Hey remember SC > MB? Make it required.

[Zirael]

Or just make Skillchains proc weaknesses.

Now, now, be careful what you wish for

[Greatguardian]

Fix't and Agreed.

Nope.

I can make skillchains and magic bursts all day. Anyone can.

We don't because they suck and they reduce the overall damage you do by an epicly massive landslide, so much so that actually sitting around and waiting for everyone to get TP at the same time and making a Black Mage stop casting their other spells long enough to time their nukes to MB off of our Skillchain is detrimental.

People got smart. They can do SC+MB if SC+MB is good. But SC+MB is not good. Make SC+MB good and people will do it again. It would have to be damn good, though, to make up for how much the entire concept epicly sucks in the context of FFXI battle mechanics.

[Glamdring]

If we are going to have arbitrary procing systems that doesn't make sense except it keeps us busy, you might as well make SC > MB mandatory again.

Make the next expansion require SC or MB to be used to defeat more difficult mobs. Just let them stay at 0% until they are hit by one or the other. If you are going to take the time to forcibly educate people how not to play together properly as a group in aby, you really should make sure everyone knows how to play together properly when it actually matters.

I'm sure I'll get tons of conflicting views on this about how people are too lazy to actually do something in sync with another person, but too bad. Get Skype, get Vent and be sociable. Write decent Macros if you don't voice chat. I'm pretty tired of everyone being too lazy to do SC > MB because it's not required. So make it required again.

problem with that is everyone having aby-burned their jobs to 95 they don't have the skill to connect with the target reliably (they also may not have the time in on the job to get the timing right). Naturally, no sarcasm involved, I'm 100% on board with you.

[Chriscoffey]

I offered a suggestion instead of this proc system which they are leaving. I was saying that they could enforce SC for different tier levels of the mobs to produce a weakness on it to physical/magical or both. It would then open up a time frame on the mob to inflict heavy damage and after the time is gone the HNM has high physical/magical defense properties again.

This could possibly turn the game into samurai only , however, they could pose even more technical skill chains so that it's not a sam only world by tier level of the chain or properties. I know this could be defined further as to what details can be manipulated but it would solve this zerg fest only playing we have now. It would at least give pauses throughout the fights so the mob could change forms/AI by lapsing between time frames.

[Insaniac]

I see people saying that the SCs should enfeeb mobs. It's not a terrible idea but enfeebs really aren't that important in the over-all scheme of a lot of fights. I do like the idea of making MBed spells 100% accurate even if the mob is 100% immune but that's still not enough. I think an interesting idea would be to not only have SCs enfeeb the target mob in some way but also add some kind of buff for players corresponding to maybe the element of the SC or the property of the closing WS. It could be a beneficial sphere effect added to the target mob. Anything to make up for the huge loss in DPS. Haste, DA, TA, Regain, Crit rate, Attack/Acc boost stuff like that. They should also make MBs generate less than normal hate or at least only generate as much hate as the spell would have un-bursted. A good magic burst just means a dead BLM.

[ManaKing]

This is the pertinent comment. For anyone who doesn't understand it, here is a bit of explanation:

The only situations I see people use Skillchains or Magic Bursts anymore is either self-chains or groups playing around or showing off.

The reason for this is very clear - while a skillchain does allow for more damage, which is excellent if you can pull off a self-skillchain, very rarely does TP in a party match up so that people can blast weapon skills at the exactly right time, and the damage from waiting for a skillchain or using a weapon skill with a little bit of extra TP simply does not match up enough in many situations to justify putting the effort into a skillchain.

If people really want Skillchains + Magic Bursts to be more viable, there either has to be more damage or other effects from performing them all around, and a better reward for using a weapon skill without having to hit one of the 100/200/300 TP marks exactly.

There are a ton of suggestions that could be made to this end, like having a level four skillchain that requires three skillchains (so players can't self-skillchain it) or making magic bursts boost the potency of -ja style spells. Posting these would be more helpful then simply "making SC+MB neccisary for a victory" by far.

You get points sir. I would happily agree to any increase in the potency of SC > MB.

[Phafi]

Nope.

I can make skillchains and magic bursts all day. Anyone can.

We don't because they suck and they reduce the overall damage you do by an epicly massive landslide, so much so that actually sitting around and waiting for everyone to get TP at the same time and making a Black Mage stop casting their other spells long enough to time their nukes to MB off of our Skillchain is detrimental.

People got smart. They can do SC+MB if SC+MB is good. But SC+MB is not good. Make SC+MB good and people will do it again. It would have to be damn good, though, to make up for how much the entire concept epicly sucks in the context of FFXI battle mechanics.

Skillchains and magic bursts aren't bad, it just requires going BLM heavy instead of melee heavy. Which hinders stagger rates. In a fight like Pil, I would much rather have 2 sams and 10 BLMs than 1-2blms and 13 melees(I'd also like to RDM tank him, but that's a different story); but that can't be done while maintaining effective stagger rates.

You get points sir. I would happily agree to any increase in the potency of SC > MB.

We have gotten increases to potency, Magic Burst Bonus and Skillchain Bonus traits were added after skillchains lost popularity.

[ManaKing]

Just so we are clear VW is already it's own new monster. This isn't what I'm talking about. Whatever is NEXT should bring back SC and MBs.

They should probably increase the overall damage of SCs and MBs by adding bonus damage or effects. Don't give bonuses to people that can Self SC because they aren't doing anything they aren't doing right now. On the other hand if a SAM, BLU or DNC readies a target for SC and another player executes, then give them the bonus. If the SAM, BLU, or DNC then continues the SC then let the get additional rewards at that point. I won't comment on SCH or SMNs ability to SSC, but it does exist and I don't really care how they are treated with SSCing because it could add something interesting to both of those jobs.

For MB, open up the window that they can drop a MB in after a SC so that a BLM or other mage doesn't have to worry as much about the timing so much as if they were willing to participate.

It sounds like they are going to make the next set of content mean and hard to make up for aby. I would rather deal with people learning to SC and MB than more proc systems that aren't based on anything party based. I could go play a single player FF game, but I'm not going to because it is more fun with other people.

We have gotten increases to potency, Magic Burst Bonus and Skillchain Bonus traits were added after skillchains lost popularity.

While I do actually agree with you, I'm asking for SCs and MBs in general to have higher returns. It's fine and all that BLU gets both of them and can SSC > MB for high damage, but what about the other 15+ jobs that have no where near the same amount of affluence in this arena?

[Theytak]

The problem with making SCs strong enough to warrant using them any time other than Self SC or SC of Opportunity (which I love, but are fairly rare. These are SCs where right as you get TP, someone uses a WS that you can SC with, so you wait half a second before you WS so as to not get that "to soon" SCmiss, and then you can more than double your WS damage), is that it would make samurai even more fucking overpowered than it already is. As it stands, sam is so @^$#%ing easy to play and do stupid amounts of damage that it makes people who put significant amounts of work into other DD jobs effectively less useful than an army of brain-dead AH samurais who have no idea how to gear their job and just hoard str gear. Add in an intelligent sam, and the difference is even more staggering. The amount of work it takes for the few jobs that can come close to rivaling an equally geared sam is outrageous (basically, ukonwar with amazing gear vs amano/masa sam can go either way, but that depends entirely on the players, and the sam will still have the advantage. Any other job is pretty much SOL.)

The reason people have forgotten about how powerful sam is is abyssea, where anyone with a crit WS pretty much wins the game. SE has made it VERY clear they have absolutely no intention of continuing to make abyssea-like content, and once you step foot outside of abyssea, it becomes very clear, very quickly, how overpowered sam still is. Every other job has basically gotten neat toys between 75 and 99, while sam got Broken-ittai (Konzen-ittai) which basically takes sam's insane damage potential and makes it even more ridiculous.

Basically, keep in mind that good sams were able to keep up, and compete with, other DDs inside abyssea, WITHOUT HAVING A CRIT WS. The don't lose nearly as much from the lack of the 50~60% increase to crit damage and rate outside of abyssea.

tl;dr: You can't buff SCs unless you nerf Sam.

[Phafi]

If we get something voidwatch tier mobs without temp items, i think skillchains and MBs would be a viable option because it would be safer. Even with temp items people still drop left and right against Pil and whatnot.