I agree. I was doing a mission where I had to survive an "ambush", which was at my level in MC last night. I died four times, even spamming the Martial Arts regen power.

I've found LR to be very effective playing as a BulletNinja. It has taken a hit with the patch as before patch my Dodge was around 65% and post Patch it was closer to 45%. Forgot to look at avoidance.

However I did a test last night and removed it from my bar. The amount of damage I was taking from -1 level henchmen was huge compared to when I had it slotted. I went from a complete walkover fight to having about 5% of my health left when the Villain joined in. Normally with LR and my Dex/Ego stacked up high I can survive 2-3 equal henchies and a Villain no problem.

I would prefer to see the change mentioned above though:

Fast Attacks:

-50% Dodge +50% Avoidance

Slow Attacks:

+100% Dodge -50% Avoidance

However dodge has always been a contentious one for me as I see Dodging as being fairly binary. If I dodge your bullet then it hasn't hit me thus I take no damage. If the bullet hits me then it should hit for the full amount regardless of whether I dodged it "a bit"

One problem I don't think they took into account is the maintained attacks (the ones where the charge bar goes down). A lot of the villain/supervillains use these type of autofire attacks and they destroy a LR character. I run a martial artist with the laser knight shield (powerarmor shield with 3 point advantage, causes shield to appear anytime you make a melee attack, blocks at about half the normal block ability) and 2 Viper weaponsmiths (villains) wiped the floor with me multiple times. I am STR/DEX, and my current Dex is 90+, but my dodge is only 45% and my avoidance just over 50%. I was also chaining the MA heal resurgance and still never took either guy down. I am not a glass cannon, as I have over 2k hit points, so it was very frustrating. Part of the problem is that Thunder Kicks no longer do much damage (just a feeling) compared to what they did, especially since Laser Knight and Resurgence both reduce damage you do (plan to test how much today).
I would agree with the the above suggestions on dodge and avoidance. I realize part of cryptic's problem is that if you group LR with Masterful Dodge, you pretty much have a 100% dodge against everything with a high avoidance, or at least it used to be that way.

But that's only 15 seconds out of every 90 seconds, at most. And it's not really different than Field Surge (when it's working) or Unbreakable, each of which can give you 15 seconds of invulnerability when coupled with the correct passive defense.

It was made stronger in headstart and then somewhat nerfed at release, but nerfed less than other def passives.

It was awful in Open Beta

Avoidance was nerfed too. I can't remember the exact numbers, but the nerf to LR overall was pretty massive, though it feels less so just by virtue of the fact that the other passives got hit so hard.

Other passives was much better than LR. And i think they are still better now.

Somewhat similar to what NexusLord and I were brainstorming out about Why Lightning Reflexes Bites. We saw the road Cryptic has gone down here as thematically appropriate and conforming to their "axis of defense" (which got busted with Defiance, frankly, now it's more of a star) but felt they didn't go as far as they could have.

Add a factor for Size of attack to the existing Speed attack factor.

Obviously the scaling for speed makes sense; the faster the shot, the less likely it is to dodge. But size of the attack should come into play as well. A little thing like an arrow or fist should be simpler to avoid than, say, an explosion.

This way you might find it harder to dodge that thrown knife because it is quick, but easier since it is a small thing to duck and so it balances out; equally with a slow but pervasive area effect such as a gas cloud. A quickly tapped (and therefore weak) AoE would be very hard to get away from, but that fully charged beam of singular doom? Even simpler to avoid than it is now. Thus something like:

SPEED ------------------- SIZE -------------------------- FACTOR
0.5 second -------------- Area -------------------------- x0.5
1.0 second -------------- Cone ------------------------- x1.0
1.5 second -------------- Cylinder --------------------- x1.5
2.0 second -------------- Single Target -------------- x2.0

We think this is both elegant and would evolve the existing mechanic to make Lightning Reflexes more viable.

I believe they are trying to avoid a problem that avoidance tanks had in Everquest 2. When they dodged something it was a 100% dodge, but when they got hit it was a 100% hit minus armor mitigation which was lower for Monks/Brusers then plate (mitigation) tanks. The problem is a couple of unlucky dodge rolls in a row and you died faster then anyone could react. I do feel Lightning reflexes needs something though. A chance to completely dodge attacks.

Like:

Good% chance to dodge, if successful then

Lower% chance to dodge completely, if unsuccessful,

Good% avoidance of the hit.

Having taken LR on my ninja themed charector i have to agree that compared to the other passives its a tad underpowered. First off the big problem with it is simply the fact that its just not consistent. I think as you suggested you also need to have a chance to completely dodge an attack. As is you get a chance to dodge wich then applies resistance based on your avoidance amount. So basicly you still get hit but unlike other powers such as invuln you do not get a base amount of resistance, what this means is you have to dodge in order for your power to be any good. All in all your better off taking invuln, altho i can see LR actually being useful at high levels where your equipment has enough defense to make a difference on its own.

p.s. It may even be a good idea to add a tiny amount of resistance to this ability that is always on like say 5% just to make it more in line with other powers.