Let's look at the Improved Reflect talent for a moment. Few things are as iconic as the Jedi using his/her lightsaber to reflect blasters fire back at the enemy
(especially for folks who grew up in the Phantom Menace era).

Unfortunately, without additional talents and gear it is an ability you will never use.

Consider an attack at medium range (2 purple difficulty) by a moderately skilled attacker (1 yellow proficiency and 2 green ability). The attacker will hit 65% of the time, but improved reflect will only
be triggerable (via 3 threat) 3% of the time. So only one out of 30 hits or so will be reflectable. Practically worthless.

But what about defense? Well, let us add some Setback dice (S) and see:

                         --       S     SS    SSS   SSSS
Hit                   65.1%   56.7%  48.6%  41.2%  34.5%
Hit+ImpReflect         2.1%    4.6%   7.6%  10.5%  12.8%
% of Hits Reflected    3.2%    8.1%  15.6%  25.4%  37.1%

That start to look a bit more attractive. You get to use Improved Reflect about one in eight times or so you get shot at if your defense is maxed. As a Jedi, however, you have more options than just maxing out your defense dice. You can upgrade your defense (via Sense, say) and be able to trigger reflect via a Despair. Or you can drop failure/threat on someone (like via Ebb).

Let's consider the above again with double upgraded sense defense (2 red challenge) rather than (2 purple difficulty):

                         --       S     SS    SSS   SSSS
Hit                   51.8%   43.8%  36.6%  30.3%  24.9%
Hit+ImpReflect         9.5%   10.2%  11.2%  12.1%  12.4%
% of Hits Reflected   18.3%   23.3%  30.6%  40.0%  49.8%

I would note that with four Setback dice you are marginally *less* likely to be able to use Improved Reflect than if you didn't have Sense Defense, mostly because you're getting
hit less often to begin.

However, against a more serious opponent, it becomes rather unlikely that you'll trigger improved reflect via 3 Threat. You' re basically down tothe chance of rolling a Despair and having the opponent still succeed. That caps at 16% with double upgraded sense defense. The moral of the story is the Improved Reflect is unlikely to trigger unless you purposely spend points / cash on ways of being harder to hit as well. Against a serious opponent you cap about at about one in six incoming shots and only if you have Sense Defence. It can, however, be modestly useful against Minions and other underpowered support characters.

Improved Reflect is pretty geared towards clearing out mooks and minion groups than really taking down major baddies. Going by the films at least, the enemies that get taken down by reflected blaster fire are by definition minions. We might occasionally see a major baddie get tagged by a blaster bolt in other media, but it's an occasional thing rather than something reliable.

It's also a good deal more potent than Improved Parry, given that the user can attack targets out to medium range and the damage is based upon the attacking weapon, including whatever successes the attacker rolled. In addition, most ranged attacks don't have Breach, so the defender gets both their Reflect bonus and their soak value to reduce the damage taken.

Granted, Improved Parry is also a talent that relies heavily upon other abilities (talents such as Dodge, Defensive Training, Defensive Stance to be able to operate.

Also, to bolster the reliability of getting Improved Parry/Reflect to trigger one shouldn't overlook the left-hand side of the Sense power, which a majority of combat-focused Force users will grab, and was probably kept in mind when the devs were working up the Improved Parry/Reflect talents.

Yeah many things contribute to improved parry/reflect working consistently.

One option that hasn't been mentioned is tossing setback dice towards the enemy with your advantages, which stack on top of your defense for their very next combat check.

In addition, one could flip a destiny point to upgrade the difficulty of the attacker's combat check further, provided they have a destiny available.

Defensive stance also helps upgrade enemy's pool, Terrify can give them another setback dice.

Don't forget Destiny Points. You can spend one to upgrade the difficulty of an Opponent's roll. People forget that not only is this an option but the system assumes you and the GM will be using DPs often.

On 4/17/2018 at 8:12 AM, FuriousGreg said:

Don't forget Destiny Points. You can spend one to upgrade the difficulty of an Opponent's roll. People forget that not only is this an option but the system assumes you and the GM will be using DPs often.

At my table, 90% of Destiny Point flips were for upgrading checks. We did a few really fun narrative things with Destiny Points, but most of their uses were purely for dice upgrades of one type or another.

I'm playing a Warden using the unarmed parallel to reflect , Overbalance, and while overbalance on it's own is hard to trigger it is easyif you have some abilities. I find I can pull it off regularly in any session with enough combat, but as you say on it's own it doesn't come up massively often. Look to these talents/abilities to choose from

Defensive Stance

Sense Defensive upgrades

Misdirects combat upgrade

Ebb/Flow threat/advantage upgrade

Most of the Soresu talent tree (an exaggeration but take a look at the tree)

My personal favourite - Baleful Gaze

Defense of any kind

Sense Advantage

Defensive Training

There are a number of talents that grant defence upgrades in the first round of combat in the foresight and also the talent Forewarning

The fear talents like Terrify,

Improved Scathing Tirade

The disorient condition

Dodge / Defensive Stance or any of the myriad talents that upgrade attacks

Armor

It's not like there is a shortage of talents -abilities to combo off. For the record this is what my 500 Xp Warden /Enforcer can bring to hear in combat

Disorient from punching - 4 upgrades from a Baleful Gaze (for a Destiny Point), 2 setbacks from sense advantage(once per session), an encounter long setback from a 3 purple fear check (heading for 5) , 2 automatic threats from Misdirect ( if I have the chance to commit) or up to 4 automatic threat from Ebb check if the die are uncommitted, 2 setback dice from armor or equipment or any combination of the list. Trust me I can regularly trigger Overbalance,

I'm playing a Warden using the unarmed parallel to reflect , Overbalance, and while overbalance on it's own is hard to trigger it is easyif you have some abilities. I find I can pull it off regularly in any session with enough combat, but as you say on it's own it doesn't come up massively often. Look to these talents/abilities to choose from

Defensive Stance

Sense Defensive upgrades

Misdirects combat upgrade

Ebb/Flow threat/advantage upgrade

Most of the Soresu talent tree (an exaggeration but take a look at the tree)

My personal favourite - Baleful Gaze

Defense of any kind

Sense Advantage

Defensive Training

There are a number of talents that grant defence upgrades in the first round of combat in the foresight and also the talent Forewarning

The fear talents like Terrify,

Improved Scathing Tirade

The disorient condition

Dodge / Defensive Stance or any of the myriad talents that upgrade attacks

Armor

It's not like there is a shortage of talents -abilities to combo off. For the record this is what my 500 Xp Warden /Enforcer can bring to bear in combat

Disorient from punching - 4 upgrades from a Baleful Gaze (for a Destiny Point), 2 setbacks from sense advantage(once per session), an encounter long setback from a 3 purple fear check (heading for 5) , 2 automatic threats from Misdirect ( if I have the chance to commit) or up to 4 automatic threat from Ebb check if the die are uncommitted, 2 setback dice from armor or equipment or any combination of the list. Trust me I can regularly trigger Overbalance,

We should rename this thread "How not to get hit"

On 25/04/2018 at 5:22 AM, Jonas Shaaf said:

We should rename this thread "How not to get hit"

For what it's worth causing threat on attacks doesn't stop you getting hit and even reflect only blocks some of the damage , improved reflect & parry, you actually want them to hit so that you can parry or reflect, as you have to be hit to parry, overbalance has nothing to do with being hit or not being hit, in fact the more success that is thrown by the attacker then the less likely they are to roll advantage and the more likely that the three threat will happen.

One of the more recent games I had had my warden standing unarmed getting attacked by three temple guards beating me down with their Glow Sticks of Death, I never attacked them once but I managed to hold them in place for 3 rounds while the rest of the group made their get away, and I was still standing with 2 of them staggered for round 4 , It was the most awesome RPG combat I've ever played through, that was only made more awesome by the fact my Dark Side Warden was being all pacifist by not attacking them, and the temple guards were using lethal force, so I could even claim to have the moral high ground.

@syrath It looks like Defensive Stance from the Suresu tree will trigger Improved Parry more but not Improved Reflect as it increases difficulty of incoming melee attacks. Dodge and the rest of your list do help with all attacks.

3 hours ago, Varlie said:

@syrath It looks like Defensive Stance from the Suresu tree will trigger Improved Parry more but not Improved Reflect as it increases difficulty of incoming melee attacks. Dodge and the rest of your list do help with all attacks.

Yeah side step + Dodge is the way to go for reflect.

On 4/30/2018 at 7:16 PM, Varlie said:

@syrath It looks like Defensive Stance from the Suresu tree will trigger Improved Parry more but not Improved Reflect as it increases difficulty of incoming melee attacks. Dodge and the rest of your list do help with all attacks.

I was talking about the triad of improved parry , improved reflect and overbalance , sorry I wasn't clear on it though, however the Soresu tree has abilities that boost overall defense as well.