Deft increases base dodge by 10%

[CodeBandit]

SUMMARY: Balance "Deft increases base dodge by 10%"

Purpose of change

Deft, with the current implementation, essentially becomes obsolete after the first few melee kills. This buff would give dodge based characters some slight flexibility on what to wear while giving Deft some use beyond the first day. It also adds some power to dodge based characters.

Dodge based characters are characters generally revolving around high dex + dodge skill + very low encumbrance as their means of defense instead of high protection values. Those relying on high protection values would generally have high strength and low dex causing an impact on those builds to be minimal to insignificant since they don't dodge anyways.

Describe the solution

Multipy dodge_base by 1.1 if the player has the trait.

Describe alternatives you've considered

Increase the reduction to half, but I felt that would be too strong and might require a new trait of its own. The purpose is to make Deft viable beyond the first game day, and possibly add diversity to armour choice other than the usual medium/heavy survivor armour. Even if it's a far-off reach.

Testing

1. Start the game as a survivor with and check dodge values in skill display.
2. Debug mutate Deft on the character.
3. Check dodge values in skill display.

Edit: Revised to new functionality, change "builds" to "dodge based characters"

[Brian-Otten]

Sounds good to me, we might wonder if this pushes it out of range of being a one point positive trait but my intuition is telling me 1 point is still about right since this isn't actually that strong of a perk, even with this new buff.
It definitely did need a little extra something though and this is quite nice, and can encourage some light/medium armor playstyles a bit more perhaps.

[kevingranade]

Tl;dr no

Making an existing trait do an essentially unrelated thing is a nonstarter.
Deft not being good enough to be worth one point needs an argument to back it up.
A 25% discount on encumbrance is way too high.
Even at a lower discount rate, it would still be worth multiple points all by itself.
You need to outline what builds this would impact and how.

[kevingranade]

Ok so it's not as high impact as I thought at first since it's restricted to just the dodge penalty, but that actually makes it worse because it has a weird partial impact on encumbrance handling, and I just see this leading to a whole family of traits that individually tweak different aspects of encumbrance, which I very much am not ok with.

[CodeBandit]

Making an existing trait do an essentially unrelated thing is a nonstarter.

To be deft means to be quick and nimble. I figured it relates pretty well since being able to dodge better while encumbered is fairly realistic.

Deft not being good enough to be worth one point needs an argument to back it up.

Deft's usefulness dies out quickly at Melee/Weapon level 3. This is easily achievable on the first day without deft. Arguably, heavy 2 handed weapons would have a use for deft, but enemy dodge is low enough that most weapons' hit stats that could use deft would hit anyways supposing the player's Melee/Weapon stats are low to begin.

Ok so it's not as high impact as I thought at first since it's restricted to just the dodge penalty, but that actually makes it worse because it has a weird partial impact on encumbrance handling, and I just see this leading to a whole family of traits that individually tweak different aspects of encumbrance, which I very much am not ok with.

I propose an alternative then: Deft would increase dodge base by 10%. This would be less impact than the proposed 25% reduction from encumbrance and doesn't touch encumbrance at all. At 10 dodge base (10 dex, 5 dodge -pretty high stats for an average character), the dodge increase of 1 would be even with -4 encumbrance (20 Torso, 20 legs).

edit: Remove answer to builds query, update on original post

[anothersimulacrum]

Builds meaning character builds, not experimental versions.

[kevingranade]

To be deft means to be quick and nimble. I figured it relates pretty well since being able to dodge better while encumbered is fairly realistic.

Just because it vaguely resembles the name doesn't mean it's thematically related.

Deft's usefulness dies out quickly at Melee/Weapon level 3. This is easily achievable on the first day without deft. Arguably, heavy 2 handed weapons would have a use for deft, but enemy dodge is low enough that most weapons' hit stats that could use deft would hit anyways supposing the player's Melee/Weapon stats are low to begin.

This is more of a general issue with melee balance than a problem with Deft, there should be a chance to miss up to the upper limits of melee skills against elite enemies.

[Dacendeth]

Deft, with the current implementation, essentially becomes obsolete after the first few melee kills.

This is not actually true, deft reduces the move cost spent on missing even at high skill. In my testing I swung a katana at 5 in all skills, 8 all stats, standard survivor starting outfit and got the following numbers.

Action	Movecost
Hitting	56
Missing normally	140
Miss with Feint	70
Miss with Deft	112
Miss with both	56

Unless you're completely naked you will still miss occasionally due to torso encumbrance even at higher skill levels so deft is never worthless.

[CodeBandit]

For the sake of accurate information, I combed the code and put together a comprehensive calculator for melee hit probability, move cost, and stamina cost with and without deft against any sort of configurable values.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1McdW0QRC_WupE07GnEPS7M54hldJbEAk1ZIKZg0R3v4/edit?usp=sharing

The example below attempts to simulate the average case of a player with starting average stats/encumbrance trying to smack a mi-go (4 dodge) with a plank.

In this case, on an average basis, deft would save the player 30 move and 26 stamina.

Below is the same case but using nail knuckles instead. In this instance, on an average basis, deft would save the player 4 move and 18 stamina.

Conclusion from above:
Deft is useful and can stay useful, it just doesn't FEEL that impactful unless the player is holding tab in a horde of zombies where stamina and move cost from missing are relevant.

[CodeBandit]

Closing PR as the quest for information led to a nice conclusion