Naijin no longer on staff

[Mobius1]

I don't recall the officials being a eye wrenching mess like this.

Of course, I basically used the officials to post short / interactive stories.

P.S. 6% to dodge is a lot more than it appears. You should see the difference in DPS when going from 0%to hit to 6% to hit on one's parses.

I'd say it's not really that big of a difference. Most SMR2 attacks are not lethal and the few that are can largely or even completely be mitigated through other means (for example, nature resist and/or piercing fittings for spike thorn, slash fittings for rift crawlers, etc.). It's one thing if that was a 6% higher chance for death (which arguably still isn't a huge difference.), but it's another if it's generally a move that might lead to death but not necessarily.

Also, there is the facts I pointed out earlier, about how in most cases you are better off with SMR2 than you were in the past, especially cmans.

Also, mind you that that bonus easily drops to only +3-5% instead of 6, if you get maneuver skills/stats boosted.

[entropy]

SMR2 requires dodge in what way? It's literally only a 6% difference to your SMR2 defense as a pure going from 0 to 100 dodging (and you also get a crap ton of extra DS).

Not only that, but before when things were basically the wild west when it comes to maneuvers, you had SMR1, and a whole plethora of maneuver skills based on unique crap that was quite often much worse than SMR2 is for you now. In fact you want to talk about getting buffed as a pure through SMR2? Let's talk about how CM defense got converted to SMR2 defense. Your defense against cmans went to the freaking MOON!! That was a massive buff for pures.

Most SMR2 attacks are not lethal

All of this is complete nonsense.

>Dodging isn't required, 101 ranks only gives 6% benefit
This is only true if the pure has trained up all their other SMRv2 defense skills. In other words, defense scales logarithmically with ranks in defense skills. Which undermines your followup claim of:

>now that CMANs are SMRv2, pures can defend the shit out of them
Due to that scaling, pures can't train their way out of getting CMANed, period. The seemingly massive buff from 20% chance to 65% chance to resist (at 10m+ exp) doesn't result in improved survivability in practice because monsters yolo out CMANs constantly. Here's a concrete numbers example: my warmage, not even a pure, is perf stats, 1x pf, 1x perception, 1.5x cman (yes), 0.6x effective dodge, 5/5 disarm. Chance to defend against a like leveled disarm attempt? About 60%. Getting clipped by like level SMRv2 (CMAN or otherwise) is a statistical guarantee. I suspect you experience playing a rogue has you both underestimating how frequently it happens and unaware of how deadly that is for a pure. They have neither the redux nor the armor modifiers to blunt the impact of the maneuver or the followup hits delivered while the character's subsequently disabled.

>SMRv2 is better for pures than SMRv1/custom creature code
Pretty much only true in your whiteroom example. Get a few levels over a roa'ter and it can't meaningfully harm you. Same level creature starts throwing SMRv2 attacks and suddenly it can hit for max damage 1 in 20 times. In other words, even if you could somehow render yourself out range of a successful SMRv2 roll, 5% of the attempts hit, and hard, via open rolls. This shit is often a hunt ender for pures. 15 dmg slash critical to the abdomen comes with a lovely R2 nerve wound, hunt over. Charge breaks your hand, you get a minor on your other arm while knocked down, hunt over. Same Charge RNGs to your head instead, massive stun, R2 head wound, hunt over. And these are some of the better outcomes. You can just as well take a moderate puncture crit to the eye and just straight up die, or get walked in on while you're disabled and eat a second maneuver that auto-hits because defense is so low.

Simply put, pures do not have the damage mitigation to walk away from these scenarios and keep playing the game, and they are guaranteed to occur due to logarithmic SMRv2 defense scaling and open rolls.


Anyway I'm in here trying to read memes and mechanics analysis/suggestions and you're just going too hard man. Some aspects of the game you're really knowledgeable about - I applied your crit analysis post to my warmage to great effect - but your take here does not share that same veracity.

[Neveragain]

I'd say it's not really that big of a difference. Most SMR2 attacks are not lethal and the few that are can largely or even completely be mitigated through other means (for example, nature resist and/or piercing fittings for spike thorn, slash fittings for rift crawlers, etc.). It's one thing if that was a 6% higher chance for death (which arguably still isn't a huge difference.), but it's another if it's generally a move that might lead to death but not necessarily.

Also, there is the facts I pointed out earlier, about how in most cases you are better off with SMR2 than you were in the past, especially cmans.

Also, mind you that that bonus easily drops to only +3-5% instead of 6, if you get maneuver skills/stats boosted.

I honestly don't know.

I've played mages for 20 years, I have never gotten fancy about it. E-wave, bolts and move on. I've always been crazy greedy and it's usually not a big deal. My krol cleric was by far the easiest to play but, like I said, I don't get fancy, spam 302 and move on. But the cleric was a beast and nearly impossible to kill under normal hunting ground situations.

Rogue, by far, is the worst class in the game to hunt with. It just fucking sucks.

[drumpel]

SMR2 requires dodge in what way? It's literally only a 6% difference to your SMR2 defense as a pure going from 0 to 100 dodging (and you also get a crap ton of extra DS).

Not only that, but before when things were basically the wild west when it comes to maneuvers, you had SMR1, and a whole plethora of maneuver skills based on unique crap that was quite often much worse than SMR2 is for you now. In fact you want to talk about getting buffed as a pure through SMR2? Let's talk about how CM defense got converted to SMR2 defense. Your defense against cmans went to the freaking MOON!! That was a massive buff for pures.

The GMs have finally put everything into one spot, one system, and that's SMRv2. This is good on the backend because it helps simplify things so you're not having to design a skill/spell that might need to be configured for multiple systems. That's basically the best thing that the GMs did when they dumped the CML and SMRv1 and moved things to SMRv2.

You are right that the defense against things did go up for pures when this change was made because of the absolute shit CML defense they had, however, pures get the worst of SMRv2 when compared to semi and square classes.

PSM3 tanked the SMRv2 defense, especially for pures. When my pures had a 75% chance to avoid SMRv2 stuff, the PSM3 changes dropped their SMRv2 defense by upwards of 20 points. That means my pures went from being able to defend (outside of open rolls) 3/4 of manuevers made on them down to defending about half.

Now, now....I know you're going to say that that's better then what you got from CML defense and even though that is true, pures are still pretty much fucked when a maneuver hits them. The spell hindrance of armors keeps pures in light armors and even with crit padding (massive amounts) you get slaughtered when endrolls exceed 101 with some of these maneuvers.

Semis tend to wear brig or some form of chain and depending on your level and skills, you can build up some redux.
Squares tend to be in some form of plate or at the very minimum, some level of chain and get a lot of redux.
Redux doesn't impact SMRv2, but it does help against physical AS attacks.
Heavy armor plays a significant role in helping reduce crits from maneuvers and also CS based spells (this has been confirmed by NIR on the forums a couple years ago).

SMRv2 was supposed to give those in light armors a better chance to dodge SMRv2 attacks. However, that's not true. You can over train in armor use and negate almost all of the heavy armor penalty for SMRv2, thus making heavy armors just as successful for allowing you to dodge SMRv2 attacks as if you were wearing lighter armors. Tack on the fact that the crit factor reduction for heavy armors against maneuvers means that semis and squares shake off manuevers a lot of the time (outside of the horrific open RNG the system allows).

Not only do semis and squares have the ability to easily defend against SMRv2 on average due to being able to train 2x (and some 3x) in each physical skill for SMRv2 defense, they also get the added benefit of being able to train away most of the heavy armor penalty to SMRv2 defense and they also get the reduced crit benefit of heavier armors.

Now, now....I know, you're going to say that squares and semis are meant to be more resilient against physical attacks. However, the system is skewed against pures and there is no real way around it.
They can't train as much in PF/Perception/CM/Dodge as semi and squares and they can't easily train in these skills either due to the very high costs for some of them.
They also can't get the benefit of wearing heavier armors due to spell hindrance....if you can't cast a spell without failure, then you're pretty much screwed.
They also don't get the reduced crit factor for wearing heavier armors.
They also got screwed the most with the PSM3 tanking of SMRv2 defense.

I've had pures take killing shots from a boar maneuver charge that resulted in a 102 endroll (102, that's 102). Rank 3 neck, eye or head.
I've had pures take hunt ending hits from charges (polearm) on 105 endrolls (even when having 15 CER of crit padding); broken arms, rank 2 head wounds. Anything over 110 endrolls is always a hunt ending hit that if it doesn't outright kill them it gives a wound they need to retreat and get healed so they can go back to casting.

Take it as you like, but you seem to either not understand the plight pures have with SMRv2 or you just don't care because you don't have to deal with it in game because you don't play a pure on a constant basis.

[Mobius1]

All of this is complete nonsense.

*sigh* Give me a break man. You realize you are talking to someone that has literally spent hundreds of hours testing SMR 1 and 2, trying to figure out the equation? I know extremely well how it works. With squares, semis, AND pures.

Dodging isn't required, 101 ranks only gives 6% benefit
This is only true if the pure has trained up all their other SMRv2 defense skills. In other words, defense scales logarithmically with ranks in defense skills. Which undermines your followup claim of:

Again, I understand how it works. Seeing as training dodging is as expensive as it is for pures, it's generally a post cap goal, and I'm pretty sure most are training it after maxing out their other SMR2 skills first. Also, keep in mind that your level itself is the biggest contributor to your diminishing returns with SMR2 defense, so even if you actually trained 100 dodging ranks without the other skills being maxed, the difference would be like 1%.

now that CMANs are SMRv2, pures can defend the shit out of them
Due to that scaling, pures can't train their way out of getting CMANed, period. The seemingly massive buff from 20% chance to 65% chance to resist (at 10m+ exp) doesn't result in improved survivability in practice because monsters yolo out CMANs constantly. Here's a concrete numbers example: my warmage, not even a pure, is perf stats, 1x pf, 1x perception, 1.5x cman (yes), 0.6x effective dodge, 5/5 disarm. Chance to defend against a like leveled disarm attempt? About 60%. Getting clipped by like level SMRv2 (CMAN or otherwise) is a statistical guarantee. I suspect you experience playing a rogue has you both underestimating how frequently it happens and unaware of how deadly that is for a pure. They have neither the redux nor the armor modifiers to blunt the impact of the maneuver or the followup hits delivered while the character's subsequently disabled.

I'm failing to see how any of this shows that what I said is wrong. It's a fact that your cman defense went up, as you yourself here claimed. If I need to explain to you why going from 20% chance to resist to 65% is a massive improvement, I don't think I'm going to get anywhere with you in this discussion. Not only are you going to outright avoid cmans more than 3 times as often as you did before, you are also going to significantly reduce their efficacy. Even if you are hit by a cman, you are still significantly better off having a lower end roll against you due to having increased defense against it. The fact that I am even having to argue this is silly.

Also, you realize you can't get better than 80% resist against a cman unless you learn the skill? And redux does nothing against maneuvers unless you go Kroderine Soul, which I'm personally not a fan of (especially as a rogue.). Heavier armor can reduce maneuver damage slightly (It's 5 CER), but with things like 520, 319, crit padding on armor, etc., those differences become smaller. And not every square is wearing full plate, either.

SMRv2 is better for pures than SMRv1/custom creature code
Pretty much only true in your whiteroom example. Get a few levels over a roa'ter and it can't meaningfully harm you. Same level creature starts throwing SMRv2 attacks and suddenly it can hit for max damage 1 in 20 times. In other words, even if you could somehow render yourself out range of a successful SMRv2 roll, 5% of the attempts hit, and hard, via open rolls. This shit is often a hunt ender for pures. 15 dmg slash critical to the abdomen comes with a lovely R2 nerve wound, hunt over. Charge breaks your hand, you get a minor on your other arm while knocked down, hunt over. Same Charge RNGs to your head instead, massive stun, R2 head wound, hunt over. And these are some of the better outcomes. You can just as well take a moderate puncture crit to the eye and just straight up die, or get walked in on while you're disabled and eat a second maneuver that auto-hits because defense is so low.

Lol, you think the old maneuver attacks didn't have open rolls? SMR 1 has open rolls, I can tell you that. And I mentioned rift crawlers earlier, which is the same move as roaters, in which case getting slash resist does wonders. If you are in Voln you can use symbol of transcendence if you really feel the need. Clerics can 319, etc..

Simply put, pures do not have the damage mitigation to walk away from these scenarios and keep playing the game, and they are guaranteed to occur due to logarithmic SMRv2 defense scaling and open rolls.

And how, pray tell, does a square fair much better? Excepting Kroderine Soul, the differences are actually not huge (Empaths can even 3x PF). It's not like open rolls don't pose issues for squares either! In fact, pures get some pretty sweet spells that help with maneuvers, such as the ones I mentioned earlier in this post.

Anyway I'm in here trying to read memes and mechanics analysis/suggestions and you're just going too hard man. Some aspects of the game you're really knowledgeable about - I applied your crit analysis post to my warmage to great effect - but your take here does not share that same veracity.

Don't come and claim that going from 20% to 65% is nothing, and then proceed to tell me that I'm not very knowledgeable about this. You literally jumped into this discussion to try and school me about something I likely know more about than you (maneuver defense), and the argument you are making is totally incorrect.

But anyways, to re-iterate my initial point that all this was about - Pures have not been nerfed when it comes to maneuver defense, they have actually been buffed. Not only was switching things to SMR2 more beneficial for you in most circumstances, you have also been given new spells over the years that help. And dodging is not a "nerf" for pures, unless you call the ability to get a ton of extra DS a nerf.

[Mobius1]

You are right that the defense against things did go up for pures when this change was made because of the absolute shit CML defense they had, however, pures get the worst of SMRv2 when compared to semi and square classes.

Honestly, I don't care to get too deep into a square vs. pure comparison here, since the point I am trying to make is more centered around whether pures were nerfed. The difference between a fully trained pure and a fully trained square is about 20 SMR2 defense. That seems pretty fair to me. And that gap can be lessoned by getting enhancives (since a square gets less bang for their buck if they enhance SMR2.), and being a maneuverable race (+40-80 dodging.).

PSM3 tanked the SMRv2 defense, especially for pures. When my pures had a 75% chance to avoid SMRv2 stuff, the PSM3 changes dropped their SMRv2 defense by upwards of 20 points. That means my pures went from being able to defend (outside of open rolls) 3/4 of manuevers made on them down to defending about half.

Yeah, this was kind of a nerf, but only depending on how you look at it. Though it technically impacted everyone, not just pures. But it was mainly aimed at pures (and semis who hunt like pures), since stance has so much weight in the equation it was actually giving them a huge advantage since they don't leave guarded stance.

Now, now....I know you're going to say that that's better then what you got from CML defense and even though that is true, pures are still pretty much fucked when a maneuver hits them. The spell hindrance of armors keeps pures in light armors and even with crit padding (massive amounts) you get slaughtered when endrolls exceed 101 with some of these maneuvers.

Heavy armor plays a significant role in helping reduce crits from maneuvers and also CS based spells (this has been confirmed by NIR on the forums a couple years ago).

It's Plate 5 CER, Chain 3, Scale 1, Leather -1, robes -3. Maneuvers/spells use a /5 crit divisor, so absolutely it's pretty decent when in plate. But as I said in my previous post, pures do get things that help with this. 520, for example, is +10 CER (Which I understand is randomized if you have over 6 CER padding).

SMRv2 was supposed to give those in light armors a better chance to dodge SMRv2 attacks. However, that's not true. You can over train in armor use and negate almost all of the heavy armor penalty for SMRv2, thus making heavy armors just as successful for allowing you to dodge SMRv2 attacks as if you were wearing lighter armors. Tack on the fact that the crit factor reduction for heavy armors against maneuvers means that semis and squares shake off manuevers a lot of the time (outside of the horrific open RNG the system allows).

Well, overtraining is actually mostly worthless. Heavy armor has such little impact on SMR2 defense because of the diminishing returns in the equation, and not because of overtraining (or armored evasion). Most squares will see a 0% benefit from overtraining armor, and some might at best get an extra 1% on some attacks due to rounding.

Going from robes to full plate is a 1% hit to most capped squares.

Not only do semis and squares have the ability to easily defend against SMRv2 on average due to being able to train 2x (and some 3x) in each physical skill for SMRv2 defense, they also get the added benefit of being able to train away most of the heavy armor penalty to SMRv2 defense and they also get the reduced crit benefit of heavier armors.

No doubt they are better against SMR2, by design. It would be silly if pures defended as well as them. Though I do think the gap between semis and squares is too small (Semis only have 6 less SMR2 defense), but that's a different discussion.

They also got screwed the most with the PSM3 tanking of SMRv2 defense.

I personally disagree, because of the benefits of the cman changes. Overall I think it's a stretch to call the stance change a nerf, since SMR2 had relatively only been around for a brief period, as those rollouts came recently (The converting of creature maneuvers to SMR2.). It was likely due to all the rollouts that this deficiency in the system became obvious to them, so they had to nip it in the bud.

EDIT: Basically, what I am trying to say here, is that overall SMR2 was a buff for pures, even if there was a nerf that happened in the short term.

Take it as you like, but you seem to either not understand the plight pures have with SMRv2 or you just don't care because you don't have to deal with it in game because you don't play a pure on a constant basis.

Every single death I have had in like the last 2 years as a rogue has been from maneuvers, and I have enhancives to push my SMR2 defense to the limits. Open rolls are the enemy of everyone, not just pures.

EDIT: As a side note, getting impact resistance for your head is also super helpful against deadly maneuvers, as it only needs 15 damage to kill. Though, at least in my experience, the vast majority of maneuvers that hit you with impact damage are cmans. The second damage hit of roater/crawler burrows are impact, but that's the weaker hit (though you'd certainly be better served getting impact resist for it.). The wave in Atoll is the only other that comes to mind, but that is 100% avoidable.

[Ramrod]

First of all, my main argument against you in this discussion, has been that I disagree that there have been many nerfs. There really hasn't been many nerfs, and the amount of buffs VASTLY outnumbers them.

Yeah, that's where we disagree. When you say that, you're either taking what Simu originally said 20 years ago at face value or looking at it in a vacuum. Are runestaves and lores a hard requirement for pures? Nope, but since introducing the systems I can't think of a single spell update/release that didn't have a strong benefit from those skills. I mean, Sanctify is pretty worthless without MIU/AS/SMC training. Did swinging clerics get directly nerfed? No, and in a vacuum it's just as viable, but in reality with things like SMRv2 and PSM3 that's just not true.

And as for a nerf because of a 1% extreme? Those situations are usually the BEST ones to implement a nerf, because it's better to nerf the extreme than try to buff everyone else. The loot cap is freaking fantastic if you ask me.

lolwut. You think that every single player should be punished because of the actions of a handful of players? Seriously? Simu could just address the underlying problem rather than putting in game-wide nerfs. Instead, fuck the customers they can all suffer because of one person.

[Mobius1]

Yeah, that's where we disagree. When you say that, you're either taking what Simu originally said 20 years ago at face value or looking at it in a vacuum. Are runestaves and lores a hard requirement for pures? Nope, but since introducing the systems I can't think of a single spell update/release that didn't have a strong benefit from those skills. I mean, Sanctify is pretty worthless without MIU/AS/SMC training. Did swinging clerics get directly nerfed? No, and in a vacuum it's just as viable, but in reality with things like SMRv2 and PSM3 that's just not true.

Except even outside of a vacuum they didn't get nerfed. Lores were a buff, dodging was a buff, and SMR2 was a buff.

lolwut. You think that every single player should be punished because of the actions of a handful of players? Seriously? Simu could just address the underlying problem rather than putting in game-wide nerfs. Instead, fuck the customers they can all suffer because of one person.

The loot cap didn't impact most players - It nerfed the extreme. Why would you go through the trouble of buffing the 99% when you can just nerf the 1%? That was my whole point.

[drumpel]

Honestly, I don't care to get too deep into a square vs. pure comparison here, since the point I am trying to make is more centered around whether pures were nerfed. The difference between a fully trained pure and a fully trained square is about 20 SMR2 defense. That seems pretty fair to me. And that gap can be lessoned by getting enhancives (since a square gets less bang for their buck if they enhance SMR2.).

"Hello? Hello? Anybody home, huh, Think, McFly! Think!"

You just said your point is about trying to see if the change was a nerf, yet you agree that they were (see below).

Yeah, this was definitely a nerf. Though it nerfed everyone, not just pures. But it was mainly aimed at pures (and semis who hunt like pures), since stance has so much weight in the equation it was actually giving them a huge advantage since they don't leave guarded stance.

The fact is, pures were nerfed and they are screwed with maneuvers. As I said in my last post.....one that you kind of agreed with, yet disagreed with somehow.

It's Plate 5 CER, Chain 3, Scale 1, Leather -1, robes -3. Maneuvers/spells use a /5 crit divisor, so absolutely it's pretty decent when in plate. But as I said in my previous post, pures do get things that help with this. 520, for example, is +10 CER (Which I understand is randomized if you have over 6 CER padding).

Yes, we've already established heavy armors provide better crit protection, which is why pures get hosed against maneuvers. Even with lots of crit padding in light armor pails in comparison to unpadded chain and especially plate armor.

Well, overtraining is actually mostly worthless. Heavy armor has such little impact on SMR2 defense because of the diminishing returns in the equation, and not because of overtraining (or armored evasion). Most squares will see a 0% benefit from overtraining armor, and some might at best might get an extra 1% on some attacks due to rounding.

Going from robes to full plate is a 1% hit to most capped squares.

And that's a problem that NIR won't fix. I've asked them and they won't do it. They feel it's okay to allow heavy armors to be able to avoid maneuvers just as easily as light armors. Light armor was supposed to give those that wore it a significantly better chance to dodge maneuvers, but they don't. If this was fixed, it would lessen the impact of maneuver deaths to pures since they're in light armors. It won't stop maneuvers from still being deadly when they're struck by them, but at least it would reduce the chance of getting hit.

Heavy armor is just awesome when it comes to defending against maneuvers, if you get hit. It should be a lot harder to dodge said maneuvers in heavier armors because you can take the hit.
Robes should give you a +20 to SMRv2 defense.
Leather should be +10.

A change like this would fix some of the nerf handed out during the PSM3 SRMv2 defense reduction to pures. Yeah, they'd get hit less (like how it was before PSM3), but they'd still take hard hits. I was okay with it when I had 3/4 a chance to avoid maneuvers before PSM3. Taking a 20-25 SMRv2 defense reduction was a kick in the nuts. Now it becomes next to impossible to survive a maneuver as a pure. If it doesn't outright kill you, you're left prone and/or stunned to take a pummel from AS attacks or worse, other maneuvers that will kill you.

No doubt they are better against SMR2, by design. It would be silly if pures defended as well as them. Though I do think the gap between semis and squares is too small (Semis only have 6 less SMR2 defense), but that's a different discussion.

It's not a different discussion. Semis and especially squares benefit doubly from being able to over train in armor use to negate SMRv2 armor penalty and also glean the benefits of heavy armor protecting better. Then stack on the fact they can train in more skills to improve their SMRv2 defense numbers, they get the best of it all where the pures get none of it.

I personally disagree, because of the benefits of the cman changes. Overall I think it's a stretch to call the stance change a nerf, since SMR2 had relatively only been around for a brief period, as those rollouts came recently (The converting of creature maneuvers to SMR2.). It was likely due to all the rollouts that this deficiency in the system became obvious to them, so they had to nip it in the bud.

You just said above that it's a nerf. You can't keep going back and forth.

Every single death I have had in like the last 2 years as a rogue has been from maneuvers, and I have enhancives to push my SMR2 defense to the limits. Open rolls are the enemy of everyone, not just pures.

Same with pures, except you don't die from every maneuver that does hit you. I have a rogue that's almost level 60, wears aug chain, has 25% redux. He takes hits from maneuvers and survives most of them and with his redux and chain armor he can take a few hits without dying if he's stunned/prone.

I've got a couple of warriors between level 36 and 45, they're in chain right now, have around 25% redux and they too take maneuver hits and keep on going, I've yet to have one that outright has killed them.
None of my squares have crit padding on their armor.
Hell, even my level 28 TWC paladin that wears unpadded chain mail survives maneuvers.
I've got multiple pures that range from low level to capped and even with 15+ CER crit padding with soft leather, low endrolls (low endrolls of 102 can kill) from maneuvers either outright kill or at the very minimum put my pures running back to town to heal so they can go back to hunt. The only exception to this is my level 61 reduxmage, he's got almost 16% redux, wearing studded leather and has 7 CER crit padding - he can take a hit almost as well as my rogue and keep on hunting most of the time without having to retreat.


In the end, pures got screwed with SMRv2. I don't disagree with you that they should defend as well as a semi or square, but when pures get zero of the benefits that semis and squares get to have (outside of mutant builds), there is something broken with the system.

[Mobius1]

"Hello? Hello? Anybody home, huh, Think, McFly! Think!"

You just said your point is about trying to see if the change was a nerf, yet you agree that they were (see below).

Sure, but it's more of a technicality. Perhaps my point didn't come across right.

SMR2 was pretty new and needed a tweak. It was a nerf in the short term, but my point is that in the long term, SMR2 is better than the old maneuver systems.

The fact is, pures were nerfed and they are screwed with maneuvers.

Are they though? "Screwed" denotes a pretty severe issue. But regardless of how severe it actually is, the point I am trying to make is that they are still better off than they used to be against them. If you are screwed by maneuvers now, you aren't more screwed than you were under the old wild west systems. Man, I for one sure can't wait for Implode to go SMR2! That will be a win for everyone!

Yes, we've already established heavy armors provide better crit protection, which is why pures get hosed against maneuvers. Even with lots of crit padding in light armor pails in comparison to unpadded chain and especially plate armor.

Actually, lots of padding to light armors is actually equal to or better than the bonus from unpadded chain/plate. I already pointed out what the bonuses/penalties are in my earlier post. In fact, in the conversation in Discord where Naijin talked about it a couple years ago that was mentioned earlier, his main point was that 520 was comparable to full plate against maneuvers, funny enough.

And that's a problem that NIR won't fix. I've asked them and they won't do it. They feel it's okay to allow heavy armors to be able to avoid maneuvers just as easily as light armors. Light armor was supposed to give those that wore it a significantly better chance to dodge maneuvers, but they don't. If this was fixed, it would lessen the impact of maneuver deaths to pures since they're in light armors. It won't stop maneuvers from still being deadly when they're struck by them, but at least it would reduce the chance of getting hit.

No, you have this completely backwards. Light armor is supposed to do absolutely nothing to help you avoid maneuvers. Heavy armor is supposed to make you avoid maneuvers more poorly. So to "fix" this, would not mean any benefit to characters in light armor, but simply a nerf to people in heavy armor. In fact Estild personally told me that the reason they will not change this, is because all it would do is nerf squares.

Heavy armor is just awesome when it comes to defending against maneuvers, if you get hit. It should be a lot harder to dodge said maneuvers in heavier armors because you can take the hit.
Robes should give you a +20 to SMRv2 defense.
Leather should be +10.

You hugely overestimate the benefits of heavy armor against maneuvers. It's also too narrow of a view, as not only are there other pros/cons to armor choice, but pures get many spells to help make up for their deficiencies, as I keep trying to say.

But again, to keep repeating myself: I am not really wanting to get dragged into a pure vs square debate here. My point is that SMR2 has been good for pures, and didn't somehow put you in some dire catastrophe where you are somehow "screwed" by it. We all have weaknesses, and a pure's weakness to maneuvers didn't suddenly come into existence when SMR2 was implemented.

Now it becomes next to impossible to survive a maneuver as a pure.

Next to impossible? Talk about melodrama!

Meanwhile we got 319 straight up laughing at maneuvers!

Same with pures, except you don't die from every maneuver that does hit you. I have a rogue that's almost level 60, wears aug chain, has 25% redux. He takes hits from maneuvers and survives most of them and with his redux and chain armor he can take a few hits without dying if he's stunned/prone.

If you are dying from every maneuver that hits you, your class is not the problem.

I've got a couple of warriors between level 36 and 45, they're in chain right now, have around 25% redux and they too take maneuver hits and keep on going, I've yet to have one that outright has killed them.
None of my squares have crit padding on their armor.
Hell, even my level 28 TWC paladin that wears unpadded chain mail survives maneuvers.
I've got multiple pures that range from low level to capped and even with 15+ CER crit padding with soft leather, low endrolls (low endrolls of 102 can kill) from maneuvers either outright kill or at the very minimum put my pures running back to town to heal so they can go back to hunt. The only exception to this is my level 61 reduxmage, he's got almost 16% redux, wearing studded leather and has 7 CER crit padding - he can take a hit almost as well as my rogue and keep on hunting most of the time without having to retreat.

I literally gave exact numbers about how all this works. I learned way back in the 90's that just because I perceived something to work a certain way, doesn't mean that's how it actually works. I'm literally telling you how it actually works - I can certainly explain it in more detail if you want to understand better how it works.

In the end, pures got screwed with SMRv2. I don't disagree with you that they should defend as well as a semi or square, but when pures get zero of the benefits that semis and squares get to have (outside of mutant builds), there is something broken with the system.

Again, it sounds to me like your problem isn't your class but is something else you are doing. Unless you are just being melodramatic.