[caliaca]

Evade sucks, man.

That's it, that's the thread.



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No, not really.  Evade sucks right now for both sides of the coin. There's way too much hit in the game, way too many evade ignores, and anyone who builds for it can essentially just pretend that evade doesn't exist. On the other side, if you don't build for hit or have ways around it, you just auto lose. This isn't really fun for either side of the coin, and right now I think you're basically damned if you do damned if you don't in terms of evade.

So I want some changes, baby. 

First of all, there's way too many god damned evade ignores in this game. Holy shit there's so many fucking evade ignores, it's a little silly. Especially after the charge mind skill where like a large majority of the mage class now can just evade ignore you and pretend your evade doesn't exist. This is compounded by the fact that evade ignores aren't actually weaker than regular spells, they usually have the same scalings so the fact of the matter is that they're evade ignoring and then dealing a significant chunk of your health bar since you can't actually afford other damage resistance sources. In addition to the fact that now the charge mind and weapon charge stuff makes them deal even *more* damage while ignoring evade. Hell, why don't we let them evade defense and resistance while dealing more damage? Both would essentially set the opponents stats to zero. It doesn't make sense here that only evade suffers this compounding efefct.


To that end, I think the (majority) of evade ignores should be turned to Great Accuracy instead. It sucks to just have all your defensive investment flat ignored, especially when half the time it's doing even more damage now than before. At least let them glance instead so there's a chance to live through a good old Divine SHower - > Excel Fir -> Explosion - > Charge Mind Ryemei fucking blender rather than instant dying.

Secondly, people can get hit that is way, way too high. Like, 260-300 hit is fairly attainable especially as a black knight. Rune mage can easily get to 280+ hit while also negating a large part of your evade with magnetize too, and these aren't the only classes that can get high hit, just the ones that can do it easily. 

I think dodge should have an effect like special strikes. Whenever you don't evade a hit, your chance to evade the next one is minorly increased, perhaps something like 3-5% per attack. This wouldn't be 'on hit' but instead the full attack so thousand stabs or something doesn't increase your chance to dodge to a silly degree.

This should also work the other way. If an enemy misses you, they should get a minor increase in chance to hit you next time. In addition to this, there should be a hit floor.  You should never have zero or a negative chance to hit, there should always be at least some possibility of hitting the enemy. Perhaps ten percent or so.

I also believe there should be a max cap to the hit you can achieve, though I have no solid suggestion on that.

[Rendar]

Will just say this now.

Flank's (GUI) bonus to hit (or GUI/2 for back with no allies/sides with an ally) not being counted as bonus hit is certainly part of the problem. Being able to Omae Wa Shinderu behind someone as a VA and getting +30 hit, or +60 (with no regards to the hit cap bonus) is superrrrrrrrrrrr not fun.

[Trexmaster]

I was honestly very tempted to make a similar thread along these lines.

I have no idea what to offer for a proper solution to the current system beyond rolling it back to ye olde Evasion! procs that stop status effects/on-hits, all I know is that what we have now is not fun for either party involved.

Either you get stat checked and can't deal damage or you get evade ignore checked and your investment into Evade is all meaningless.

Relegating a slew of the easier to spam/throw out evade ignores to being Great Accuracy instead feels like the easiest, most immediate fix to some of the problem on evade's end.

Otherwise we're stuck with an unhealthy system. Evade is balanced around always capping your bonus to have a reasonable chance to evade (with increasingly more strict means of reaching that cap), and most people either building that much hit + 100 or having enough evade ignores to win regardless of the disparity.

The Evoker update really made me wonder what the point of Evade is if we're just going to keep getting things that ignore it entirely.

[Autumn]

I think I've said this to death but a partial evasion reversion is probably for the best, as it stands, Evade is simply too powerful when it does work and too weak because the entire game is centralized around having methods to deal with it, at least back in Evasion! procs it would contribute defensively no matter what you were facing down (spell or basics), I'm not sure how you would do it at this point without a ton of work though.

Either way, I'm not going to go in depth with how I feel the game should be when it comes to evasion, I think the current system just sucks for both parties severely, the main thing worth keeping is how glancing prevents alternate effects, I feel like if we kept glancing as the primary system instead of full evasion, having it reduce the status infliction of the attack and prevent assured-infliction chances would be for the best.

[MothEnthusiast]

That moment when you write a whole post, then accidentally go back a page and lose it.

Anyway, I'm still partial to the idea of a bell-curve system (Impossible to hit 0%, impossible to hit 100%, but lot of variability between the 25-75% range), but Dev has sadly said he's never going to do that. OP's system is a lot like a lot of BYOND games' systems to deal with evades, often dubbed 'offensive pressure'. It'd help mitigate the all or nothing aspect of the system if applied in both directions, if nothing else. I'd be willing to try it.

I'm also surprised nobody really talks about the fact that SKI, a mandatory stat, has different bases between races. I struggle to see how a 2 base SKI race is supposed to get enough hit to actually fight dodgies without relying on evade ignores or classes with INSANE bonuses.

[FatherCrixius]

The return of the bi-monthly evasion thread, happy to see you all again~

I will keep my cliff notes short, but the rest of this post will be a WALL. 

Evasion will always be either too strong or too weak, but I do not believe that is the problem. Fights becoming overly mechanical is however. Having to press the same button over and over makes for terrible rp, regardless of how the balancing aspect changes the state of the game. It just sucks. It is my opinion that these threads should concern less over making the game competitively balanced, as SL has never been good at this, but rather focus on making the part we all play for more enjoyable.

To that end, I think a reversion to GR1 evasion is the only way this'll get any better. Numbers can change, metas can shift, but this'll be the same problem however far down the line we go.

Now, the rest of my thoughts, spoiler'd to not take up the entire thread.

 

Unfortunately this post is going to need to go over history more than numbers.

The reason why GR2 happened initially was due to dissatisfaction with the way evasion was working at the time. You got 30% Damage reduction if you dodged the sole hit check, and barring cobra this was all the reduction you got. The dissatisfaction arose from the fact that people that build to hit you always hit you, and that people who did not build to hit you typically out damaged you with superior numbers.

It was, at the time, my opinion this was not an inherent issue with evade but class balancing instead. A Kensei had no reliable DR if not to equip Ogatas and dodge. A mage bonder could have 64 / 60 pre shared pain, and will naturally do more damage than what a Kensei can do per turn simply due to mage scalings. It was not fun for anyone, but it was not a Evasion vs Tank issue -- Merely this was where the problem was at it's most brazen.

My proposed solution before the rework was to just raise the Level cap by 10. 40 More points was enough to front actually usable DR on the highly underperforming classes at the time, but could only afford the stat efficient class meta either faith or Sanctity, neither of which really performed on their own. They could not build hit due to how Luck was also necessary, nor were they generally below hard cap on defensive stats.

This obviously did not happen, and instead we've been in an evasion v hit arms race for the past year or so, and I do not know if my solution would still be true in lieu of the new classes, mechanics, etcetera. 


I will now go onto the bulk of this post, mechanics ob:

 
Depicted above, GR2 evasion. Semi self explanatory, but I'll go over it anyway.

• Hit is hit, evasion is evasion
  
• Base is the hit chance % / Dcheck one is probability of a glance
  
• DCheck two is the chance for an outright miss.
  
• DR is the then adjusted average reduction provided
  

Contrary to popular opinion, it is not difficult to play evasion. It is not worse, either. FAR more limited in build, as you will need hardcap evasion and each singular point of evasion amounts for much more DR wise than individual points of defence or res, and the minutia of classes able to support evasion in a momentum friendly way can be counted on one hand. But it's still GOOD. Unlike tanking it

• Negates on hits, momentum refunds from fleur etc.
  
• Negates status inflictions, like glancing a wretched oil.
  
• Restores no FP on chivalry, etc. (Minor)
  
• Denies a lot of combo setups like rising tide -> chaser.
  

Where it's damage reduction applies, it beats out both defence and res. Mechanically, this would mean that anything that does not achieve permanent 60+ hit chance would not be viable, save for the handful of moves that enable builds to ignore evasion outright. That would be grapple -> Checkmate, Falcon strike, Steam sear Lords flame etc. 

There is an iota of counter play, fire res on your dodgies, do not fight the firebird, etcetera etcetera, but fundamentally this is unfun mechanically and I obviously will not be using a move with a 0% chance to hit in a fight. This makes the RP into very spammy slap matches.

I do not believe these moves are inherently toxic, strictly because most classes were not designed with current evasion in mind, nor have they been retroactively changed to suit it. GR2 was a band aid fix to a greater problem, and it hasn't really helped in my opinion. 

Classes

Classes like Monk, Boxer (Were it not the highest hit class in the game now), autohit ghost, DH All suffered from the loss of Evasion! This is more an issue of magic damage being straight up superior than what they have in their kit, but they in particular have lost numbers from everywhere. These classes were stat-tight before GR2, before the reductions to defence and res, and certainly before the scaling nerfs to most martial weapons. Reaver DH for example, a cherrypicked example from a terrible class.

• Rising tide is it's highest swa scaling skill at 130%. This fucking sucks. Crescent rook, next class adjacent, trades 30% swa for 120% elemental attack scaling with tile-creating prospects, an interference and a teleport.
  
• Has no bonus hit in it's class, meaning you either need a CRUTCH mainclass or to sacrifice a firstborn son and a leg to hardcap skill. If you aren't using howling handshot you will want to rip your cock off.
  
• The only elemental attack scaling in the kit is on elemental rave, at 120% 40% across 4 10's. Without an enchantment, this will be across four stats you likely only have two of.
  

It is rare for a DH to have significantly more than 130 - 140 swa nowadays, even rarer to see a dh hitting harder than 170 physical for 3m, where a crescent rook would hit for 25% harder without twohanded. It is unreal how done dirty some classes have been by GR2 and prior scaling nerfs. Monk would be a good example of this too, the lack of two handed not being accounted for with the general scaling changes that came with GR2, and with each sub 110 swa fist I see ran on a boxer an angel cries in heaven. 

I do not want to write a full eulogy for everything dearly missed from GR1, because I have already done that and nought came of it despite the totally real 3000~ views. Just my opinion that this game sucks mechanically and will continue to suck for as long as people truly care about the competitive viability of x / y / z. Just make it fun dawg, give me buttons to press and do not deny them categorically. That should be the real criticism of GR2, it is not as fun.

[caliaca]

Tbqh I'm not going to talk about reverting to Gr1 or reverting the system in general. Dev has stated multiple times over he does not want to do this and won't do this. So I am not really entertaining the thought and it's not what this thread is about. This thread is about attempting to make the current system palatable for both sides.

I believe this would make things both more enjoyable and more balanced. These are not mutually exclusive.

[Sawrock]

My ancient, terribly-out-of-date knowledge of the game has left me with the objectively best opinion. The game should not be balanced for 1v1s, there should be dodgies that some people cannot hit reliably and dodgies that suffer from a specific enemy having good enough hit to punish them.

In addition, celerity is best when it has a role other than just damage mitigation. Back in earlier versions, when celerity meaningfully contributed to initiative, dodge was less reliable than tank but came at the benefit of allowing crunch in party compositions. While that did lead people being KO'd early on in the fight, it made a meaningful difference in choosing between dodge and tank. Not that I want to go back to how initiative was before, but it's a thought I've been having.

Skill isn't mandatory. I've had builds where I've put 0 points into skill. I've had builds with 40 scaled skill and able to reliably hit opponents. I've had builds where I pump skill out the wazoo and I crit for days.

[caliaca]

I disagree. 1v1s are a considerable portion of the game and should be at least thought of for balance. A lot of serious pvp happens in 1v1s, a lot of spars happen in 1v1s. These things are still important and have character defining moments based on their backs, for better or worse. Thus, I do think they should be considered for 1v1s, otherwise we're just telling a bunch of people their rp isn't important.

You can easily get away with 0 skill investment right now due to the nutso amount of evade ignores though for sure. Or just being full supportle.

[Sawrock]

Here's the thing about balancing for 1v1s: if you want to make a situation where two fully-leveled characters both have a decent chance of winning, you will absolutely not have a variety of abilities, or alternatively there will be no meaningful difference between the abilities. An enemy class having an ability is a problem, in the sense you need to overcome it or figure out how to work the least in their favor. If you have a solution for every problem the enemy can give you, and the enemy does the same for you, then no class is unique, no specialties exist, and it's more of going through the motions.

In no way do I think that 1v1 combat roleplay does no matter. It absolutely does matter. I've had a lot of solo combat moments and a lot of team fight moments. I would absolutely rather have my teeth kicked in by an encounter that I, by almost no means, I could win... in opposition of always having a decent chance to win. I want my characters to be things, to be representative of their fighting styles and, well, character. I would rather lose and roleplay than always inherently seek a win. This doesn't mean that people who crunch and try to win fights the best they can are bad- this is both roleplay and a game. We should absolutely be enjoying both. But I enjoy losing, too, and having characters be distinct not only in roleplay, but mechanically so as well.