[Autumn]

I think touching tank busting skills/effects would be a very bad idea right now, people very much underestimate the power of rampaging + other def reductions.

I don't have much else to add other than that.

[Shujin]

Oh I am not talking about all, some just feel a bit outdated. Others, mostly the acid ones are pretty solid as they do what I suggested. Fray is also "Updated" to the way I suggested. Geldoren, Shatter beam and such that touch defense directly are just worse off, because deminishing returns. I mostly mean those.

Rampage is fine how it is, its strong and comes with the downside to keep it up with basic attacks. Mostlyx just meant outside of specific cases, that its not really helping the damage race versus tanks on its own.

Also it has to happen at the same time with the overall damage reduction so the weight shifts bit from just stacking damage and basically having the permanent power to having to use anti tank tools to create damage to them. You know? having actually a strategy to tackle tanks. And the lack of Tankbusters is certainly an Issue if you want to even the playing field between them.(Barring races again, that naturally get access to those) I think a tankbuster that only ignores Defense on a crit would be an interesting skill and make some Tanks consider to build a bit more critevade.

But it depends a bit on how we want the game to go.. I am not sure if Dev actually just wants Dodgers to be a differnt kind of tanking. Currently Tanks can hit just as hard if not harder than Basic attackers in many cases, while having a more solid reduction kit thats harder to pass by. So having dodgers being more squish but overall bring more punsihment if they are good at what they do is sorta where I imagine them to be at.

[Mr.SmileGod]

Having only skimmed through the two walls each person has posted, I'm kinda surprised that nobody's really mentioned just.... increasing the damage negation of Evasion procs. Unless they have and I'm just blind, but.

Why not just increase it? It's way too low now as it is, and I'm not really scared of dodge-tanks abusing it just because of how rare dodge-tanks are. Something along the lines of
20% for heavy armor
45% for medium armor
70% for unarmored

- when proc'ing Evasion. The unarmored 70% is so high because Evasion proc's are still a chance, rather than a guarantee. Even if it is scaled down from my suggestion, any buff to Evasion's damage negation would be appreciated.

[Autumn]

Having only skimmed through the two walls each person has posted, I'm kinda surprised that nobody's really mentioned just.... increasing the damage negation of Evasion procs. Unless they have and I'm just blind, but.

Why not just increase it? It's way too low now as it is, and I'm not really scared of dodge-tanks abusing it just because of how rare dodge-tanks are. Something along the lines of
20% for heavy armor
45% for medium armor
70% for unarmored

- when proc'ing Evasion. The unarmored 70% is so high because Evasion proc's are still a chance, rather than a guarantee. Even if it is scaled down from my suggestion, any buff to Evasion's damage negation would be appreciated.

Currently the numbers are 0% for Heavy armor, 15% for Light Armor and 30% for unarmored, there's no reason to increase these numbers even a little bit as they all stand in a fairly balanced position and have been for a very long time. (Evasion being 50% pre-GR was already proven to be way too much.)

Dodgies should be not be rewarded with being situationally tankier than even tanks would be, we already have stacking DRs for dodgies to abuse in order to gain about as much DR as a tank would anyways, from ice point guard to eviter to shared pain etc.

70% DR is simply wayyyy too much DR, Evasion is a chance sure but its not some arbitrary chance, you can raise it enough to basically proc evasion on anything you want to, and should you meet an archetype that is able to punch through your evasion entirely somehow, then that is simply a bad matchup.

I will also comment that people end up believing that dodge is somehow vastly inferior to tank, while not as useful I do think that dodge is very much under-rated, and the gap between the two is not as large as people make it out to be. Initiative is a very powerful stat itself.

[SolAndLuna]

I agree to 70/45/20 being entirely too much damage reduction for evade, whether it's chance based or not. I can't say for sure whether changing the numbers at all is unwarranted, but I do wish for evade to be more useful for classes in general. Ice Point Guard, Eviter and Shared Pain are all there, among others, and they help mitigate the issue, but there's very little preventing tanks from using those same boosts as well. Out of the ones mentioned, the only one that's more useful for evasive characters is Ice Point Guard, and the only other skills to protect against autohits that are more useful to evasive characters that I can find is Demon Hunter's Snake Dancer, which is admittedly fairly useful a lot of the time, and Boxer's Swaying, which... for 3 momentum and an extra FP cost to buff Evasion for 1 turn, isn't exactly ideal. In addition, the number of skills that boost your damage reduction without lowering your evade or anything similar are fairly limited, the most notable ones are Demon Hunter, Verglas, Ghost and Bonder.

On top of that, tanks can currently use a far larger variety of class combos while still being effective. On top of that, in order for evade to be even remotely reliable against the thing it's supposed to be good at dealing with (basic attackers), it needs mid-battle buffs or debuffs. And since Lead Storm has become an autohit now, there are very few builds, if any, that won't have at least one option to simply deal damage after someone's taken the time to buff up anyways, whether they're a basic attack build or not.

To make matters worse, Evasion also has a number of classes that can ignore any effort you might put into it. Any class with a skill to ignore evasion, any class that can freeze you, any class that can inflict knockdown... potentially things that I'm overlooking as well. This takes away their entire Evasion bonus, which means an entire 30% damage reduction is completely gone. And the number of classes that have at least one of the methods I mentioned?

All Archer classes, all Martial Artist classes, Lantern Bearer, all Duelist classes, all Soldier classes, Hexer and Rune Magician. That's 15. 15 different classes, out of the 20 currently available in the game, have a skill to help them disable Evasion if they so choose. 16, if you include Spellthief's copy spells.

Now, granted, some of the classes I mentioned earlier require a full turn to actually achieve that and can't take advantage of it themselves as a result of that, but that still leaves an evasive build extremely vulnerable in any fight that isn't a 1v1. If counting the number of classes that can bypass evasion without expending 6 momentum in one turn or requiring specific equipment/class setups, that would bring the number down to... 12, by my count. Less can do so every single round, but with this many classes being able to punch through evasion, I'm not so sure if it simply falls under a bad matchup anymore.

By comparison, tanks do have various skills they have to deal with that tear away at their defense, but the ones that people usually note are Arbalest's Buster Cannon (which comes up far less frequently) and the Rampaging enchant with a high power weapon. The others, while useful, don't quite match up to taking away 30% damage reduction, especially when said evasive character might have needed to use up their momentum to buff their evade further just to achieve that in some cases.
To be fair in this, there are 15 different classes that can cut at an enemy's defense, including Spellthief (by my count), so the number of classes with some sort of tool is balanced, but the majority of them don't go past taking away 10% damage reduction. For example, Ranger's Agile Andocobra inflicts LV 5 Acidity (LV 10 with Annorum), Geldoren takes away 5 DEF and RES (which, due to diminishing returns, means relatively little), Fray removes 10% phys. DR... Kensei and Ghost have the best non-Buster Cannon options, removing 15% phys DR and 20% of all DR respectively in a best case scenario.

I'm not about to say that the DR reducing skills are bad or anything, all of them last multiple turns and taking away ~10% DR while still dealing some damage is fairly useful, especially if you have a way to use multiple of the previously mentioned skills. My point is simply that Evasion is in a really bad spot by comparison. It needs to use skills in the middle of the fight to reliably dodge, and a lot of classes have at least one method to make evasion do nothing. In addition, evasive builds are still hurt by the same DR reducing moves that tanks are supposed to be weak to, and in a small handful of cases, like the aforementioned Geldoren, they're hurt by it even more than a tank would be. By comparison, tanks don't suffer at all from reduced evade or any Evasion ignoring move.

One key benefit that was mentioned is initiative, and while moving first can give you some notable advantages - status effects like silence or immobilize don't affect you for as long while affecting your enemy for longer, the ability to skip and put your opponent in a worse situation (if they don't respond by skipping as well), etc. - there are multiple classes that also benefit from going after their opponent as well. Things like Ranger's Thunder Bolt or Engineer's bombs + Grenade Launcher, or even just any build that uses cinders or other kinds of tile effects, among other things. So, while I won't deny high initiative being helpful, I would like to note that low initiative doesn't exactly limit a tank's utility too significantly.

As numerous people have mentioned here, evade is definitely in a far worse spot than defense, and initiative or the wind/lightning moves that exist aren't necessarily enough by themselves to make them more worthwhile in any situation. As far as I can see, the reasons someone normally plays an evasive character is either because their particular strategy requires them to move first (either buffing their team or debuffing the enemy team in a large number of cases, at least from what I've seen), or simply because they enjoy the idea of their character being fast more than they enjoy them being tanky.

Really sorry for the wall of text, tl;dr: Boosting Evasion numbers higher than any tank can reach is a problem, but between far less potential utility, needing to buff to dodge basic attacks, autohits being everywhere, many different ways to bypass Evasion entirely and even their ability to go first sometimes backfiring on them, they definitely need some sort of improvement.

I personally liked some of the possible solutions Dev offered on the Discord server - making Evasion work far better early in the fight and weakening each time it triggers, or extra bonuses for using small weapons and/or having a low battle weight. I feel like various things like that could probably put them on a more equal ground with tanks if done right, while still giving them some degree of identity so that they're not just "tanks but building celerity and luck instead of defense and resistance". About the only other thing I could suggest is maybe making some of the things that remove Evasion altogether simply reduce the percentage of it instead to avoid the issue of everyone simply using ways to bypass Evasion as much as they can.

[Senna]

To think this got revived. Alright, I'll put out a suggestion then. I understand Spo's concern. Giving certain classes that option will get out of hand really fast. Classes like Ghost. Verg and even Bonder the ability to get more reduction is not the best idea. I get that.

That will only turn those classes into complete evasive tanks. We already have that problem with Ghost/Bonder with the running youkai that has share pain and wraithguard.

That can dodge and take hits much better than any normal tank due to just abusing share pain, Evasion and wraithguard.

So, how would I suggest something against this? Since not every class wants to run one of those to survive. Well. Each one of those classes has one thing in common. They either carrying a parrying skill or they have something to increase their overall reduction.

So I thought about it, EVASION by itself is okay? But it has a lot of counters. No matter how much you try to buff it up, it will still at the end of the day face those counters. SURE! Giving classes more options against basic attack is pretty good but recent, people either hit stack to hell with certain classes or just run auto-hit.

SWA stacking still exists sadly.

I've nothing how much giving Verg a parry skill helped them survive. So I kinda thought about it. We do have traits and there are still people out there with a lot of traits or just picking random stuff so. How about this? A trait that assists the poor souls?

Trait: Graze
Requires 20 base Cel, 20 base Luck, and 15 base Skill.

With the understanding of certain weapons and how they work, the practitioner learns how to defend themselves against them better than others. This allows them to deflect as much damage as possible or even block given attacks. This trait allows the user to Parry weapon Auto hit attack/damage from their Main class weapon selection or weapons they have in Talent that has full points into Adaptation. This cannot be used with other parry skills. Scale Luck/2 chance to parry with the reduction equaling to Character's level/2. Each parry lowers the weapon's durability by 2.

Or it could be something like this.

Trait: Sentimentality Parry
Requires 20 base Cel, 20 base Luck, 15 base Skill and Sentimentality trait (100 battles completed)

After bonding and using that weapon enough, the user gains a better understanding of how to use and wield this weapon. They treat it like an extension of their body thus granting them the ability to efficiently block or parry incoming attacks. This grants a Scale LUCK/2 chance to parry an attack base on half the character's level. Each parry reduces the weapon's durability by 2 and cannot be used with other parrying skills.

Some stuff like that and so on.

[Hanzo]

Senna's suggestion is pretty nice. Though, I think the stat requirements should be quite higher.

Otherwise, something limiting how much DEF you can have, before losing the bonuses to evasion.

[WaifuApple]

Do not try to return to making traits the essential solution here. The rework was implemented to move away from 'essential' stuff (though some ended up being seen as 'essential' to people anyway). It's best to think of solutions that don't rely on one specific skill / trait, regardless. Either way, don't like the trait idea at all.

[Hanzo]

There wouldn't be a difference between a straight buff, and a trait that everyone would take. The idea is to stop people from being both evasive AND tanky. I don't see another way to make this possible.

[Akame]

I agree to 70/45/20 being entirely too much damage reduction for evade, whether it's chance based or not. I can't say for sure whether changing the numbers at all is unwarranted, but I do wish for evade to be more useful for classes in general. Ice Point Guard, Eviter and Shared Pain are all there, among others, and they help mitigate the issue, but there's very little preventing tanks from using those same boosts as well. Out of the ones mentioned, the only one that's more useful for evasive characters is Ice Point Guard, and the only other skills to protect against autohits that are more useful to evasive characters that I can find is Demon Hunter's Snake Dancer, which is admittedly fairly useful a lot of the time, and Boxer's Swaying, which... for 3 momentum and an extra FP cost to buff Evasion for 1 turn, isn't exactly ideal. In addition, the number of skills that boost your damage reduction without lowering your evade or anything similar are fairly limited, the most notable ones are Demon Hunter, Verglas, Ghost and Bonder.

On top of that, tanks can currently use a far larger variety of class combos while still being effective. On top of that, in order for evade to be even remotely reliable against the thing it's supposed to be good at dealing with (basic attackers), it needs mid-battle buffs or debuffs. And since Lead Storm has become an autohit now, there are very few builds, if any, that won't have at least one option to simply deal damage after someone's taken the time to buff up anyways, whether they're a basic attack build or not.

To make matters worse, Evasion also has a number of classes that can ignore any effort you might put into it. Any class with a skill to ignore evasion, any class that can freeze you, any class that can inflict knockdown... potentially things that I'm overlooking as well. This takes away their entire Evasion bonus, which means an entire 30% damage reduction is completely gone. And the number of classes that have at least one of the methods I mentioned?

All Archer classes, all Martial Artist classes, Lantern Bearer, all Duelist classes, all Soldier classes, Hexer and Rune Magician. That's 15. 15 different classes, out of the 20 currently available in the game, have a skill to help them disable Evasion if they so choose. 16, if you include Spellthief's copy spells.

Now, granted, some of the classes I mentioned earlier require a full turn to actually achieve that and can't take advantage of it themselves as a result of that, but that still leaves an evasive build extremely vulnerable in any fight that isn't a 1v1. If counting the number of classes that can bypass evasion without expending 6 momentum in one turn or requiring specific equipment/class setups, that would bring the number down to... 12, by my count. Less can do so every single round, but with this many classes being able to punch through evasion, I'm not so sure if it simply falls under a bad matchup anymore.

By comparison, tanks do have various skills they have to deal with that tear away at their defense, but the ones that people usually note are Arbalest's Buster Cannon (which comes up far less frequently) and the Rampaging enchant with a high power weapon. The others, while useful, don't quite match up to taking away 30% damage reduction, especially when said evasive character might have needed to use up their momentum to buff their evade further just to achieve that in some cases.
To be fair in this, there are 15 different classes that can cut at an enemy's defense, including Spellthief (by my count), so the number of classes with some sort of tool is balanced, but the majority of them don't go past taking away 10% damage reduction. For example, Ranger's Agile Andocobra inflicts LV 5 Acidity (LV 10 with Annorum), Geldoren takes away 5 DEF and RES (which, due to diminishing returns, means relatively little), Fray removes 10% phys. DR... Kensei and Ghost have the best non-Buster Cannon options, removing 15% phys DR and 20% of all DR respectively in a best case scenario.

I'm not about to say that the DR reducing skills are bad or anything, all of them last multiple turns and taking away ~10% DR while still dealing some damage is fairly useful, especially if you have a way to use multiple of the previously mentioned skills. My point is simply that Evasion is in a really bad spot by comparison. It needs to use skills in the middle of the fight to reliably dodge, and a lot of classes have at least one method to make evasion do nothing. In addition, evasive builds are still hurt by the same DR reducing moves that tanks are supposed to be weak to, and in a small handful of cases, like the aforementioned Geldoren, they're hurt by it even more than a tank would be. By comparison, tanks don't suffer at all from reduced evade or any Evasion ignoring move.

One key benefit that was mentioned is initiative, and while moving first can give you some notable advantages - status effects like silence or immobilize don't affect you for as long while affecting your enemy for longer, the ability to skip and put your opponent in a worse situation (if they don't respond by skipping as well), etc. - there are multiple classes that also benefit from going after their opponent as well. Things like Ranger's Thunder Bolt or Engineer's bombs + Grenade Launcher, or even just any build that uses cinders or other kinds of tile effects, among other things. So, while I won't deny high initiative being helpful, I would like to note that low initiative doesn't exactly limit a tank's utility too significantly.

As numerous people have mentioned here, evade is definitely in a far worse spot than defense, and initiative or the wind/lightning moves that exist aren't necessarily enough by themselves to make them more worthwhile in any situation. As far as I can see, the reasons someone normally plays an evasive character is either because their particular strategy requires them to move first (either buffing their team or debuffing the enemy team in a large number of cases, at least from what I've seen), or simply because they enjoy the idea of their character being fast more than they enjoy them being tanky.

Really sorry for the wall of text, tl;dr: Boosting Evasion numbers higher than any tank can reach is a problem, but between far less potential utility, needing to buff to dodge basic attacks, autohits being everywhere, many different ways to bypass Evasion entirely and even their ability to go first sometimes backfiring on them, they definitely need some sort of improvement.

I personally liked some of the possible solutions Dev offered on the Discord server - making Evasion work far better early in the fight and weakening each time it triggers, or extra bonuses for using small weapons and/or having a low battle weight. I feel like various things like that could probably put them on a more equal ground with tanks if done right, while still giving them some degree of identity so that they're not just "tanks but building celerity and luck instead of defense and resistance". About the only other thing I could suggest is maybe making some of the things that remove Evasion altogether simply reduce the percentage of it instead to avoid the issue of everyone simply using ways to bypass Evasion as much as they can.

This is a nice read and I hope it isn't overlooked. It's a very interesting solution that I'd be willing to try out. I'm overly much in favor of "ignores Evasion" making their exit and never returning.