How good is Evasion?

[Hurshana]

I was running the numbers on this--if you decided to chase the highest evasion stats you can reach 79% Evasion, and after calculating for Lucky Breaks that's basically just over 80% Evasion.

On its own I'd say that's pretty good. Just having a high shield item seems like it would get you through most combat.
However, I don't know how enemy stats interact with it. In particular, if enemy Aim/Accuracy does anything to reduce it, or if the two mechanics are entirely separate.

The wiki says that Aim is ranged attack power, but also says it's analogous to Accuracy, but Accuracy is also just defined as a bonus to damage.
There has to be some kind of chance to hit though, because Blindness manipulates that stat.

Anyone know the answer to this?

 

[Savin]

As of the current build of the combat rules, Accuracy and Evasion are direct counters to one another. 1 Accuracy = 1% more likely to hit, and 1 Evasion = 1% less likely to be hit on a 1d100. AIM does contribute to your net Accuracy, as does gear, while Reflexes contribute to your net Evasion. I don't quite remember exactly how many points of an attribute = 1 Acc/Evade at the moment (though AIM is 2 points = 1 damage, iirc).

 

[null_blank]

Evasion caps at 90%

Accuracy has been reworked and now directly counters Evasion.

As a general rule, try to keep your Evasion stat out of negative value as the penalty for having Evasion in the negatives is you will take additional damage for being a slow, clumsy target.

 

[Hurshana]

High evasion does not sound very good in that case.

while Reflexes contribute to your net Evasion. I don't quite remember exactly how many points of an attribute = 1 Acc/Evade at the moment (though AIM is 2 points = 1 damage, iirc).

Are we sure?
When I was playing around I tested with a level 10 Smuggler at 0 and 50 Reflexes--neither altered the Evasion stat as it was listed in the Codex.
Unless it's like Lucky Break and the Reflex Evasion is calculated in combat only.

 

[Savin]

When I was playing around I tested with a level 10 Smuggler at 0 and 50 Reflexes--neither altered the Evasion stat as it was listed in the Codex.
Unless it's like Lucky Break and the Reflex Evasion is calculated in combat only.

The listed values are only from your gear (and maaaaybe perks?).

 

[Theron]

Lucky Breaks is 'Miss Chance'. I'm pretty sure it's separate from Evasion (but is calculated at the same time). Lucky Breaks also gives bonus Defense equal to 1/3 of your Evasion (max 2x Level).

Cloak and Dagger also gives +5 Evasion after a 'basic attack', so isn't counted out of combat.

What I want to know is:
Is Evasion above the cap calculated against enemy Accuracy?
For example: If Steele had 100 total Evasion, and an enemy had 20 Accuracy, does Steele have 80 effective Evasion, or 70?

The blog post linked above mentions 'Ranged weapons no longer miss more easily than Melee'.
Ranged weapon bonus Accuracy currently goes up to 30 (Ice Cappers and Street Sweeper), Melee bonus Accuracy goes up to 16 (Zil Champion's Assegai).
Was the higher Accuracy cap on Ranged weapons meant to offset their innate higher miss chance, and should they be rebalanced now that that is no longer the case?

 

[Hurshana]

Lucky Breaks is separate. The last I heard is that it was calculated after Evasion, which means it's less effective the more Evasion you have.

 

[Theron]

Lucky Breaks is separate. The last I heard is that it was calculated after Evasion, which means it's less effective the more Evasion you have.

That's why it also gives you scaling Defense. And why I want to know if Evasion over the cap still counts against enemy Accuracy.

 

[TheShepard256]

The basic hit chance calculation is: if 1d100 + attacker's ((Physique or Aim)/2.5 + Melee or Ranged Accuracy) < X + target's (Reflexes/2.5 + Evasion), the attack misses; otherwise, it hits. X is the base hit chance, which is 5 if it's the player attacking or 10 otherwise. The 10% miss chance for Lucky Breaks is rolled before this, so its effectiveness is unaffected by Evasion. Evasion is capped at 90 before it's used in any other calculations, so any extra Evasion above 90 has no effect whatsoever.

 

[Theron]

Evasion is capped at 90 before it's used in any other calculations, so any extra Evasion above 90 has no effect whatsoever.

In that case, Stealth Field Generator becomes increasingly obsolete as Passive Evasion rises and completely useless at 90. It won't take much more power creep for that to happen.

Does the Lucky Breaks Defense calculation allow 40*, or is it capped at 30?

*Level 20 x 2, 120 Evasion / 3

Smugglers are going to get hit hard by capped defenses, aren't they? Tech Specialists will keep getting better Shields, Mercenaries will get better Armor, Smugglers will hit 90 passive Evasion this planet or the next, most likely. What do you want to bet enemies will get more accurate?

The only thing I see going forward is consolidating Evasion on fewer items, freeing up equipment slots for other stats.

 

[TheShepard256]

In that case, Stealth Field Generator becomes increasingly obsolete as Passive Evasion rises and completely useless at 90. It won't take much more power creep for that to happen.

Stealth Field Generator grants +80 Evasion, though I don't see why it couldn't be reworked to instead provide a penalty to the attacker's Accuracy in the hit chance calculations, thus keeping it relevant for the entire game.

Does the Lucky Breaks Defense calculation allow 40*, or is it capped at 30?

There's no hard cap on Defense from Lucky Breaks, only the soft caps provided by the hard caps on level and Evasion, so it's effectively capped at 30 by Evasion (and currently capped at 20 by level).

 

[Theron]

Stealth Field Generator grants +80 Evasion, though I don't see why it couldn't be reworked to instead provide a penalty to the attacker's Accuracy in the hit chance calculations, thus keeping it relevant for the entire game.

That's what I meant. +80 is useless if you're already have 90 passive. And not particularly useful if you have 70 passive.
It feels kind of bad to have a perk/ability that goes from possibly overpowered to completely useless. But passive Evasion takes until about Uveto to really come online. I've never tried Disarming Shot. I was planning to, but learning the Corona Lord Flamer was made immune because it would render her harmless was very discouraging.

There's no hard cap on Defense from Lucky Breaks, only the soft caps provided by the hard caps on level and Evasion, so it's effectively capped at 30 by Evasion (and currently capped at 20 by level).

Unfortunate. So Smugglers have a scaling Defense bonus that stops scaling at level 15.

 

[Hurshana]

The issue is that if enemy Accuracy directly counters player Evasion, then you need to be able to counter enemy Accuracy AND still be able to make 80-90% or so of all attacks miss to be competitive with the tankiness or Tech Specialists, especially with how low stats are otherwise on high Evasion equipment.

 

[Savin]

This is a good conversation and i'm not trying to derail it as my perspective is not in opposition to the discussion, more ancillary to it but this conversation highlights why i've never been a fan of evasion as a defence, it's spiky damage, miss, miss, miss, BANG, miss, miss, etc. It makes me nervous as generally if evasion is your defence stat your more standard defence is quite low which makes it so each combat turn is full of risk, 1 solid crit and you're fucked. I much prefer taking more regular and consistent low damage than random massive spikes, something i picked up a hatred of in my WoW healer days.

Still, as i said, this conversation is not really about that, so i hope my comment doesn't feel too out of place.

Enemies can't actually crit in TiTS, unless they have a special ability.

 

[Hurshana]

It's a trade-off, and one I approve of in concept--it's a matter of fine-tuning the numbers, which is rarely easy.
It's worth keeping in mind that TITs has Shields, which mean early damage is usually irrelevant due to them recharging after combat. In theory, some enemies may deal relatively heavy damage to your shield when they hit, but since they should rarely hit in the first place it should be fine so long as you kill them first.

It may actually be the damage that's more a problem--Smugglers seem like they're supposed to be a glass cannon, but their biggest damage numbers come out of using their first ability, which A) costs energy and B) doesn't work on some of the strongest enemies.
In contrast, both Mercenary and Tech Specialist have passive damage boosts to certain weapon types, and Mercenary has a passive armor penetration and increasing damage over time, never mind Rapid Fire, while Tech Specialists have attack drones which get a flat +50 to their damage (if you play Fuck Sense Tech) in addition their own base attack AND the Tech's own weapon damage each turn.

Smugglers need to hit way harder to make their playstyle feel worthwhile, but if they do then it could drastically skew enemy balance.

Hard to say which lever needs to be pulled.

 

[Theron]

Tech Specialists are especially tanky because they can restore Shields 1/fight and auto-regen every round they don't take damage. Combined with a Stun Chance weapon, Stun from Overcharge or Paralyzing Shock and they can have effectively infinite Shields. However, some enemies have attacks that ignore Shields (ex: Corona Lord Flamer, Janeria), making them potentially very dangerous for Tech Specialists.
The really broken Tech Specialist bonus damage is Charge Weapon. +bimboIntelligence Electric damage for the entire fight for 15 Energy.

By +50 Drone Damage, do you mean fully Corrupted, 200 Libido? Sneak Attack/Aimed Shot give bimboIntelligence/2 bonus Damage, so under the same conditions, a Smuggler should be getting +100 damage/attack (if I'm reading it correctly).

Ranged Mercenary bonus damage/shot maxes out at +Level, which is still pretty good. They really benefit from the fact that there's a weapon property (Bonus Hit Rate) that negates the supposed downside of their extra damage (decreased accuracy on subsequent shots). Interestingly, Toughness applies to both HP and Shields.

Tech Specialist and Mercenary +20% damage only applies to the weapon's base damage, and bonus damage from Attributes is additive, so it's not as big as it seems.

I've had success with Stun Chance weapons. Unfortunately, there are only 2 Stun Chance Ranged weapons: Shock Bow and Heavy Slut Ray. Heavy Slut Ray does not benefit from Second Shot unless you use Rapid Fire and doesn't benefit from Aimed Shot in any case and Shock Bow is rather behind the curve at this point. I suspect there won't be many more Ranged Stun Chance weapons added, either, because Rapid Fire + Second Shot exists.

Lucky Breaks was changed to add a little more scaling durability. Unfortunately, it only applies to HP, you need to be stacking Evasion to make the most of it (and most high Evasion has poor other defenses) and it seems to be capped at 30 (because of the Evasion cap), meaning it stops scaling at level 15.

Smugglers do restore all HP with 4 hours Rest, unlike the other classes.
Which reminds me, we can Rest for 2 consecutive 4 hours undisturbed in hostile territory, but need to use a Tent to sleep/level up.

Does anyone else find it odd that the class that gets passive bonuses from increasing Physique has the best Range build in the game, while the class that is described explicitly as using Ranged weapons has the best Melee build (and can ignore Physique while doing it?)

 

[Hurshana]

Wait, does Smuggler get the Fuck Sense perk's conversion of Libido to Int? I thought that was exclusive to Tech Specialists.

ALL classes benefit from Bonus Hit Rate, on both ranged and melee bonus attack. But Mercernaries benefit the most because the highest hitting weapon in the game right now is ranged kinetic

 

[Theron]

Most (all?) Intelligence based combat perks seem to run off of a function called Bimbo Intelligence.

Spoiler: Bimbo Intelligence

public function bimboIntelligence():Number
{
var amount:Number = intelligence();
//Bimbos actually do better with LESS intelligence!
if (hasPerk("Fuck Sense"))
{
//Inverse intelligence + libido - bimbo tech specs can minmax easier whynot~
var bimbInt:Number = (intelligenceMax() - intelligence() + 1);
bimbInt += libido()/10;
//Gotta cap it so it doesn't get FUCKED SILLY
if(bimbInt >= level * 5) bimbInt = level * 5;
//Compare actual intelligence (for exceptions like Dumb4Cum and extra smart bimbos)
return Math.max(bimbInt, amount);
}
return amount;

Looking at the code, it seems like you can't get more than level * 5 effective Intelligence this way. Tech Specialists have special descriptions if they're using Fuck Sense, but it seems to benefit all classes.

Ranged Mercenaries benefit the most because their extra damage is dependent on up to 3 extra attacks with an Accuracy penalty and bonus damage so long as they keep hitting. They also can fire weapons 4 times/round that otherwise don't benefit from Second Shot. The Heavy Slut Ray in particular has Bonus Hit Rate, but can only be fired once/round by other classes, making the flag irrelevant for anyone but Ranged Mercenaries.

Tech Specialist:
Charge Weapon gives normal attacks more damage, effectively stacks with Second Attack, so benefits from Bonus Hit Rate but no more than Second Attack already does.
Overcharge performs one attack for extra damage. Higher multiplier if you have Second Shot. No Accuracy penalty, as far as I'm aware. I haven't actually used this. Good for getting around high Defense? The (one round) Stun is also potentially useful, especially with Rapid Recharge at level 10.

Mercenary:
Power Strike performs one attack for extra damage. And applies Sunder (-50% armor) if you took Rending Attacks. Does not benefit from Bonus Hit Rate. More damage if you have Second Attack.

Smuggler:
Both attacks in a round against a Blinded or Stunned target will count as Aimed Shot/Sneak Attack if they hit. Bonus Hit Rate applies.
I'm pretty sure Stunned targets are auto-hit. Not sure about Blinded.