FFT Arena: Balance Discussion Thread

[doriantoki]

Elemental weakness doesn't affect proc rates, as far as I know.

[Generic19]

New to this mod and have a newb question.  Does two hands doubling effective PA change anything that the original two hands doubling effective WP did not?

[Barren]

Two Hands I think only effected weapon power, but PA factors in as well like PA*WP. it depends on the weapon of course because the formulas are different sometimes

[Generic19]

Ah, but I mean, isn't it 'effectively' identical for all intents and purposes?

[TrueLight]

Yes, Two Hands is solely used to double the damage of the weapon, nothing more.

[Dol]

For the elemental Ninja attacks, are they reduced by Shell or Protect?  I'm thinking it should be Shell, but after watching the marathon again, its looking like Shell had no effect on the damage when units used Magicward.

[CT5Holy]

The -tons are boosted by Attack UP, so I'm guessing they will be reduced by Protect. Your observations of Shell doing nothing would contribute to this guess.

[formerdeathcorps]

Some changes:

1) Make the spell guns always proc the Tier 3 spell so we can lower their WP.  Kagesougi gunner is a little too strong.
2) Remove the MP cost off transfusion.  There's no need to pay in HP and MP.
3) Remove haste from nameless song.  With it, the AI will never stop using nameless song.
4) Change grand cross so it can't target self.  To be honest, I'd rather see it add poison than blind since Kagesougi already does that.  (The fact that you can now use a PA optimized setup should already balance the new grand cross favorably against chirijiraden and spin fist and justify the MP cost.)
5) Give Secret Clothes Null: Blind / Poison / Oil since it's currently underpowered compared to thief hat, much less the +PA/MA gear.
6) Please move Dia to Priest and Reraise to Paladin.  As Raven and I both noted a while back, both skills currently are underused in their current skillsets because they conflict with the skillset since Paladin has no MA to use Dia while Priest has Raise and thus doesn't really need Reraise.
7) Make Hawkeye worthwhile by merging it with Greased Bolt.  An unevadable SP * WP attack that adds oil and poison is worth the charge time and MP; the current implementation is not.
8) Make Spellbreaker deal weapon attack damage + 50% Remove positive statii at MP cost.  This makes it useful compared to weapons like chaos blade or gold staff without obviating dispel magic or the above weapons.

[Gaignun]

Here are a few more.  Not all of them need to be adopted.  (But some of them do!)

Skills

• Lower Equip Armor's JP cost from 450 to something lower. 250 sounds about right.  Given that the Paladin skill set is just about useless to units that want access to armour, this will put the true cost of armour privileges at 500 JP.  Casters already overburdened with choice will be able to use the armours' status immunities to protect themselves and their high faith from the fearsome Oracle and Time Mage... as opposed to just stacking M-Ev, which is what they do now.  Besides, paying the current 700 JP price tag to run away from clothes and their delicious elemental resistance/stat boosts is silly.


• Incorporate the oil status in the Wizard's skill set so that fire mages are used for more than just making their opponents sweat and need a shower.  Either create a skill that adds oil, or include "Add: Oil" to Poison and rename the skill as something flashy like "VX Gas".  Have the poison kill within seconds for factual accuracy.
  


• Introduce a reaction ability which adds Oil to targets to expand fire-based team synergy.  Add it to wizards.  Ask British Petroleum to sponsor them.


• Increase Haste's Y value from 60 to 70 to make it competitive with Masamune.


• Lower Demi's MP cost from 20 to 14.


• Lower Demi 2's MP cost from 40 to 30.  Spending 33% more MP than Holy for a skill that takes longer to cast than Holy, is thwarted by the popular Black Costume, and is as accurate as a drunken man playing darts on a fishing trawler reeling in Hemingway's great marlin in the midst of a category five hurricane is a little too pricey.


• Lower Holy and Flare range from 6 to 5.  Sarah Palin could target Russia from her house with the current spells.  Do it for the Russians.


• Increase Asura's multiplier from 6 to 7 to make it comparable to Koutetsu and Heaven's Cloud.  (One ignores allies, one has wide range, and one tries to add Slow and fails; all do equal damage)


• Adjust Koutetsu's range from [1,3] to [2,3].  The ability to easily boost this currently wide-ranged Draw Out skill with Golden Hairpin is overshadowing the other skills - particularly Asura and Heaven's Cloud.


• Increase Kiyomori's range from 1 to 2.  I would currently end my units turn without doing anything and give the preserved 20 CT to my opponent than use this skill.  Following that line of thought, what are the chances this skill can be changed to add CT to fellow party members?  Masamune bots could haste their friends, then give them CT when there's nothing left to do.
  


• Lower Masamune's vert from 2 to 1.  It is currently the bee's knees.  Lowering the vert by one is the most modest nerf I can suggest... while keeping it the bee's knees.


• Apply P-Ev to Fuuton, Suiton, and Meiton.  Given how highly these skills can be strengthened, they are ineligible for 100% accuracy.

Equipment

• Remove elemental weaknesses from Mythril, Gold, Ice, and Fire shields.  These weaknesses are inhibiting these shields' adoption.
  
• Increase Crystal Shield's P-Ev/M-Ev values from 10/10 to 20/20 to entice people away from Venetian/Aegis shields.


• Set Crystal Helmet's effects to "Cancel: Don't Move, Don't Act" and Genji Helmet's effects to "Cancel: Berserk, Charm".  Lower these helmet's HP values if necessary.  The current Genji Helmet, with its lone "Cancel: Don't Move," is unattractive considering how underused the Don't Move status effect is.


• Set N-Kai Armlet's effect to "Cancel: Charm, Oil, Absorb: Dark", since Confusion is not used.


• Add additional effects to the useless accessories.  You know the ones: Jade Armlet, Defense Ring, and Defense Armlet.  Putting stock in status immunity is as reliable as putting stock in Enron.  You choose and you lose... out on its effects, as the opposing team favours beating you over the head with damage over meddling with the status effects you came to defend against.  Give these accessories something that can always (or often) be relied upon, such as stat bonuses, elemental boosting, or elemental resistance.  Seeing how N-Kai Armlet absorbs Dark while immunizing its user from status effects, how about they likewise absorb an element each?

Status Effects

• Reduce the damage modifier of Oil from 2.0x to 1.5x so that the changes to the Wizard's skill set suggested above are not totally broken.


• Lower the CT of Sleep from 60 to 30.  It is not uncommon for a sleeping unit to be left alone for the full duration (~7 turns) of the status effect when its support units are overburdened.


• Remove the frog status upon death so that the status effect isn't so fatal to the AI's intelligence.


• Replace Confusion with MP Regen and add its application to Priest's Regen skill and to P-Bag - Regen to give the skill something over Masamune, and P-Bag to give caster's something more than Move-MP UP to passively restore MP.

Finally, I'd like to echo FDC's suggestion about the guns.  Have them use tier 3 spells and lower the WP values of the fire, ice, and lightning guns to 13, 12, and 11, respectively.  This is tantamount to having the current guns proc spells a little weaker than tier 2 100% of the time.  Damage will be about 10 points higher on average (pre-Faith modifier) to possibly make the idea of a gun mage feasible.

[formerdeathcorps]

Gaignun, the way I coded oil makes your suggestions to oil rather impractical: you'd either have to single out fire weakness induced by oil as 1.5x weakness or change elemental weakness as a whole to 1.5x.

As for decreasing the range on spells like holy / flare, I have to disagree.  There should exist spells as long-ranged as guns, especially since holy and flare aren't AoE.  The huge JP / MP costs are more than worth 6 range.

As for Kiyomori, it currently only works on teams with very defensive / evasive units with long-term strategies (zombie / death sentence / stat reduction).  Increasing the AoE will not increase use because the AI thinks poison is HP damage, and thus, will use poison over attacking.

Personally, I'd reduce masamune's vert to 0 because it really is that OP, but that's just probably me habitually running squads with 8 SPD units.

Also, what exactly do you mean by [1,3] or [2,3] for Koutetsu?  I do understand that the current AoE is kind of strong, but I'm not too sure what you are trying to suggest.

Personally, I'd rather break the consistency and subject ninjitsu to shell and M-EV (as well as reflect).  If you think about all the other broken attacks currently dominating the metagame (grand cross and kagesougi), they are also blocked by protect and P-EV.  Adding ninjitsu to this pile makes it too easy to counter, just run a team like Losers (high evasion) or spam Cherche (which incidentally stops so many other threats).  In short, by making all the strong physical attacks evadable by P-EV and reducible by protect, you guarantee the existence of an obvious hard counter, which can create a rock-paper-scissors metagame.
Part of the reason why shell/reflect/M-EV is underused is because unlike physicals, there exists far more variety in undercutting M-EV (summons), reflect (summons and Tier 4 spells), or shell (status magic).  However, if ninjitsus were also blocked by this (and if we make Draw Out more attractive an offensive option), there would be much more reason to run shell/M-EV.
Just to give an example, I may still run DEFUP or Cherche on 40 Fury units because I fear the power of the physical hitters in the current metagame.  On the other hand, I invariably use setiemson only to cover the weaknesses of an initial: faith or 70 faith unit because I know that most units with above 300 HP and 40 - 55 faith have little to fear from most mages without MATKUP / elemental boost / initial: faith.  Those that are threats usually are damage optimized, meaning they lack either the spell casting speed (Short Charge) or HP necessary to survive my spell interruption attempts.  Draw Out, with the exception of kiku, has less range and is less of a threat.  When optimized, it does less damage than flare.  The same can be said of ultima (which bugs the AI) and geomancy (even less damage, and the status effect isn't really stopped by shell).  To be honest, MATKUP + elemental boost on spell guns are more of a threat than the last two because the archer or chemist using it can have 350+ HP and 9+ SPD.  (Notice that many physical strikers share this trait: just consider the jumpers on Raven's team, the 2H paladins on my team, or the myriad of kagesougi gunners.)

Replacing Confusion with MP Regen would require some AI hacking.  I don't mind doing it though.

[Gaignun]

Ah, you responded while I was still editing my post post-post. 

Gaignun, the way I coded oil makes your suggestions to oil rather impractical: you'd either have to single out fire weakness induced by oil as 1.5x weakness or change elemental weakness as a whole to 1.5x.

Tough luck, then, huh.  I still think oil should be more easily utilised, though.

As for decreasing the range on spells like holy / flare, I have to disagree.  There should exist spells as long-ranged as guns, especially since holy and flare aren't AoE.  The huge JP / MP costs are more than worth 6 range.

Holy and Flare are much stronger than guns, though.  I view their 0 AoE as the tradeoff of their power.  To each his/her own.

As for Kiyomori, it currently only works on teams with very defensive / evasive units with long-term strategies (zombie / death sentence / stat reduction).  Increasing the AoE will not increase use because the AI thinks poison is HP damage, and thus, will use poison over attacking.

There are more reliable ways of punching through stall tactics than Kiyomori.  What do you think of my suggestion to change Kiyomori to something entirely?

...what exactly do you mean by [1,3] or [2,3] for Koutetsu?  I do understand that the current AoE is kind of strong, but I'm not too sure what you are trying to suggest.

I mean the area of effect extends from two tiles away from the user to three tiles away - kind of like crossbows.  It's a very mild nerf. 

Personally, I'd rather break the consistency and subject ninjitsu to shell and M-EV (as well as reflect).  If you think about all the other broken attacks currently dominating the metagame (grand cross and kagesougi), they are also blocked by protect and P-EV.  Adding ninjitsu to this pile makes it too easy to counter, just run a team like Losers (high evasion) or spam Cherche (which incidentally stops so many other threats).  In short, by making all the strong physical attacks evadable by P-EV and reducible by protect, you guarantee the existence of an obvious hard counter, which can create a rock-paper-scissors metagame.
Part of the reason why shell/reflect/M-EV is underused is because unlike physicals, there exists far more variety in undercutting M-EV (summons), reflect (summons and Tier 4 spells), or shell (status magic).  However, if ninjitsus were also blocked by this (and if we make Draw Out more attractive an offensive option), there would be much more reason to run shell/M-EV.

Kagesougi and Grand Cross won't be a problem if our change to guns is followed through.  Then people will move onto Shell and M-Ev to protect themselves from the next biggest threat: Draw Out and magic.  What would P-Ev be used for if not for Ninjutsu?  Apart from Kagesougi and Grand Cross, physical offense is a little toothless at the moment.  Physical attacks are weak due in part to the attraction of magic; it is safer to stick to Brave-independent skills and keep Brave low than add the option of attacking with weapons and opening oneself to the opponent's weapons (particularly that painful Stone Gun, which goes through P-Ev anyway) at the same time.  The job traditionally dedicated to fearsome physicals, ninjas, has been declawed.  They are weaker than squires, slower than thieves, and as squishy as scholars.   Punch Art, which should be holding the banner of physical-based offense, is excluded to all but units that sacrifice everything for PA thanks to its unwieldy quadratic formulae.  People don't need Ninjutsu to entice them to stack M-Ev; they already are for Draw Out and status magic - and I hope they would be for black magic if not for the impotence of the skill set.

Replacing Confusion with MP Regen would require some AI hacking.  I don't mind doing it though.

Sounds great!  Don't kill yourself over it, though.  It's currently a suggestion that's been thrown out there, after all.

[formerdeathcorps]

You misread what I meant.  I meant that only stall teams can currently use kiyomori the Samurai spell.
As for changing it?  I can currently see a good niche use for it, as I can for Zombie and Heretic, but I admit such things won't see mass popularity, so I really don't mind it being changed but I won't advocate for it either.

[2,3] is actually really hard to code.  An alternative would be to change it to
Range 1
Area of Effect 2
Vertical 2

Apart from Kagesougi and Grand Cross, physical offense is a little toothless at the moment.  Physical attacks are weak due in part to the attraction of magic

If anything, Kagesougi and Grand Cross are the main culprits why physical offense is toothless right now.
If a melee attacker attacks a grand cross user, if the attacker doesn't immediately kill the Grand Cross user, the Grand Cross user will retaliate by healing himself while damaging AND blinding the melee attacker.  The blind makes the melee attacker's future attacks very uncertain while the Grand Cross user just erased most of the damage.
Similarly, a melee attacker must close the distance against a Kagesougi user.  If the close range attacker has too low move or was outsped (most Kagesougi archers have 9+ SPD), he'll take an attack strong enough to qualify as a 2HKO and will usually be blinded.  He'll either have to fall back and heal (for less than the damage taken, usually) or try for an uncertain kill shot (assuming he has one).

As for the trade-off between 40 and 70 fury?

70 Fury
+Reacts more
+Does more physical damage
-Takes more physical damage

40 Fury
+Takes less physical damage
-Does less physical damage
-Reacts less

Just from heuristics, as long as you have a reaction you care about and your damage is physical, it makes more sense to run 70 Fury, provided that unit (and by extension, his squad) can support that with the necessary damage output and healing.  More specifically, 40 fury only helps a low (< 300) HP unit survive a 1HKO attack, usually by being left in critical (which usually is just as bad in terms of tempo).  Obviously, for a charging mage, this doesn't matter as much since the charged spell will now go off (whereas with 70 fury, it would not), but for a physical striker, being put in critical leads to cowardly behavior.  Only when HP goes past around 350 (assuming no other defensive mechanisms) does 40 fury start to convert optimized physical 2HKOs into 3HKOs.  It's still a matter of playstyle (and obviously, my offensive bias shows here), but the downside of 70 fury really is overstated.

[Gaignun]

You misread what I meant.  I meant that only stall teams can currently use kiyomori the Samurai spell.  Or do you mean the weapon?

No, I meant the skill.  Sorry.  It's still weak at 1 range, though.

You're too hung up on Kagesougi and Grand Cross.  Kagesougi, Grand Cross, and Ninjutsu are the only things representing physical offense right now.  Consider Kagesougi and Grand Cross gone with the guns.  The next best option apart from Ninjutsu is physical attacks.  No physical attack is going to put a caster into critical state from full HP.  A Stone Gun does 151 damage with 70-on-40 Brave and Attack UP.   300 HP units with passive regen will take two bullets and still live.  This damage is manageable.   The only physical attacks more threatening than a Stone Gun that I can think of is Jump and Two Swords (dual wielding weapons).  Like Stone Gun, Jump goes through P-Ev.  Jump also takes time to land, which gives the opposing AI time to respond, turn order permitting.  Two Swords can hurt more and delivers damage instantly, but requires close proximity, is subjected to C-Ev and W-Ev, and has two chances to miss.  Neither Jump nor Two Swords will 1HKO at any rate.  More importantly, both target only one unit.  A single-target attack that doesn't kill is the most manageable form of damage.  Magic, on the other hand, hits multiple targets.  One may die while another is wounded at the same time.  Support needs to both heal and resurrect on the same turn.  High faith, which is indispensable for units with Raise 2, will take heavy damage.  This damage is much less manageable, and it is what I will strive to mitigate with shell.  Sure, status magic goes through shell.  It doesn't go through M-Ev, however, which is what I'll be stacking in lieu of P-Ev, which is of no use against Stone Guns and Jump.  Now I am exposed to Ninjutsu.  I still have a chance of dodging with C-Ev and W-Ev, thank goodness!

The way I see the defensive balance is

P-Ev: physical attacks, Ninjutsu, breaks
Protect: physical attacks, Ninjutsu, Jump

M-Ev: Magic (sans Summon), Draw Out, status effects
Shell: Magic (inc. Summon), Draw Out, Elemental

Moving Ninjutsu to M-Ev/Shell would imbalance the... well, balance.  If Punch Art was fearsome enough to deserve a mention, I would have no problem with Ninjutsu jumping the fence from P-Ev to M-Ev.

Minor point, but:

... the Grand Cross user will retaliate by healing himself while damaging AND blinding the melee attacker.  The blind makes the melee attacker's future attacks very uncertain while the Grand Cross user just erased most of the damage.

I empathise with this plight.  I think the 100% blind effect of Grand Cross and Kagesougi is unnecessary.  I would remove it or lower its proc. rate if I was calling the shots.

[formerdeathcorps]

A couple of other useless moves.

1) Heretic (I can think of exactly one offensive setup that exploits it, but I'm not sure on how well it works.  I'll report back once I test that squad.)
2) Preach (I can also think of a use for this, though creating the proper speed synchronization is tricky.)
3) Solution (For the purposes of spell interruption, bizen boat / mimic daravon / blackmail is uniformly better, as is sinkhole and throw stone.  This has the same use as 1), but is much more of a risk.)
4) Doku no Kyoukai (I bet if I make a tanky enough squad, I can get this to work)
5) Nameless Song / Dance (The AI will probably never stop spamming either because they add haste and slow, respectively.)
6) Bad Luck (This can't even be used on tanking squads.  The range is limited, the AI will spam it because it thinks it's always adding dead, and there's a charge time, which exposes the caster to 100% accuracy attacks.)

Proposed Fixes:
1) None yet as I still have a testable strategy.
2) None yet as I still have a testable strategy.
3) is inferior both as spell interruption and as the strategy usable for Heretic.  Can we please fuse it with insult?  Not only does this distinguish mediator more from oracle, it gives insult more weight with the AI towards spell interruption while ensuring that innocent will also be added.
4) None yet, but I don't have a testable strategy.
5) Simply removing haste and slow from the respective spells won't work because we break parity between Nameless Song and Dance.  Slow is vital to making Nameless Dance moderately useful, while haste ensures Nameless Song is used proactively.  Thus, I think both skills just need to do something different.  I personally prefer Nameless Song being a 33% at mass esuna and Nameless Dance being a 50% at mass dispel magic (since positive statii are on the whole less decisive than charm or petrify).
6) I like the idea, but what if we changed the charge time to "persevere", i.e. performance?  This would mean that every 4 CT clicks, a unit inflicts some subset of {Dead, Darkness, Silence, Oil, Slow, Stop} to a unit that originally started within 1 range of the caster.  It costs 9 MP per use (which we can certainly up to 12 or 15, if needed) and will continue until the caster changes targets or inflicts stop / dead on the target.  On average, it'll take 36 MP to kill someone (and 18 MP to stop or kill someone), but the spell is close range (so much more limited than wizard death or TM Stop), but you get multiple chances (usually 1-2 in between turns), which makes up for the expected CT of 8 for stop OR dead.  Unlike the wizard spell death, actually works against the undead.  If nothing else, it would encourage people to null dead and stop.

[CT5Holy]

Nameless Song should be 100% hit. This way you're guaranteed a buff, which is the reason one would use Nameless Song in the first place. The buff is still random, so you won't always get the most helpful buff, and you might get the same buff applied twice in a row.

[Fanatic]

For the record, I'd like to add a comment about elemental guns and Kagesougi. In addition to the usual defense of elemental absorbtion, Kagesougi Gunner is vulnerable to Projectile Guard [Hence my Unappreciated team]. If Grand Cross was also vulnerable, you wouldn't have to nerf the elemental guns.

[formerdeathcorps]

Anything using a gun is blockable by projectile guard including MATKUP spell gunners, Jumping Gunners, Grand Cross gunners, and Kagesougi gunners.  However, if you intend to argue that people should run 2x projectile guard on two units and 2x black costume on other units just to deal with the current metagame, then we clearly have a broken tactic on our hands because you're effectively saying that people have to resort to junk defenses (projectile guard is worthless against any non-gunner team) just to stop your team.
For the record, the maximum damage dealt by Kagesougi gunner is 16 * 5/4 * 4/3 * 17 or 26 * 17 = 442 before Fury, which is actually more the maximum damage capacity of last season.  When you consider that Arena also has lower HP, movement, and SPD totals than S5, while this kind of damage also hits at 6 range and the Kagesougi gunner can attack at a decent magical clip, Kagesougi gunner is currently the most broken damage tactic (especially since the only physical units that do more have to use berserk at melee range, which gives them only one option and is extremely risky).

As for subjecting ninjitsu to P-EV?  As it currently stands and using Gaignun's notation,

P-Ev: physical attacks, breaks
Protect: physical attacks, Ninjutsu, Jump

M-Ev: Magic (sans Summon, Holy, Flare), Draw Out, status effects
Shell: Magic (inc. Summon, Holy, Flare), Draw Out, Elemental
Reflect: Magic (sans Summon, Tier 4), status effects, ninjitsu

This may not seem "balanced" but we can't weigh everything equally.  Breaks are a mostly bad offensive option due to their low hit chances, and are about equal to the attacks at the low end of the physical spectrum.  Physical attacks include kagesougi, grand cross, 2H weapons, 2S flails or elemental boost ninjato, 2 climhazzard knives, berserkers, and punch art (~240 DMG base at optimum).  Thus, although P-EV really only blocks one category, it is by far the most significant category to block.  Considering you can get it higher than 33%, when you calculate the expected damage dealt by your opponent, you can have it block this subset of attacks far more than Protect ever could.
One can reasonably argue protect blocks a more significant subset of physical attacks, but protect only can block 2/3 of the damage so the trade-off with P-EV is reasonable (though I'd still argue protect is slightly stronger since 33%+ P-EV isn't exactly easy to get either).
If you look at M-EV, we have four skewed effects.  At a mechanical level, C and W-EV only work on P-EV.  Second, the metagame is dominated by physical damage, which discourages the need for M-EV.  Thirdly, because most magic doesn't do enough, a unit with 40 faith doesn't need M-EV (unlike a unit with 40 fury); the units usually most afraid of magic are high-faith mages themselves, but they can't evade while charging.  Lastly, and probably most importantly, most players tend to use only the strongest or highest AoE spells, and these are precisely holy, flare, and Summon, the very things M-EV cannot block.  Thus, M-EV's effect is really only significant vs. Draw Out and Status Effects.  Out of the two, statii is actually the more dangerous threat because draw out is an inferior range and damage option compared to magic.  But even then, a mediator has a far higher hit chance against a 40 faith unit than an oracle.
I won't go over shell here, but it's fairly clear that the parity between M-EV and Shell is nowhere near the the parity of P-EV and Protect.  Even if we "fix" the brokenness of grand cross and kagesougi, the physical metagame would still remain fairly dominant so units with 40 fury would still probably want DEFUP/Protect or P-EV and M-EV will still be weaker than P-EV.  Thus, adding ninjitsu to P-EV, although it would make P-EV have parity with protect, would do nothing to solve the M-EV/P-EV parity and would likely only worsen that problem.  This is why I propose subjecting ninjitsu to M-EV.

[Fanatic]

No, Grand Cross ignore Projectile Guard, at least with Elemental Guns. Test it yourself.

[Fanatic]

Look, an ability is not junk because it is not useful in 100% of situations. If that is your definition, then most abilities are going to be Junk, including Auto Potion, HP Restore, Holy, Kotetsu, Charm, and Zombie. You would not say all those abilities are useless just because they don't always work.

No, an ability is rated on 1) How often it is used 2) the strength of its use 3) The positive cost of using it and 4) the negative cost of using it.

Let's pretend Projectile Guard actually DID block Grand Cross. Projectile Guard is useful against any physical ranged unit, barring Monks and Lancers. And I'd say running into physical ranged units is about as common as running into Draw Out. But I'll give it a "B" under category 1.

It gets an A under category 2. It shuts down ranged attacks. Not only that, but the AI will still make the attempt, creating wasted actions. The very nature of Ranged Attacks means that multiple units will be in range, and since we know how AI targeting priorities work, it is not too hard to create units that will be frequently shot at. When it comes into play, in comes in HARD.

It gets an A under category 3. All you need is Brave and Faith. You can slap it on ANY unit, it is independent of stats. Further, it even activates when a unit otherwise would not get evasion. Abandon and Awareness require specific equipment builds - Projectile Guard does not.

It gets a B under category 4, but only because I'm being overly critical. To be honest, no reaction is so game breaking that using Projectile Guard instead of it handicaps you. Auto Potion works if you stack Protect and Shell, and/or Defense up, but by no means is it game breaking. HP restore comes up less than you expect, mainly because the very build that makes it useful discourages enemies from attacking! Abandon and Awareness require equipment, and though they tend to be more useful, but there are plenty of attacks that ignore evasion. MA Save / PA Save seldom triggers often enough or for long enough time to affect the outcomes of matches. Counter assumes the attacker is actually in range. Same with Meatbone Slash. Dragon Spirit sounds good, until you realize that the revived unit is still going to run or heal itself (often not enough to escape imminent death). And counter magic takes MP, and since most magic attacks are elemental, you might end up HEALING the attacking unit!

You claim it is Junk because you don't use it. I could understand that if you knew that Grand Cross bypassed it (And I would downgrade category 1 to a D), but you thought you could get the same evasion even against that. If I don't use projectile guard, it is because either A) I know it doesn't work against 1/3 of the Gun threat (Grand Cross) or B) I don't have the job points to spare.

[Fanatic]

Actually, I understand what you're saying.

You're right. Absolutely. We need more MA Evade.

Have you considered greatly boosting the MA Evade of Shields and Mantles? Elemental resists are another reason people might skimp on the Evade...