fern mentioned. This punishes people not choosing to dump skill while still making it a valid option, something very important for build diversity which is unfortunately entirely lost right now. The orbiting 'secondary parts' of the system such as evasion ignore and hit/evasion changing effects and their frequency and availability would of course be reverted/changed to better fit something similar to the GR1 system.

I'll explain now why I think this would be the best solution. I think that the current evade system is virtually impossible to balance effectively due to the sheer number of moving parts in this game. On top of this, even in a dream land where hit and evade are well balanced between all class and build options I think that the system is inherently unenjoyable to interact with. Forcing basically every build to hard dump skill is very unhealthy for build diversity for a start, and squeezing every last little bit of hit and/or evade out of your build only to lose that number roll anyway feels so bad for the loser, even if the odds were fairly balanced. Having something as major as almost all damage you deal be heavily mitigated or even nullified entirely by a numbers roll is also mechanical torture, as fights can be made or broken by which side gets lucky even when hit vs evade is well balanced, ESPECIALLY when it's well balanced. It takes control of the outcome out of player hands more than anything else of its kind by a large margin, such as status infliction rolls for example. The numbers stacking game also makes pvp even more noob unfriendly than it already was, making an unoptimized build essentially incapable of so much as touching any half decent evade build or triggering so much as a single glancing blow against any build with half decent hit, making for a very discouraging new player experience with pvp. (3)


The best way I can paint a picture of how the current evasion system plays out in practice is with my verglas build. It's my only build that refuses to engage with evasion mechanics and crutches entirely on evasion ignore against evade builds while putting almost no points into skill. It's also my most fun build to make and play as a result. It has better build options and diversity than my other builds by far. It has a large amount of sanctity which is fun and thematic to build and play, something I've found almost unjustifiable even in small quantities on almost any other build post GR2. It also has enough free stats without paying the skill tax to have decent survivability without being forced to wear heavy armor and gouge armor as hard as skill, allowing me to play with some unarmored synergy without being forced to play evade or be some kind of no DR glass cannon.

This results in a very clear picture being painted every time I go against an evade build. Against non evade builds, I get to have the kind of build diversity I could never have on my other builds with the now required skill tax, while still getting the full flexible, mix and matching skills verglas playstyle. Against evasion however, the game plan shrinks down to essentially just 'initiate with icicle spear then hit them with something else while they're frozen', with a side of zoning people out with the threat of evasion ignoring setting sun. The most interesting thing that ever happens with this build against evasion is icicle spear into kadouha into face stomp, that's the one 'combo' I get to do if I'm lucky compared to the full flexibility and enjoyment of chimera style shenanigans. Now don't get me wrong, this is still incredibly effective and wins the match against evasion more often than not, but it's just not very fun and often repetitive due to the narrow playstyle. I'm sure that a lot of people can agree that icicle spear spam isn't very fun to play against on the flip side either. Not having to deal with all of my damage coming down to essentially just rig-able rng is very nice, but it comes at the cost of my playstyle being forced into being narrow and less fun against evasion. I tried every which way to make a version of this build that builds skill so I could play the fun way against evasion too. I mean come on, it's an ice focused class, if anything should be able to do it well you'd think it would be verglas. The unfortunate reality is that even taking every reasonable bit of hit I could (At heavy sacrifice to every aspect of the build), it would never be enough for the old icicle spear strategy to not just be the better and safer option against evasion regardless. This could be used as an argument for better numbers balance or evasion ignore nerfs, but as I mentioned above I think this system is just inherently unfun to interact with even in an imaginary world of decent balance due to its inherently random nature and the various negative effects it has on the landscape of pvp and build diversity.

TL;DR - Crix makes good points. I think GR2 evasion mechanics are virtually impossible to balance and inherently unfun to engage with even in a dream world where they are well balanced. I think skill tax annihilates build diversity to the point of making certain builds essentially 'unmakeable', and we'd all be better off with evasion mechanics akin to GR1 with buffs for evade.

Sadbot

I aim to not be too critical in these threads because bad mechanics have evolved into better ones in the past. Whether Evasion 2.0 is one of those mechanics, or is left like new turn order, I do not know. IGNORING VERGLAS ABUSE

Your third paragraph sums up my feelings on the matter well. It will always be a snowball, due to the array of hit being subtractive (IE, Your % to hit subtracting evasion gives a very narrow band of important numbers compared to the total value) Any evasion debuff or hit debuff is so significant that your DR can go from 0 - 70 at the drop of the hat, but isn't conveyed visually and is just math. This is an RP game, causing a problem of combat dissociation and general bitterness to the systems at play -- I should've hit that 60! etc. And dear lord is it hard to explain to VETERAN players, let alone new players. I wouldn't say a mechanically perfect version of this system would not be FUN, but it sure as hell won't be human-readable, and more importantly it won't be RP friendly if no changes are made. As to what though-- I don't know. There are too many systems at work and I feel changes should be made in isolation, with player testing and general viability being the two important sentiments.

Then the next attack piercing through your full optimal ghost passives +50 bonus evade + san scaling stat race max capped evade bonus (colourized)


KISS

Nah, just Skip GR3 and make GR4. It will fix the problems of GR2 and GR3!

Shujin

This is the kind of forward-thinking we need on the forums!

[Senna]

just make GR3: combine skill and cel

Now hold on, you might be on to something. Add that to SL5

[Shujin]

"The solution I provided then was to raise the level cap by 10, affording everyone 40 more points, said 40 affecting the F tier stragglers of GR1 the most -- And stat efficient setups the least. How that would work in GR2, I do not know, as Luck being detatched from hit makes viable hit far more affordable. I am all for general survivability buffs though, such as the 2hp per invested point change."

Just a small little tidbit I like to point out is that raising the soft cap in that scenario is NOT helping the stragglers that need to focus on multipile stats realistically, but makes them struggle even more.
The reason for that is, that with raising the level cap you raise the soft cap automatically. Meaning 4 Main stat andys might aswell just put those points into their 4 most important stats, but little timmy with his 6 stats begins to sweat as he has to spread the 40 points between 6 stats that all have their soft cap raised by 10. so Andy build becomes just overall more efficent compared to timmy.

It would in the end be a win for the ones with less stats needed still. Therefore its mathematically not the Solution you seek. you could of coruse just increase stats per level, that would atleast fall into the diminishing return area as the softcap would remain untouched. Still its not really adressing the problem much in my opinion. Some of the stats they need might actually just need some better return to make it worth their time or the total number of stats they need to function at a base line needs to drop.

Else the Rich get richer and the poor get poorer analogy applies here too.

How to acheive that? I have no fucking idea, but raise of the Level soft cap is not it.


I do think Ferns "Solution" is more in line with what I personally think.

Something like that or a variation such as Keeping two hit check but forgo full evasion negation might be the best option.
Like missing both hitchecks with a slightly greater negation of damage/No status effect (the no status effect is probably the most important change that needs to happen to make it feel worth while)
Missing only one is like old GR1 evasion. And some of the Autohit skills could be changed to auto hitting one roll.

Or really any variations, pretty much everyone agress that it was a bit too hypertuned and polarizing in this attempt but that there are some good ideas still in GR2. Everything at once might have been just a bit too much to change at once and too drastically. If it gets watched for a bit in different intensities I am sure we eventually find a spot where it feels fine enough.

[Lolzytripd]

"The solution I provided then was to raise the level cap by 10, affording everyone 40 more points, said 40 affecting the F tier stragglers of GR1 the most -- And stat efficient setups the least. How that would work in GR2, I do not know, as Luck being detatched from hit makes viable hit far more affordable. I am all for general survivability buffs though, such as the 2hp per invested point change."

Just a small little tidbit I like to point out is that raising the soft cap in that scenario is NOT helping the stragglers that need to focus on multipile stats realistically, but makes them struggle even more.
The reason for that is, that with raising the level cap you raise the soft cap automatically. Meaning 4 Main stat andys might aswell just put those points into their 4 most important stats, but little timmy with his 6 stats begins to sweat as he has to spread the 40 points between 6 stats that all have their soft cap raised by 10. so Andy build becomes just overall more efficent compared to timmy.

It would in the end be a win for the ones with less stats needed still. Therefore its mathematically not the Solution you seek. you could of coruse just increase stats per level, that would atleast fall into the diminishing return area as the softcap would remain untouched. Still its not really adressing the problem much in my opinion. Some of the stats they need might actually just need some better return to make it worth their time or the total number of stats they need to function at a base line needs to drop.

Else the Rich get richer and the poor get poorer analogy applies here too.

How to acheive that? I have no fucking idea, but raise of the Level soft cap is not it.


I do think Ferns "Solution" is more in line with what I personally think.

Something like that or a variation such as Keeping two hit check but forgo full evasion negation might be the best option.
Like missing both hitchecks with a slightly greater negation of damage/No status effect (the no status effect is probably the most important change that needs to happen to make it feel worth while)
Missing only one is like old GR1 evasion. And some of the Autohit skills could be changed to auto hitting one roll.

Or really any variations, pretty much everyone agress that it was a bit too hypertuned and polarizing in this attempt but that there are some good ideas still in GR2. Everything at once might have been just a bit too much to change at once and too drastically. If it gets watched for a bit in different intensities I am sure we eventually find a spot where it feels fine enough.

I agree here, raising the soft cap is a horrible idea. Sloping the curve of diminishing returns, sure, probably a good thing, it ramps up way to harshly and should probably have a hard cap of 1 per 2/3 points at full effect.