[Shujin]

Eyyo! I have fumbled around on Kensei a lot recently and whenever I want to come up with something a little more unique I am always hit in the face with Kensei's lack of... Alot. Outside of solid damage it doesn't really do anything well on its own, and needs alot of crutches in other classes (rouge promos primarly) when it comes to dodging. I think that kinda goes against the class fantasy

For example a Destiny Kensei, is realistically only really playable as a Tank, it has no way of actually playing Dodge, because it will never reach buffcap or even get close to it. And even buffcap Evade with fear is hardly a sure way to survive.

While Kensei DOES have pseudo-dodge buffs, or rather debuff, in Kenki (-10/15 hit which is not even effected by buff cap cause debuff) and fear, it has no real buff for evade outside of Absolute pace which gives +10 Evade. 

So even if I was absolutely trying my best, and forfeit twohand, which Kenseis REALLY want to use, and use two katanas with Sarasha gi I end up having only:
+10 evade Absolute Pace
+12 Sarasha 
maybe -15 hit on enemies that you hit before.

Theoretical +37 evade but realistically +22 evade. More realistcally cause you want to DPS when you already go evade +10. Its other promotions don't really help much in that regard either. We could add Miragewalk to it for a 1 attack buff but still be a good deal off, but everyone knows 1 attack buffs are horrible, and even worse in teamfights. But I am calculating with it for my proposition.  Disengage also falls into this category albeit having at least some niche use cases.


Kensei also lacks at the moment real MCing reasons (over Ghost). So I wanted to suggest two things. The first one is pretty straight forward:

1.)Let Katana Master also buff the 3-stances level by 5? This would make absolute pace go to 15 evade, the other stance gain 5swa and 5 crit, thats not too bad I would claim.


The second Suggestion I feel like I need to elaborate a little more. I could simply suggest a Mainclass Skill that just buffs evade for couple of rounds. But that would be boring and in my opinion? If you want to play Kensei you want to play fast flashy combat, and not join everyone else in the Boring buff up game, which would throw you out of your game in mild annoyance.
Furthermore I think that Kensei has a weird way of playing Sheath sword builds. It relies WAY too much on you either being a bunny-girl for their Instinct effect to be effective or on Soldier's Watchful Eye.
I am not a huge fan of locking its effectiveness behind a single race, nor do I think we should limit the Options to one other class to be effective with it. So thats where my Suggestion comes in.

I would take a page from Verglas for this, and its stances. Give it a MC-only Passive Skill, that progressively boosts your Evade, and once upon reaching its cap, it gives you a pseudo Bunny-instinct. Something Like:



2.)
Battle Awareness (call it what you want,I don't care)
Passive
1 Rank Main Class Only

A Master Kensei has forged their skills over thousands of battles and learned to blend in offense with defense by studying their opponents.
If Kensei is your Mainclass, you gain the permanent effect of "Battle awareness" which increases your evade by Level. Each time the Kensei triggers a Kensei Combo Skill or Lands a Critical hit the level is increased by 5 capped at Kensei Level-5(or 30, I don't care. just wanted to give Destiny a little edge)
At level 30(or higher) the Kensei also begins to react to attacks with "Heightend Reflexes". Before an attack there is a 15+cel% chance, that the Kensei turns to face the attacker. (realistically that's probably around 75% trigger chance, which I think is fair)

Yeah something like that. This is just an Example, but I really think this would open SO many more ways to play Dodge Kensei in a fun way and keep its Class Fantasy of "flashy swordman always ready for battle". What the direct conditions and strength of the skills are, is whatever to me. But I think this would remove alot of Kensei problems with their Class variety and creativity as it no longer relies on other classes as crutches and functions on its own, even if only as MC. with a cap of level 30+battle flows +10(or 15 if katana master buffs it) , we still only reach +40 evade, but I think thats alright, since hit debuffs and mirage-walk exists.

[the REAL Minos Prime]

Buffless Evade as a whole needs to be more viable - not every evade should be forced to spend their first turn or two shoving buffs down their throats

[Poruku]

Pretty much. But why would you wanna play destiny kensei, especially if you're going dodge? I don't think Kensei suffers from a lack of skill points at the moment.

Just main kensei and subclass any MA or Rogue, or whatever, and get those buffs up.

I dislike the focus on this evade buff situation as much as the next guy, but hey, that's just how the game works at the moment. There's plenty of viable ways to play Kensei. Kensei/Verglas with yukijin is free evade buffs, Kensei/Monk, Kensei/Shifter or Bonder, Kensei/DH for the nostalgia (sucks because no buffs) A few different flavors of Kensei/Spellthief, Kensei/VA can also be quite nice, can even grab impure with an ele katana.

Then if you wanna play tank, you can go Destiny Ghost/Kensei, or Kensei/BK, Kensei/mage, Kensei/whatever you want.

Kensei isn't a top tier class but it can still be used in many setups. I think ultimately this is another "evade sucks" post, which I agree with.

All that being said, I do think Kensei would benefit from a nice evade buff that complements its playstyle. The buff you proposed sounds perfectly in line with what Kensei wants to do and is all about. Only issue is that 30 free evade bonus is too powerful to have as a passive. Balance it a bit to make it fair and it'd be perfect. At the same time though, I feel like tank kensei could also use something more interesting to help them out.

[Shujin]

No its not, its exactly on Verglas level, with a harder build-up and gated behind MC.

[the REAL Minos Prime]

Pretty much. But why would you wanna play destiny kensei, especially if you're going dodge? I don't think Kensei suffers from a lack of skill points at the moment.

Just main kensei and subclass any MA or Rogue, or whatever, and get those buffs up.

A dodge-focused class shouldn't need a special subclass to actually dodge, it should have access to at least semi-decent dodging as a baseline.

[Autumn]

In my opinion, every class that could be a dodgy character should have access to an evade buff worth 25-30 evade, this way you don't have scenarios where you're evade capping from a round 0 interaction with the fastest people in the game where they only have to spend 3m to put you on an effective coin flip chance because as much as hit stacking sucks to face, the dodgiest people still can dodge those builds. If they want to evade cap round 0, I think 6m is a reasonable ask if the duration is better.

Because at least I dislike the narrative that dodge buffs should grant an immediate +40-50 Evade (looking at you fortune wind overbuffs), I think that Evade Buffs can be boosted in duration quite heavily (effectively permanent, 10 rounds) for having meaningful momentum costs, they can cost 2-3m quite healthily, especially if they're usually sprinkled with 25-30 evade instead of 20 like whatever the heck Feather Veil is supposed to be. Hellish Eye should be rebalanced around this though.

I think 25-30 evade however is a good bracket to shoot for for a lot of evade buffs if you were to grant them to other classes, in the case of like Kensei which has access to Kenki and absolute pace, if you give them an evade buff it should be worth like 15 Evade imo, situating it a bit lower than my suggestion due to the class already having some fantastic evade tools that situates it as the 2nd dodgiest class in the game already.

Its not the 2nd dodgiest in raw evade, but in it's access to debuffs, which are a form of a cap-less evade buff if only specific in it's targeting, that said if Kensei does get a 15 evade buff, it'd be better suited to a passive, this used to be Yomidori but Dev took that away from us too (and re-granted it via Absolute Pace).

[Shujin]

I agree, I do not mind if this buffs ends up being alitte weaker like 15-20, still have to consider the potential that this still can pair with other buffers or even debuffers.

I choose the numbers mostly to, in a vaccum, reach similar levels than a Rouge promo with its +5 base evade with Kenki in mind versus blotch. Though correct me if I am wrong, but isn't Kensei only the thrid strongest hit debuffer?

I thought it was
Priest-With lightshafts and possibly staff too
VA- 16-19 debuff depending if blotch is spirited and
Kensei- 10-15 depending on Katana master

or did you simply not consider Curate/priest as a supplement to dodge build? Genuinely curious about your insight.

[Autumn]

I agree, I do not mind if this buffs ends up being alitte weaker like 15-20, still have to consider the potential that this still can pair with other buffers or even debuffers.

I choose the numbers mostly to, in a vaccum, reach similar levels than a Rouge promo with its +5 base evade with Kenki in mind versus blotch. Though correct me if I am wrong, but isn't Kensei only the thrid strongest hit debuffer?

I thought it was
Priest-With lightshafts and possibly staff too
VA- 16-19 debuff depending if blotch is spirited and
Kensei- 10-15 depending on Katana master

or did you simply not consider Curate/priest as a supplement to dodge build? Genuinely curious about your insight.

I'll try my best to explain my viewpoint but ultimately its just an opinion, Light Shafts are pretty good but they're ultimately voluntary too, you don't have to stand in a light shaft unless the priest makes it their mission to do so, additionally the application of Kenki is a part of Kensei's bread and butter combos, wazabane, in addition to that you have easy access to Fear via AF and L'au Dela where as Curates generally don't get access to fear quite as easily. There is also locking guard in this case to consider but it isn't unlike priests can't use swords either I suppose.

VA is a different story but I would consider VA the dodgiest class in the game from a pure numbers perspective.

[Senna]

Can't say much on the topic since we all put a hand in murdering what good effective dodge is in the game; leaving it to be only useful in three to four different class groups.

And yet some people want to murder those as well...

Salt runs deep sometimes.

The first thing we gotta do is buff universal dodge options. We don't need to quietly add an evade bonus to all classes, but instead, an evade bonus from items should just be better.
The cap exists so, no reason to limit/make evade options a super-rare occurrence married to a few classes.

Two examples: 

Mirage walk - 15 evade for 1 attack. 
Lose's its charm in a team fight. 

Windswept - 20 Evade for 1 attack.
Use to be what mages used to build evade. 

With other ideas and abilities giving 10, but they're spread out which makes them not so easy to make use of. 

It's a lot harder to build up your evade dealing with individuals reaching 230~260 hit casually (With less effort than an evade build burning 6~9 momentum to buff.).

No one likes the feeling of not even glancing once throughout an entire fight. 

Not to mention the existence of Hellish eyes and people chopping their arms off for 5 free hits.

We should honestly start backtracking and increase the universal/item evade buffs while providing classes with better options without being forced to run Rogue, Summoner, Martial Arts (Not Monk), or Archer for good evade survivability. 

For example, Things like A/Pace increase evade to 15 instead of 10. 

Scales, Windswept, and other 1-hit evade buffs lasted for three hits instead of one so they could exist in team fights.

Evade Torso like the Maid outfit providing 20 evade and up for 5 rounds instead of a bonus of 10.

We don't need to knee cap/limit evade this hard to those classes given a total cap exists. 

[Shujin]

I agree, I do not mind if this buffs ends up being alitte weaker like 15-20, still have to consider the potential that this still can pair with other buffers or even debuffers.

I choose the numbers mostly to, in a vaccum, reach similar levels than a Rouge promo with its +5 base evade with Kenki in mind versus blotch. Though correct me if I am wrong, but isn't Kensei only the thrid strongest hit debuffer?

I thought it was
Priest-With lightshafts and possibly staff too
VA- 16-19 debuff depending if blotch is spirited and
Kensei- 10-15 depending on Katana master

or did you simply not consider Curate/priest as a supplement to dodge build? Genuinely curious about your insight.

I'll try my best to explain my viewpoint but ultimately its just an opinion, Light Shafts are pretty good but they're ultimately voluntary too, you don't have to stand in a light shaft unless the priest makes it their mission to do so, additionally the application of Kenki is a part of Kensei's bread and butter combos, wazabane, in addition to that you have easy access to Fear via AF and L'au Dela where as Curates generally don't get access to fear quite as easily. There is also locking guard in this case to consider but it isn't unlike priests can't use swords either I suppose.

VA is a different story but I would consider VA the dodgiest class in the game from a pure numbers perspective.

Gotcha! while I personally enjoy the dodge priest setups, they are certainly different than direct debuff dodgers. Very match up reliant too, as some class combos are actually affected by the shafts alot and need to move which gives you a momentum advantage, others just can fully ignore it.
Fear I do not REALLY count, because I believe thanks to haunted everyone has easy access to it one way or another and absolute fear has the opportunity cost of not being in your dodge stance, or SWA stance.
Its not bad by no means, but... Haunted. which comes at the opportunity cost of an enchant but is cursed then which gives acess to Sayakana. Which is why I usually do not count fear much for set ups. Also Shaitans.
But yeah, you are not wrong. VA is certainly the dodgiest with direct debuffs access. I always cry over lack of Locking guards for daggers though Q.Q

Anyway, thanks for the input!