[MegaBlues]

I'm not sure if a topic has been made about this recently or not, but this is a long-standing issue that's only been getting worse as of late, I think.

There are three forms of attacking in the game. Basic attacking, magic-based autohits (i.e. magic, usually), and physical-based autohits (i.e. skills, or just autohits, usually). You would think that the difference between the latter two wouldn't be important enough as to warrant separation, but the explanation for that will come later.

To counter a regular basic attack, you can either dodge it or reduce the damage by defense or resistance. Usually however, someone who's basic attacking you is getting some benefit solely by making contact (Fleur, MG Shells, etc), and taking no damage is better than reducing it, so you're going to be playing the game of evade buffing/hit debuffing, while the other side is going to try to hit you (Or use an autohit, but elaboration later). Assuming your opponent doesn't have any autohits at all and they're dedicated to making their attack land, you're going to have a fair bit of trouble keeping that from happening. Nearly every physical class has some method of boosting their hit, while boosting evade is slightly rarer. Not to mention that before buffing, usually, a basic attacker will have the hit to make dodging a risky gamble at best. Oh, and if the attacker is using a bow or a gun, you're not dodging. Ever. Though on the flipside, those using a gun can also inflict Hesitation at a rate of nearly 50%, making other basic attackers miserable.

To counter magic, even more options are available. You have your resistance, the magical counterpart to defense, but then you also have elemental resistance. Both of these are percent reductions and work very strongly together, while usually, physical attackers don't need to worry about elemental resistance (Remember how much people complained about Drowned Woman? Yeah). Now, you might be saying, "Just use a different element!", but in the current meta, it's extremely hard to use more than one element effectively, and mechanically impossible to actually use more than one element at its fullest power. This is because of the casting penalty you take if using a tool that doesn't match the domain of the spell being cast, so if your opponent correctly guesses the element of the spell you'll be using (Which will probably be Earth, Water, or Dark, due to how using defenses as attack stats is, again, the understandable meta), you're going to be hurting. To top this off, magic can be, simply, stopped from being used as a whole by the Silence status effect (Blind, while similarly debilitating, has the benefit of a Trait to reduce its effect, as well as Hit being generally stronger than Evade. Hesitation is much more rare than Silence is, but still allows the opportunity to attack). Magic overall has seen repeated nerfs due to the high damage it used to able to put out in a fairly wide range, though it continued to receive nerfs after it was made weaker than physical attacking in general, and right now is in the gutter.

As for physical autohits, without an element. Your only defense is to decrease the damage you take from them. You can't stop them from being used, you can't do double-time with an elemental resistance, and you can't dodge them (aside from Evasion, which is the aforementioned gamble, and is generally less effective than simply nabbing Defense and Resistance). You could try sapping the user's FP, though this isn't nearly as effective as before, and is a viable tactic against nearly any other build. There are no specialized statuses to stop physical autohits in the vein of Silence, Blind, or Hesitation, and autohits generally have higher attack scaling, longer range, and more/stronger effects than their basic/magical bretheren.

This is a design flaw that's been plaguing the game since release, and it would be wonderful to see this get fixed in the Reckoning. If I've misrepresented something or you have an opinion, try to note so civilly, so this issue can get fixed (Or so that this non-issue isn't made worse, if you don't agree.)

[Egil]

I don't have a solution readily available (and maybe won't ever come up with one on my own) but I appreciate the effort put into the topic and agree that this is a problem that needs to be addressed. +1

[Rendar]

There was a change ™ I was suggesting with a rework to Stun that could likely apply here (that was discussed a bit in the topic at hand).

Dazed could work similar to how hesitation does for basic attacks, and make it a % chance that they just simply don't damage (or even target) a person with the attack when they use it. Making it still useful if they're targetting themself or using a move tech, but it won't work for things that target players 100% of the time. Sounds like a decent enough idea if we also make SILENCE a % chance to just have your spell fail to cast.

[Kameron8]

If this strays a bit too off topic, I apologize in advance. Since we're talking about offensive spells, I'm assuming this is almost exclusively with regards to Evoker and Hexer. Hexer is more than fine with what it does, so I'm also assuming you are referring to Evoker spells and base class Mage spells when you talk about these weaknesses.

I'd like to see Evoker overhauled to fill the tankbusting role. Enormous health pools, defensive stats, damage reductions, and a handful of autohit skills have been the most effective way to build a character ever since GR rolled around. There's plenty of room to argue 'what if, but this item, these two classes, this race, enchant with', but the vast majority of battles I've seen are won by the tankiest individual who is most suited to sustain health and FP.

To try and connect back to the original post, this would entail making changes that gave insanely high scaling to spells, methods of bypassing the calculation on the new resistance stat, and making multi-element builds possible to even create. On the flip side, high powered mages by default would be fragile and easy to kill. How all of these things are achieved is, in my opinion, where the discussion should focus.

[Bjarn]

If we're on the topic of physical autohits, I'd like to bring up Monk physical autohits.

I dunno if its just me, but they seem kinda.... Piddling weak. Anyone else have this experience?

[Akame]

Thanks for addressing this, especially the hit buff vs evade buff situation, even though I mostly believe its just the AoE and SoE that are the hit buff problem.
Also, It doesn't make sense how people that can build off 300 evade and can still be hit by a charging strike 150% scaled turnover for 14 FP and have mediocre SKI and LUC.. Never understood that.. Same with magic. Doesn't make any IC sense. I had a friend that suggested taking an IC spar to Skype because his auto-hitting magic against my dodgiest character was too effective in his eyes, so he wanted a more realistic environment for battles (And because its just more fun in general because you have more freedom.). I don't know any real solutions to it as I'm not a PvP crazy, but that's just my experience.

Not suggesting removing autos at all, but a scaling nerf or a FP increase of them would be nice.

[Exxy]

If we're on the topic of physical autohits, I'd like to bring up Monk physical autohits.

I dunno if its just me, but they seem kinda.... Piddling weak. Anyone else have this experience?

Monk is underwhelming as a class currently (but no one has mentioned this since they're still whining over pre-GR [strike]MA[/strike] Monk), all they have going for them is BoI, Serpent Strikes, Aid (if WIL-based. . . OH WAIT-- NO ONE IS ANYMORE) but their autohits (damage rates) are literally crap without taking into account the 100% hit rate and status effects you get (I.E. Magnetized, Soften - which is a poor man's Geldoren and the knockback from DG).

To be honest, the entire class is out-shined by its Base (although this is another topic in and of itself).

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That being said, autohits do need some form of rebalance. Literally the only down-side is they can't be used to crit (which that statement in itself is invalid if using *insert-name* elemental badge). This doesn't justify all the pluses associated with them.

I'm not against to simply giving them more FP and slightly reduce the damage scaling (but not to the point where Mad Chop was ran into the ground) while keeping the guaranteed hit. Although they should definitely have less "added" benefits like Status Effects, Debuffs, etc.

EDIT: D-. . . did someone just use "evade boosting" and "rarer" in the same sentence? If this is rare I deserve a gold medal for finding all the people who do this. Q_Q

[Slydria]

You're getting off topic with this talk of Monk, this is more about Autohits in general.

I think the big issue is not that Autohits exist but more how easily accessible they are and how they are often better than using a basic attack. (Most builds will at least pack one, if not several, in the off chance you encounter someone with high dodge.)

So really, I think either there needs to be a big culling on the number of available Autohits (as in making more skills require hit checks) or Evasion needs to not be Rogue-exclusive because currently Autohits invalidate the need to have good hit or good evade.

As for magic based Autohits, I'm undecided on what should be done with those specifically yet because they aren't looking so crash hot right now and do indeed have more flaws than their physical counterparts.

[KhalidtheGrey]

The ancient philosophy I prescribe to on the ability to ignore evade is that it's a rare thing that specifically designed skills are used for. And they never never never except never deal more damage than a normal attack. I'd personally cull the auto hits down to restrict it to only skills you could not reasonably just jump five feet to avoid. So something like Madchop would check hit per swing, but Crystal Rose would not. Evasion I'd change to become a Trait you get with a certain amount of base Cel (30?) and more or less leave it as it is otherwise. AoE spells might have to be tuned to be weaker than other spells on average.

I do wonder, should being on the edge of an area of effect allow you an evade check? Which could simplify things so as to get around going through and individually marking each skills as being an autohit or not.

[Lolzytripd]

Madchop used to check evasion, It did NO damage at all back then because axuracccy