CH4OT1C!
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This post has been a long time coming.
For quite a while now, veteran players have recognised just how overpowered dodging and dodgelash—the ability to deal damage or trigger other effects when the player dodges—strategies are. In this post, I want to break down why this mechanic is so powerful and share my proposed solution to the problem.
Why are Dodging and Dodgelash overpowered?
If you were to ask a group of veteran players why dodgelash is so powerful, the most common answer would likely be that bosses simply cannot counter it. However, this explanation doesn’t fully capture the core issue; after all, many balanced playstyles involve mechanics that bosses aren't able to defend themselves against. Neither is it purely a mathematical issue; it’s not as if the cost of boosting the player’s MRM is undervalued (unlike Lucky Strikes...). Instead, I believe that the core issue lies in the extreme potential a player can achieve with the dodgelash playstyle.
Under standard assumptions, both the player and monster are expected to have a base accuracy of around 85%. In practice, this varies slightly, as players can choose armours and shields that are optimised for either elemental defence or blocking, and both player and monster attacks can have inherent BTH leans. However, at present, AQ also features a variety of items that can significantly boost the player’s MRM defences. For example, one can use the Bun-Banneret pet and guest (+35.43 MRM), the Imanok Edoc spell/skill (+30.3 MRM), and the Hairmuffs misc (applies a -25.3 BTH lean to monster attacks) to effectively increase the player's MRM by +73.9 for 2 turns. This is enough to adjust the monster's base 85% hit rate down to just 11.1%. For this incredible power, you pay a total cost of 118 + 59 + (568/2) = 461 SP per turn. This cost is easily sustainable given the numerous ways to regenerate SP (e.g., Essence Orb), and Mages can even split the cost between SP and MP. This situation is also unlikely to change even after EO is inevitably nerfed. All of these items can be acquired for Gold; the hardest part of obtaining them is waiting for the Bun-Banneret void boss to appear and then defeating it. Under these circumstances, it's no wonder why bosses being unable to counter dodgelash playstyles is often cited as the key problem. Monsters are able to resist the Berserk provided by Hairmuffs, but the boosts from Imanok Edoc and the Bun-Bannerets target the player and have no save. That’s an easy +48.6 MRM, which can be further supplemented with defence boosts from other items. Dodge playstyles have basically already reached a point where any player can effectively reduce the monster’s accuracy such that it's rare for an attack to land...
Hits are so rare, in fact, that the player need not worry about elemental defences at all. Each turn, a monster is expected to output 140% Melee per turn (assuming 85% accuracy). According to the player turn model, the player has enough HP to survive for 20 turns as long as they wear an appropriate armour and shield—the average length of two 10-turn monster battles (i.e. 2800% melee worth of HP). The ultimate goal of a standard monster is therefore to reduce the player's HP by half of that (1400% Melee) during a battle (NB: I highlight this now because it is important for my proposed solution). Assuming the player's MRM was boosted via the item combination described above (+73.9 MRM, with the monster effectively having an 11.1% hit rate), the player would be expected to survive 10*0.85/0.111= 76.6 turns before losing half of their HP! This represents an incredible amount of defensive power—so much, in fact, that they can also survive attacks while wielding an inappropriate armour and shield combination. The following resistances were calculating by extrapolating the resistances of the Armour of Awe to PwrLvl 150:
Element: Resistance: Ratio:
Main 14% 1;1
Ally 49% 1;3.50
Neutral 74% 1;5.29
Poor 92% 1;6.57
Opposed 93% 1;6.64
The ratio column details how much extra damage the player would expect to receive relative to their main elemental defence. For example, if the player was defending against a Fire attack, their main elemental defence would be Fire, and their expected "opposed" resistance would be ice. They would be expected to take 6.64x as much damage defending against a Fire attacks using an Ice armour/shield combination than one defending against Fire.
Integrating the assumption of an inappropriate armour/shield combination into the above calculations we find that, even under these circumstances, it would still take the player 10*0.85/0.111/6.64 = 11.5 turns to lose half of their HP. NB: Some players might object at this point, stating that monsters deal more damage than this, and that it doesn't take this long for the player to lose half of their HP. This discrepancy is due to a combination of other factors, including the player often sacrificing their defences for additional damage (e.g., using the FO armour lean) and monster also having modifiers (e.g., Monster Leand and BTH leans. Many monsters have offensive monster leans, making them deal and take x1.5 damage).
My point with the above calculations is to demonstrate that it's perfectly possible for players to reduce monster accuracy to such an extent that the player can survive a large number of turns without an appropriate armour/shield equipped. This fact fundamentally undermines a core assumption made by AQ's balance standards: that the player should be carrying defensive equipment for each of the standard 8 elements. It removes the need for most armours and shields in the game for dodge players, as a single combination can be sufficient to defend them against almost every monster. It also negates the value of carrying using a variety of defensive effects, such as Elemental Shields. This is a major issue.
NB: Before going further, I want to provide a table showing the average % melee output of a monster over 10 turns at 11.1% accuracy based on the above resistances. Please note: the turn model assumes that the monster deals 140% Melee per turn, but that also needs to attach the assumption of 85% accuracy, as otherwise the 20-turn player turn model would in fact be the 20/0.85 turn model (this would be problematic for a variety of reasons, which I'll leave for another thread). Basically, to keep things consistent, monster attacks themselves need to deal 140/0.85% Melee so that their 85% accuracy rate brings them down to 140% Melee and balance things out. Hope that makes sense!
Element: Output:
Main 13.06%
Ally 45.71%
Neutral 69.03%
Poor 85.82%
Opposed 86.75%
The 'output' column refers to the percentage of 1400% melee that the monster reached. For example, the 'main' resistance reached approx. 13% of that, which should be interpreted as 1400 * 0.13 = 182% melee.
So, dodging is too powerful because it allows players to survive for too long and invalidates the point of elemental resistances. But what about Dodgelash? Dodgelash items face a very similar problem to Lucky Strikes. I've already produced another GBI on that topic, but the relevant point for this discussion is that players can guarantee Lucky Strikes while taking advantage of the assumption that Lucky Strikes are inherently rare (and thus receive a significant compensatory modifier to cost/power). This same issue is prevalent with Dodging. Since the monster is assumed to hit 85% of the time, the player is only expected to dodge the other 15%. This means dodgelash items receive a /0.15 compensation modifier to their effects, making them extremely powerful. If a player can dodge most of the monster's attacks (and, as shown above, players can absolutely do this), they can take advantage of them. Below is another table, this time showing the %Melee the player needs to invest in damaging Dodgelash mechanics in order to deal 1400% melee over 10 turns (i.e. the amount needed over a standard battle to kill a monster).
Accuracy %Melee
5% 26.01
10% 27.45
11.1% 27.79
15% 29.07
20% 30.88
25% 32.94
As can be seen above, it takes as little as 26% Melee before other effects to kill a monster in 10 turns through dodgelash. This is increased to 27.79% Melee under the accuracy assumption I've been using throughout this post.
So, in a nutshell, the problem with the Dodging and Dodgelash playstyle is that players can easily stack Defence boosting mechanics to the point where monster damage becomes negligible, and one armour/shield combination can cover the defence of all 8 standard elements. At the same time, they can take advantage of extremely powerful mechanics that are heavily compensated because dodging is supposed to be a relatively rare event. Monsters can do little to stop this. And perhaps the most surprising part is that the above is just scratching the surface. For example, I haven't even discussed the effect of Dodge-lean armours like Ghost Costume, a Gold-costing armour with an armour lean that boosts player MRM by 17!
The Solution Part 1: The 'Dodge'
Before getting into the solution itself, it's important to place the Dodge and Dodgelash problems within the wider context of both the game and the team developing it. Perhaps most importantly, there are a lot of items that affect monster accuracy in AQ. I'm not going to give a detailed breakdown here, but I did briefly checked @Ward_Point's Misc Index and found 41 different items that directly boost player MRM. This alone demonstrates that it's completely unfeasible to implement a general item-based fix—AQ's small team simply wouldn't be able to handle modifying that many files. This significantly hampers the ability to control stacking interactions unless it's done server side.
I also feel it's important to highlight that when it comes to the 'main' elemental resistance, MRM boosting item combinations like the one described above should significantly extend the number of turns a player can survive. To reiterate, the issue is that the player can dodge so many attacks, that they can use item/shield combinations even when they have 'Neutral' or even 'Opposed' elemental resistances. This is the issue I want to tackle. My goal with this part of the fix is to ensure that the player takes significant damage from Neutral, Poorly, and Opposed elements, even when they're dodging.
My proposed solution involves the Accuracy Floor that was brought in during the stat revamp. At present, this floor is set to 5%. Given that my example above demonstrated the problems associated with an accuracy rate of 11.1%, it will come as no surprise that the 5% accuracy floor produces numbers that are even worse:
Element: Output:
Main 5.88%
Ally 20.59%
Neutral 31.09%
Poor 38.66%
Opposed 39.08%
(NB: As before, the 'output' column refers to the percentage of 1400% melee that the monster reached).
As the table shows, this accuracy floor is too low to prevent MRM boosts from negating the value of elemental defences. However, what if we were to raise that floor?:
Accuracy 5% 10% 15% 20% 25%
Main 5.88 11.76 17.65 23.53 29.41
Ally 20.59 41.18 61.76 82.35 102.94
Neutral 31.09 62.18 93.28 124.37 155.46
Poor 38.66 77.31 115.97 154.62 193.28
Opposed 39.08 78.15 117.23 156.30 195.38
(NB: Same as above, interpret the values as percentage of 1400% melee that the monster reached).
As you can see, increasing the accuracy floor to between 20-25% increases the 'Neutral' output to >100%. This means that monsters will still on average deal than more than half of a player's HP bar in damage. I propose that this is exactly what the staff should do: Increase the accuracy floor to 25%. This suggestion is a little more interventionist than I would typically support, but it would allow Dodgelash players to continue benefitting from Defence boosters (the 'main' row never exceeds 30% of 1400% melee; they could still last approx. 30 turns) while also making it more punishing for them to use inappropriate armour/shield combinations. Additionally, it's a method avoids requiring a large investment of labour, as the accuracy floor has already been coded and would only need its base level to be adjusted. Most importantly, it also eliminates the need to modify large numbers of item files.
The Solution Part 2: The 'Lash'
Even if the staff were to raise the accuracy floor to 25%, it still wouldn't resolve how easily players can exploit the compensatory modifiers for Dodgelash mechanics. Unfortunately, due to the specificity of this compensatory modifier, the only viable solution is to implement an item-based one. I propose that the most effective fix, relative to the ease of implementation, would be to include an additional component in the compensatory modifier:
quote:
[Effect] / (0.15 + [Defence Boost]/100)
Put simply, the modifier would check if the player has the Defence Boost status effect and incorporate this component into the compensation modifier. For instance, since Imanok Edoc provides a +30 Defence Boost, the modifier would calculate as 0.15 + 30/100 = /0.45. This adjustment ensures that the compensatory modifier becomes significantly weaker without:
(i) fully negating the benefits of Dodging mechanics (i.e., Dodgelash users still gain some advantage!) and
(ii) introducing a complex fix that would be impractical for the staff to implement.
I fully recognise that this solution doesn't address every aspect of the issue, and in truth, I don't think a complete fix is possible without a large-scale project—which the staff likely don’t have the time to undertake. That said, for this solution to be effective, the staff would also need to commit to the following additional measures:
Retroactively adjusting old Dodgelash items as time allows.
Either adding Blind/Dazzle effects to Freedom or addressing its potency (though this is a problem for another day). They're already a part of boss boost, but that's not enough. Again, potency problems.
Restricting direct MRM boosters to relatively small values (e.g., +10) and limiting them to certain item types (like miscs, where they're common). Larger defence boosts need to be coded as Defence Boost statuses.
With that, I open it to the floor.
NB: For anyone that wants to copy the calculations I used:
quote:
(140/0.85*[Ratio])*[Accuracy%]/100*[#Turns]
Used to calculate the raw %Melee, followed by
quote:
[AboveCalc]/1400*100
To convert to a percentage of 1400% Melee.
To get the % input for dodgelash:
quote:
(140*[#Turns]/0.85)*0.15/[#Turns]/(1-[Accuracy%]/100)
I also link this thread for some previous ideas.
< Message edited by CH4OT1C! -- 1/3/2025 15:43:34 >
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