[Senna]

This is about to start a shit storm. The clash of the ideals and the sucker punch to all.

Okay so the current state of GR2; it’s between good and bad.

There are several factors that cause problems/situations including things that rolled over from the prior system. These things were once never used due to Autohits being unavoidable (Outside of Evasion!) and Evade was only built to deal with basic attackers. Add this with the new features and we have a few major unbalanced points.



The first on the list: Classes


Classes are categorized in two sections. The classes that are great with both hit and evade (Debuffs as well) then you have classes that aren’t.

Due to this, people that aren’t running those classes that don’t have a hit and evade bonus tend to suffer more than other. In a match where two classes that are within the same categories fight, the ‘numbers’ seems okay but if two classes from the different categories fights, the class that’s Greater with Hit/Evade/Debuff will more likely win.

In other words, the meta is who can stack the most buff faster than the other or who can stack and debuff faster than the other. Due to this, it forces people to overcap their skill and Cel in fear they might be hit or they might miss their attack.

One of many examples -

A Bonder/Ranger against Evoker/Lantern Bearer - Honest; no cheese.

Bonder/Ranger has in hit: +18 Hit from Innate, +20 hit from Bonder Fight as One, +15 from flip shot, +5 stats from Cherry Blossom, +7 Stats  from Synchro Summon and if they’re off handing a melee weapon or a gun, +15~25 from pinball. This isn't counting the weapon enchantments and GUI bonus either.

Bonder/Ranger has in Evade: +20 evade from Fight as one, +5 stats from Cherry Blossom, +7 Stats  from Synchro Summon, +10 from Acrobatic Shooting, 5+50% Luc Fortune Wind. Then we count item bonus and Enchantments.

Bonder/Ranger has with hit debuffs: Warning Shot, Crippling Arm, (Base on the youkai) Blind.

Bonder/Ranger has with evade debuffs: Cripple Leg, Entangle Trap, Frigid Arrow.

Loaded uh? This isn’t counting Ranger’s magic that also ignores evasion.


Now let’s show what Evoker/Lantern Bearers have to deal with.

Evoker/Lantern has in hit: +15 hit Purity Edge (But at the cost of an enchantment), +5 Skill with Typhur or Fenrir, +5 skill from Ice Fairy, +4 skill from Kraken. Now weapon enchantment counts and GUI doesn’t affect unless they’re standing exactly behind them.

Evoker/Lantern has in evade: +6 CEL Quickness, +5 CEL with Typhur or Salamander, +5 CEL Relent Gale and +4 CELTalvyd. Then we count item bonus and Enchantments.

Hit Debuffs: Light Shaft/Brighten (This affects everyone, including you), Altera's Blind.

Evade Debuff: Lvl 15 Glow/Brighten, Galren/Magnetize.

Without Excel Crash with Explosion cheese (Everything that just flat out ignores evasion), Bonder/Ranger would run laps around them unless the person either...Has no idea what they’re doing or purposely held back.

This is what a Stacking Classes vs Normal Classes look like.

Suggestions on how we can fix this? Well, adjusting the numbers the buff and debuff offers won’t change much as other classes that lack that option would end up struggling. There are three options I can think of. And no, if someone is forced to run either Blessed or Bloodhunt out of all the list of enchantments to pad their hit if their class cannot stack as much as the other, that’s a problem.

Suggested Option one: Every class gets their own buffs and debuffs to spread but this would still end up in the game of who can buff what faster and who can take advantage of their max bonus/debuffs than the other.

Suggested Option two: All buffs lose their bonus and gain a different effect instead, this leaving the game to stats vs stats and who may be able to debuff stats faster than the other person. Debuffs can remind but bonus comes from universal sources like items and enchantment but doing so, items and enchantment’s recently nerfed buffs would need to be restored.

Suggested Option Three: More Battle potions options that increase hit, evade as well as offer many debuffs and so on they may take advantage of. Bottle size and so on matters as well as the duration and effects being improved with Alchemy’s Perfect talent.



Second on the list: GUILE


GUI, when it works, it WORKS. Due to this being unaffected by the hit cap, someone’s running a Stacking Class that provides a lot of hit bonus to take advantage of GUI. Because this is not affected by the cap, it's very easy for their attacks to obtain the unmissable status if the victim does not have enough debuffs in place. As shown in Amber’s Flaws and Benefit (Link here) thread, it’s not impossible to reach a decently high hit rate. Add enough GUI and individuals are able to reach +305 hits. This is not counting debuffs that can be applied to the target.

Without high level smoke, Vine plants, Blind or just flat out kiting/Running, this person would be hitting their mark 9/10 times.

How can we fix this? One main suggestion comes to mind. Without nerfing GUI, let this bonus go towards the hit cap.


Third on the list: Evasion Ignoring Skills.

The game has far too many options, skills and spells that ignore evasion. Some of these can be used back to back with little to no cooldown or some can joggle between the options based on their classes. These are needed to keep evade builds in check but adding more on top of the set that was already in the game was a bit too much. Nothing they can do about charge attack with thousand stabs (Charge does not go on CD if you're within a certain range), Excel crash spells and skills, Explosions with Steam Sear (Steam does not have a CD). The list goes on.

It reached the point of; why bother building evade if the person will just ignore it every turn, back to back until your HP hits zero. If they know what they’re doing, they could get away with builds like this without building much SKILL and turn to pure SWA.

How can we fix this? Three suggestions really.

Suggestion one: Excel charge’s effect that ignores evade should be moved to 3 charges, everything else should get their scaling dropped since it is ignoring evade and a longer CD.

Suggestion two: Instead of a guarantee clean hit, it guarantee one hit check (100% Glancing) but they need to run a check for the other.

Suggestion three: Reduce the amount of Evasion ignoring skills in the game, adjusting from old to some of the new.



Fourth on the list: Very high hit to evade.


The GUI section explains this part a bit better. As it is, it is SKILL and GUI versus CEL. Hit being able to reach abnormally high amounts compared to evade’s cap being around 200 to 215, most of the time, it’s easier to hit the target than evade someone (Shown in Autumn's thread above). It’s only the other way around if the class lacks any hit bonus or decent evade debuffs. With many different things in the game that tilt the scales between the two, hit normally comes out victorious.

In other words, building Evade at the moment is worse than it was before the update. I call it ‘A trap’ (Who knows me get that ref). There are too many things that can ignore evasion and too many things that can push hit over the line IF used with a hit stacking class (300 hit vs 210 evade….They’re not missing, glancing now and then? Sure). This forces the overcapping of CEL to improve their base Evade so their end result would be somewhat higher to deal with some of the classes in game.

How can we even fix this? Well, with the removal of LUC and weapons still keeping an okay accuracy and so on, CEL itself needs a small buff.
Instead of 2 per 1, increase it to 2.25 or 2.5 per 1.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Just Senna being Senna again-

These are the problems that standout the most. You’re either really good at evading or never evading another hit. Your class is really good at what it does or really bad at it. You either cheese or don’t cheese. The game will never be perfect or completely balanced but we’ll see how it goes and suggest adjustments.

[Snake]

Yep, I agree.

[Senna]

List Bonus -

There is one more point I need to add to this. While this point isn't that large, I can understand the concerns of it. The hit checks and the on-screen percentage. People are upset due to the fact the two checks messed with the hit on-screen percentage. While this is understandable as the game is running the check twice. This lowers the actual hit chance shown due to probability.

In other words, 80% on-screen hit is not 80%, but instead, 64% for a said clean hit as it runs 80% twice.

So there are two suggestions to this:

Suggestion One: Here: (Link here) whereas it only performs the second hit if the first fails for glancing and misses if both fails.

Suggestion two: Adjust the on-screen calculator to provide the correct percentage for both hit checks.

Quality of life: This was suggested prior by someone else but to ensure it wasn’t drowned out however, the option to display the hit and power for auto hits as well. Players would like to know if they have enough hit for a attack or if they need to debuff or buff before attempting again.