[Ryuzaki]

My suggestion:

delet lightning.

It used to be my favorite element in gaming overall; because a lot of the time lightning damage is tied to stuns. Now? I genuinely can't fucking stand it because of critfucky lightning chars. Remove lightning crits, give us lightning stuns instead to actually make things interesting. Or just do what these folks suggest and half the dam of lightning crits, w/e just nerf it please.

Sincerely,
The guy who regularly does 250 dam on evasion with fucking hirazuki

[Autumn]

If anything needs to happen to lightning its just the half-GUI modifier on the crits themselves, they already get an astonishing 25% base critical damage along with weapon scaling up to 140%, or even with the case of magic where its not only weapon scaling but also elemental atk scaling that gains its crit from the very same stat it gets its damage.

I'm sick of lightning, lets move onto another element, its the best element in the game to align yourself.

[Shujin]

Removing 25% tops from it's otherwise near 100% power boost ain't all that big of a nerf, And it still makes no sense to be critally hit by an attack you evaded.

I mean currently you get easily 50%ish from guile, 15 from the passive, weapon crit boost which can be anything from 5-I think the highest was 50%ish with daggers, not to mention all the other boost you can slap on top of it like the basic boost from the skill you use like 140% SWA (Multis on multis are alwys fun), or stuff like hunted or absolute death or what have you. I REALLY doubt cutting guile in half is doing all that much on it's own.

[Autumn]

Then the next best option is to change the effect of lightning criticals entirely, its not healthy, and could be adjusted to something else, slapping on evasion checks to bypass it is no better than my option, where in evasion becomes a lot better than it already is but tanks still suffer to the raw damage output of lightning criticals as a whole, you'll probably just see dodge based tanks rise up tremendously once again.

[Shujin]

Thats why I said both could happen and it would still be very strong. So tanks get out of this a bit better aswell, which they certainly do need.
It's not about whos change is "Better", since the changes aim at two different character types.

The whole thing why Global evasion became a thing was because everyone agreed that Autohits, while minmaxing entirely on your damage stats was dumb and unfair over speedy chars that die in like 3-4 hits from that with no counter play. Lightning crits are that but worse. You can easily entirely ignore hit stats for the most part and just otherwise bump your crit chance/damage high and you deal much more damage than you would by just hitting someone with a normal autohit even though you trigger evasion.

Lightning has been a huge issue for a while now, something should happen and just cutting Guile in half alone is a REALLY small overall damage change which is at max something around 25%(of something around 80%ish-110%ish, just from the crit part, mind ya.), while some other damage sources get barely touched at all since many of the Lightning users even don't build guile all that much cause SWA is more useful overall (Cause of the Skill multiplicator) So I half expect people to just go "Screw Guile" and nothing really changed in the end all that much.

[Chaos]

History shows that doubling down on nerfs tends to completely ruin the skill/aspect in question.

That being said, making Evasion even more powerful is not the answer to Lightning Criticals; all it does is make Dodge even more of the cover-all-bases defense it has been for the past numbers of months. The only thing on this topic I'd agree with is lowering the power of Lightning Criticals themself.

Or, alternatively, provide ways to mitigate/negate Lightning Criticals independent of aspects that aren't Critical Evade and Equipment/Skills.

[Snake]

I mean. I wouldn't mind if lightning got useless.

- It alone means 1 race is unplayable in this current meta. Mechanations.

- It has the most game-changing status effect attached to it. (Interference is just nasty, you being a healer or not.)

- It can cause immense, unmatched damage, easier and with less setup than other things. (Charge Mind + Ryemei/Overload is the most known, but the list of exploits is just H U G E. And most of it lies on having a Kensei/Spellthief with Splash stolen. Or, how about we throw Death Knighting on top of it, for more damage?)

- It has multiple ways to have such damage multiplied by reducing the enemy's resistances. (Splash and Mercalan Mist is outright -40% Lightning Resist. Now be a Mechanation fighting against that? -65% Lightning Resist, and then you receive a critical hit on top of it... Omae wa mo...)

- Luck affects all combat statistics, making you both able to ignore Evasion sometimes, be dodgy, and have more reliance to proc its effect (unlike Cinders, where it requires the enemy to move/stay in them, or pull effects, which require Magnetize).

- It caused Crystal Rose to be nerfed wrongly, if the problem was the absurd critical damage it pulled. (And still does.)

- It gives you free movement with Thunder Hooves, making you able to kite the enemy. (Yes, nerfed, but gets on this list of 'why is Lightning so worth')

- It has 100% synergy with a material, Conduiz, making Lightning Mages able to use their element with literally anything they can shove Conduiz in.

You get why now? This element alone has too much going for it. Even if you just hammer down a little of its power by asking GUI bonuses to get shaved, it will still be super good.

In my opinion, the chances of lightning impact criticals happening should be halved by default, along with the critical damage coming from GUI. Critical hit procs are fine enough with basic attacks, and should stay there, not go to skills or be as reliable on skills than it is on basics. Skills/Magic vs Basic Attacks is too much of a giant gap to have such gimmicks applied.

[Fern]

I object.

-Mechanations aren't entirely worthless in the current meta. Ironically some of them are the ones running lightning, even. Odds are that if you're playing one with intent to PVP, you don't want to keep that lightning weakness, so you cover it up. If you're not doing so, that's asking for your enemy to abuse your elemental weakness. This is a common strategy with all other races possessing some kind of weakness - players cover it up so it can't be exploited.

-Lightning's major exploit comes from Charge Mind with Ryemei. Kensei/Spellthief generally does less lightning damage in comparison to a full shock-mage, not to mention that pulling off Death Knighting is difficult in most cases going off the current meta. Sometimes, you also even have to go to a corner to guarantee it, which buys the other setup time.

-Mercalan Mist rarely goes off in practice due to the common silence locks, Splash however is a big issue of its own, being 1M and giving significant effects overall as well as doing decent damage. Sometimes over 100.

-Luck targets Evade, Hit, Critical, and Critical Evade. People that stack LUC across the roof usually don't have many points to allocate for defensive stats, even with Fugu Katsu. At best they get -some- defenses or have to pump up CEL. Which leads them to being more prone to getting shredded in the autohit meta.

-Crystal Rose's size change was unnecessary in my opinion, but its own scaling feels way too high.

-Most people building Thunder Hooves auto-enchant Talvyd instead of Redgull and opt for Wind anyway. It's either that, or a Soldier with Charge, or a Rogue with Western Wind. Kensei/Spellthief with Thunder Hooves and Redgull isn't common at all - in fact, only three people actively run it as of recent times.

-Conduiz is also an issue of its own, and should have less effectiveness compared to other casting tools.

Allow me to provide some numerical examples.

This is a Kensei/Spellthief's max Swift Crystal Rose damage, with spirit'd Absolute Death, Fallcall, LV17 Hunted and Splash.



This is an Evoker with Charge Mind and no Guile. WIL/CEL/LUC stacking and a Qinglongram (50% WIL CEL LUC tome). Over 145 Scaled Weapon Attack and 100+ Lightning ATK.



The former requires a longer setup and has it more difficult overall to maintain their damage in an actual fight.

The latter doesn't need to Charge Mind in most cases, and tends to pack a Heron Feather / Screaming Tome to deal with Silence.

If you want Lightning nerfed, then I'd say to lower Conduiz's effectiveness -and- lower the GUI bonus. Making it not land a critical hit on Evasion will encourage more of a dodge meta.

[Neus]

The way everything interacts wouldn't work with the suggested change, anyway. Lightning criticals are determined before the damage is applied, while evasion is applied when you take damage.

[Noxid]

I'd agree with lowering conduiz effectiveness. Doesn't seem right to me that a spellblade type character should be better at casting spells than a dedicated mage.