The Required Concise Format

• Region: NA
• Suggestion: Rework the crowd control and resistance system to remove randomness and simplify the number of effects and stats.
• Details Summary: Combine all resistances into a single “Poise” resource. Rather than hard CC effects, skills apply different values of an “Unbalance” effect that removes a target’s “Poise” (similar to how incoming damage depletes the Guard Gauge). If a player loses all “Poise”, they are put into a Knockdown state. Rather than mitigate all effects, Super Armor and Guard each mitigate a percent of “Unbalance” and Damage respectively. 

And now, the detailed suggestions

Please Read Me First

1. I want to see your own ideas and constructive feedback, positive or negative, in the replies. Is this system worth changing? What alternative or additional ideas do you have? What do you think could work or not in the ideas I have below?

2. I am skipping over explaining much of the “why” and “how would this work” for many of these ideas to keep this relatively concise. I am hoping much of the reasoning is clear when taken as a whole, and I am happy to answer any questions in the replies.

3. I am not going to discuss detailed numbers around the systems mentioned. The purpose here is to consider the general ideas, not provide a complete implementation plan. I’m making the assumption that the resulting system would be well balanced and leave it to Pearl Abyss to make that a reality if pursued.

Goals

1. Remove RNG in crowd control and resistance interaction.

2. Simplify stats related to crowd control and resistance.

3. Provide additional options for PA to define classes, for players to build characters, etc.

4. Personally, I dislike this “SA all the time, else one mistake and you’re done” format. I’d prefer an alternative where there is room for mistakes while maintaining skill expression.

Core Ideas

The following is my best interpretation of how the goals could be met, accounting for my understanding of the game and what may be possible to achieve within the game’s framework.

1. Resistance

• Replace the percent-chance Resistance stats to resist Crowd Control effects, with a single “Poise” resource stat.
• The base amount of a character’s “Poise” resource is defined per class.
• Replace all instances of Resistance on equipment with “Additional Poise”.
• The “Poise” resource is managed similarly to the Guard Gauge. A “Poise Gauge” would show the player the status of their “Poise” resource, which would recover over time when not affected by “Unbalance”.
• While a player has their “Poise” resource, their actions are not interrupted by other players.

2. Crowd Control Effects (in general)

• Replace individual Crowd Control effects and “CC Count” system, with a single “Unbalance” effect that erodes a target’s “Poise” resource.
• The base amount of “Unbalance” effect is defined per skill as a part of class identity and balancing.
• Replace all instances of Ignore Resistance on equipment with “Additional Unbalance”.
• If a player runs out of their “Poise” resource, they are immediately put into the Knockdown status, unable to act for a time and affected by Down Attack multipliers.
• When the Knockdown status ends, the player stands up with their “Poise” fully restored.

3. Super Armor

• Replace the ability to provide absolute immunity to any Crowd Control effects, with mitigating a percentage of incoming “Unbalance” effects.
• The exact amount of mitigation is defined per skill as a part of class identity and balancing.

4. Forward Guard

• Replace the ability to completely mitigate damage and Crowd Control effects from the front, with the ability to mitigate a percent of all incoming damage.
• Rename to “Guard”.
• The mitigated damage is taken from the Guard Gauge, with the rest being taken from Health.
• The exact amount of “Guard” effect is defined per skill as a part of class identity and balancing.
• Attacks from the front are mitigated more (i.e. 80%) than attacks from behind (i.e. 20%).
• If a player runs out of their “Guard” resource, damage mitigation effects do not occur and all damage is applied to Health.

5. Grapple (“Grab”) Effects

• Grapple remains as the most significant application of “Unbalance” with its own additions to interruption.
• If the target is at all affected by a “Guard” effect when a Grapple skill lands, the Grapple’s “Unbalance” effect is amplified.
• If a Grapple effect lands and depletes a target’s “Poise”, the skill’s existing animations (i.e. Berserker's carry, Nova’s draw, etc) play out in full before placing the target on the ground for the Knockdown effect resulting from the loss of “Poise”.
• Targets currently affected by Grapple or Knockdown are immune from additional Grapple effects.
  
  
• Given base stats for classes and skills, I'd assume a Grapple would apply an "Unbalance" effect that would take about 80-90% of the average "Poise" across classes. Thus, generally, Grapple is no longer guarenteed to always cause a CC from a neutral state. Instead, a player would need "Additional Poise" (Ignore Resistance) stats on equipment, apply other "Unbalance" effects to the target first, or land the Grapple on a target in "Guard".

6. Down Smash

• Replace the ability for skills to instantly reset the Knockdown state, with players in the Knockdown state being vulnerable to additional “Unbalance” effects.
• When entering the Knockdown state for the first time, the player’s “Poise” resource is immediately restored.
• If incoming skills remove the player’s “Poise” again before they recover from the initial Knockdown, a Down Smash occurs and the Knockdown is reset.
• A Down Smash effect can only occur once per interruption.
• Again, Grapple cannot be used on players in the Knockdown status and thus cannot contribute to a Down Smash effect.

7. Invincibility Frames (“Iframes”)

• Unchanged. If a player is in an Invincibility state, no incoming damage or effects like “Unbalance” are applied.

Additional Ideas

The approach outlined in the core ideas opens up many possibilities within its framework. The following additional ideas are what I could imagine being considered to further deepen or complete the system. The order of the list has the “best” ideas first, as I see them.

1. Protection Synergies: Super Armor status also provides a marginal amount of damage mitigation. “Guard” status also provides a marginal amount of “Unbalance” mitigation.

2. Protected Knockdown: Players in the Knockdown status are also in a Super Armor effect with some “Unbalance” mitigation to make being forced into a Down Smash more difficult.

3. Protected Knockdown Recovery: When a player is in the animation of recovering from a Knockdown, they are also in a Super Armor effect with 100% “Unbalance” mitigation to give them an opportunity to reach an actionable state and use their own protections.

4. Off Balance: Players take a marginal amount of additional damage as their “Poise” depletes and approaches zero. Once at zero and in the Knockdown state, Down Attack Damage multipliers take over as the additional damage.

5. Vulnerable: Players take a marginal amount of additional damage when their Guard Gauge is at zero.

6. Shield Break: Players who Guard Gauge hits zero lose a percentage of their current “Poise”. This alone cannot cause “Poise” to hit zero.

7. Multiple Down Smash: Rather than just once, a player can be subject to multiple Down Smash effects. At the first Knockdown, “Poise” is set back to its normal full value. After each Down Smash effect in an interruption, “Poise” is reset to progressively higher values, making each additional Down Smash more difficult to achieve without a dedicated “Unbalance” build or contributions from multiple players.

8. Protection Resource Stats: Incorporate items and equipment that provide “Additional Guard” and “Additional Super Armor”. These stats add to the values of any skills with the related effect; they are not passive stats that apply at all times. Care should be taken in balancing so that players cannot easily achieve 100% mitigation except only on the most significant protection skills.

9. Protection Recovery Stats: Incorporate items and equipment that provide “Guard Recovery” and “Poise Recovery”. These stats help recover protection resources more quickly in between engagements.

Edited because this editor is not WYSIWYG enough, and to refine some ideas after further thought.

Hard pass.

Something is good, something is not.  

As for me: 

1. SA and FG should be in the game.

2. Delete all resistances. 

3. Add speed limit for awk nova.

4. Iframe shouldn't be almost every 2 seconds like some classes have it.

5. Grab has very short cd and too big value and advantage for pvp 1 vs 1 or  AoS. If you have grab, enemy team doesnt have grab, then you already  win, you even dont need to play super good, just grab people.    

I would delete grabs from this game at all    /   or  add 3 min cd like for V   /         or  add grab to all classes then.  Today grab system is not fair.

People who play for awk ranger, tamer, zerk, nova  etc. I am happy you have almost infinite iframe or can run over all map for 1 sec. It is easy to avoid grab in this case.  For example, go and avoid grab when you play succ sage. When the iframe has 8 sec cd and you always move, so you can not save this iframe to avoid grab and like 2 sec iframe vs 8 sec..., tamer has like 1 sec cd for iframe at all,  weak class btw =))))  and the only option for succ sage is  w+c, that has  fg on the beginning and broken classes like striker and zerk grab you from valencia distance on this fg, before iframe. Also, it is only when 1 grab, when 2-3 grabs, you are just permanently dead,  stamina is out very fast,  no iframes, all people need just sitting on you for 10 seconds and easy kill you.  You can not even do dps. when you run, because succ sage is very slow and if you try to cast some skill, they will grab you. It is so stupid.

6. Balance all classes, so everyone can  have fair  fg + sa + iframe to survive.

Pearl Abyss did very good PvE balance, only a few classes are bad. Please make good PvP balance now, when  AoS ends. 

Fk no, combat is good we don't need protection rework. 

I'm glad j isn't there to listen to people like you. I can't believe we have people like you still crying about grab in 2025. Lil bro talks about grab being auto win while literally solare proved us once again grab isn't the ultimate mechanic that gives you free win. If it was then there wouldn't be 1500 elo grab classes while having 3.4k elo non grab classes.

You are literally blaming some random factor because you aren't good at the game. If there wasn't grabs you would be blaming some other factor. 

2 non grab classes compeletly taken over solare, deadeye dominating all regions, awakening meagu dominating all regions. Awakening sorc is insanely strong. Season 3 succ sage was dominating all regions. Season 2 succ meagu was 70% of the ranking. Guild league meta season 1 was 7 meague 2 Shais 1 striker. Like stop it already just go learn how to play the game before you cry about mechanics.

Lmfao use your iframe when close to the classes you listed  litterally all 3 of them have predictable grabs zerks case he just has more attempts to grab same with striker which I agree prob shouldn't be a thing but  you also claiming your class is slow and has less protection is wild. Succ sage also hits like an absolute  truck let's not forget about that.......

like there are trade offs to whats strong and weak on classes or at least there should be.

Ya I play awk ranger you want to know what I'm trying to use extremely smartly? My grab there's so much aoe cc in the game now missing the grab is me cced it's got a lot of risk to it in today's game. Also people are litterally zipping around at the speed of light due to a lot of mobility creep over the years. 

If your going to get in my face and your not gonna bait out my grab with your iframe your playing the game wrong. 

Also while awk ranger has a good ammount of protection movement the class is usually dancing for most of an aos match just trying to survive all the damage  being thrown at her she doesn't have protected super armor damage like a lot of classes do. it's  frontal guard long combo damage only

Succ sage is fine get gud.

It has already been announced that resistances are going to be removed for PvP.

OP's  ideas seem well thought but generally I dont agree because I think PvP as it is now simply needs some more tweaks, not drastic changes.

If anything, what Id like to see next after resistance removal is a general reduction in combat speed to avoid the zoomies from render distance, which are often coupled with a grab. That and some more class balance that puts older and newer classes in an even ground and focuses on the lowest performing classes first.

yep combat is way to fast for the servers to handle the tickrate of our servers coupled with all the other issues everyone knows about related to FPS and the game just make it way to fast. People look at this games combat from the outside looking in and see warping on the screen when they watch wars. from a viewers perspective it looks terrible and very hard to read wtf is actually happening. mobility creep is a huge part of that issue.

The start of the original post's ideas came from the announcement of (maybe? certainly?) disabling resistance in PvP.  To my mind, that change would just further cement the, "SA all the time, else one mistake and you’re done," playgame we have currently.  It already feels too exacting and perfectionist, and this removing what little buffer exists (resistances) would make it even more so.

Here's another goal/concern/purpose then: There should be some room tolorate an occasional mistake, or lag, or desyncs, or anything meta that can affect the player experience. In the end, I'm personally not too concerned on the exact "how".

I agree with you both that play speed is another dimension to consider.  More time for a player to read the situation, and the server to process and provide and accurate picture of the situation, feels like it would address my more personal concerns.

Going to be real upset when you find out it is being reworked anyways lol, just in a different way.

Source????