Evasion and the Hazy/Gale runes

[bmesick]

Is it true that Speed alone determines evasion? I'm sad that I can't find a formula for it. I'm guessing that it's a combination of Speed and Luck.

I am in the process of grinding for Hazy rune drops, and I'm trying to figure out how many I should bother getting. I have a feeling that it might be useful in some kind of a special set up - maybe involving Firefly or Mangoshes. I don't know. Gale would increase Speed *and* evasion. Or maybe they stack - Gale + Hazy means lots of dodging and compliments a Mangosh.

Does anyone have any insight into the properties of Evasion/Hazy/Gale? Do high Speed long range characters like archers or a speedy mage dodge attacks when they come their way like frontliners do? I only ask because someone has pointed out in a different topic that Humphrey and Viktor with similar TECH/LUCK values seemed to have different attack rates for some reason.

It's really frustrating trying to set up characters with runes when I'm not even sure what stats do what. I will have to do some tests at some point, I guess *sigh*.

[Punkaiser]

I'd like to know about the formula to determine hit and dodge rate as well but so far, I can't find it anywhere.
For what I know until now, only SPD affects dodge rate(at least according to S1 that is) but there's no proof that LUK has any impact on this matter(or not yet proven).
I have no backup but in my imagination the formula is like this:

Effective evasion rate = [ your SPD * 1.5 (from gale rune) - enemy TECH]*1.5 (from hazy)
There's probably a constant somewhere in there just like how they put 32 in critical rate formula (tech+luck)/32)

Do high Speed long range characters like archers or a speedy mage dodge attacks when they come their way like frontliners do? I only ask because someone has pointed out in a different topic that Humphrey and Viktor with similar TECH/LUCK values seemed to have different attack rates for some reason.

Long rangers can dodge, but they won't counter attack, only melee characters may have this option available(with the % depends on TECH)

[bmesick]

If that formula is roughly accurate, mathematically, the Gale rune would always increase evasion more than the Hazy Rune no matter what constant is used to alter the general relationship. The only incentive to use the Hazy rune would be to purposely limit the speed of a character for turn-order purposes (maybe for combination magic, I don't know - I've not used it much). Even with a multiplied constant anywhere in the formula this is true. There would have to be an added constant (+C) in the formula, like a base evasion rate, that would make Hazy less or more effective at different SPD-TECH values.

What is more likely, though, is that Hazy is actually mostly worthless compared to Gale unless they are stack together.

Now if there *was* a constant added in (maybe another stat like LUCK) Hazy could redeem itself by multiplying the benefits of Luck/constant and Speed values toward the evasion rate instead of just speed with Gale. Eva = (1.5*SPD + C - eTECH)*1.5 with some messy constant multipliers in there. C could be anything.

Anyway, I guess there's no way to tell for sure unless someone looks at the code or I do some tests. I have a feeling that you are right in this matter and that Gale simply outclasses Hazy in most respects.

[Punkaiser]

I have a feeling that you are right in this matter and that Gale simply outclasses Hazy in most respects.

I do hope that I'm right, but yea who knows, even if the formula had the good shape, the constant value would mess everything up as in your exemple which makes evasion rate then depends on the comparision between enemy TECH value and the Constant value, hazy may have the chance to outperform gale rune( when constant value is more than 2 times enemy TECH value)

[ninjaluc79]

While modifying the SPD stat (through Gale Rune or other SPD-enhancing gears) does help in having high MAG characters cast Rune Unite spells (e.g. if you want McDohl to cast the Rune Unite with Luc), another way to use them is to set up the party healer depending on your needs.

If you want your party healed right at the start of your party's turn, enhancing the healer's SPD would help. This is particularly useful with a Spark Rune bearer. However, the one time you won't use SPD gears on your healer is for handling a party with high-powered Unite Attacks that damage its participants, a prime example being the Servant Attack (Sierra + Bob + Bolgan, 4x dmg to 1 E, Bob and Bolgan's HP to 1). Instead, you would want your healer to heal Bob and Bolgan up after their turns and before any incoming enemy attacks.

Therefore, in the above case, SPD gears are better used on the other party members so you don't have to bring Viki along with you to do just that. There are other characters with good Water affinity but not as slow as Viki, so you can always make use of those if you wish to build a high-SPD party.

A similar setup can be used with Badeaux and the beast-type characters (Siegfried, Feather, Abizboah, Rulodia, Chuchara, Shiro, the squirrels, and Gadget (he's coded as a beast type despite being a robot)). Badeaux simply needs to have higher SPD than any of the beasts for him to use the Howling Rune before the beasts attack. This makes him a walking Fury Rune for the beasts. You will only need a Windspun Armor, Speed Ring, and Winged Boots to do so, though, but Gale can help Badeaux evade attacks and hit multiple opponents often.

One big advantage Gale has over Hazy is that SPD also determines the chance to hit more than one enemy in a single turn. Nanami has 07 SPD (~180 at level 60), so she can multi-hit as early as the Sindar Ruins. A possible exception would be Clive, who can also multi-hit despite having average SPD, but he has one of the highest natural TECH stats in the game (along with Shilo).

I haven't tried building evasion on any of the characters myself, but I want to know if there is any practical use of doing so.

[bmesick]

That is really interesting, Ninjaluc. I definitely plan on using Badeaux and some of the beasties (I'm actually interested in trying Gadget + Meg + Lubrication oil + Badeaux that I read about in your character manual topic).

I don't know if there is any practical use to an evasion build either. Maybe you could build an evasion tank that draws in physical attacks and dodges them or dodge/counters them (like Ninja in FFXI). I'm going to guess that there are more efficient ways of avoiding damage than evasion builds in S2 (such as wiping out enemies before they even attack you) <_<. But I got a bunch of Gale/Hazy runes just in case there might be a 'fun' set-up. I have a pretty good idea of what a powerful party looks like, but I'd like to try things that are less conventional for the heck of it.

In any case, I don't know the game well enough to say one thing or another about builds yet.

[ninjaluc79]

Interesting. If one wants to make the Rokkaku Ninjas live up to their name, it's not at all a bad idea to give them Hazy Runes. They have pretty decent SPD themselves (Kasumi being the highest, and she comes with a Ninja Suit, which greatly increases SPD). However, each of them only has one free rune slot, so you really have to be sure about which runes would you like to use for them.

There are two ways to do this:

1. Equip Hazy Runes on the Ninjas and then stack them with SPD-enhancing gears (the aforementioned Ninja Suit, Wind Amulets, Speed Rings, and Winged Boots).
2. Equip Gale Rune + Dream Robe on one of the Ninjas (Mondo or Kasumi would be your best bet, Sasuke can do just fine with Hazy + Ninja Suit + SPD Gears since he's L-ranged).

There can only be up to two Dream Robes in the game: One from the Greenhill Liberation Arc, the other from the Guardian Deity (Turtle, Unicorn, Rabbit, Dragon). No enemies drop this equipment. So unless you cheat, I don't recommend obtaining the Dream Robe from the GD since you will miss out on awesome items like the Hunter (for item hunting) and Fortune (for EXP grinding) Runes.

P.S. Too bad Suikoden ninjas are more Taijutsu types than Ninjutsu types, as most of them have pretty low MAG stats and average elemental affinities.

With this, I'm pretty sure you can see the Rokkaku Ninjas turn invisible fairly often.

[veeshadow]

Thinking that evasion has mysterious formula, I just taking look some my videos and found these. Obviously Freed and Gengen are not speed type or stacking any SPD equips to them but you can see how often they dodge.... Tech and Luck likely has a role too.. And yeah it's often, this is my 4th-5th attempt for that section to minimize time for Clive's timer and they only get hit few times during battles...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... hGk#t=168s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... hGk#t=218s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... hGk#t=287s

[ninjaluc79]

Hmm... If TECH and LUCK does affect the evasion formula, then it makes sense why Freed and Gengen can dodge a lot of attacks, even without the Mangosh (counter-attack rate x 1.5, so it can also help on dodging attacks).

Riou has high TECH and LUCK as well, which explains why his end-game evasion and counter-attack rates are ridiculously high.

Maybe somebody should test these stats for evasion: SPD, TECH, and LUCK. The set-ups could be like this:

Setup A - 255 SPD, 1 TECH, 1 LUCK
Setup B - 1 SPD, 255 TECH, 1 LUCK
Setup C - 1 SPD, 1 TECH, 255 LUCK
Setup D - 255 SPD, 255 TECH, 1 LUCK
Setup E - 1 SPD, 255 TECH, 255 LUCK
Setup F - 255 SPD, 1 TECH, 255 LUCK

From there, we shall see how these 3 stats affect evasion.

[Punkaiser]

This is an old post I read long ago when I was an irregular of this site, lucky it's still around.

I'll edit this post once all the tests are finished.
Test made against groups of 6FurFur around the mercenary fort. Based on 25turn.

Here's the results with 255tech 1speed 1luck
Multi Hit: 0/25
Critical: 14/25
And a lot of dodge/counter attack

With 255speed 1tech 1 luck
Note: since Riou missed a lot, i based my results on 25 sucessfull attacks
Multi hit: 10/25 (only double hit)
Critical: 1/25

With 255Luck 1tech 1 speed
Note: Again Riou missed a lot of hit but less than in the previous test.
Also, even with only 1speed he was attacking faster than the monsters (he was slower than them with 1speep 1luck)

Multi Hit: 16/25 (a lot of triple hit)
Critical: 5/25

Although some pieces of infos are still missing, we still can see that in order to build an evasive melee, tech is the most important factor as it checks for counter rate and convert it into dodge+counter while bypassing the normal evasion rate(testNo1 255tech 1spd 1luck). It's reasonable as we never saw any character got hit then countered, they always dodge+counter.
Quite a pity that he didn't mention anything about number of evades in the other tests though so we can't conclude anything more about evasion rate.

[ninjaluc79]

So maybe we needed to test again, maybe for 100 successful attacks?

[bmesick]

Interesting, so luck factors into turn order a bit, along with speed?

I put Gale and 3 Speed Rings on Nanami and Hero, and am in the Two River sewers. They multi-hit a ridiculous amount, that's for sure. Still not sure on evasion, but I have a possible test in mind involving lots of Speed Rings, Lucky Rings, Tech Rings and Blue Ribbons. I have two Blue Ribbons on Hanna and Oulan in the front row, and Riou is the only one that is targeted. So I could get into battles and take data on enemies that do pure physical attacks and see how the data changes with higher TECH, LUK and SPD. It might work better on a character with low stats across the board in the front row. I also don't know if this game actually uses the characters' level in any formulas. You could collect a lot of data doing all these tests with Gale and Hazy runes. I wish there was a tech rune. :\

I don't know how to do any of those fancy tests where you can alter the stats manually.

One thing I'm not sure of, is if an evade/counter is an evade check, then a counter check, or if evade/counter is different than evade. It would make sense if they were separate checks, I think. Does the Mangosh thus increase evade *and* counter? Does Defend increase either or both of those?

I'm starting to get confused

[Punkaiser]

in the testNo1 255 tech, the rest = 1
Surely tech has never meant any effect to evasion but simply affects counter rate, then that tested character couldnt have normally dodge anything if evasion was checked first. And there's a fact that whenever counter attack is triggered the characters will definitely dodge incoming attacks so the order according to the test should be checking for counter chance before the evasion chance check.

[ninjaluc79]

Why Two River Sewers? You don't expect a lot of avoidable physical attacks there. Even the Sirens can silence your party. Maybe you should try North Sparrow? No enemies there use magic, though they're too weak for the end-game party.

Hmm... Maybe I'll try to experiment things myself. We'll going to need TECH, SPD, and LUCK enhancing gears. And a character with average stats across the board. I'm thinking of Badeaux as the test subject. S-ranged, average stats across the board, and a non-shielder (so he can't use the Mangosh).

Mangosh gives you 50% (multiplicative, not additive) better chance of countering avoidable melee attacks.

@Punkaiser I take it to mean that the evasion check is run first before the counter attack check.

[Punkaiser]

Test: 255tech, 1 spd, 1luck

With that speed+luck, it means evasion is almost 0% or the character just will just never dodge
Theory: Evasion gets checked first
If it's true, then the character definitely can't dodge
-> Can't dodge -> can't counter because of the fact we experience in game: a counter can only followup after a successful dodge
But the test result said: "And a lot of dodge/counter attack"
-> evasion gets checked first is a wrong theory.
So it must be the other way around. the game checked counter rate first.
High tech ensure a lot of counter attacks. As counter attacks are triggered, the character can 100% dodge in order to perform a counter attack(again, we never saw a counter attack after being hit)
so I see no conflict to say : the evade which characters perform in order to counter attack has nothing to do with his evasion rate, it's a mechanic of counter attack that makes sure the character will dodge.