Hear me out... We keep talking about glancing this and bring back evasion DR and whatever bell curve maths and such, but I wanted to add my suggestion that I think would not be frustrating to play against and would remove the need for gouging stats.

Instead of making hit and evade a direct comparison, we make them entirely independent.

There is no more evade value. Only evade DR and hit chance.

The attacker rolls to hit based on a bellcurve formula with his own hit. Skills and buffs can modify this chance. For instance, an evade buff or passive would mean attackers get reduced hit. This means you want accuracy even when fighting tanks, which makes sense. In actual combat, even heavily armored combatants will try to not get hit, but they will be far less effective at it.

Example:
50 hit: 10%
120 hit: 50%
170 hit: 75%
220 hit: 90%
etc. I dunno how the math would look like. But basically hitting high amounts of hit means good chance to hit but never guaranteed.

When an attack "misses", it applies evasion DR.

Your CEL determines how much damage reduction you get from evasion proccing.
10 CEL: 11%
50 CEL: 55%
so you can reach fairly good DR value with your CEL. Skills might increase this

Effects when an attack "misses"
- Defender always take some damage, reduced by evasion DR. So there is no "full evade"
- Skills do activate status resistance checks, but defender gains +1% bonus status resistance per evasion DR
- Weapon on-hit and on-crit effects don't proc
- Most skill effects that are guaranteed still activate, like fleur(?).



Evade from your gear and certain skills reduces enemy's hit value! Making your CEL more valuable. So evade builds would be centered around trying to have better chances of proccing evasion and increasing DR.

So for instance, maybe a guy has 200 hit, so his hit chance is 85%. The enemy has gear (25), a passive (20) and one buff (35) that reduce hit by 80, so he has 50% chance to hit instead of 85%. And his DR is 60% from raw CEL, so the evasion build is getting an averaged 30% damage reduction from evasion with, let's say, a medium amount of investment. Meanwhile, a tank build with no CEL invested would get about 1.5% DR from evasion in that scenario.

Balancing this part would be quite delicate but if the hit chance formula is solid and the ways to modify hit feel fair, the rest will fall into place.


Of course this is just an example but the idea would be that the common evasion build would be able to reach an evasion chance that gives them good DR without needing to focus their whole build around it, allowing them to get other kinds of defenses as well like good hp and DR. You just invest however much you want into each and it gives proportional results. 

It would also put an element of ever-present RNG to common combat which would make plays less "guaranteed" even in tank matchups.

Skill would still be an important stat, but you wouldn't need to reach a specific amount or compete with gouged numbers on the other side. So overall people would be able to put stats a bit more spread out and focus on what they want. If they want high hit, they can invest more and there's skills that will help with that, but it would never completely invalidate evasion.

Evasion ignore abilities would still exist, but since evade no longer requires going all in, it would be more like a nice way to counter evaders instead of a way to completely destroy their build.

You would probably see many builds with something like 50 cel, 30 def, 30 res, and a bit of evade buffing, getting decent mileage out of hybriding. Or super dodge+tank builds who are very tough but aren't untouchable (still need SR versus DoTs...). Or maybe a tank gets like 30 CEL and a little bit of evasion passives to complement his tankiness.


Overall, it would take work to fine tune the math and balance, but if gotten right, I think it would be a great way to future-proof the balance of evade and hit and reduce the unfairness of certain matchups. No more feeling like your build is completely useless, whether that's because you can't hit a guy or you can't dodge a guy!

Of course, everything in this post is up for debate and ultimately it is not meant to be a suggestion to be implemented as is but something to offer alternatives and a new way to look at the evasion problem. I'd love to hear your feedback and discuss it!

Every time Unholy Diver or Kick Play proc trickery, your tempo is reset before the dance happens. Very annoying, making the Dancer/DB archetype essentially impossible to play without great frustration

Rustic is now just a worse Reaper enchant. Can it get bumped up to +10 Power to compensate for the lack of durability?

Currently when you are knocked down and get back up, your hotbar stops working when it becomes your turn again. This is restored upon using a skill in the skill menu manually but can get annoying in encounters in PvE against enemies that spam knockdown such as Gold Beetles or Ice Giants.

Maybe it's just me going through a nostalgic phase right now and trying to get back into SL2.
But the past 14 years of playing your games, for better or worse, have been a wild ride.

All starting with Mitadake High (And by extension SL1 not a few weeks later), in my high school years. (Not including a years worth of SS13 prior).
I was playing Sigrogana Legends before I ever even touched D&D, or any other TTRPG, and it has deeply affected my introduction into roleplaying and the genre.

So thank you big man, keep doin' what you're doing. 

Munch

It is my opinion that currently there's a big problem in terms of kiting in this game.
People do it to let cooldowns refresh.
People do it to spam long ranged attacks.
People do it to run out the clock.
People do it to let people proc die hard. . .

There are so many ways to escape, and not very many ways to effectively chase, without leaving yourself open or creating a stalemate situation. I feel that this leads to unfair situations that tend to result in players feeling. . Dissatisfied in combat.

If you lose to someone just running away all game, or win after 60 turns of chasing, its just not fun. It isn't very heroic, interesting, or enjoyable.

For that reason I propose a sweeping change to most if not all techniques that move the character around:
Namely, for them to have the same effect that charge and thunder steps now have.

The ones that cost 1 or less momentum, or move 7 or more tiles: Winged Serpent, Haunting,  Blink (Yes I want this changed), Aerial Chaser, Ice Skate: I believe they should all go on a 3 turn cooldown if you don't end up within 3 tiles of an enemy unit.

The ones that move less: Flip Shot, Retreat Shot, Parting Shot, Sidecut, Kagekiri, Shukuchi, Crescent Rook, Bright Bishop, Silcut, Aligminato, Warp Strike, Pinball strike: I believe they should all have a 2 turn cd, if you end up not within 3 tiles of an enemy after movement.



And finally I also think Create Shade should have a 2 turn cooldown. Being able to spam it endlessly is so easily done, cheap to do, and draws out fights like crazy. I've survived at 0 fp for a good 6 turns straight just spamming this until I had enough fp regen to heal back up. The range on it is insane, and its only 3-4 momentum generally to use. I wouldn't even mind if it got a three turn cooldown.

This leaves certain things like Black Bolt, Detogate, Mass Rescue; and Charge Order still able to kite potentially, but I think that's fine enough. . . Charge order is 3m so you can't really use it to easily kite for yourself completely. Black Bolt and Detogate can be dodged and require signifigant investment, same with Vydel. . . And Rescue is only useful in a teamfight situation, and still draws them all together which sets them up for potential area of effect attacks.

If this change is made, then a lot of high mobility techniques can be used as a gap closer, without people being able to spam them to run away. Now if you want to run away, you have to stack movement tiles which has an increased amount of counterplay available in terms of traps and tiles.

I wasn't really done with this but since people are taking pieces from it already (you know who you are!) and are making threads about flip shot I feel pushed to go ahead and put it in.


It's clear that Ranger has issues on both sides of the aisle. It has highs that other classes have difficulty touching, with builds like Ghost/Ranger and Hexer/ranger (especially when piloted by doriads) while also having massive lows if you don't play one of the cleared class combos or you decide, for some foolish reason, to use strength-based bows. 


I'm going to look to equalize some of the highs and some of the lows here in order to make it not so bipolar on whether you completely shred an enemy before they touch you, or they just completely destroy you.


We'll start with **Archer**


Starbow and Aerial Razor are both fine. 


Snake Shot: Gives a power malus on hit (-30/25/20/15/10), drop the poison to (2/4/6/8/10). If the target is poison immune, instead inflict snake wrap (I see you, Glykin). Keep it at 10 FP for all ranks.


Pulling Shot: Remove the damage bonus. It's a massive utility spell already and doesn't need extra damage.

Cripple Arm/Cripple leg: 20% hit reduction is absolutely massive and should not exist on spells in the modern CEL landscape. Make it like cutthroat and have it be minus a set amount. You want Leg to hurt dodgies but it'll never hit a dodge in its current incarnation.


Fortune Wind is one of the worst pure evade skills there is. It’s a markedly worse distortion pre **50** scaled luck and is then worse on duration. Make it 4 turns pretty please?


Entangle is adequate.
Knock 1 range off longdraw.



Moving onto Ranger
Retreat Flight: This thing looks terrible compared to Flip shot, worse in every way save for very niche cases where it can save you 1M as a flier. Reduce its FP to 13/10/7. Let it be variable for length between 1 and 5.


Flip Shot: Here it comes.. Reduce range by 1 and add a 1 turn CD


Twin Shot: This is pretty nuts since the rework. Make it 110/120/130.


Forest Fiend: Just make it a 3-range AoE for a spell that's already never used.


Frigid Arrow: Just fine


Wind Runner: Let it become a 1-6 range spell and have it leave lingering damage (slash) for 10/20/30 for 2 turns. On Annorum, make it do 40 in addition to other effects.
TBolt: It's awesome. Yay.


Agile: Please please please stop its targeting pattern from existing. I wanna see how it plays without that.


Gentle Garden: Change it to 80 + 1.1 SWA at max. (50/65/80)/(90/100/110% SWA)
Example calcs: 110 Swa =  201, 130 SWA = 223. Spirited it becomes  227, 251
This makes it always worse than current version and doesn’t let people offhand a bow for ranger heals for nothing.


Cherry Blossom: Heal component changed to(40/50/60)/(90/100/110% SWA)
Example calcs: 110 Swa =  181, 130 SWA = 203. Spirited it becomes  202, 226


This makes it always worse than the current version and doesn’t let people offhand a bow for ranger heals for nothing.


Forest Walk: 2 turn CD or nerf it's range (or both)


Annorum: The gauge is kinda tough sometimes. Can we make it so all archer spells build gauge to 3? This is just fortune wind added on. Shouldn't be a big deal. 


This is also kinda setting up things so that bows can be something like Skill or Guile (Guile works out better probably cause we already have dagger mutates) scaling without having so much power. Most of the ‘good’ ranger builds currently run mutates or howling handshot regardless. Please.

This should only take effect if you have no weapons equipped, and Grudge Claws are regarded as active, so you're not permanently subjected to full Holy weakness even when you're not using the racial trait.

Thanks for coming to my short ted talk.

Either do this, or let Fruit of Memories reset all of your Chimera racials too.

Joke topic aside.

Can we, atleast in Meiaquar, buy simple basic Handguns in the store? 

Currently they are not buyable and I think also not craftable?

Flip shot

1: Has decent range
2: Allows you to move while attacking
3: Allows you to select a specific spot to move (unlike retreat flight)
4: Has bonus hit
5: Has no cooldown and low FP cost

This skill alone makes ranger worth taking, and also makes ranger a menace in terms of kiting. The sheer mobility of this class can be overwhelming in many cases due to it.

As it stands, you just spam it every single turn and in many cases that makes you momentum positive against your opponent and results in overwhelming wins against anyone who isn't prepared for it. I suggest it gets a nerf. Any nerf, please. Just nerf flip shot.