Dexterity.
The dexterity stat has historically proven to be one of our more problematic areas when it comes to PVP. In general, it either did not influence a class at all, was easy to overcome for a class, or was utterly crippling for a class. This was primarily due to the nature of a binary dodge system. In Achaea missing an attack entirely is so extremely punishing that there was not really a way to make dexterity both impactful across the majority of classes while not also feeling terrible (because ultimately, everyone just hates missing due to rng with very little you can do about it).
As a consequence, we have entirely reworked the dexterity stat and the avoidance skill. Here are the quick changes, with some exposition below. If you aren’t interested in the why and only the what, this is your section!
– Dexterity continues to scale your avoidance score, as do dexterity scaling abilities such as Subterfuge Weaving or Bladedance Acrobatics.
– Missing as a dodge mechanic has been removed. You may still miss under clumsiness or in conditional contexts (axekick against a standing target, for example).
– There is a new ability in avoidance: [0;1;37mAVOID[0;37m. You may AVOID [0;1;37mPHYSICAL, ARCANE, MENTAL, or AOE[0;37m.
* Avoidance rolls have been added to the majority of classes.
* When hit with a category of what you’re avoiding, you make an avoidance roll. If successful, the damage of that attack is reduced.
* [0;1;37mAOE[0;37m is a special category – you’ll try to avoid all AOE attacks that can be avoided independent of the attack type, but of course this means you won’t avoid any directed attacks at all. This type of dodge does not have a third person line when it occurs currently, we can revisit this potentially but I think minimising the spam here is more important.
* You may not avoid if incapacitated by afflictions or conditions that make dodging impossible. These are the traditional ones: prone, paralysis, and entanglements of all forms.
* Unblockable sourced damage (and things that would bypass a shield of absorption artefact) are universally undodgeable regardless of any other factors in play.
* Asphyxiation damage is also undodgeable.
– New transcendent avoidance ability: [0;1;37mEPITOMISE[0;37m. This is functionally a very short lived version of [0;1;37mSHINDO PERFECTION[0;37m and is intended to give a little more agency in large group fights.
* Six second duration, one minute cooldown.
– The light stepper trait no longer contributes to your avoidance rolls. Instead it increases [0;1;37mEPITOMISE[0;37m duration by three seconds and cuts the cooldown by ten seconds. This trait has been automatically un-selected for everyone who had it, so you may reselect what you wish for that slot be it light stepper or something new.
Some exposition:
The two major goals of this update are to make dexterity universally applicable and desirable, and to give people more defensive agency (in both solo and team contexts).
On what criteria we used for if something should be dodgeable: generally if its a passive it can’t be as of this time. This is a design choice and not a technical limitation, so if it becomes warranted we can change this (or do it case-by-case). If it is an ambush attack like Subterfuge backstab, it also can’t be dodged. If it is a conditional attack (so gated in some means), it is unlikely to be dodgeable. If it is a ranged ability, (used in a ranged context), it cannot be dodged. If there’s something about the ability that contextually means that dodging is not likely (psionics bloodboil for example), then we might specifically decide in that case it can’t be dodged. Otherwise, generally if it is an active damaging attack, it can be. See the [0;1;37mCLASSLEADS POST 161[0;37m for a full patch breakdown.
Dodge AOE: one recent frustration point that we’ve seen a lot is knowing people are going to AOE bomb you, but having very little way to mitigate it since a lot of people will just blow up to the on-mass damage. I think AOE serves an important role in large scale pvp as you do need ways to thin down huge numbers, but I’m also of a mind that if you know exactly what a team is going to do, being in the position that ‘a lot of our guys will just melt to off target damage’ is not a good place to be. This is a first step at adding more universal mitigation options here. Basically if you know a team is going to try something, we’d like you to have some ways to preemptively prepare for it.
Epitomise: dying instantly because six people all (to use a technical term) f1’d you sucks. This will still happen, but making this more engaging has been hign on the list for a while. A general purpose anti gank mechanism that is always on has been floated in the past, but I’m not convinced this is a good idea and feel this is a reasonable middle ground.
Asphyxiation damage: we’ve decided, given how held breath currently works, not to make asphyxiation damage dodgeable. This may change in the future, but having two defensive layers on top of general resistance does not currently feel appropriate.
Future plans:
This is the bulk of the technical work on the update. However, we’d like dexterity to apply to affliction and limb based offenses as well. We’ve got some ideas here, but they’re not quite there just yet. You can expect more added to the avoidance skill once those are finalised.
Penned by My hand on the 16th of Phaestian, in the year 989 AF.