[Snake]

I press F at everyone who says basic hitting is weak, and remember them that Vorpal exists.

[Fern]

I press F at everyone who says basic hitting is weak, and remember them that Vorpal exists.

It's not that it's always weak, but it's usually infinitely more appealing to run an autohitter build. Quick evidence:

KENSEI/BK PROTAG-KUN WITH A VORPAL TARNADA
Accounting for the Peerless/Fortitude innates, Icejewel Rogue's Work Gloves, MIragewalk Waraji, Jupiter Badge for lightning criticals, and of course a Tarnada. Giant Gene Ninja Armor. Because using anything else as a basic attacker Kensei is usually suicide (for PVP, anyway). Has STR SKI CEL VIT LUC GUI WIL legend inks.



PROS:
-If you crit, you might get some more damage.
-Lightning crits can blow up people without critical evade.
-Decent dodge/hit/crit rate, and decent crit evade if you account for Black Knight's Negation innate.
-190 or so critical damage before reductions! It's okay.
-10% chance on critical to do good damage to tanks.
-Style.

CONS:
-You have to roll RNG to do your best damage output, most of the time.
-You have to invest STR/WIL/SKI/CEL/GUI/VIT/LUC in this instance. 7 stats.
-Failing proper risk management will put you in the death zone in PVP.
-You might as well be relying on 10% if you have any crit on the hyper tank you're fighting to win.
-Very squishy to autohits and magic.
-You -need- to land your Kensei debuffs if you want to have good enough hit/crit and what not.
-If you get knocked down before you're whacked with autohits, you're done for, since there's no Evasion damage reduction.


BOXER/DH PROTAG-KUN WITH A REBELLION FUUMA
Accounts for the Fortitude innate, Firejewel Dragon King Gloves, Dragon King Helmet, Mars Badge, Warwalk boots of your choice, and a Giant Gene'd Cloak of Many Colors. I'm assuming 10% all of its respective elements in this instance for the torso.



PROS:
-Declaring Reaver Stance and using a Reaver move (I.E Elemental Rave) will make you benefit from Combination Strike, since Reaver Stance is an offensive class skill and therefore will give Elemental Rave 15% bonus damage.
-On the Ropes will allow you to also get 15% more bonus damage if you hit your enemies from behind. You could, on paper, grab Cobra Stance and Leaping Lizard + Winged Serpent solely for this purpose, assuming you ditch Matador Stance entirely. Which you don't really need all that much to begin with.
-Combining On the Ropes and Combination Strike, which is fairly easy to do, nets you a lot of damage. For example, you would be doing 395 per Elemental Rave before reductions. This doesn't account for the damage you could deal by just flailing at someone with Reaver combos, mind.
-You're pretty beefy. Meaning it's hard to kill you immediately in most circumstances. Weathered Body and ComC add to your damage reductions pretty well.
-Shukuchi allows for easy wide movement should you need it, I.E pursuing a kiter.
-You don't need to roll RNG checks to do damage. If you feel like it, you could use Fegen with Mixed Martial Arts and knock a dodge character off its feet then proceed to ook ook unga bunga on them with Reaver offensives. They would be unable to mitigate the damage with Evasion! red text in that instance.
-You're not playing an actual fist Boxer so much as using it just for its utility, you're playing a DH autohitter with two-hand.
-On demand magical damage with Asura Fist.

CONS:
-10% chance to blow up to a Vorpal on crit.
-No critical evade.
-There are certain moves in the game that ignore Geist Schritt completely.
-Fairly single target.


These are a few examples out of many. Vorpal does not win you every fight, it exists as a way to stop no critical evade tanks from becoming the most absurd thing in the game. And even then it doesn't always pop up, because again, it's RNG-based. You might get the impression Boxer is the problem here, but it really isn't. It's the fact basic attacks, for the most part don't match up to SWA stacker autohitters in general. These examples are minor in comparison to what currently takes place in the meta, which normally includes using Mage/Duelist/Curate/Soldier/Martial Artist promotions for the sake of doing damage without building hit rate.

As a few examples:
-Ghost/DH or DH/Ghost if you're looking for more DR overall
-Monk/DH
-Firebird/DH
-Firebird/Ghost

Now, I'm not saying autohitter builds shouldn't exist. I find it good for the game to have build variety and not just be railroaded into always building basic attacks, otherwise it would be horrendously boring. But there is a clear difference in efficiency here.

Most basic attacker builds are evade builds, because building basic attacks as a 'tank' will more often than not be far more detrimental than it is to build dodge for it. This is partially because basic attacks often utilize LUC, which is also a stat that grants evade. So you often have little reason to build something like a bruiser/tank, except for very specific circumstances.

[Senna]

Most basic attacker builds are evade builds, because building basic attacks as a 'tank' will more often than not be far more detrimental than it is to build dodge for it. This is partially because basic attacks often utilize LUC, which is also a stat that grants evade. So you often have little reason to build something like a bruiser/tank, except for very specific circumstances.

Oh, my dear, dear blue plant. Tanks sadly are pretty nasty basic attackers as well. However for them to do so, they're forever lock to classes such as BK/Bonder/Ranger/MG/Monk/Curate/Hexer and so on, the class that provides them more hit to make up for it and whatnot.

One quick example is this: Firebird/Black Knight - If you haven't seen hit and SWA stacking before, prepare yourself.



Pretty basic items to say the least since I came up with this on the spot - Duodent, Bellplate, or Turtle Shell if you want to F people's day up (Any heavy works here really, it's up to you), Nullstone Gauntlet with fire jewel, Mountain Boots (Or get Metal Greaves Plus and 4 Arctic mat for that +10 crit evade and bonus armor) with soul of war, Mars Badge, and Dragon King's Helm (You can switch it out for snake helm). You can also switch out Vorpal for something like Bloodborne if you just want to confirm hits.

What to expect?

- 92 Crit Evade - Better get to crit stacking-
- Possible Risk but they're not high-stakes risk.
- Two-Parry Skill - Probably Eviter since this also affects autohits.
- They can stack hit via Prophylaxis, Zugzwang, Hanging and Firebird skills. (Honorable Knight too if they attack from the front and GUI flank if they hit from the side/back)
- They can stack power/SWA with Zugzwang and Ignite power since they have many options in soldier and duelist to cover the battle field in flames. If done right, they'll have around +35-40 bonus SWA.
- Magical feathers - They hit twice and they hard if used with something like falcon strike. A good way to set themselves up for a combo like charge bash through the feathers and fire.
- They can chase someone across the entire field via charge and basic attack them since hanging is also range.
- Steel skills that removes a lot of the tank's counters. No poison, no onhits, no defensive drop.
- They can also increase their Def if needed as well as use the guard skill in Fire bird to improve their defense via castling. If they trigger black wind (Which will be often because of hanging) as well, that only further adds to their reduction stacking due to Indomitable.
- They can force people to stay within range with them via force moving and it's effect (+Range). This can be very dangerous for the victim since, they'll more likely be around fire tiles and have their movement nerfed.
- Many autohit bonuses in case they choose to run Borne instead and would like a certain hit confirm.
- They also have a way to improve their crit via Poise and Sharpen.
- While Nullstone covers their lower magic reduction, they can still take a hit pretty well.
- Verglass can stomp them out if the Verglass plays it well with winter bite but that's about it.
- While there burst IS single target, they're no stranger to AOE and Multi-target skills.
- If they choose Bellplate; Well that will mess Gunslingers and Archer's day up.
- Void Assassin, if they play their cards right, can counter, and take down this beast but it comes down to the VA taking a dangerous risk.

They can do everything better than you- No they can't, yes they can, no they can't, yes they can, yes they caaaaaan.~

This is just one of the many Basic attacking tanks. Though this is only to prove a point that they can do almost everything, most just build autohit because they can always just, you know, don't deal with hit check, evade stackers and missing 90% hit chances.

[Hanzo]

Those are seven classes there, right?

[Senna]

There are many more like Kensei, Ghost, even Runes and so on but I only listed the ones off the top of my head.

[HaTeD]

It's been a long time coming, but I'm back. Reading through balance fu is what I do. Hello, I'm HaTeD.

Over the years ive seen evading from cel during launch back in like 2014? It was godly. sure spells still autohit without an 'evasion' proc, but there were very little 'autohit' skills for weapons. Time passes, evasion gets added, cel users rejoice. The cliché of having sleight of hand and being fast AF was glorious. it wasn't bad either, with the addition of autohits for many classes. Though I would say the problem began after the great reckoning.

To explain that, I will say that manually allocating stats into defense and resistance became the issue. Growth builds for defense and resistance were very few and the most ive ever seen naturally accumulated was around the 40s in value. (without bonuses) This still left the pc lacking in other areas because of their desire to just growth defense.

Now that that is explained, let me get to the heart of this topic. We shouldn't be looking at tanks as the issue. I for one, can vouch that tanks can and will be beaten. there are many ways aside from vorpal, or rampaging. It's not just from fray or even terrasque statter beam. Its pure SWA at the moment. Running a test build with a haunted sheer cold, two handed talent, ghost/hexer I have around 200 swa and ran the numbers. 50% phys with even bonder youkai out will still hit this guy for 100+ dmg and that is the least. tanks aren't the issue.

Now to make a side note for the sake of evasion! I'd love to see evasionistas in the limelight again. so yeah running the numbers again, I can easily reach 220 evade from cel and luck. that's normal. but to combat natural 300 hit? lets bring back the evade traits. +flat value evade trait when you have like 40 cel, then the %bonus evade trait at like 50. those dedicated cel users deserve that much.

Glad to be back, love you all.

[Senna]

Ghost/Hexer, 200 SWA, haunted axe weapon. CC grants bonus damage and if you have Hexer's passive, that's also bonus damage. You just stated two classes we kinda mention before. Of course you'd do that much to a tank (I'll assume didn't stack armor or used reduction items?), you'd probably 1-2 round an evasive build with that LOL. This kinda feeds into the SWA stacking point. Hell, I bet your Ghost autohits hurts like crazy too. We're not saying Vorpal can't beat them, we did say it's possible but it's a 10% chance and can be played around. Rampage isn't good if the weapon isn't high power so that's literally purposely building against tanks. What we're doing is that tanks are really good right now, evasive build needs some support. Pretty much you have little reason to choose evasive over tank.

[Fern]

This is just one of the many Basic attacking tanks. Though this is only to prove a point that they can do almost everything, most just build autohit because they can always just, you know, don't deal with hit check, evade stackers and missing 90% hit chances.

The thing is that I've already highlighted this in my previous post. My message isn't denying that building autohits over basic attacks is overall better. I can't say I understand the point being expressed in your argument.

Firebird/Black Knight is incredibly vulnerable to magic damage most of the time unless they're building autohits or dedicating their everything to stacking elemental resists, and even then that leaves them a downside in other areas such as damage stacking despite having access to Ignite Power. And magic damage is the most common source of damage in the game, as of this moment.

Additionally, cinder damage is halved when you're pulled/moved across it, unless it's a specific move that is somehow bugged still. Feathers are an exception to this due to them working differently compared to cinder tiles.

Having access to Steel Blood/Mind/Body doesn't necessarily mean that a weakness will never be present in that build. Even Martial Artist builds that have Cleanse Body get slapped with a Menov's Fang or counter-played with poison/immobilize under the right conditions. When you're aware of the tools you've got and how to use them, even match-ups where your opponent has a skill that removes X can be found struggling because they're spending momentum constantly trying to remove that status or they've been locked into taking it.

I would say more on that matter but I find it to be a bit off-topic since the thread is about, to my understanding, tanks having it much better than evade characters. I'm still of the opinion that the only change that should be made for now is giving Burn the ability to treat your enemy's armor as 0, since it's a fairly easily accesible status.

[Shujin]

This is just one of the many Basic attacking tanks. Though this is only to prove a point that they can do almost everything, most just build autohit because they can always just, you know, don't deal with hit check, evade stackers and missing 90% hit chances.

The thing is that I've already highlighted this in my previous post. My message isn't denying that building autohits over basic attacks is overall better. I can't say I understand the point being expressed in your argument.

How I understood the point is, that they are just saying that Tank basic attackers are just also better at the Job or rather more reliable than Dodge basic attackers. Don't think it was nessecary argueing against you more than adding another point that speaks for the current overall problem.
Assuming that, I think both of you make pretty good points overall and sum it up pretty well.

Some points and ideas I have:
1.)Too High SWA/damage stacking, while lacking reliable not RNG Anti-Tank moves for basic attackers.I don't think Tanking needs to take a hit, I think we just overtuned SWA/flat bonus stacking...Again. What we also lack in the game, for a few exceptions that have been mentioned before aswell (Shaitan Claws, Divine Eyes, Arbalest Buster canon) is the lack of Tank buster moves. Tanks have many ways to not just safely stack SWA but entirely negate all sources of "Defense" lines a Evasion person has. While on the other end of the Spectrum Evasions people have very few options, and I am not a fan to locking those options exclusively to some races. Its one of Many reasons why Shaitans are just the Superior Humans.
Also a skill like Falcon Strike shows just how powerful the evasion ignoring effect is

2.)Many of the current Def Reducing Skills, are not impactful enough.Lets be real. We have a lot of -Def -Res Attacks...But unless you stack them all together, you barely effect your damage at all. For example, a Geldoren against a Tank will probably only effectively reduce its Physical DR by about 2-3% depending on how high he is above soft cap, you sometimes just see a damage increase of like 1. Maybe we should change those first:
-Also reduce Armor by the same amount?
-Simple stack up the number of some of them?(many of the +def booster skills we have actually outweight them)
-them reduce Physical/magical reduction instead?
I feel the flat stat reducer and such on their own don't do much of a Anti-Tank job otherwise. Rampage aswell, actually even if its one of the stronger ones and atleast somewhat noticeable, it needs constant basic attack preassure on your opponent if you want to keep up the debuff. The only time Rampage really shines is when combined with a charged Salamander Sword, or stacking with other debuffs of the same kind (geldoren actually works pretty well here, but I think thats the only def debuffer one that works with it from the top of my head.)

3.) Tanks have more Options to negate damage reliably (no Shit Shujin, they are tanks)Another thing that I noticed mostly because of Verglas, is that it used to be reliably defensive in the past thanks to Ice Point guard providing both good stats but more importantly the ability to guard. This is still technically useful for tanks (but they usually won't use it cause they have better options that cost less prepare time or are more reliable. Verglas ain't exactly the go to tank class.) But Evasive Verglases suffered for this. Because Guard removes the abillity to Trigger red text Evasion! taking an important tool out of Verglases kit. So what I was thinking, maybe Evasion people need their own version of "Guard", in some manner that maybe increases the damage reduced by succesfully triggering evasion, if they spend some M before "preparing to dodge". This would make the Dodgers still the "More Risky" damage negaters but they atleast have an Option to play it saferish.

1 and 2 need to sorta happen at the same time..Cutting down on the "No brain" huge damage increases (Ignite Power, CC, Probably some of the Hexer stuff etc.) while slightly making the anti tank "weapons" more useful. I think if it happens with the "Has to crit for enhanced effect" condition, we automatically build in the Counter play that tanks need to build crit evade (therefore lessening their SWA in most casses) if they don't want to be melted by such. Just some thoughts.

[PantherPrincess]

An interesting idea I've been toying with in my head is "Trait - Advanced Evasion - Unlocks at 15 base CEL and only works with unarmored torsos - Upon taking damage and proccing evasion! You increase your armor and magic armor by your evade divided by 20 (I.E. 200 evade translates into +10 to both and the more evade the better). This will only work against autohit skills only." Of course this is just an example and a quickly fleshed out one so feel free to critique but I think this would aid in softening the blows somewhat.