Dexterity, We Have a Problem.

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golem09 wrote:

I just had another idea, although this would be quite a big change to the game.

str currently gives you 1 life per 2 str (defensive, total) and 1% melee damage (offensive, percentage).
The defensive one is added primarily by the str stat alone + special nodes and some enhanced equip. The offensive one is a multiplier for a stat that is primarily from a weapon.

Now dex.
dex currently gives you 2 accuracy per 1 dex (offensive, total) and 1% evasion per 5 dex (defensive, percentage).
First of all, this is turned around, but now look at the stat-origins:
The defensive one (evasion) is NOT primarily from a stat, but a multiplier from your armor.
The offensive one (accuracy) is primarily from the dex stat + special nodes and enhanced equip.
Now what if whe turn dex around and make it similar to str.

Dex could give you 2 evasion for 1 dex (defensive, total) and 1% accuracy for 5 dex (offensive, percentage).
For that to work, the stat origins would have be reworked as well.
The defensive (evasion) would now be primarily be a from the dex stat and sometimes enhanced by special nodes and equip.
The offensive (accuracy) would now come primarily from weapons.

ALL THIS MEANS:
1. No Evasion from equip. Str and Dex gear would now BOTH be primarily armour gear.
Str is not influencing the armour rating in any way, SO WHY SHOULD IT BE EXCLUSIVE TO STR BUILDS?

2. ACCURACY FROM EQUIP. I think this would be the most work in all this. All weapons have now not only a damage rating, but a WEAPON SPECIFIC ACCURACY RATING.

The result:

str and dex builds now both use armour gear. str builds stack a lot of armour because the gear that requires str has more armour in general and stack life with their multiplier.
dex builds, here we come. Those have now armour by default. Their evasion comes from a high dex rating and not by using big eva equip. They get accuracy by using accurate weapons, plus their dex multiplier.

Both builds now get TOTAL POINTS for their way of defense and a PERCENTAGE MULTIPLIER on their way of offense.
SINCE NONE OF THEM INFLUENCE ARMOUR, BOTH GET ARMOUR.
One stacks life, the other stacks evasion.

Which is a big difference, because so far it's like this:
One stacks life AND armour, the other just stacks evasion.

This is the only solution I could come up with, that doesn't destroy the neat and tidy way that every one of the mainstats just influences TWO things and nothing else.
But it would need a lot of work on the equip of the whole game.
But I think an accuray stat on weapons make more sense than an evasion stat on armour.
I think this just might work.

I really like this. ::thumbs up::

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golem09 wrote:

I just had another idea, although this would be quite a big change to the game.

str currently gives you 1 life per 2 str (defensive, total) and 1% melee damage (offensive, percentage).
The defensive one is added primarily by the str stat alone + special nodes and some enhanced equip. The offensive one is a multiplier for a stat that is primarily from a weapon.

Now dex.
dex currently gives you 2 accuracy per 1 dex (offensive, total) and 1% evasion per 5 dex (defensive, percentage).
First of all, this is turned around, but now look at the stat-origins:
The defensive one (evasion) is NOT primarily from a stat, but a multiplier from your armor.
The offensive one (accuracy) is primarily from the dex stat + special nodes and enhanced equip.
Now what if whe turn dex around and make it similar to str.

Dex could give you 2 evasion for 1 dex (defensive, total) and 1% accuracy for 5 dex (offensive, percentage).
For that to work, the stat origins would have be reworked as well.
The defensive (evasion) would now be primarily be a from the dex stat and sometimes enhanced by special nodes and equip.
The offensive (accuracy) would now come primarily from weapons.

ALL THIS MEANS:
1. No Evasion from equip. Str and Dex gear would now BOTH be primarily armour gear.
Str is not influencing the armour rating in any way, SO WHY SHOULD IT BE EXCLUSIVE TO STR BUILDS?

2. ACCURACY FROM EQUIP. I think this would be the most work in all this. All weapons have now not only a damage rating, but a WEAPON SPECIFIC ACCURACY RATING.

The result:

str and dex builds now both use armour gear. str builds stack a lot of armour because the gear that requires str has more armour in general and stack life with their multiplier.
dex builds, here we come. Those have now armour by default. Their evasion comes from a high dex rating and not by using big eva equip. They get accuracy by using accurate weapons, plus their dex multiplier.

Both builds now get TOTAL POINTS for their way of defense and a PERCENTAGE MULTIPLIER on their way of offense.
SINCE NONE OF THEM INFLUENCE ARMOUR, BOTH GET ARMOUR.
One stacks life, the other stacks evasion.

Which is a big difference, because so far it's like this:
One stacks life AND armour, the other just stacks evasion.

This is the only solution I could come up with, that doesn't destroy the neat and tidy way that every one of the mainstats just influences TWO things and nothing else.
But it would need a lot of work on the equip of the whole game.
But I think an accuray stat on weapons make more sense than an evasion stat on armour.
I think this just might work.

Base accuracy on each weapon would be a very welcome improvement and give the ability to deflate the numbers used (2 for each dexterity can easily get to high numbers and with liberal +x% accuracy it gets pretty extreme if you get some items too. The base hit chance is not bad and accuracy is therefore mostly an option for most characters), as long as the weapons have a progression of accuracy it will make the stat a lot more useful!

I also agree that evasion as +x instead of +x% would give a higher upside to dexterity characters in especially the early game and make them a lot more disticnt from the other classes.

The core problem of survivability, however, is only improved slightly. There is a need for a way to get your hp up in especially early game, to increase hit-survival.

Interesting thought: What if the armour for dexterity did not have any evasion, but +HP as main stat? That would improve survivability immensely and, balanced correctly, it would improve the incentive to go for hybrid gear a lot.

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radiatoren wrote:

The core problem of survivability, however, is only improved slightly. There is a need for a way to get your hp up in especially early game, to increase hit-survival.

Interesting thought: What if the armour for dexterity did not have any evasion, but +HP as main stat? That would improve survivability immensely and, balanced correctly, it would improve the incentive to go for hybrid gear a lot.

I already included in my original suggestion that dex characters now get to have armour on their gear and NO evasion anymore. That way even if you are hit, which is rarer than on not evasion chars, you still have a lot of damage reduction.

The basic problem with evasion is that it's not a base armor type, but rather a support type, you get hit less often. That is useful with either armor or energy shield because it makes them more useful. It is not good on it's own as an "equal" armor type because the 5% of the time you do get hit at higher levels your going to die unless you have a ton of health and/or health regeneration from the strength side of the skill web.

Perhaps it would work best if we did the following:

1) Make evasion the + rather than the +% ability as suggested by Golem09, but rather than having evasion gear provide +armor have it instead provide other stats, such as +attack speed, + movement speed, even more +dex. At the same time add movement penalties more directly to armor, as a visible stat so the two types of protection become even more distinct.

2) Cap the maximum evasion at 90% so your getting hit 10% of the time instead of 5%, yes I know a nerf isn't going to be popular but I want getting hit to be something you expect, not something you fool yourself into thinking is an unlikely event.

3) Finally the new stuff people might like. Evasion starts out changing some of the damage taken into a "bleeding" D.O.T so that you have time to use flasks, run from the battle, or whatever else you find to soften the killing blow.

As you get more evasion the % of damage turned into bleeding goes up. Perhaps it's even a 1 for one thing even, so if you have 25% chance to evade you have a base 25% of every hit transformed into damage over time.

If you have 90% chance to evade 90% of the damage would be stacking onto you as damage over time until eventually if your not careful . . . your a dead man walking. It would be a totally different dynamic defense that could survive entirely on it's own.

4) People who get evasion to a point where it should be over 90% should see the time between D.O.T ticks go up giving them more time to run, kill weak mobs, and use flasks to help them survive.

5) High accuracy should actually counter evasion so that in PVP the best person to fight a high dex/evasion character is another high dex character, or at least one that has taken points in accuracy making it a more interesting and dynamic stat.


6)Hope people like the suggestion. I tried to come up with a solution that didn't take +health away from strength, but still improved dexterity by quite a bit.

The trouble with some of your proposed ideas, John, is that it would be incredibly difficult for GGG to communicate these mechanics to players without a very detailed explanation. I think there could be a much simpler way to make evasion useful.

Nerf armor by adding in Armor Penetration and making it fairly common on rare monsters. This would allow them to lower the overall damage of monsters in the game by a bit so that Evasion characters aren't demolished like when they get hit.

I'm pretty confident that GGG has placed more life nodes in the Dex tree for .9.11, but we'll have to see. That would be a necessity in my opinion. At least a couple more islands of it.

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echephron wrote:

No more accuracy. Base chance to hit is 95% before evasion. Everyone has base accuracy, and whatever your critical hit% is gets added to your chance to hit.

This idea is not new, and I find it to be very interesting. I think it might be a good idea for GGG to fool around with this and see how it feels. I don't think I would put it as high as 95% though.

I would suggest removing the majority of the smaller Accuracy nodes which provide a lot of clutter to the Passive tree and making it a mostly item-based stat (while keeping certain Accuracy nodes in the skill tree that heavily focus on Accuracy with certain weapons or larger ones like Deadeye.) Accuracy also should endure much less relative diminishing as you level up. With an Accuracy stat with a much smaller appetite for +Accuracy, removing the excessive Accuracy nodes from the tree would definitely be possible.

Important to read

I still like Accuracy mods on weapons and items, however. It helps distinguish the great from the godly in a way. With my idea above, it would make every little bit go much further.

• This would reduce stat inflation of +Accuracy rating on items, because the amount of +Accuracy you need to get 1% Accuracy becomes a bit high as you level up.
• It allows players to grab much more important nodes since people grab Accuracy because they want to fix a negative part of their character, not adding a positive part. I don't think that's the right reason to allocate something as hugely important and limited as a passive skill point. People like grabbing big nodes that specialize their characters, not smaller ones that generalize.

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echephron wrote:

Dex boosts attack speed instead of accuracy, with a support skill gem/keystone which lets you apply this bonus to cast speed.

Now the first part is another rather old idea that has been thrown around in conjunction with removing Accuracy a lot, but that doesn't make it any less relevant. I like the idea a lot. It makes more sense for Dex characters to be more nimble, and this would definitely separate Dex as its own stat rather than being a supplement to Strength for the most part.

Adding a Keystone and a Support Gem like the one you suggested would be something that could potentially add an entirely new dimension to the game. It's like Iron Grip for Dex Casters, and I LOVE it.

I really like this idea, and if GGG implements things that are along these lines (Strength used for Bows, Dex used for Casters) then it only furthers how great this game is. These types of ides are by far the most brilliant, and I'm really excited to see if this gets used.

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echephron wrote:

Evasion Armor could be the one armour that does not reduce movespeed, but its not a big deal to me.

Rather than that, I would ask that pure +armour pieces reduce movement speed the most, followed by +armour & +evasion pieces, then +evasion, +evasion & +ES, and last pure +ES pieces which would not reduce movement speed at all. I think it's nice to make distinctions like these between the armor pieces.

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echephron wrote:

Evasion gets glancing blows which deal a set amount of reduced damage. Without accuracy, there would be no way to mitigate evasion aside from spells. Elemental damage and most spells ignore armour(but armour needs STR which mitigates spells through more HP). Chaos ignores ES. So just Spells ignore evasion? Guess that's ok.

Spells are definitely the counter to evasion, but you have to keep in mind that they aren't going to remove something like Accuracy, but rather probably modify it. The reason for this is because of the following formula for chance to hit
This calculates how things attack each other and is a fundamental part of the game. It also distinguishes mobs like archers from other less-accurate mobs, and I like that. But I agree, every defense needs its counter.

Like you pointed out - Strength, armour, and health all go hand in hand, so there really isn't a total counter to it. Elemental ignores armour, sure, but not health. There really is no physical counter for armour, though, which I think is a huge problem with the game's current design. See my post above for what I think on that.

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echephron wrote:

Oh, and Iron Reflexes is stupid. If anything it should be the other way around with Deflection armour.

I agree that it is stupid as well.

Great ideas here. Thank you for rekindling this thread with such a quality post.

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YoMicky wrote:

The trouble with some of your proposed ideas, John, is that it would be incredibly difficult for GGG to communicate these mechanics to players without a very detailed explanation. I think there could be a much simpler way to make evasion useful.

Nerf armor by adding in Armor Penetration and making it fairly common on rare monsters. This would allow them to lower the overall damage of monsters in the game by a bit so that Evasion characters aren't demolished like when they get hit.

I'm pretty confident that GGG has placed more life nodes in the Dex tree for .9.11, but we'll have to see. That would be a necessity in my opinion. At least a couple more islands of it.

I think some of the problem here is my own desire to go into ramifications and details that the average player doesn't need or want to know. Here is how I'd explain the idea to the masses:

"You now get points of evasion based on how much dexterity you do regardless of how much armor you wear, or what type of armor you wear.

Evasion is capped at 90% but for every point of evasion 1% of damage taken is translated into bleed damage which happens slowly over time giving you time to use flasks and/or run.

Extremely high evasion slows how fast you lose health from the bleed damage so feel free to stack straight dexterity and experiment with all three types of armor!"

Everything else is something players could learn and/or figure out simply by playing and watching how dex based monsters react to their hits, and/or what stats now drop on dex based "armor".

Those are definitely some serious overhauls to the current system, ones that I'm not sure GGG would be willing to make but I like the line of thought you're going along.

I would refer you to Chris' post on the bottom of the first page of this thread. Although this thread is about Elemental Damage, I find it important to relate it to how they may intend to fix full evasion builds in the future.

I would consider your ideas to be a huge buff to the current state of evasion that would throw things off balance, that's why I find it important that you read what he says about the Circle of Balance™. I find that a nerf to armour would be more than enough for them to do. Evasion is a % chance to nullify an attack completely, and the mechanic is experiencing the same problems that it always does when it rears its head in other games.

I don't think buffing it out of recognition is the answer, I think increasing the survivability by slightly nerfing the more inherently over-powered mechanic(pure damage reduction) and then rebalancing damage output from mobs around that new system is the way to go.

That's just my opinion, anyway. :)

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YoMicky wrote:

I don't think buffing it out of recognition is the answer, I think increasing the survivability by slightly nerfing the more inherently over-powered mechanic(pure damage reduction) and then rebalancing damage output from mobs around that new system is the way to go.

That's just my opinion, anyway. :)

It's a good opinion, unfortunately the circle of balance works in both directions. Lets see if I can convince you by hypothetically going with your suggestion.

I slightly nerf armor mitigation, and suddenly strength characters are taking more damage, and the duelist takes a huge nerf as he uses both armor and evasion.

Meanwhile nothing has really changed for the Ranger. Pure evasion still is awesome 95% of the time, but 5% of the time high damage kills you instantly at higher levels.

Now the duellist, the ranger, and the marauder all want damage nerfed so they can survive better. But a nerf to damage is a huge buff to life recovery, and to energy shield, both of which now have to be nerfed to keep things balanced.

So we keep nerfing, and suddenly we reach the same point we are at now. Evasion is certainly balanced right now. The ranger takes about the same damage, as a percentage of life, that everyone else does.

Unfortunately all of that damage is concentrated in the small number of hits that get through his evasion. This results in the APPEARANCE of your ranger taking more damage than someone with armor or energy shield. It also results in a lot of unavoidable, non-strategic, deaths that aren't fun for players.

My alternative may seem a bit extreme to you, but it actually doesn't change anything beyond spreading out that concentrated damage so that it can be dealt with by players rather than coming in a single huge, unworkable mess.

The other viable alternative that comes to mind would be getting rid of evasion entirely, as it really is a broken mechanic. But I think that suggestion would be unacceptable to most of the community.

I suggest making Dex improve armor and attackspeed, so the benefits are more consistent and reliable.