Evasive Fire out of balance

[Quasxen]

The ranger's ability of Evasive Fire is something that can be easily abused in the turn-based mode. With 8 bond a Ranger can get off 9 shots in the opening round (1 from their Action point, and 8 from using Evasive Fire).

 

I think a simple solution to this would be to make the shot gained from using Evasive Fire only occur on the first usage of the ability each round. This way you'll gain the benefit of 1 extra shot and the mobility aspect, but you can't just kill off a bunch of guys by spamming it

[Wormerine]

Overall, free abilities being unlimited per round is a questionable design. That's a very offensive way of abusing this feature.

[Franknstein]

One use per round for every individual free action might be the right thing.

[arkteryx]

Yeah you should be able to use as many different free abilities as you want but each one only once per round.

[SChin]

Hey everyone!

 

Thank you for letting us know about the issues with Evasive Fire!  I put in a bug report for this and sent it to the Systems Design team for an investigation.  Please feel free to continue posting about this if you find anything new as I have linked the thread to the bug report to be used as a reference.

 

Thanks again for the help!

[error3]

I run a party with several rangers and since picking up this ability we almost immediately kill all low challenge enemies as soon as one of them gets a turn. (This is on PotD, with level upscaling)

 

While the ability is spammable, it notably only does good damage against 'easy' enemies. Against anything hard it suffers from low penetration, accuracy, and %dmg bonuses, as it doesn't get the standard attack bonuses from the equipped weapon. Spamming this against anything tough will just successfully burn out all of your resources and make little impact.

 

It does feel wrong to be able to spam through 10+ shots of this on easy fights, but on tough enemies where I need the weapon bonuses, it once again is mostly just useful for repositioning.

 

It reminds me of Brand Enemy, and how 1 paladin can set the entire enemy team on fire right away. Although, that was a valid strategy in the real-time mode as well.

 

Edit: Of note, Evasive Fire does not gain a bonus from Sneak Attack. This doesn't make sense thematically (shooting a guy isn't an attack?), but would further hurt the balance of the ability.

Edited March 11, 2019 by error3

[QuiteGoneJin]

I'm also slightly triggered that theres no cool animation for the attack dmg just shows up. Found this very off putting. 

[error3]

I tried Evasive Fire with the rogue ability Coordinated Positioning yesterday, to great effect. The 2 abilities when chained together by a Rogue/Ranger multiclass allow you to reposition the entire enemy team together for AoEs on the 1st turn even. A very strong combo. This kind of synergy is where the abuse of infinite use free actions really comes into play.

Edited March 14, 2019 by error3

[error3]

I'm also slightly triggered that theres no cool animation for the attack dmg just shows up. Found this very off putting. 

 

I was curious about this, so I paused a lot while using Evasive Fire to see if I could find anything. The character flips and swings their arm, and at just the right moment you can spot a small dagger thrown while using the attack.

This explains why there are no weapon bonuses, but why the heck is this attack only usable with a Ranged Weapon if the character is throwing a dagger for the damage?

 

[mishona]

You say 'abuse', I say "You're talking about a level 7 power on a multiclass. It should be equivalent to 9th level powers when properly utilized." There should be differences in tactics and their effectiveness in turn-based vs real-time modes, otherwise what's the point if it plays the same?