[AkaInuHime]

No bonus effects is 100% a thing that should stay, it's what makes evade feel unique compared to just building bulky. A lot of time the only way to avoid crippling stuff like pulling shot or a full team crashing bull -> bellowing stag is dodge.

[Druby]

60% DR on evasion seems like a bit much to me. I'd probably more range it in the ballpark of 40-50% myself, with the consideration that it's much harder to reach super high levels of DR without specific class bonuses that an evasion build would also have access to, such as Wraithguard from Ghost.

As for bonus/status effects, I agree that MOST statuses should be avoided, but I think some consideration should be taken for effects that reduce evade, as it always annoyed me that a lot of tools meant to help even the playing field against an evasion build required a hit check in the first place meaning that when you really needed them you couldn't actually get them off, and when you could reliably land them is when you didn't actually need them. Maybe capping status percentage at something like 50% when evading an effect? Or having some sort of exception explicitly for those kinds of skills? Just something I'd want to consider.

I don't think it'd be too hard to "revert" honestly either. Just give all skills Great Accuracy, and we're basically most of the way there. No need for Dev to go back and undo a million lines of code that he probably did to change to GR2.

[Poruku]

60% is reasonable imo because you're only getting that when you proc evasion, while tanks always get dr. Unless your enemy foregoes skill, you will always have a chance to get hit and thus take 100%. I always thought the 30% was too low, that was the era of tanks.

I think it'd be fair to have skills like felhook apply their bonus through evade, but it should be a case by case and only on very specific skills. In general, it should be a full avoidance of statuses.

[Nekojinn]

60% is what glancing currently gives, I believe. And I believe full evade just being the same effects as glancing would be much healthier.

And of course, full evade is basically 101% DR, no damage, no extra effects, nothing. With the caveat that it is countered by evade ignores.

If full evade was changed to 60% DR + No additional effects apply.

And glancing was 60% DR + Additional effects apply, it would be way healthier IMO.

[Autumn]

Glancing is currently 50% isn't it? Either way I'd want 40-50%, the old evasion system seemed healthiest at 45% damage reduction similar to Vergs/Oracles/Spellthieves or Aquamancers.

[PossumParty]

I think around 40% DR would be fair. I think 60% DR is a bit too much. Lets say most Evade users are getting to 70 CEL (65 stat points, without passives or Pumpkin Lollipop which most are using), tank players have to pump Def and Res to 45 (around 80 stats) to get 40% DR in Phyiscal and Magical. So for more 15 stats, they get 20% less DR. And thats without extra DR on both sides, most evadies have Weathered body or Ogatas or Wraith Guard on top to even further it. Not to mention their base DRs getting tacked on, at least everyone with aptitude is gonna have 10% base DR. An evader with WG and Ogatas and 60% glance DR is easily getting to 110% DR (I know it's multiplicative). Tank players wish they could get to that so easily.

[Miller]

I'd be fine with 45% DR for a single hit check landing and 60% + avoiding effects for zero hit checks landing, personally.

[InsainArcaneBirdbrain]

To the previous posts above:

If we're using the old style of GR1 evasion, an evasion DR baseline of 45% sounds reasonable yeah, since that's what it used to be with old Ring of Pearls (which for the newer folks, used to increase evasion DR by 15% in addition to the evade buff+parry). I don't imagine we'd get back the old evasion specific mechanics like that back since all the related skills/passives/armors have since been reworked, so making 40-45% the new baseline sounds fair in that sense.

I like the idea of DR + no effects for full evasion since it mixes the old and new systems a bit, though a consideration I think that might have to be made are on-evade effects since currently a lot of those trigger on glances at full potency, which is a massive buff compared to GR1's implementation. Older items used to account for this since it was either on-evasion or on-miss (which at the time really was just an auto-hit miss and basic hit miss distinction) such as Green-scale Tunic, which only had partial FP drain on evasion and full drain on full miss:

"When you evade a basic attack or trigger Evasion: Sap FP from the attacker equal to half of UL (Evasion is only 33% effective). "


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As far as my own thoughts on the matter though, my viewpoint on the matter as a whole aligns with what Fern and Ruby both on what made GR1 builds more flexible and customizable in general. As someone who spends way more time on the calc than any sane person should, GR2 builds in general feel like a blurry mess where they all feel really samey numbers-wise, despite the sheer number of stats/"options" the game has. The focus entirely being on the Hit/Evade arms race is unhealthy in a sense that you can't really choose to ignore it short of more hyper-specific builds like pacifist healers, and it raises the barrier of entry for a build to be considered "viable" compared to the past. If I wanted to make a funny build with a crappy weapon or silly class combo in GR1, I very well could and still have a semblance of viability where I feel like I can do *something* in a given fight.

If I want to run something with suboptimal stats these days, it usually means auto-losing to the calc stage alone short of misplays on my opponent's part. Skill expression is still present in GR2, but it's also much more of a "did you build a minimum hit/crit/evade?" type of affair than it used to be. Meta will always be a thing, regardless of system, but at least one could pose a fighting chance back in the day even if a particular matchup was ultimately a lost cause. In short, it feels more fun to have a semblance of a fighting chance even with suboptimal setups than getting washed instantly because you didn't build enough stat tax. To give a more clear example of how this feels in practice, imagine you're fighting some dudes irl with regular swords and armor, but the next guy you're up against has an actual lightsaber- you already know you ain't got a chance in hell against it because your weapon and armor would just vaporize on contact with it, so it isn't even a fight at that point, and thusly onesidedly unfun.

The new player experience aspect is also honestly a consideration that I wish more people would consider, since it's *very* easy for someone going in for the first time to get screwed over by the current system compared to the old one. Stats are something you can't easily change once committed, so by the time someone connects the dots on how hit/evade works here, they could be lv30+ without having a single point of invested APT or SKI (this has happened more times than I can count). Yes, the discord exists, but not everyone uses that due to newbie shyness or what have you. I sure didn't the first years I played, and honestly if I joined in now as a new player, I'd have been turned off real quick by how poorly explained the importance of hit is ingame; it's oddly punishing for what's advertised as a roleplay focused game.


Now on the topic of nerfs, and yeah, I think the recent ones in particular are particularly bad in the sense that they're overly heavy-handed. The main issue of nerfs compared to buffs is that it narrows the field of competition as far as skills/items go. They are necessary on occasion, yes, but I'm more of a believer of gradual nerf tuning over time rather than shooting out both kneecaps and stealing the kidney of the problem. The best balance here is more minor nerfs, but also more buffs to underused/awful items. People like buffs, that's just a simple player psychology thing since unlike nerfs, no one gets directly screwed over by them- whereas nerfs can sometimes feel targeted, especially with how hard things get nerfed here without recompense. This plays into the above reasons of the lack of build variety as well, since every major change destabilizes the precarious hit/evade arms race more, and oftentimes the already well-off builds get off with a slap on the wrist while weaker builds using these powerful options to have a chance to level the playing field despair and doom (justifiably so, it's demoralizing to me too as I run out of options to make my usual flavorful stuff work).

This last part is maybe a partially hot take, but stat taxes should exist on an individual level, not a global one like hit/evade currently serves. Basic attackers already had that in GR1 as an example, as crit stats like SKI/LUC were vastly more important to them. As it currently stands, one could argue you could remove SKI from the game completely atm and our stat pool total dropped by like 40, and not much would really change on the grand scheme of things in the current statting meta (disregarding SKI specific things like ice atk). That's the main reason I dislike global taxes, they do nothing to promote build variety, and only do the opposite to hurt it really. If something is over/underpowered like a couple of things already pointed out in GR1, then those specific aspects should be touched upon instead of making sweeping changes to every build as a whole.