Stay Away from MA and Dodge

[Zawarudo]

My dodge is 93, it goes beyond 110 with assassins rags. My ma is 64, my str 92.

I one shot things, most things.

After days training... Im still getting hit by fogmen... I can solo them, I can kill 50 by myself but in the end Im still downed and tied to a pole.

Stay away from dodge!

Melee defense can do a much better job with half the skill points, really.

Warn people so they dont waste their time training this stuff :P

You sacrifice protection to have dodge and u get downed.

With melee defense u can wear tons of armor and you will parry many more blows and last much much longer then the dodge guy.

Since u sacrifice armor, dodge should be better than melee defence right? No!

Wearing full heavy armor and with mere 60 points in melee defense i parry more blows and last for way longer.

Stay away from dodge!

PS: MA blow mobs up... dont think anything else can deal the same damage ma deals. If you are soloing, stay away from it. In a group tho, its overkill.

[bunny de fluff]

It's not like this is a squad based game or something...

[Shidan]

Doesn't really have a whole lot to do with Dodge directly, it's almost entirely the armour situation. A similarly skilled character with a weapon and light armour would face very similar damage when solo.

This problem originates because there is a cap on how good you can be at blocking/dodging. At best, you have a 95% chance to avoid damage. When in a group this is essentially invincibility, as the hits are spread around, mitigating the small chances of being hit.

When solo though, you take all the hits. Giving them tons of chances to get that 5%. It's essentially guaranteed you will get hit when swarmed, no matter your stats. With quality armour on, it barely matters. But with less protective armour on, every hit matters. And you'll get hit more and more once damaged thanks to penalties, so it stacks up fast.

So stay away from less protective armour when solo. Unless you like living more dangerously of course. ;)

[Pyrrhus]

MA can do better vs elite hunter assault than melee so it's not a waste. Dodge is set on default if you aren't wielding a weapon. For solo, if your head, stomach, or chest is down to 10hp, flee to rest until healed, simple. If in group, you would need at least half of characters to carry another half in case some get knocked down. Just don't wear your characters all way down without support in places where NPC would eat you.

[SmallGespenst]

numbers matter. if you're surrounded there's going to be a lot of attacks coming your way, and it doesn't matter that you can kill the enemy in one hit if you never get to land that hit 'cause you're too busy dodge/blocking. if you're going to play solo you need to pick your fights. what might be child's play for a group can doom a solo char to a death-by-a-thousand-cuts.

[Zawarudo]

95% ? I feel the cap is more like 80%... 1 hit in every 5. I suppose Id take a lot less hits with block mode enabled... not because of the extra 20% but it... I have a very strong impression that long attack animations make you more prone to receiving damage... not just in MA but in every weapon category such as... that double katana strike for exemple.

As for melee defense, Id say at level 60 they take 1 hit in every 10 attacks. Maybe because the animation is short? This is all speculation on my part!

[SmallGespenst]

Originally posted by Badargo:

95% ? I feel the cap is more like 80%... 1 hit in every 5. I suppose Id take a lot less hits with block mode enabled... not because of the extra 20% but it... I have a very strong impression that long attack animations make you more prone to receiving damage... not just in MA but in every weapon category such as... that double katana strike for exemple.

As for melee defense, I'd say at level 60 they take 1 hit in every 10 attacks. Maybe because the animation is short? This is all speculation on my part!

if a character is busy with another animation they can't block/dodge. I think that when using weapons characters can interrupt their wind-up (I'm pretty sure I've seen that happen a couple of times) but it's worth noting that your results will vary depending on weapons, slower weapons like hackers and heavies will have slower blocking and longer animations, so they'll block less attacks at the same levels.
it's worth noting that while blocking has direction to it, dodging doesn't. I'm pretty sure it just has I-frames for it's entire duration, so there's no risk of getting caught out by rapid attacks.

[Zawarudo]

True I was getting many good parries with a katana even tho my skill was low. I think the dodge frames are iframes but some ma attacks are not such as the double punch ... maybeeee the jumping knee (im not sure about that one).

[Bedelguese]

Originally posted by Badargo:

assassins rags.

There's your problem, assassins rags suck at covering your stomach and chest which are the places most often to get hit. Get a sleeveless longcoat/dustcoat and you'll be a lot more survivable.

Assassins rags:
Head 25%
Chest 25%
Stomach 50%
Right Arm 100%
Martial Arts +6

Sleeveless Longcoat:
Chest 100%
Stomach 100%
Legs 60%
Martial Arts +4

Sleeveless Dustcoat:
Head 25%
Chest 100%
Stomach 100%
Legs 60%
Martial Arts +6

[Ông_Già [VN]]

All of the above answers are right. Dodge is a skill of combat and not whole. Fighting rely only on Dodging is funny. Better run off if you think you can survive.

My squad is now downed from 30 to 15 after many fights, mostly with Leviathan, whole team is wearing Dustcoat + Leather Turtle neck + Drifter short + Drifter boots + Rattan hat + Assasin backpack ==> support fighting at most. No minus point on combat. Only Boots have -5% of Stealth movement.

[Zawarudo]

I know I could get more armor from dustcoats, I could get more defense from almost everything else.

Thats not the point.

The point is, you grind for many hours to get your dodge to 100, its a hell of a grind and you need to rely on cheap tricks to actually make it... like the encumberance stuff.

Once you reach dodge 100 you are supposed to be a dodge god... You should be able to fight naked! Yet fogmen with 15 points in melee attack skill will hit you... subsequent hits!

Do not waste your time with dodge. Grab a tank friend and one shot things with MA but dodge is crap.

Unless you want to feel the same frustration that is :P

Pull out a wakizashi at level 60 melee defense, you will parry more blows after investing 1/50 of the time.

Maybe cuz you cant cheese melee defense the way you can cheese dodge.

It only takes debuffs from gear alone.

[SmallGespenst]

Originally posted by Badargo:

I know I could get more armor from dustcoats, I could get more defense from almost everything else.

Thats not the point.

The point is, you grind for many hours to get your dodge to 100, its a hell of a grind and you need to rely on cheap tricks to actually make it... like the encumberance stuff.

Once you reach dodge 100 you are supposed to be a dodge god... You should be able to fight naked! Yet fogmen with 15 points in melee attack skill will hit you... subsequent hits!

Do not waste your time with dodge. Grab a tank friend and one shot things with MA but dodge is crap.

Unless you want to feel the same frustration that is :P

Pull out a wakizashi at level 60 melee defense, you will parry more blows after investing 1/50 of the time.

Maybe cuz you cant cheese melee defense the way you can cheese dodge.

It only takes debuffs from gear alone.

it's probably based on the fact that dodging is intended as a backup for when you can't block hits, there's a reason that melee defence will always override it, even at 100 dodge and 0 defence.
it certainly doesn't help that you're fighting fogmen, enemies that will always surround you, rain attacks on you and if you're solo being able to take them down at all is never a certain prospect because with all of the block/dodge animations it'll take so long to and hits that more fogmen will show up, possibly outpacing the rate you can kill them. if you're not using exploits/crossbows; never fight fogmen solo!

[SmallGespenst]

also: there isn't much point grinding dodge to level 100, it's one of those stats that gets most of its utility at a relatively low level, but can be increased further to help get around penalties like injury and encumberance.

[Zawarudo]

My heavy armor gives me 70+ penalty to dodge. When I wear it alone my dodge falls from 93 to 15... if 15 dodge is a backup skill it never succeeds haha.

It is really a glass cannon I guess. Maybe when I hit MA 100 and Dex 100 I wont dodge as much but attack instead? They say dex increases ma attack speed, slightly.

That will be a huge pain to grind... gonna get rid of my meitou weapons and focus on dex and ma i guess.

Tho, if dodge caps at 95%... any point above dodge 100 is useless I wonder?

[Shidan]

The Dodge/Block chance is based on your relative skill to the opponent. So there can be value to increasing the skill, depending on who you're fighting.

It takes 21 levels to reach the Dodge/Black chance cap. So if you're already 21 levels or higher than the opponent's attack skill, then extra levels are pretty worthless. But if someone more skilled comes along, that extra skill could be very useful.

[Hans]

I've never cared for MA personally, even though I always have one or two token MA characters in my group. They're always the first to drop and the way the dodge animation executes still gets them hit a good amount of the time. I thought I could mitigate this by downloading a mod that makes the dodge animation faster, but my MA characters still seem to eat dirt first.

The biggest problem though is the "cleave" damage that tends to happen in group fights, depending on the attack animation/direction of the weapon, where lightly armored characters that are not the primary target are unable to block/dodge. My shek warriors draped in samurai armor with blackened chain mail are always the last ones standing.

Makes sense though, I'd rather take low, consistent damage with a gradual degradation in my abilities with a heavy armor character than taking a large spike in damage on a lightly armored character that will quickly spiral out of control.