[Ranylyn]

I don't know if this thread is a topic about evasion or a suggestion for a new class. I simply wanted to share my experience from another game that had a really cool evasion mechanic that I feel could be adapted into SL2. I'll leave it up to the discussion to decide what direction to take this in.

Game: Dragon Age Inquisition Online Multiplayer
Character: Isabella

In DAI, rogues came in two types: Twin Daggers, and Archers. The dagger rogues are honestly kind of berserker-like; high damage output but frail as hell. Unless they have barriers from a mage ally (DAI has no magical healing; mages instead cast temporary barriers enemies need to break down - think of them like Painkillers in other games) dagger rogues are one hundred percent dependant on attacking from stealth, or they just die. (Unless you were like, really clever with traps and such; and while there were skills to quickly move and all, but you can only set so many skills and using those ate away at offensive options.)

Enter Isabella, a dagger rogue without Stealth. She instead had something much, MUCH better.

Depite having the usual two daggers, she had a third weapon at her hip: A miniature crossbow. This crossbow would mark targets, and dagger skills would then consume those marks to give her stacks of "Evasion." She could hold a maximum of three stacks, and would either lose one when getting hit, or could consume them with a powerful attack. An attack that triggered an evasion stack would do no damage, effectively making her still frail as hell in the hands of an inexperienced player, but potentially solo god material in the hands of a master, as she could survive hits that would kill any other character outright, if she had even a single evasion stack handy. You just had to micromanage her stamina and skills.

I was thinking that a similar mechanic could be implemented in SL2, if done right. Part of what makes Evasion so powerful is how you can stack Evasion with Defenses. So why not some kind of mechanic that builds up stacks of something based on tactical play, but in exchange basically makes you take double damage if you don't have them saved up? I was thinking we could call it something like "Cunning" and have it represent staying a step ahead through tactical decisions.

- If this was implemented as a change to rogues, we could make traps give Cunning if triggered, or something similar. Or perhaps something similar to Archer's Trap Mark, with different skills giving different amounts of cunning when consuming marks.
- Alternatively, it could also potentially be an idea for a duelist promo, to stick with the "mark with one weapon, consume with the other" mechanic that inspired this post.


Anyways, just a random thought since I'm planning to replay DAI soon.

(DAI Multiplayer also has a really fun musician mage I could make a thread about, too, if people wanted to see a bard class that actually plays music as a mechanic instead of only knowing a bunch of preset songs like any other class has skills and spells.)

[Neus]

I don't know if that kind of system would work well in SL2.

There used to be a system in the game in alpha that let blows become 'glancing blows' if you were 'close' to dodging them. I imagine this could be re-added in some fashion. Essentially it meant if the 'hit' roll was high enough to actually hit you, but not beyond a certain range, it became a 'glancing' blow, which was essentially a reverse critical hit, dealing reduced damage. The 'range' it can trigger would probably be determined by your armor type now.

Just an idea. The main problem with evasion is just that it's not reliable and it benefits people who are maximizing damage reduction instead of people who are trying to use it as their only means of safety. It makes sense for evasion to be risky because it's so powerful when it works, and even something like this shouldn't be 'as' reliable as damage reduction from defense/resistance.

Another area that could use some looking into is the various hit/evade buffs. Some are more powerful than others which creates an imbalance in one direction; ideally the buffs/debuffs would have values closer to each other instead.

[Sawrock]

If you do end up doing a 'range' of glancing blows (which sounds like a good idea to me), why not make the range and reduction unique to each armor, and make enchants for boosting said range and reduction?

[Neus]

It's possible, but I'm not really sure what the criteria would be for a shorter or larger range other than 'this torso sucks at the moment'.

[Autumn]

I'd support a system similar to that yeah, I'd like to see how it pads out.

I'd like to see armor matter more for dodge, cause currently armors for dodgies mostly include the utility of it, and unless you're rocking Breezecloth Good fit ninja armor your next best bet is Cloak of Many colors or Armor of Eyes so that you can become more tanky, and not die.

I'd like to see the rise of the viability of dodginess without tons of DR stacked on top.

[Lolzytripd]

so a flat glancing value determined by armor type(5/10/20%), I'd say also let luck add a bonus to it (1% per 3 luck)
Have the reverse crit modifier based on Cel

[Slydria]

Another area that could use some looking into is the various hit/evade buffs. Some are more powerful than others which creates an imbalance in one direction; ideally the buffs/debuffs would have values closer to each other instead.

I definitely think it'd be worth tweaking some of these but I'm going to make a seperate thread for it since it's really a Balance Fu thing: http://www.neus-projects.net/viewtopic.p...amp;t=4181

[Lolzytripd]

Blind is a really strong hit debuff, if you've ever fought a high level shadow guardian without blind immunity as a basic attack build you are going to have a bad time