[Snake]

Glancing Blows need to go back to its former glory in terms of its decisive factor, but not to the same overbearing form that it was. None of that.

While the fix makes it so the Hit displayed is accurate, it made the purpose behind Glancing Blows kind of worthless (which was to forgive a dodge for not dodging, and reward an attacker for almost hitting). So I'd like to disregard the changes to Glancing Blows, and request experimenting how the mechanic will do if it behaves like this:

Proposition #1:
- Glancing Blows will happen regardless of the first hit check or not.
- Glancing Blows's damage reduction is only 30% or 40%, instead of 60%.

Proposition #2:
- Glancing Blows will happen regardless of the first hit check or not.
- 5 roll checks are made. Depending on the amount of hits or misses, the Glancing Blow's effectiveness will fluctuate.
>> 0 Hits = Full Evasion.
>> 1 Hit = 90% damage reduction. Nullifies on-hit effects.
>> 2 Hits = 80% damage reduction. Nullifies on-hit effects.
>> 3 Hits = 40% damage reduction only.
>> 4 Hits = 20% damage reduction only.
>> 5 Hits = No Glancing Blows.
- Multi-hitting effects, such as Gun attacks, Fist attacks, Rapid Kick, Regenshauer, etc. will ignore Glancing Blows.

[Kazzy]

You want 5 hit checks when 2 hit checks were making the server chug to death.

Honestly? No. Glancing blows are in a fine place right now.

[Fern]

The big problem(s) with glancing blows now, off the top of my head, is that:

-Because you now roll first for clean hit and then glancing second, the evader is at severe disadvantage (compared to it being the opposite before)
-There's a few too many easy to use evasion ignoring skills. (I.E Explosion, Icicle Spear, Falcon Strike, Lift Off, etc.)

One could argue "well we can just remove the second roll then" but then that makes people feel more forced to build hit rate, which is a big part of the system that isn't enjoyable to most people. There's nothing wrong with putting people in a disadvantage of some kind for not building hit rate, but it shouldn't completely invalidate the character's build - not being able to play your character in a fight against a monster or another person isn't fun to most people.

Making Hit overly mandatory cripples build options, and it honestly doesn't good to be telling people that can't make their gimmicks work in Glancing Blows that they "can" build for GR2 if they build for (insert combos such as BK hit stacker or Spellthief evade stacker here) which is what people say nowadays. SKI can be rewarding, but it shouldn't be something you absolutely have to invest to less you don't want your character to figuratively function. And it's not like every character's IC is going to be being a tanky BK or a tricky Spellthief, or a bird throwing out burning feathers.
 
As for my own personal experience, I found my options to be very limited for my (once upon a time) dodge character despite burning 1100 Patrions on Fruits of Fluidity, to the point I had to suck it up and run BK without evade, because being a dodge character is more of a death sentence than it used to be. While living past Round 2 is great, a part of me wishes things didn't end up this way still.
 
Long story short, and I'll sound like a broken record, but I still think the old Hit vs Evade system before Glancing Blows was better than what we have right now. I can't imagine any reason dodging effects should leave, though, so if any changes were to happen I'd say that part should be kept.

[Kazzy]

The system would be easily repaired by removing +hit and +dodge enchantments. Number bloat is our big issue as opposed to mechanics. Mechanics would be easier to balance if people couldn't sit there and go 'Okay I'm gonna hit 300 hit rate and 226 dodge and be literal cancer'.


That said. I kind of like the mandatory 60 scaled SKI meta. It means everyone has a side element in Ice and nobody can 100% guarantee they can just install a yokai / wear gear to completely counter a person.

[Snake]

Maybe it's high time to have a system that turns excessive hit into a penalty to damage. It makes sense. A high Dexterity means you'll have to refine your blows better. Imagine if putting too much on one made it harder on the other and forced us to choose a balance?

Excessive STR = lower hit
Excessive SKI = lower damage

--But.

Eh. As long as all classes don't get some Hit/Evade rebalance on their bonuses I don't think fixing Glancing Blows, reverting Evasion or whatever will amount to anything, personally. So many little things need addressing. The 'bigger ones' like Glancing Blows are just a consequence of the 'bad roots'.

[Poruku]

Ever since the change to glancing blows making them less common I'd say it feels pretty decent. Evasion is just a bit spiky in terms of damage reduction. It takes good RNG to actually be tanky with evasion

[Lolzytripd]

I'm happy with it as it currently is, my only grievance now is with blind and the formula

[Senna]

The main problem with this one check new system is that it heavily favors hitting than evading. Because of this, it gives off the impression that being evasive is dead. Why? One needs to overdo it in their evade just to TRY and proc glancing at least twice a fight. The main classes that are being used at the moment focus on completely removing someone's ability to evade or actively stack a lot of hits, to the point, even if they were to buff themselves up, it wouldn't make much of a difference. (*COUGH* Like Black Knight *COUGH*)

Fern is correct, evade is currently in a really bad spot.

They either suffer from Blessed, Bloodhunt after the enemy abuses evade ignoring skill/spell or super nerf the targets evade via Glow, Flatfoot, Frozen, Stealing buff, dismissing buff, Touki, Magnet and other of the many debuffs. (Can go on but this list will be too long)

It doesn't help there aren't many hit nerfing options outside of...4? Around 4 with the two universal being Fear and Blind, which can be lessen with to Talent/Trait/Race. (Fear, Blind, Smoke and Light Shaft)

It is also the reason why tanks have become more popular over time. If an evade build is going to take full damage anyways despite how much they stack or tried to, with little chance of glancing unless they're very lucky, they believe they might as well build reduction to reduce some damage along with a lot of health.

There's no point in building evade if, at max, all the person has to do is apply one debuff and render the evade useless since the game uses one check instead of two now.


While I do like the one check system, I believe some adjustment to classes and enchantments would be needed. (*Some more hit debuff options would be nice.*)

[FaeLenx]

100% damage reduction is incredibly powerful and should be incredibly rare and difficult to achieve. The only way it could be balanced is if it was somehow lessened by Defense and Resistance so you didn't have someone who was stacking a 30% dodge chance on top of 50% damage reductions.

[Jeff]

I think the approach taken with capping hit and evade is backwards, and overall detrimental to the concept of build diversity. The bonus hit and evade from battle effects was capped, but the baseline was not. This means that races with higher base CEL will simply achieve more evasion than other races if they are built the same way and using the same items. In turn, this creates the arms race against SKI where people are stacking it as high as possible because - and let's be honest - using 3 momentum to do 0 damage feels bad.

The best way to approach this is for Dev to ask himself the following question: "In an ideal scenario between a high evade defender and a high hit attacker, how much of the damage should get through?"

From there, work backwards to cap the out-of-battle hit and evasion. If this is done, then races with higher base CEL can simply look at that characteristic as a way to more easily reach that cap and start investing in other stats. The same principle applies to hit; if you reach that cap, then you're set and you can begin investing in other stats to diversify your build and set it apart from other builds.

To be blunt, if the evade game continues to be a dick measuring contest of numbers, then one side or the other is going to be upset. And most often both sides will be.