Minimum Hit, a way to combat dodge tanking

[Jotari]

So, maybe you feel like dodge tanking isn't an issue and something that series needs to rein in. And I get that, it is fun to make a build where you just stack avoid effects and making a completely untouchable unit, but I don't think it's conductive to particualrly good game design, and the fun you get from it, like any OP ability, will soon fade off when you're just skipping turns as enemies suicide on you. So, how would you feel about a minimum hit rate? Say 50%. No matter how much avoid you get, no matter how much terrain you hide behind, hit rates will never drop below 1 in 2. We've seen a minimum damage cap of 1 in Valentia and people actually seem to be pretty okay with that, and to some extent they've tried to do this by having, I think, true hit above 50% and displayed hit below 50% in more recent titles (maybe, I'm too lazy to check calculations right now, but I don't think I'd just imagine something like that). But a minimum hit rate of 50% would be quite a bit more drastic, and I think for the positive. It wouldn't completely destroy dodge tanking, because avoiding half of all attacks is still fairly freaking good, it just means glass cannons can't be reliably made invincible. But more than that, I think it would reign in enemy dodge tanking a bit more. It's not often games throw super dodge enemies at you, but it's very frustrating to fight an enemy you have below 50% hit on, especially when they're healing and not moving a throne and you essentially just have to slowly wait until you get lucky enough to hit consecutively to bypass healing. Surge has been introduced as a thing to get around that, and it's very much welcome, but I think a minimum cap on hit rates would be a good catch all so evasive enemies are never a crapshoot to deal with (though, as I noted, no selling half of all attacks is still powerful) and evasive player units aren't the objectively best builds (because they kind of are, especially if we're comparing to regular tanking).

[lenticular]

I wouldn't be against it, since I do think that dodge tanking has been overpowered and un-fun in some games in the series, and am up for any try at addressing that.

(Engage's Maddening mode having enemies ignore enemies they have 0% hit on was an interesting try, but I don't really feel that it worked.)

I'm not sure I agree that reducing enemy hit rates to 50% would still be strong, though. Because of the nature of permadeath in FE, you pretty much have to assume the worst. "Oh, I'll be fine so long as I don't get hit by all three of these enemies" is equivalent to "oh, I'll be fine so long as the enemy doesn't crit with a 13% crit rate". Which is to say that if you keep on relying on it then you won't be fine for very long. That said, even if it did completely kill dodge tanking as a viable strategy, that probably wouldn't be a bad thing.

As an alternative, how about the minimum hit chance scales depending on how many times the unit has been attacked in a turn? First time you're attacked, you just calculate hit as normal. Second time has a minimum hit of 25%, then 50% and so on up until the fifth unit to attack you is guaranteed to hit. That would keep dodge tanking effective against small numbers, it would completely kill all strategies that rely on just standing there on enemy phase and letting the entire enemy army suicide against you, and it would provide the player with a viable option for dealing with dodgy enemies.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, lenticular said:

I'm not sure I agree that reducing enemy hit rates to 50% would still be strong, though. Because of the nature of permadeath in FE, you pretty much have to assume the worst. "Oh, I'll be fine so long as I don't get hit by all three of these enemies" is equivalent to "oh, I'll be fine so long as the enemy doesn't crit with a 13% crit rate". Which is to say that if you keep on relying on it then you won't be fine for very long. That said, even if it did completely kill dodge tanking as a viable strategy, that probably wouldn't be a bad thing.

Well that's exactly what I mean. Nullifying 50% of damage is not something you can rely on, but you've got to admit a skill that just ignored every second attack would be a very powerful skill. Not so powerful you can just throw a unit at an entire army, but enough of a boon to significantly increase a unit's sustainability.

1 hour ago, lenticular said:

As an alternative, how about the minimum hit chance scales depending on how many times the unit has been attacked in a turn? First time you're attacked, you just calculate hit as normal. Second time has a minimum hit of 25%, then 50% and so on up until the fifth unit to attack you is guaranteed to hit. That would keep dodge tanking effective against small numbers, it would completely kill all strategies that rely on just standing there on enemy phase and letting the entire enemy army suicide against you, and it would provide the player with a viable option for dealing with dodgy enemies.

That's definitely an interesting way of doing it. Less useful against enemies than a flat 50% would be though, and I do fear it would be a less obvious fix. As in, people would get upset when their dodge tanking simply isn't the working the way they're expecting it to and keep getting killed thinking they just have monstrously bad luck, unless the game spells it out in pretty uncertain terms.

Edited May 7, 2023 by Jotari

[lenticular]

53 minutes ago, Jotari said:

That's definitely an interesting way of doing it. Less useful against enemies than a flat 50% would be though, and I do fear it would be a less obvious fix. As in, people would get upset when their dodge tanking simply isn't the working the way they're expecting it to and keep getting killed thinking they just have monstrously bad luck, unless the game spells it out in pretty uncertain terms.

I'm not sure it's less useful so much as it's useful in different circumstances. If you're just trying to tank a hit from a single very dangerous enemy, it's way stronger. If you're looking to mow down a horde of mooks on enemy phase, it's much weaker. 

I also think it would be pretty easy to teach the mechanic to the player. Just have an early boss with very high avoid and have your Jagen or your tactician comment to you about how you'll need to have multiple characters attack them to help pin them down. Then after the battle, have them reinforce the idea and remind us that it also works against us. Then throw in a UI element to show this happening, to both enemy and player units. I'm sure some people would still miss it, because no matter how much you try to idiot-proof something, the world can always come up with better idiots. But I think that it would be pretty obvious for most people.

[Fabulously Olivier]

I for one like dodge tanking and don't support this sort of thing.

 

And a flat 50% is way overzealous. The goal shouldn't be to "fix" dodge tanks by making them completely useless.

[samthedigital]

To me the better solution is just to have enemies that can't be beaten via dodge tanking. That way it can still be a useful strategy depending on the situation while not making it overpowered. Engage "solved" the issue by making a lot of other defensive (and offensive) tools overpowered. I'd say that dodge tanking hasn't been overpowered relative to other strategies in at least half of the titles since the DS games though, so I don't really see it as a problem.

[Acacia Sgt]

7 hours ago, lenticular said:

As an alternative, how about the minimum hit chance scales depending on how many times the unit has been attacked in a turn? First time you're attacked, you just calculate hit as normal. Second time has a minimum hit of 25%, then 50% and so on up until the fifth unit to attack you is guaranteed to hit. That would keep dodge tanking effective against small numbers, it would completely kill all strategies that rely on just standing there on enemy phase and letting the entire enemy army suicide against you, and it would provide the player with a viable option for dealing with dodgy enemies.

I'm reminded SRW did this with a few of its games. Evasion Fatigue. It wasn't increasing the Hit chance to a set humber, rather, the evader's Evade simply halves itself every time. I think it was halved, but it was definitely Evasion penalty for every attack dodged per turn.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

I was also about to suggest a system where your Avoid rate gets cut on subsequent attackers on enemy phase. Because when more and more people swing a weapon in your general space, there's less space for you to feasibly dodge. Anyone who's packing an extra stock at the end of a Smash Bros Free For All match knows that phenomenon well. "He has a second stock. Get him!"

You could also bring back Fatigue and have its effects start to activate within that map itself where you've gotten over-fatigued - one of them being a penalty to avoid. I know I would love a scenario where there's an awesome recruitable unit on terrain, but if you take too long eventually he succumbs to fatigue. Fatigue could also be done in stages with stacking effects the worse you get. Stage 1 Fatigue is Attack being cut in half. Stage 2 is Avoid cut in half. 3 is Def/Res. 4 is HP. 5 is Mov and you essentially become a civilian NPC that can't fight. And maybe weapon rank somewhere for staff users, since they wouldn't care about most of these so long as they don't see combat.

[Armchair General]

XCOM 2 had this thing where if either an specific soldier (or your entire team, can't remember which) kept missing an  certain enemy; they'll eventually hit it, provided that you're playing on the easier difficulties.

Of course, with it being XCOM 2, you'll probably fail the mission, lose an chunk of your monthly income, and the ayys will probably kickstart the doomsday clock or something

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

Naw, let´s not cripple a certain type of build with a blanket solution.

I see 2 things that enable dodgetanking:
- enemies have shit stats.

- dedicated builds.

The first can be done away with by simply scaling enemies and their gear - noone likes dodgetanking in Fates since it´s tacky as fuck. 

The latter is fine too - but not the way it was with TH, where the best class also stumbled into stupid amounts of avoid - but when you have to seriously dedicate ressources towards it and thus can´t field many dodgetanks, anyway. Having said that, I´m not aware of a FE game where that´d be the case.

Alternatively, dedicate certain classes to shut down such builds, like the Kinshi should with fliers. For footies split Archer promos into Hunter, gaining/maintaining Beast/Flier effectiveness and a cool Hawk for good measure, and the other Sniper, getting damage and accuracy buffs, but flagged to dramatically increase accuracy against dodgetanks - of course that would require dodgetanking only being enabled by being in  certain classes. Same thing for let´s say Assassin with the whole backstabbing thing.

Don´t know what flying class could be given that role - maybe griffons? - but I´d rather not see fliers with all the stats and dodge on top of it.  

And if the world we play in has dodgy enemies, then surely technology and magic has caught up to this and can provides suitable weaponry to deal with that.

 

Alternatively, Mantis Shrimp shapeshifters. None may escape a 83 km/h punch.

[Fabulously Olivier]

1 hour ago, Imuabicus said:

The latter is fine too - but not the way it was with TH, where the best class also stumbled into stupid amounts of avoid - but when you have to seriously dedicate ressources towards it and thus can´t field many dodgetanks, anyway. Having said that, I´m not aware of a FE game where that´d be the case

Maybe this could be done by factoring Luck into Avoid more than Speed. That would give high Luck more of a niche.

[AnonymousSpeed]

How to combat dodge tanking? Hm, interesting question. If only there were poison strike, chain attacks, enemy engage attacks, surge tomes, certain blow-

[link16hit]

54 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

How to combat dodge tanking? Hm, interesting question. If only there were poison strike, chain attacks, enemy engage attacks, surge tomes, certain blow-

don't forget about stats reducing, sleep (in older games), High hit wpn (slim), or just ignoring like in Engage Maddening difficulty

[Jotari]

2 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

How to combat dodge tanking? Hm, interesting question. If only there were poison strike, chain attacks, enemy engage attacks, surge tomes, certain blow-

The only one of them nearly common enough to combat dodge tanking is chain attacks, and even then they can be eradicated entirely because it was decided Corrin needed to be even higher S tier.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

11 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

Maybe this could be done by factoring Luck into Avoid more than Speed. That would give high Luck more of a niche.

I´d throw Skill into the calc before changing Luck and have 2 animations, one which dodges the enemy attack (the GBAFE Myrmidon sidestep comes to mind) and another that parries/blocks enemies attack (SD General animation when the enemy misses). 

 

let our units git gud

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

On 5/7/2023 at 3:20 AM, Jotari said:

So, how would you feel about a minimum hit rate? Say 50%.

That's way too high. Suppose the enemy doubles you. Then there's only a 25% chance of dodging both hits. Dodgetanking would, effectively, be dead. Sure, units would still try to raise their avoid, but they'd never be able to "count on" dodging most of the attacks next enemy phase.

But on principle, I'm not opposed to a floor to Hit rate. What about 10% (in 1 RN)? That way, you could still dodgetank, but it's a bit of a gamble. You'd have about a 73% chance of dodging three hits consecutively, but only 53% of dodging six hits, and a mere 28% if we go up to twelve. So dodgetanking would still have its uses, but you wouldn't be able to trivialize the game by luring in enemies with zero chance to hit.

20 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

I was also about to suggest a system where your Avoid rate gets cut on subsequent attackers on enemy phase. Because when more and more people swing a weapon in your general space, there's less space for you to feasibly dodge.

What if the enemy army were also able to take advantage of "linked attack" bonuses from 3H? So, if there's one other enemy in attacking position, they get +10 Hit; add another, it becomes +20 Hit; and so on. This could simulate the "surrounding" effect, while making dodgetanking progressively more difficult. 

[Fabulously Olivier]

6 hours ago, Imuabicus said:

I´d throw Skill into the calc before changing Luck and have 2 animations, one which dodges the enemy attack (the GBAFE Myrmidon sidestep comes to mind) and another that parries/blocks enemies attack (SD General animation when the enemy misses). 

 

let our units git gud

That would be really wonky. 

 

Halberdiers and Snipers: "Look at me. I'm the dodge tank now."

 

Also, Engage already has evolving dodge/parry animations to showcase units getting good. Speaking of which, I feel that Engage's implementation of chain attacks already sort of "solved" the issue of dodgetanking. It's just that obtaining the skill to cancel this out requires too little investment.

 

I'd suggest a slight overhaul to the skill system in future entries to compensate. Particularly powerful skills like Corrin's Dual Guard could be designated as an "Elite Skill", and each character could only take one such skill. So any such choice is inherently a high investment.

[ciphertul]

I think dodge tanking is fine, but you could always have more “auto-hit” weapons to help counter it or maybe even do something like Disgaea where you always have that “Nick” chance of hitting for half damage.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

5 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

I'd suggest a slight overhaul to the skill system in future entries to compensate. Particularly powerful skills like Corrin's Dual Guard could be designated as an "Elite Skill", and each character could only take one such skill. So any such choice is inherently a high investment.

Maybe bring back "capacity" from Tellius? So, if a unit has 100 capacity, a powerful skill like Pair Up could "cost" 80. That way, you can only combine it with a relatively weak skill (like, let's say, Bow Avoid) that costs 20.

[Fabulously Olivier]

2 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Maybe bring back "capacity" from Tellius? So, if a unit has 100 capacity, a powerful skill like Pair Up could "cost" 80. That way, you can only combine it with a relatively weak skill (like, let's say, Bow Avoid) that costs 20.

That would work too, and there are advantages to it, but it would require IS to not only know which skills are the best, but also to reasonably judge how good every skill is comparable to every other skill, game-wide. Whereas my Guild Wars-inspired suggestion only requires them to reasonably judge which skills are the best ones in the game (and make them that way intentionally).

[Eltosian Kadath]

Personally, I think 50% is way too high for a minimum hit, as that is at the range where dodge rates become useless in the players hand, and annoying in the enemy's hands. Something more like 5%, 10%, or 20% sounds s bit better to me. Although I am also a fan of Thracia's maximum hit as well to make things always a little spicy as well (either the classic 99% max hit, or perhaps a 95% for extra spice)

[lenticular]

One option would be to have minimum hit be tied to difficulty level. Say, 0/20/50% for normal/hard/maddening? Or they could go a step further and have different minimum hit for player and enemy units, and tune them differently, though that would come with problems of its own.

[Florete]

Agreed with others that 50% as a minimum is bad and would effectively kill dodge tanking altogether, which I wouldn't like. Any good strategy deserves counterplay, including dodge tanking, and we've seen some come into play in recent games, so even if you don't like dodge tanking, I feel like the problem has already been solved.

I wouldn't be opposed to a minimum hit of 5-10%, though. It's low enough that dodge tanking is still viable, but prevents anyone from being unkillable.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

On 5/8/2023 at 3:54 PM, Fabulously Olivier said:

Halberdiers and Snipers: "Look at me. I'm the dodge tank now."

Finally something they´d be good at. Neither of these two be known for their speed, except Setsuna.

On 5/9/2023 at 2:41 AM, Eltosian Kadath said:

Although I am also a fan of Thracia's maximum hit as well

Excuse me?

Edit: But why would he do this? Just to make people suffer?

Edited May 10, 2023 by Imuabicus

[Jotari]

3 hours ago, Imuabicus said:

Finally something they´d be good at. Neither of these two be known for their speed, except Setsuna.

Excuse me?

Edit: But why would he do this? Just to make people suffer?

If there's a way for Thracia to be evil, it will take it.