Strength and Evasion are underwhelming

[zenor]

I don't think this deserves to be in "Suggestions" section so here we are.

It's just an opinion of course, but I genuinely believe Evasion is by far the most useless skill in entire game. And the main reason behind it is your potential to almost completely offset inability to evade by exploiting other, overall simply, means: energy shields, dark corners and precognition powers would significantly diminish ranged damage from enemies regardless of weapon proficiencies they may possess. Turrets don't care about lighting, but they also don't seem to care about your evasion in general either. Grenades might be a problem, but few enemies use them. And psi-powers, well, obviously aren't prone to take your evasion score into consideration.
Now look at dodge, for example. Dodge is cool. Has that nice Deflection feat also. Energy shield ain't gonna help you much here. Should you invest in it? Depends, but answer is usually clear from the start. Results are quite visible too.
Single defensive skill would be an auto-include in any build? Understandable. Still, current split works in a way where one half doesn't do much and other does like, um, everything.

Now Strength. Strength is kinda bad too, there's absolutely no reason to prefer STR over DEX in most builds, even in melee-oriented ones (with hammers/spears). What do you gain from STR? Carry capacity? That's just not enough. Description about bonus damage from STR actually lies, even with heavy weapons and 20 STR your bonus damage is very minor and slightly exceeds damage output from same build but with 20 DEX. STR should either reduce ap cost for heavy weapons attacks (like DEX does for light weapons), or add extra armor penetration to your swings to be competitive.

[Shredded Cheddar]

Lol, I find this post hilarious.

First off, I find evasion to be about 2x more useful than dodge because of the aoe damage reduction as well as the fact that distance, lighting etc. affect ranged thc, where in melee none of that matters. This makes it so that even with a meager 6 agility evasion is still useful on hard, and arguably dominating, while dodge is almost completely useless with that agility score (esp. on dominating).

To address the strength thing, you're basically totally wrong. Go use a sledge with only 8 or 9  strength and even late in the game you wont be 1 shotting shit and all you get is an infused rathound leather worth of crit chance.... Meanwhile if you pump strength to the max you will literally be crushing skulls in one shot on non critical hits, so you can bash through 3-5 enemies per turn, which IMO is quite respectable when you compare the efficacy of sledges to, for example a shotgun burst or AR hail of bullets. This shit is near silent on top of that, so if you have the MP you can bash whole squads in one turn without alerting anyone.

The whole point of strength vs dex is to empower your strikes vs. getting a flurry, I think it is fine the way it is implemented. And in my opinion, the high STR sledge kinda shit im talking about actually shines on dominating runs because you're not over killing your enemies by 200% anymore, you actually need that damage to put em all down.

[cypherusuh]

Agree with Cheddar. Even with some dodge, usually I just put 40 Dodge and grab Uncanny Dodge, it's plenty enough, since you could just prioritize and kill melee unit.
Str vs Dex has its use, but I kinda agree that Dex has too many usefulness. It affects light melee damage, AP usage, throwing, lockpicking, Pickpocketing, and Trap. But as is, I think it's kinda balanced. Most STR weapon are useful enough and powerful enough to 1shot enemies, and most Tichrome heavy weapon has enough AP to fit in additional attack while still keeping the damage enough to potentially 1 shot.

Athough it would be nice if STR has additional benefit, like small increase on health (maybe 30% of Con increase) and Intimidation, since I would sure as hell would pissed myself if someone mega muscular wielding 50 pounds of solid steel in 1 hand talked to me out of thin air with high stealth

[dddmemaybe]

Yea, Strength isn't really all that bad. Carry Capacity becomes more and more impactful as you begin to try and carry different armors to suit different types of enemies. With High Con/Higher Str armored builds, having the armor-type edge in a combat can make you near immortal, especially compared to every other enemy and build out there.

I think very high Strength scores should decrease Armor Penalty(after feats like Juggernaut and Heavyweight check ofc). I think like every point of Strength above the required amount to wear the armor should lower the armor penalty by 5%. But that's just my 2 cents. I mean, having Strength 20 makes sense that your armor doesn't even hold you down imo. 95% Armor pen - (5%x12=) 60 = is still 35% not including helmet and boots, it's not too insane actually.

edit: also has anyone else noticed that Juggernaut-like builds are the only ones who can truly abuse leaving an area and coming back, taking only minor penalties from the opponents getting the first turn. Tank damage that would kill anyone else, throw a powerful grenade, a flashbang, leave the area, come back, lather rinse repeat.

edit 2: One more tip for Juggernauts with Sledge. You can flashbang on your feet with your metal, tinted lenses helmet (make heavy padded for -5+% crit for added tanky bonus) to be immune (just Thick Skull works too but you can avoid the daze easily as well too). Now your opponent has no Dodge or Evasion, now Pummel will guarantee hit. If it's just one opponent, wait until next turn so you don't break their incapacitation until you have full ap again. Now you can use adrenaline + pummel and have 3 guaranteed(95%) hits right after your pummel. If pummel misses at 95%, they won't break from incapacitation so you can just leave and come back or just fall back for cooldowns.

[Apostrophe]

I agree with OP. I think all rng-based defenses are terrible. Explosion protection, just put some points in traps and enemies won't throw grenades at you if you LOS them. And even on normal you can't really just sit in the middle of an enemy group with absolute faith that Evasion is going to save you. It's an extremely unreliable clutch when you make a mistake, for 160 skill points. Dodge at least has nice feats and a way to guarantee 100% success. Also, Premeditation + Forcefield / Stasis / Imprint is too powerful, you basically have 3-4 turns before enemies can do anything, almost negating the need for any defense, especially unreliable one, even on dominating.

Strenght bonus is additive with weapon skill bonus for all weapons except pure unarmed. 16STR bonus for sledgehammer is not 80%, it's ~20%. And while I think that STR is a better option for sledgehammer it has more to do with stat distribution and weapon and feat requirements, if I could dump strenght I would.

[zenor]

with a meager 6 agility evasion is still useful on hard, and arguably dominating, while dodge is almost completely useless with that agility score (esp. on dominating).

Did you even read my post? The whole point about evasion that it's not always clear how it affects your character. I've played through expedition with a very high evasion skill on domination, and it felt like a complete waste of skill points. "Raw" evasion really doesn't do much against ranged attacks there. When you start to use other means that contribute to evasion, you feel great, but you might use them with 0 evasion as well and find yourself just fine.
High dodge with Defelction feat, on a contrary, makes character almost untouchable. You can notice the difference even on low levels.

you're basically totally wrong. Go use

I've actually tested that in game too. As well as other people have. Raw STR has minor effect on your damage output, even with a sledgehammer.

[cypherusuh]

,

Also, Premeditation + Forcefield / Stasis / Imprint is too powerful, you basically have 3-4 turns before enemies can do anything, almost negating the need for any defense, especially unreliable one, even on dominating.

Bit off-topic and kinda unfair to put psi on calculation since we all know how balanced Psi rn

Did you even read my post? The whole point about evasion that it's not always clear how it affects your character. I've played through expedition with a very high evasion skill on domination, and it felt like a complete waste of skill points. "Raw" evasion really doesn't do much against ranged attacks there.

It's quite clear tbh, it reduced attack chance based off your evasion vs enemies gun / crossbow skills. The problem with evasion on Dominating is because they have 30% increased skills across the board, which means evasion has much lower value because your Evasion skill always lags behind scaled enemies, unless you have 18 agi w/ top notch infused siphoner

And with current balance on Dominating, the best strategy is simply don't take unnecessary damage and abuse constant CC, traps, and corner.
Tbh, it's better to just merge both skills and nerf Uncanny Dodge
Or buff evasion so it could reach max 60% base reduction (10% enemy chance to hit) on 3x evasion vs ranged skills, just like dodge and change Dominating skill check without 30% increase (30% only affect damage increase)

[Apostrophe]

,

Also, Premeditation + Forcefield / Stasis / Imprint is too powerful, you basically have 3-4 turns before enemies can do anything, almost negating the need for any defense, especially unreliable one, even on dominating.

Bit off-topic and kinda unfair to put psi on calculation since we all know how balanced Psi rn

Don't think it is off-topic, I was trying to just point out how for less skill and stat points you can have a reliable defense, they are not exclusive to specific builds.

[Bruno]

Evasion is great when you have the spare skill points (not so easy). From time to time you will take a grenade hit or fail to spot a mine. A fragile character is dead then without evasion. If you play with the goal of not reloading more than absolutely necessary, you need evasion of you have low CON and light armor.

[happybee]

In my opinion Strength is the easily weakest stat in the game, but that doesn't mean it's bad. It's just extremely niche outside of a tax to use weapons/armor for the following reasons:

1. A vast majority of strength feats are extremely underwhelming. Easily the worst set of feats in the entire game.
2. Carry capacity is a luxury at best. Compared to the real tangible benefits every other stat uses means every point in it feels like a waste.
3. While necessary, stats that are just taxes for equipment use feel bad.
4. No dialog or story checks whatsoever.
5. No skill point synergy outside of melee.

Strength really needs another small benefit added. Maybe have it effect throwing skill and intimidate as well as providing some innate damage resistance. What it needs the most is some more generalized feats so taking strength for 95% of builds isn't looking up on the wiki what your preferred weapon needs to be effective. Maybe some feat that makes it so when you have a status effect on you, you do more damage. Or you can use strength in place of will for will feats so psi monks don't suffer from needing every stat.

Evasion is fine. I'm not really sure why evasion and dodge are separate things, as both require you to go all in on and are RNG based. I feel like armor should have some sort of skill attached as as armor offers way too much protection for basically no investment. Maybe weaken armor over all and have some sort of blocking mechanism tied to a shield skill? I dunno.

TLDR:
Strength is weak, but only because it offers no real game play advantage outside of sledgehammers.
Evasion is weak, but only because it's RNG and outside of infused rathound leather armor there's no reason not to slap on a bullet proof vest and trivialize most bullets. 

[cypherusuh]

Everything seems great other than using Str on Will check
Imagine focusing on your muscle energy to understand the vast universe through adrenaline and iron fist while benchpressing on ancient obelisk

Although lore-wise, muscle energy technically exist through Corporeal Projection

[Shredded Cheddar]

IMO strength should reduce armor penalty each point after five similar to other stats. Even something as little as 2% per would be significant, as a character with 18 str could have 18-5=13*2=26%

26+ 15 (nimble) + 10 (bodyweight training) could nullify 51% armor penalty - either totally cancelling heavy leather with high density foam padding + metal helmet, or just use metal armor without being slowed to a crawl / unable to use stealth.

I also think that there are only two feats (one of which requires (DOUBLE TAKE) nothing) to obtain this reduction and I find it kind of weird considering how punishing armor penalty is and how dogshit metal armor is until you can craft late game high quality supersteel or tungsten that blocks almost everything....

My thought on con is just reducing damage taken, the amount in the percentage for all damage types - it makes sense, it's flavorful, and considering how much this game flavors glass cannons it would do quite a bit to balance gameplay types. Obviously this one needs humungo testing since every creature in the game has a con score.

[happybee]

I feel like that's still too weak/isn't universal enough/is actually bad for juggernaut/that crit boosting feat. Strength already provides a fair amount of the sledge/power spear dude. Strength isn't weak, it's just really niche. Everyone is happy to get more initiative, everyone is happy to get more movement/initiative/everyone is happy to get more fort save/health, everyone is happy to have more crafting buffs. More carry weight? Yaaaaaaaaaay?

Strength is like Will, only you aren't forced to take it in every single build that uses a weapon (and it has amazing diverse feats, has 8 or so skill synergies, and offers massive mind defense).

At it's core Strength is a tax and no one likes paying taxes. It needs to pay out a bit, for everyone who isn't the Hulk.