3 posts · 2006-08-31 07:46:00 to 2006-09-03 10:13:00
I was under the impression that Hyperdodge not only cost IS to activate, but also whenever an attack missed you due to the bonus the buff provided, it drained a bit more inner-strength. Several times now I've seen the telltale motion blur animation play on my character followed immediately by "IS:10" floating off and watching my IS bar drain slightly.
Evade Combat works the same way.. you pay an initial IS cost for activating it, and then every time it does it's job you're charged a bit more IS.
Let me go post 3921 more times to show exactly how much that line of thinking is worth. 
In all seriousness, if you are able to cram the ability into memory, you should keep it running all the time. Since you can only actively run one or the other, I actually prefer using hyper-dodge over hyper-block because I'm only ever melee-fighting one person at a time, while usually several people are shooting at me in the process. It would be nice to know how effective either of them works out to be in practice, but without that knowledge hyper-dodge seems like the safer bet.
The complete definition of hyper-dodge that I have is this:
Hyper-dodge is a combat ability that allows you to dodge an attack that would otherwise hit you. This ability adds a certain amount to your dodge score. If an attack misses due to the bonus provided by this ability, you pay the Inner Strength cost, and the appropriate Bullet Time animation plays. Activate this ability to increase your chances to avoid being hit by fee fire attacks. The bonus to your dodge increases as you improve the ability's level.
Ability Level Cap: 25
10% Proc: Bullet time FX activates
Dodge Ability: +(Ability Level)
Whether that is accurate or not, just watching yourself fighting over time will provide the answers for you. I know every now and then I see my character do the blur-bullet time maneuver (not to be confused with the "ducking/stepping out of the way of each shot" animation, this one actually looks like the blur effect the agent did in the Matrix when Neo shot at him on the roof where the helicopter was). I see that blur animation play pretty often on NPC's, but very infrequently on my character. The few times that I have, I've seen an "IS:##" cost float off from my character (much in the way it does when you're in block mode and regenerating IS every round). Next time I see it happen I'll check my chat log to see if there are any relevant messages there.