[Rendar]

So. Let's just cut to the point here. Evasion was meant to be the 'answer' to "What the hell are dodgers meant to do against auto-hitters" which should never have really been a question because auto-hits should have never existed in the first place, but hey. Whatever. LETS ACT LIKE IT ISN'T A PROBLEM.

Right now, the only way to deal with being a dodger and having Evasion work is based off of a lot of things.

1) Did you beat the evasion check against your opponent's hit? Remember, they get their weapon accuracy added into this.
2) Did they attack from behind? That might cause an issue due to GUI. If so, they get more hit.
3) Are you Guarding, Knocked Down, Invoking, or Stunned? If yes; stop here. You have failed to evade.


So! Let's look at all of this and why this is. ECH.

Evasion as it is is a conditional 30% DR (which is already inferior to def/res) to auto-hits that target you. What this does is knock 100 damage (after everything) down to 70. Not much, but it's worthwhile.

This is at the absolute best possible conditions. Meaning you have to be UNARMORED, ROGUE MAIN CLASS, and generally dodge.

So, with that in mind. You're limiting yourself to being a mainclass ENGINEER, VOID ASSASSIN, or SPELL THIEF. One of these classes is mostly useless except for like. Medbot. Which is kinda OP. Void Assassin is a good starter topic, because it already benefits from mainclass because of dagger dance! Spell thief doesn't really get anything from this venture, and would likely want to be in sub-class like Engineer. SO! Let's assume you're a mainclass VA with some other dodge class. Probably Martial Artist or even Duelist because you like basic attacks.

Now, knowing that dodge is actually garbage for the ability to have up to 4 stats, plus weapon accuracy add to it severely counters your 2 stats with.. minor buffs. So, where do we go from here? Well we assume that you're being targetted and that they actually MISSED YOU with that autohit.

That's 30% if you're Rogue Main Class w/ Unarmored.
15% if you're Rogue Sub Class w/ Unarmored or Rogue Main Class w/ Light Armor
7.5% if you're a Rogue Sub Class w/ Light Armor
0% if you aren't Rogue, Wear Heavy Armor, Guarding, Invoking, Knocked Down, or Stunned.

Let's look at the 0%s. If you're wearing heavy armor, it gives awful evasion anyways, and also weighs a ton, which might weigh your BW down! I can understand this though. Light armor is... questionable, since rogues traditionally like *leather* armor. So I could honestly just go with "IS YOUR ARMOR CLOTH MATERIAL? GOOD FOR YOU, EVASION WORKS IN WHOLE!" which you know. Could probably cause some issues, but whatever.

Guarding? Well shucks. Guarding already reduces your evade by a percent. Why the hell do you lose EVASION and your evade for a 70% Guard? No real good reason, honestly but hey. Let's just do away with this. The change to GUARD already counteracts evasion. So, unless you're just the worst auto-hitter in the world with 0 skill, no weapon, etc... you'll likely land a hit.

Invoking? Literally.. why??? Don't make tank meta the norm. Get rid of this. They're already feeling the pain from going Rogue and being a spell caster. Literally no reason to have this. None.

Knocked Down? Knock Down already reduces your evasion for being active. Also you can't really use the kip-up effect they have as another thing that is main-class or whatever it is where if you evade while knocked down so. Just.. get rid of this as well. People can roll whilst prone. They already lose some evasion for being prone, so this is silly.

Stunned? Well I mean. Besides the generic arguement of "WHY IS THIS STILL IN THE GAME".. It's okay. I guess. They're messed up and can't see properly. So whatever. Keep this one.


As a whole? I'd love to see Evasion just.. removed from Rogue. Give it to everyone. Hell, make it a friggin trait at the end of the dodge tree. People have to invest 3 traits to get it, and WOW. Would it make DODGE NOT GARBAGE FOR EVERYONE BUT ROGUE.

[Lolzytripd]

Okay, what do we give rogue to compensate

[Rendar]

Give them improvised dodge. Give them some better stuff. As it is, they already have the Kip-up version with evasion which, if proc'd, is a fantastic ability that makes them more inclined to dodging... Could involve something that makes their traps last for longer/make them slightly better.

Not really sure at this point, however for the most part, this needs to change. If nothing else, they could have a version of EVASION that gets powered up by the trait or something to make it way more viable than it currently is. Meaning that going rogue will be a good defensive option, however NOT going rogue isn't just stupid to do.

[Autumn]

I'd rather just a big weed out to autohits in general, a lot of people would be against that I feel but ultimately it might be necessary.

[Lolzytripd]

If we weed out autohits its only fair we weed out out autohit magic too

[Rendar]

Magic is literally already shit with a ton of classes simply getting Magical DR simply for existing and stopped imemdiately by Silence.

Auto Hit magic is fine.

[Zakizo]

My only comment on Evasion itself is that it could be changed to increase evade if it successfully activates, giving it a greater chance to activate again within the same round; else have it cancel on-hit effects from attacks that Evasion successfully activates against. I'm not sure how effective either of those ideas would be, but I thought I'd put them out there.

On the subject of auto-hits even existing... I never thought auto-hits were necessary or made sense in most cases, and I would be overjoyed to see them go. It seems a lot more logical and balanced to me to give skills that currently auto-hit their own individual accuracy modifiers. Weaker skills could get larger modifiers making them "unlikely but still possible to dodge," while stronger skills could get lower modifiers. Spells could have greater modifiers in general to account for the (usually) low accuracy of their casters, and/or have their auto-hit status based on where their target is within the AOE (if the spell is AOE at all). All of these skills, spell or otherwise, could receive their weapon's accuracy bonus. Of course I don't expect any of that to actually happen because it's been suggested before and auto-hits have been a part of SL since SL1 days, but it's nice to dream.

[Akame]

I'm for making Evasion a trait. It could be Agile Feet > Afterimage > Evasion (30% reduction and a CEL base requirement, with the light armor and heavy armor penalties also.)
Also, it's pretty disappointing at the moment that you can't use the Green Tunic or Flottement to their fullest potential unless you sub or main a Rogue class.

As for Rogue, it'd be nice for them to have a evade passive or innate as compensation.. Some reason MA's get them but Rogue doesn't. But, honestly, just get rid of auto-hits and it's fine.

[Chaos]

So, DEF and RES can be specific, but evade needs to be omnipresent? Autohits have to be restricted or removed just so evade is capable of single-handedly locking down (almost) everyone if they don't dedicate their build and sacrifice a virgin to their hit, on a basis where hit needs to build up 3 stats, whereas evade only needs 2? Where's the nerf for magical damage, so that DEF builds can shine?

But I digress. Currently, evade has absolutely no penalties for failing. You can have 60% Phys./Mag. Defense, and still chop off that much if someone managed to get past your 300 evade. In a system where autohits barely or don't exist, this is a serious problem, and considering that even hardcore evaders can snag some armor points, elemental resistance and damage reduction, this will just make evade the biggest tank around, ft. all the other defensive values to make everyone else very miserable.

Just removing autohits is going to be a major mess of imbalance. However, I'd like to see an option somewhat like this:

Evasion (1 Rank)
You perfer to not deal with pain, and take measures to ensure you never get hit by anything in the first place. While you have this skill equipped, you will force an accuracy check against autohit skills or spells. If the attacker fails the check, you negate all damage and effects that the skill or spell would deal. However, if the attacker succeeds the check, you take full damage, with all defenses negated. (Some skills will not proc Evasion)

Evasion will not take effect if you are Guarding, Invoking, Stunned, Knocked Down, or wearing Heavy Armor.

Or we can just wait for Dev to fully implement skill cooldowns, and see how autohits work out after that.

[Neus]

We only need one thread for autohit salt.