An idea to rework the Evasion stat

Squeakums

Currently, our stats have options for 2 offensive stats and 3 defensive stats. Normally people specialize in one offensive stat depending on their preferred kill route. Lots of points are dumped into regen, and some (50-150ish) into life-force.

Evasion is mostly ignored. I don't think it makes for a terribly fun stat with its current mechanics, and I had an idea to rework it into something that does.

Turn Evasion into Shielding.

Thematically, it makes sense. We already have pseudo-forcefield armor from FlexaDerm-style, nano-thickness transparent layers on certain armor descriptions.

Mechanically, it could be something like a shield that has a maximum value of (base HP for your level) or (baseHP / 2) or some flat value like that. Then the stat comes into play with how quickly the shield regens to its max value. At 150 it heals 15% max shield per WW tic, at 200 it heals 20%, at 300 (effective) it heals 30%. If the shield is about half as big as your HP pool, that's roughly 250-500 shield points regeneration every tic for a max level character, depending on how heavily they invested into it.

Why the change?
It gives us another defensive stat to play around with meaningfully.
It slows down burst openers with a big chunk of extra hit points to burn through.
Sustained damage is really high. This would make it so there are easier windows to play around with swapping HP/aff Wetwiring prios.
Once the shield has been depleted, it gives you opportunities to take advantage of burst damage windows.

500 damage shield every 5 seconds? OP!
You have to consider that in order to get to this point, the person will have to have allocated points from elsewhere. So their HP regen is lower, their max hp (and therefore their HP regen) is lower, or their offensive stats are lower. It gives an opportunity for somebody that wants a tanky playstyle to do that in exchange for offensive capacity, which is a niche many enjoy and we currently don't cover. I've also just thrown out random numbers, these could be adjusted up or down as necessary. 

With a bit of extra coding, this could also provide an interesting opportunity to do something with EM damage in PvP (where it might be extra effective against shields or something like that).

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the suggestion (regardless of whether you love it or hate it or anything in between). 

Poet

I don't know if this is viable, but I'd love to see something that made the stat more relevant.

Grek

What's the practical difference between having 3000 health 0 shield vs. having 2000 health and 1000 shield? Wouldn't that just be 3000 damage before the target drops regardless? Ditto having +100 health regen vs 100 shield regen? Isn't that just moving you 100 points further from death every 5 seconds either way? Maybe I'm missing the big idea here.

Squeakums

@Grek , no practical difference between 2000hp + 1000shield or 3000hp for the most part (a bit of a difference for Fury, where <30% HP but full shield might still be in Throw execute range). But for most cases, yes, that's 3000 damage until dead.

You wouldn't lose health regen if this gets changed. So right now I have 450hp regen every 5 seconds. With shielding, I'd get 450 health regen + 150 shielding (or whatever adjusted number) passively--a little bit of a tankiness buff against sustained damage. When fights have soft resets and people crash out and heal up a bit, the extra shield regen would give you a bit more of a buffer before you're vulnerable to burst damage once the fight restarts.

Part of the "big idea" is that many of us (I don't want to generalize and say 'most') feel that damage is too high across the board. Rather than try nerfing everybody's damage, and then trying to balance out PvE accordingly, this just means everybody is a little tankier. It introduces flexibility in having a choice to be extra tanky by allocating lots of stats towards Shielding, which isn't a choice we currently have. You could have players choose to specialize a little more towards damage reduction this way and try to play for slower or less-pressuring kill cons, or have players eschew that in favor of a more aggressive stat allocation. That kind of meaningful choice is fun, adds variety, and expands on a stat system that's pretty good already but has some great areas of improvement (namely evasion). This suggestion was my way of addressing that and offer it as one alternative towards improving the "PvP damage is too high" issue. 

Neritus

I've been following various discussion on Evasion and stats in general. The main issue I have jumping on anything Stat-related is that really, a buff to evasion amounts to a buff to those who can get 300 Effective in all their stats, and a nerf to everyone else. But let's revisit the idea after Mods 3.0!