[MakeshiftWalrus]

Jay » Tue Nov 18, 2014 8:29 pm[/url]"]
If you're not sure, it's best to ask. If you wear something like a Kirosh, the damage type becomes dark damage. No where in my proposal mentions changing the damage from magical to physical.

Right, I had completely forgotten the elemental swords existed. Most of those are at least resistible, though, so I don't see why you'd ever want to change from your far superior Slash damage for those.

Jay » Tue Nov 18, 2014 8:29 pm[/url]"]
There is no real 'loss' when your melee can suddenly target another defensive stat reserved for mages. If Power Gradation became 20 FP as opposed to 10 FP, it'd reinforce some strategy or consideration of skill spamming. A typical ghost or kensei has at least 15-20 will, which is around 220-240 FP. That increase in cost is generous when you consider similar skills like Judgement Blade, and the fact Kensei can passively regenerate FP. It's not quite 'neither Ghost or Kensei typically has a lot of Focus to burn' so much as 'Ghost or Kensei typically burn most of their Focus toward game changing skills; Power Gradation'.

I suppose the comparison to a spell could be made, but considering that it scales off Strength rather than Willpower, checks for accuracy (I know it doesn't matter against BKs, but I'm still including it.) as well as requires you to be in melee range of whoever you want to hit I don't think a raise to the cost would do much other than frustrate the few people who doesn't have a lot of Focus to throw around. Besides, there's still ways to reduce the damage by tons via guarding. Eventually you're going to run out of Focus if you spam PG, especially if your hits won't do anything but hit for 35~ damage per hit while you sit behind your shield. Combined with Monk you're capable of healing it back even.

Jay » Tue Nov 18, 2014 8:29 pm[/url]"]
Lets just say that even with that free +50 Crit Evade for having horrible luck growths, the critical opportunities from Poise, Kensei's Innates, Weapon Parts, Ghost's Passive, and things like VA's Veil off neuters that protection. Anyway, the skill is basically a spell, and I don't think it should benefit from fleur or even critical. It's already heavily benefiting from AD, among other things.

I know it's easy to stack crit chance. Very much so, even for non-Archers. I myself sport a (Boosted) 19 power 40+ crit sword with 5 weight that benefits from Fitting Form. I don't agree with having it lack critical strikes given that's essentially what the Duelist trees work around. Leaving it without a chance to crit would make it worse than most of the Monk skills, to which they could just turn in order to bust down tanks. Hell, we all know Monk/Kensei is broken. And everything benefits from AD, it's not just PG. Literally everything that hurts, AD benefits in a significant way, which I would agree is pretty dumb. But I don't think limiting the skill either would be any better. It's a spiral of getting things banned from its effect until nothing remains. If you give PG the limitation that's going to feel unfair seeing as the monks are still scaling 1-1 on Setting Sun and pretty darn well on Dragon Gale and that it does more/slightly less with an additional effect. We could instead do it to all magical damage-based attacks, but then where would we be?

In my opinion, making PG a promotion skill and increasing the skill's cost slightly would be enough, but not if it's on par with Kensei's costs.