[Nekojinn]

With the addition of Druid ever since this post was made, I believe it's good to talk about it again.

I was actually gonna make my own thread but I'm glad I saw yours, let me explain what I believe to be fair, first:

Evading is, without a shadow of a doubt, incredibly OP if left unchecked. It's a omnidirectional omniparry, if you're able to pair evade with other DR tools (very rare due to the CEL cost) you can become really really tanky. The ability to just Evaded! to reduce damage to 0 is incredibly strong.

Having said that: Wow flanking is kinda huge???

If you have enough evade debuffs and hit buffs you're able to easily get 280-300 hit builds, I've done it before and I feel with the addition of Druid that has become much easier, Purity Edge on a class with both brighten and snake wrap can get out of control.

On top of that, these classes can benefit from flank! If you use (Call) Hawk Strike you can even make that target flanked at all times, until your next turn! (Admiteddly I haven't seen many use this, but it can literally give your gunner or dagger teammate 50-70 hit)

I believe evading is overpowered as heck, but I also believe flanking is a mechanic that HARD punishes melee evadies who are already on the weaker side due to distance being one of the best way to defend yourself (unless you're against a Solblader, then distance is meaningless.)

Truly, the solution to this is to make so Armor of Eyes can ignore flank! (this is a jest)

TLDR: Evade overpowered, but melee evade weak cuz flank punishes, can flank be bonus hit pwease?

[Ray2064]

Just rework evade or have CEL give HP I beg you

[Poruku]

We've been begging dev to rework evade for literal years, people have been complaining about evade ever since it was changed, for a wide variety of reasons and situations. When is anything gonna change? Why would we think Dev's gonna do anything different this time?

[Nekojinn]

To be fair, Polk.

In the same update that gave us str crit, Dev did add something for CEL in the test servers, that, after testing, proved too strong and wasn't added into the live servers. (It was crit damage reduce on CEL.)

Balancing in this game is not easy, everyone has their own opinion on what should be nerfed and what should be buffed.

For example, Omina. Can we get an Omina buff, please? (sorry couldn't control it.)

I do believe that Dev has their eye on evade, as the smoke/light tile interaction change recently has proved. I'm sure it will get more attention in the future as well, balancing is not easy when trying to make things both fun and competitive.

As I said in my post, Evade is definitely overpowered, I do not think evade is weak at all, it just isn't commonly paired with other DR sources. Evade is at it's strongest when you also get more DR on top of it, I've been running an evade build with 40 def/res and just by evade-walling I can solo a few T3 rematches without worry, and having DR sources means I don't get exploded by anyone touching me, especially since I Tetraite myself against critters.

But I do understand that evade is commonly used on builds that don't stack other DR sources, and I do believe getting exploded when someone is able to hit you is fair, as you're not really getting other ways of defending yourself.

The issue is with the fact that:

In some matches, the evadie will make the newplayer hit negative in PvP, thus making the match unwinnable and evade overpowered.
In other matches, the evadie won't be able to keep up with the opponent's 80% hit chance on them and die in 4-6 hits.

I do not know what the perfect solution would be, but I do believe making things like flank into bonus hit would help with the more groundbreaking levels of hit, as shown by Rendar on post #1.

Maybe having things like max evade/hit buff cap at 30 would help as well, as both sides would get nerfed so it would bring the higher end evade/hit and lower end evade/hit together. (I still have nightmares of reaching negative hit as a newplayer.)

TLDR: I do think Dev has done a lot for evade, look at smoke/light tiles not stacking anymore! There's no perfect solution but we're all free to give our own take on it, mine aligns with Rendar's post, I do believe flanking is a bit much.

[Poruku]

Yeah no you're right, I apologize for my earlier comments, I was unfairly harsh and pessimistic due to an unrelated situation.

Anyway yeah flanking definitely needs some kind of nerf since it's too high.

Personally I think the minmaxing of weapon components and weapon/torso quality is also an annoying part of the equation. The issue is that a difference of 10 hit or evade can make or break a fight. The current system requires you to push on every button to have even a chance, while for most other metrics (like +2 damage) it's only a small difference. You build could also go from 220 hit to 250 if you make the right choices. It's a really volatile system where a small difference makes a huge difference so even after countless patch notes it will still feel unfair to many players, especially those who aren't in the top.

That's why I prefer to suggest an overhaul to evade that would allow a +10 hit/evade to not make or break a whole playstyle. Instead, it should be a system that sees evade and hit on a spectrum, with some luck but more consistency. We could have for instance a system where someone with 210 hit versus 210 evade would still be able to damage the enemy, just doing less damage from a scaling glancing DR. Make glancing more prevalent and consistent, make on-hits play well with evade (for instance if you glance and you have on-hit damage, why not have the on-hit damage reduced instead of negated), and allow archetypes with 217 hit or 194 evade to exist competitively because their number isn't completely invalidated by bigger number.

Until we fix this fundamental problem, it's gonna be a lot of work to balance something that can't truly be balanced

[Lolzytripd]

Lord Logsoth the deep one of the swamp of Floridalesgethebeth says that a logarithmic curve inducing diminishing returns within the bands of 0% and 100% that prevents evade from straying beyond 0% to hit and being 100% to be hit in the realms of pvp to be the correct choice of outcome

Theoretical hypothetical out my ass, no facts, all bad takes, by haters of the log examples to be

by the executive and reasonable decision of thinking about it for ten seconds, the center pivot median of the log should be roughly 65% to hit, slowly but yet rapidly at the edges curving in either direction with diminishing returns

A current 50% to hit would become 65%
A current -50% would be somewhere in the realm of 10-25% to hit (depending on what rate we decide to set the curve)
A current 150% hit could be around 80-95% hit rate allowing the dark lords of fire emblem and xcom to choose the fate of battle.

[Collector]

Rocket Tag isn't an evade-exclusive issue. 40/40 DR is not enough to exist on the same field as a crit build; especially not when 'melee range' is 7 tiles because of engagement buttons.

Maybe, perhaps, the builds with a bonus action (or whatever you call Solblader's 7 button turns) shouldn't be doing 900+ damage a turn with 300+ hit and 150+ crit.

[caliaca]

Those numbers are pretty hyperbolic.

Naz's build is the one a lot of people use for this stuff and she doesn't hit 300 without swapping to a spear that has massively lower damage and crit.

Sure basic attack builds are strong, especially in 1v1 (less so in 4v4) but let's not just make shtuff up. Nor is flanking particularly that bad when it comes to high hit build. My highest build in terms of consistent hit is a spellcaster.

Evade being overpowered is something that's rather :eyebrow: to me because of how darn easy it is to just... have 270+ hit without flanking. Perhaps its so in pve where its really easy to smoke or whatever but everyone balances around that.

I've talked at length here of why I think some of these arguments are in places that aren't perfect so lemme throw in some potential solutions as well.

The top end of hit really needs to be toned down a bit. Stacking some sources of hit is just far too much. I don't think lowering both hit and evade bonuses to 30 is a good idea, because this greatly helps high hit builds and further nerfs evade. What I do think is there should be some sort of mininum hit to assist in cases with unoptimized builds, potentially something like 10-15% and I do think that some sources of hit should not stack.

I don't think it should be as drastic as the 'only the highest level tile' thing for smokes/brighten thing, but potentially that some sources just don't stack together. Purity edge might be one to look at here specifically.

Glance is a good system and that might want to be looked at more. Maybe add a 3rd level of it and adjust hits based on it, but that's talking overhaul territory.

[Autumn]

Explaining my view points on why I think Flanking by itself is fine with abuseable caveats:

Flanking is a globally accessible hit buff that most melees can afford to allot for especially now given the changes to STR that allow you to save on 20-30 stat points you'd normally spend on LUC instead if you should choose.

Flanking ignores the hit cap unlike many other hit buffs, and is at it's strongest when you are approaching the cap or can cheat your way past it, Grandmaster is a good example of a hit buff that doubles up from your GUI in more ways than one.

Therefore, I believe the core issue to be on the higher end of the hit spectrum rather than being an issue exclusive to flanking itself, we can look at Daggers and perhaps some guns as to reasons why flanking isn't (at base value) an issue by itself normally.

There are other things that complicate matters too, there's a few ways in where you don't exactly make the best use of flanking, ranged weapons struggle to consistently make use of flanking without their opponent closing the gap first, for instance. Or in the case of daggers, your opponent covering their back, or being rescued away from being flanked by a teammate in the first place.

Either way, I want to suggest that Flanking contributes to the hit cap unless there are 2 or more enemies present adjacently, to keep it as the "globally accessible hit buff" it is, while possibly making the ways to stack hit alongside it less effective overall.

[Collector]

Those numbers are pretty hyperbolic.

Naz's build is the one a lot of people use for this stuff and she doesn't hit 300 without swapping to a spear that has massively lower damage and crit.

Sure basic attack builds are strong, especially in 1v1 (less so in 4v4) but let's not just make shtuff up. Nor is flanking particularly that bad when it comes to high hit build. My highest build in terms of consistent hit is a spellcaster.

Evade being overpowered is something that's rather :eyebrow: to me because of how darn easy it is to just... have 270+ hit without flanking. Perhaps its so in pve where its really easy to smoke or whatever but everyone balances around that.

I'll concede that they are a little high for general use; 270 125 is a far more reasonable estimate factoring guile, but even still, this outperforms every single one of my casters with very little effort. It's also worth noting that Shifty Pocket enables swaps on the fly between the two absurds inherent to spears (hit) and axes (crit/crit damage) for no cost, and this shouldn't be discounted; it's a very real thing I'm petrified of and die to.

Even assuming the 270 hit/125 crit and the aforementioned nuclear damage, it's still far too high; basic attackers just do too much damage, bottom line. Druid, Ghost, Black Knight, and Solblader are all popular, have effective ranges of 5-13(Solblader) tiles, methods to negate immobilize unless an opponent is (up to) 8 tiles away, etc. I don't even apply the 'basic attackers are bad in teamfights' anymore; control casters and casters in general die far too quickly to matter unless you cripple yourself with BK/DW Install to survive (both of which require MC) or play the peak of teamfight (Vydel/Caster VA), so the statement became more of 'basic attackers are bad into a dedicated healer*' with a big asterisk next to it. It's either play meta, build to kill instantly, or build to heal off the attempts at your life instantly.

There's too many conditionals because of the nature of casters, and I'm rambling, but-

I've seen new players/suboptimal setups get 1 turned more times than I can count, and I just want to exist for more than the 1-2 turns I do right now when a basic attacker engages. Guile is such an overinflated stat in providing crit damage and hit in droves that it's difficult to compete, and I wouldn't blink if the guile crit modifier was halved. STR crit brought several weapons that were completely obsolete into basic functionality or better (looking at you, roaring rose), and I'd like to see subpar casters be made the same or see the absurdity cut off the crit. Trying to just exist in a fight with any of my non-meta casters (Evoker/Ranger, SS/Evoker, Evoker/Hexer, AQ/Ranger, FB/ST) feels like an exercise in futility when they consistently die in 1-2 turns. Helping casters is my bias, but trimming crit is likely better for everyone trying not to play rocket tag.

If only there was a universal, malleable tool casters could put in their build and use to manage sudden aggressive moves across the map. A tome of the customize-able variety, perhaps.


Side tangent, but Kensei/Druid Can Actually Just Do That ™. It's made of paper, has a whole host of issues, and is, unfortunately, Kensei, but I'll be damned if the boy can't statball.