Adjustments to Embrava and Perfect Defense

[Llana_Virren]

If by "no other significant form of mitigation", you mean give all the jobs equally broken SP....

Logical fallacy.

By "no other mitigation" I mean that end-game content needs to be adjusted so that the abuse of an overpowered SP is not an essential element of strategy for the majority of players. Reducing the potency of Embrava and PD is not meant to align them to the other SPs. It has been clearly defined by the developers (via proxy translation by the community reps) that the Devs believe that players are too successful at end-game content and that we were not supposed to be winning as much as we are.

Fix the "I win" button in the endgame simultaneously with adjusting PD and Embrava. 10% drop in HP is not sufficient.

[Llana_Virren]

Many of the groups that lowman ADL at the moment (which are the major source of marrows) are only realistically capable of killing one of the two clones post-split. It doesn't take them 90 seconds to do that. Additionally, this is being implemented (we assume) in the same patch as chainspell shock squalls. I think people will still kill one of the two clones, but some groups that are managing to kill both at the moment will only kill one now.

So some fraction of the total marrow supplier pool will drop from a 100% win rate to a 50% win rate, some will stay at a 50% win rate, and some will stay at a 100% win rate. I don't think it's going to affect the price of marrows that much in the end.

The primary source of supply for marrows are LS-wide fights, not a low-man party. And, consequences considered, if the influx of marrows to economy was reduced 50% (which I think is a generous assumption), you will most certainly see a raise in prices. I would estimate based on Lakshmi that the price will ascent to ~20M per at its peak.

[Llana_Virren]

We have killed ADL with 4 clones out and no PD, obviously your DD are terrible.

Beating it down to sub-40% HP, it splitting, and then stunlocking it and killing the correct one first is not a winning strategy over using PD. It's luck. Players confuse luck for skill all the time.

[saevel]

Beating it down to sub-40% HP, it splitting, and then stunlocking it and killing the correct one first is not a winning strategy over using PD. It's luck. Players confuse luck for skill all the time.

Honestly he was just trolling everyone here, probably to get a laugh for the media forums.

ADL splitting that low and producing four copied would mean four instant TP moves. At that low HP he has access to Tera Slash and if it split into four then it has access to implosion. So a combination of Oblivion Smash, Tera Slash and Implosion went off simultaneously, yeah it's pretty much game over.

I'm willing to bet he doesn't even do ADL as he mentioned DD's. Anyone who's fought ADL knows he's weak as a wet paper bag defensibly. Toss a few buffs around and ensure your DD's are riding capped magic haste and two to three DD's can tear ADL in half, it's his cheesy move spammage that you have to deal with. You actually don't want to kill him to fast at first so you end up holding back a bit.

[Cowardlybabooon]

Honestly, if they implemented the patch exactly as stated:
1) ADL win rates would drop a little.
2) Nyzul win rates would probably go up because they're overnerfing it.
3) Legion would be slightly more painful (one more bard swap) but not really that different. I can do one more bard swap if you give monsters 10% less HP.
4) Provenance would be slightly more annoying, in that you'd need better DDs to win the zerg because you have to eat 2 Marches.
5) AV would get slightly more annoying
6) Pandemonium Warden's final form would get a little more annoying

Other than those, there are pretty much no cases where PD and Embrava are used strategically at the moment. Embrava is certainly used in a lot of situations because it's convenient (a lot of healing, a lot of haste, and you don't even have to be using a dualbox), but that's exactly what SE is okay with eliminating. Similarly, I bring a SMN character to Tier 3 Einherjar because doing the bosses with PD is just easier. SE is probably fine with me not being able to abuse that anymore.

Long story short, I don't think the nerf/buffs proposed are really that destructive.

Totally agree with Byrth on this.

Directed at Matsui: Thanks for the excellent explanations. I appreciate you acknowledging how volatile the player base is these days and how easily they get pissed off at pretty much anything SE does. Myself being pretty happy with FFXI in general, I will say that these adjustments are actually much appreciated. I don't get excited at all every Saturday and Sunday when we go kill Arch Dynamis Lord as a linkshell 5-8 times in a run, never losing, and never having any complications. Granted that no matter what you do, we will continue to try to work toward a situation where we win all the time, I very much like the idea of taking away a zerg that is dependent on 1 or 2 abilities, and adding 20 new special abilities that we can experiment with for new strategies.

It appears that the people who are mad about this are being a bit short sighted, as we still haven't seen which of the new special abilities turns out to be accidentally overpowered and becomes our new go-to. Maybe it turns out that PUP automations with invincible will be holding the second ADL pop off to the side, or BSTs will be spamming call beast and holding them. These are examples, so don't spend too much time refuting my brainstorm here.

Lastly, my linkshell and most of my friend's linkshells who do ADL all split the gil from the marrows. If you currently win 8 times per run, and that drops to 4 times per run, the price of marrows will go up, the split will get bigger, and you can buy your marrows for your own relic with that money. If you're working on a relic and you're not in a linkshell that does ADL or some other massive gil making event, you might reconsider what you do with your time, or just deal with it and hang on to your 95 relic until you can solo dynamis enough times to buy them.

[Zamms]

Killing all 4 with no PD or embrava and not dieing should have been said by my 1st post

[Zamms]

Saevel research stuff before you say "I'm willing to bet he doesn't even do ADL as he mentioned DD's" I am always on mythic drg for dynamis.

[Mefuki]

Fix the "I win" button in the endgame simultaneously with adjusting PD and Embrava. 10% drop in HP is not sufficient.

So then we're in agreement. I was trying to point out that the adjustments that PD/Embrava are going to receive may not be as bad as some people here seem to be making them out to be. That the devs need to see the landscape of endgame without PD and Embrava reliance. People are upset about these adjustments despite the fact that we knew they were coming, that most of us wanted the adjustment and that for the health of the game was a needed one.

My point wasn't that endgame without PD and Embrava is balanced. It isn't, as far as I know. My point was that these adjustments will make these abilities a useful tool or boon rather then a (perceived?) necessity. PD is still 56 seconds (currently) of "PD" effect, Embrava is still +25% magic haste and +72HP regen. I think that's still pretty useful.

I agree events and monsters still need adjustments but they wouldn't have need of them to such a degree if they hadn't let things go like this for so long. These abilities began to be included in many player strategies, then SE started to adjust monsters around this very thing. Now look where we are. Abusing an overpowered SP will always be an essential element of strategy for the majority of players so long as that method exists.

It's my hope that the devs will be able to see how much needs balancing in a post PD/Embrava game. Which is one of the many reasons I'm pleased with Matsui's leadership so far. It's rather clever of him to do a test, of sorts, in Neo-salvage to determine how post-Embrava adjustments will effect things.

[FrankReynolds]

Saevel research stuff before you say "I'm willing to bet he doesn't even do ADL as he mentioned DD's" I am always on mythic drg for dynamis.

Nobody cares about your gear. You could all be dual wielding Mytyhic polearms and it wouldn't change the fact that he does instant TP moves that can wipe your whole group.

[Karbuncle]

someone with a few shiny weapons babbling about killing ADL with 4 clones out and absolutely no details whatsoever and not understanding what people are actually arguing, acting like he's king of all the worlds epeens? ... and he's Elvaan?!

Color me SHOCKED.

Oh wait, the opposite... Its so stereotypical it almost belongs in an 80's film.

Everyone knows ADL will still be killable, Its just the Luck Factor will be even more apparent because of this nerf. You now have essentially 30% less time to kill him than you did before, Probably cutting 1 Clone Kill out of the equation for good groups.