Match of the Millennium

So this is probably not going to be the most popular balance change ever, but it's been a long time in coming. JUST_DEFENDED as a proc has always been problematic for what it gave. 0 Damage reactions on the reaction intentionally designed to be the highest chance of success more often than not has a high tendency to snowball out of control, especially if it procs more than once in a fight. I've spent years contemplating what makes JD so strong compared to PARRY and as I've watched how Auto-Guard has played out (The D and C ranks), I came to realize that the real strength of JD is the Block Penalty immunity it grants. Block, as a reaction, is allowed to be a high odds option under the premise that it is a limited resource that you have to use judiciously. But lucky JD/Auto-Guard procs completely circumvent that, giving you basically a free round of block plus the BP recovery at the end of your turn. On almost every character, this can be a real momentum shift as you get to retain higher block odds for another round, meaning you get to pull your higher odds reaction again on the next round. This wasn't so bad in an era where ability slots were at a premium. But in the current world of wide horizontal build growth potential, JD has become the second most common ability to take, largely because you only want so many actives, and after you add on Vigor like almost 50% of the builds do, picking up power proc reactions is pretty much the next logical place to go. After thinking about the impact JD has on fight ebb and flow, I've made the following changes: D Rank - No longer prevents Block Penalty when proc'ing Auto-Guard. C Rank - No longer prevents Block Penalty when proc'ing Auto-Guard. B Rank - No longer prevents Block Penalty when proc'ing JD. A Rank - Grants [20]% reserve, up from [10]% at B rank. No longer reduces Block Penalty taken on fail blocks. This was kind of a lame mechanic that made minimal numerical impact and was largely invisible to you as a player, so it's been chucked. S Rank - Grants the Block Penalty immunity JD has always had. So in short, you can still have the pre-reboot JD from before, it just requires S Rank instead of B rank. B Rank continues to grant: No damage. Health. Reserve. No Proj Penalty. Making it a solid proc no matter the circumstances. But now it still incurs the cost of using block (accruing Block Penalty) making it less decisive in giving you ongoing strong reaction odds round after round. As always, I'll keep an eye on what impact this has going forward. If this hits JD too hard, I'll find other ways to improve its value in the B/A rank range, but the D/C ranks are unlikely to see any buffs from where they're at presently. All is not lost for blocky types though. CRUSH also went under the scalpel. CRUSH has always been a really strong flag with its only downside being that it drained 5% super. For 5 super, you kind of gave your opponent a lose-lose scenario, with: -10% chance to block. 2x block penalty (roughly) on successful blocks. With so many mechanics added that now grant additional super, the cost trade off is marginal at best. I could increase the cost of CRUSH to offset that, but I decided for now to go ahead and reduce its bonus to-hit because +10% to hit against block is incredibly strong (equaling RUSH's power with regards to targeting block). I've made the following change to CRUSH for now: -[5]% to block, down from -[10]%. This may not be the only change to it. I am considering adjusting CRUSH's interaction with ATK+. But I want to take this one step at a time and evaluate the impact of this change before going any further. Finally, I did come across a bug that was causing Auto Guard and Avoid (D/C JD and D/C Parry) to have roughly 50% the proc chance they were supposed to have. That's been fixed. So... enjoy that improvement that you have no way of discerning. And that's that for now! -GLaDOS