Beyond Black Belt

[Psxpert2011]

Because in RL the one inch punch is a move that ignores your opponent's defense by striking through the body instead of out at it. Since in FFXI terms that just means that their raw DEF is ignored by a minor chunk and the base damage is low the result is much less effective.

Very interesting! Is there a modifier for One-inch-Punch?

I agree with the OP as in Black Belt should be upgradable. SE is dishing out a bunch of new ideas with less impact and currently scrapping the bottom of the barrel. What ever happen to the old areas? They're only being used for GoV and VoidWalker events. Abysea, being redesigned using color, so and so...

New Black Belt tier can be included through the classic quest system (which everyone should be used to). I agree, the quest for limit break should be harder but they aren't. Why should a upgrading an item (we worked so hard to get) be any harder? As tedious as it was to get Black Belt compared to the original method was due to the level cap. Who about forget the damn magian trials and follow a chain of classic quest and fight NPCs. Then go fight NMs and save some lives (solo). The whole point is to train on skills, techniques and strength.

I know newbies would like that kind of stuff, so of-course the idea would be cast out but think of the character of the person willing to go through it for the reward. Maybe killing 100 mobs would be too much but ask those DRKs how they got their job in the first place, this would seem "nothing". I look forward to keeping well known gear we all know and love instead of replacing them with something out of a "Cracker-Jack" box. So what if we have to go pop those same "Kings" again two or three more times, if there's no gut, there's no glory!

[Arcon]

As most "True" martial artist will tell you, you dont need ANY belt. Martial Arts in it's purest form is self-defense.

Baloney.

All those 7-9 Dan "grandmasters" wouldn't last a 10 seconds vs Jon Jones or Machida.
"Belts are good for holding your pants up. that's about it" Bruce Lee.

More baloney.

[Ahtis]

Black belt's fine as it is, offensively speaking, but I think the best idea was to set pdt to damage taken, would love it :3

[scaevola]

Nope, the highest haste belt out there caps at 7%, the next best thing under the BB is still AV's belt.

The cap for haste on gear is so low and Empyrean AF for melee has in general been itemized so well that I can't in the long term see a need for much more haste on gear than we've already got. SE bought itself a little time in Abyssea by shifting towards crit/crit damage, but eventually caps are going to have to be lifted if new gear is still to provide meaningful upgrades.

[Swords]

I kind of agree with you to a point, but eventually there are diminishing returns in the things we currently value. Just to clarify what I mean suppose they removed Haste cap from gear, you'll be able to throw out WS's perhaps 1.2 times faster but you've sacrificed all your attack/acc/str gear your DoT significantly suffers. So while you pull out 3-5k WS's a little faster your DoT may have dropped from doing 450-700 per hit to 250-300. That's just a speculation of course, because there should always be a degree of balance between stats.

As it stands, I think were at a good balance with the current caps and limitations, I think the next direction should head more in the enfeeblement department to further weaken our enemies to make our current powers excel beyond what they are now. Such as the under utilized combination of abilities and spells like box step(-13% def), Angon(-20% def), and Saboteur/Dia III(-15-19.5% def) together in order to make our WS's stand out more.

[Arcon]

Right now, we have to choose between Haste, Acc, Att, DA, TA, QA, STP, Crit Rate, Crit DMG, and god knows what and find a right balance between all of them. So if they released even more Haste gear, the choice would be made easier. If we can cap Haste in 4 slots instead of 5, it will allow you to boost one or more of the other stats in that freed up slot. So unless they start tossing out gear with > 25% Haste on a single piece, there will be no reason to raise the Haste cap, and it will still benefit people gravely.

And just for the record, if they did, it would still be best to cap Haste over anything and everything else, even more so than it is now. Haste becomes increasingly more useful the higher the value goes, so unless you have a BRD and WHM constantly with you, with whom to cap your overall Haste, Haste will never go out of style (unless it has Skill -500 attached to it somehow, or something equally absurd).

[scaevola]

Right now, we have to choose between Haste, Acc, Att, DA, TA, QA, STP, Crit Rate, Crit DMG, and god knows what and find a right balance between all of them. So if they released even more Haste gear, the choice would be made easier. If we can cap Haste in 4 slots instead of 5, it will allow you to boost one or more of the other stats in that freed up slot. So unless they start tossing out gear with > 25% Haste on a single piece, there will be no reason to raise the Haste cap, and it will still benefit people gravely.

Maybe, but in order to start dropping pieces in a world where even Twilight Belt monks can cap with 5 easy-to-get Haste pieces (or even 4 with Zelus) means 3-4% jumps on multiple pieces of gear. We really aren't that far off from a point when BB's 12% Haste is overkill, if it isn't already; would the game really be more interesting if SE made capping Haste that much simpler?

Personally, I'd rather see a direction where capping Haste is a meaningful decision for which you give things up. Like, I'd prefer to see a belt with 4% Haste that had some really weird and cool proc attached than another BB with 15% haste this time around, you know? Ganesha's Mask is a step in the right direction: it's a cool, unique item that is potentially really good but makes it way harder to cap Haste if you use it.

[Greatguardian]

I kind of agree with you to a point, but eventually there are diminishing returns in the things we currently value. Just to clarify what I mean suppose they removed Haste cap from gear, you'll be able to throw out WS's perhaps 1.2 times faster but you've sacrificed all your attack/acc/str gear your DoT significantly suffers. So while you pull out 3-5k WS's a little faster your DoT may have dropped from doing 450-700 per hit to 250-300. That's just a speculation of course, because there should always be a degree of balance between stats.

As it stands, I think were at a good balance with the current caps and limitations, I think the next direction should head more in the enfeeblement department to further weaken our enemies to make our current powers excel beyond what they are now. Such as the under utilized combination of abilities and spells like box step(-13% def), Angon(-20% def), and Saboteur/Dia III(-15-19.5% def) together in order to make our WS's stand out more.

You clearly have no understanding whatsoever how Haste works. Going from 80% Haste to 90% Haste is a 100% increase in TP and WS damage.

The whole "Hit faster but weaker" vs "Hit slower but stronger" argument has always been 110% hogwash.

[Swords]

Yeah you missed speculation at the end of the paragraph, currently even if they raised the gear haste cap there's only a handful of jobs that could really push it past 30% via gear. Even with haste scaling becoming greater at higher levels min/maxing for 2-3% might do more harm than good at lower levels, such as losing out on the STR, Subtle Blow, Set bonus, and Perfect counter dmg bonus from Tantra Crown +2 in trade for -5 Eva and +1% more haste on Zelus Tiara.

If for whatever reason you were a mere few points away from the overall haste cap, you would receive no argument from me that min/maxing 2-3% wouldn't be worthwhile because at 70% overall haste it would have 2-5 times more effect on attack speed rather than a slight improvement at 20% overall haste.

In any case, those restrictions are still there and we have other means for getting haste from spells, JA's, etc that can put any melee at or pretty damn close to the overall haste cap. Frankly I'm almost jealous of 2h wielders because Hasso can put them at the 80% with capped gear haste, Embrava, Haste/March.

[Concerned4FFxi]

yes i would like to see it upgraded, perhaps it could be called the grand master's blackbelt or blackbelt # degree. I'd be fine with it being another hard quest to obtain the upgrade and of course one would need an orginal bb to get the new bb. Maybe the new quest could be challenging but not quite as hard as it is now to get bb drops.