The problem with Agility.

[xsm]

Many people tend to suppose that a high base hitrate 'makes Agility suck' and a low base hitrate 'makes Agility awesome'. This popular belief is in fact entirely wrong and actually the opposite of the real problem with agility and base hitrates

Comments

[litagemini]

Dan actually said he believes agility to be underperforming (!!) right now. This may actually be because certain types of 'tank' builds are even more ridiculous right now, though, such as any build with Deflect.

You're right about the equation, though, I didn't think about it that way. Most people will NOT dump-stat dex (accuracy, whatever) even if it doesn't benefit you too much unless they have real data, because 'hitting well' is pretty psychologically important. Conversely, people despise missing. I run in to this a lot running Dungeons and Dragons, because the base hit-rate in D&D can often be very low. People just HATE it when, when their turn comes around, they waste it by rolling a low roll and not hitting the guy, which is probably one reason 4th ed allows multiple types of actions in one round, and requires seperate to-hit rolls for attacks that target multiple assailants.

[sewa]

Daryn misses with some regularity. By which I mean not an offensive amount but his ACC is pretty high. Other tank builds miss HIM a fair amount too. In theory, we'd be hitting agility builds pretty rarely though I haven't had time to test it, just from how often we miss each other.

I'll try and run a test against an AGI build at some point and see how D-man does because you don't really get any more tank than him right now.

[degraine]

Results of the agi build test (well, Alloy is statted more dodgy) are interesting.

22 attacks, for 11 rounds of combat, not counting that screwup with nondamaging Combo attacks or my epically stupid manaburn past Fail, until Daryn got Alloy to Fail.

Alloy hit Daryn 100% of the time. Interesting.
Alloy dodged 5 times out of 11, a 45% dodge rate.

I tagged him with three weakness hits and two resistance hits, and he got one resistance hit on me. Daryn was 6 points away from Fail when he Failed me, and for Alloy, who isn't really specced for anything besides a mild emphasis on acc/eva and lacks passive combat abilities (damn! I should've turned on Reflect), I think I'm fairly satisfied with this performance.

Damage certainly needs to go up a tad, both my test fights went about twice as long as they should have. My slight concern is that doing that will turn agi builds into two or three hit wonders. I don't mind uncertainty but that's a bit too interesting for my liking.

[sewa]

daryn's dex is relatively high.

[unclejam]

While I do like dodging a lot in test fights with Mai (largely because, due to a combination of past history, character design, and dismal expectations because I'm not a one-dimensional muscleman with a stupid trick sword) it does seem a little excessive. It could just be good dice, but I could definitely see how it could frustrate someone, and while to a certain extent I am like "tough shit if you get frustrated in your potential efforts to assert future moral superiority by being very angry at me," it applies to me too

[kainrocket]

Scarface is certainly an interesting case in this regard. In that he's a tank, with Deflect and Reflect who can dodge okay, but not great. My fear is that I'm not going to be able to compete with other EFC's because they're all freaking dodge monkey's that can pound the hell out of me.

I worry about the glass cannons of this game, particularly when some of them are EFC's who can beat the shit out of you before you can land enough hits on them to actually start cracking any glass. That's a formula for breaking the game.

[unclejam]

That seems like quite an absolutist statement. Certainly we don't want any particular "type" to have universal weakness (although some may be higher risk than others; glass cannons will inherently have a higher risk than tanky dudes, I think, because tank is almost always there, while dodge is inherently based on a random outcome.)

My adventure in EFC combat was kind of lame because I had a few flaws:
1. Relatively few defense options (I had a big END tank and Forcefield, along with so-so agility) which were compounded by
2. A resistance that would in theory let me laugh at other big EFCs, but didn't work because they could target my
3. Epic weakness, telegraphed with a big sign in my +finger, and which everyone had an attack to affect because it also affected the TP boss of the era.

So basically I had a really big gun (if I could afford it) and was otherwise, in practice, kind of indifferent. (This did not apply against OCs/weaker FCs, although they still often went for the Sonic rape.)