Adjustments to Embrava and Perfect Defense

[Camiie]

With that said, we will not be lowering the difficulty because there are people who feel that the battle is too difficult. Instead, we would like players to collect better gear from slightly easier content, work out a battle strategies, and rise to the challenge.

Whenever the devs make excuses about anything and ask for our patience or whatever, I'm going to mercilessly throw this back in their collective faces. Enjoy!

[Mahoro]

Checking out my invo (mnk).

4 items come from dynamis (one of them being a relic)
8 items come from AH (mostly bcnm or crafted stuff)
13 items from abyssea
3 from voidwatch (with 2 being AH able)
3 from meeble
3 from salvage
4 from artifact
1 from walk of echoes
1 from legion (AH-able)
1 from sky
2 from neo nyzul
2 from hnms
3 from sea/limbus
1 random from imperial standing rank

You are essentially proving my point. Legion's proportion of useful equipment is more or less the same as the vast majority of events added in the last several years. About ~20% useful spread out amongst the 20 jobs and ~80% crap. Count up the useful pieces from VW, WoE, Neo-Limbus, etc., divide by the total number of items in each event, and you will find similar proportions (~10%-25%). We already know SE throws a lot of junk gear into its events. This is not new. Does that mean we should just stop playing all new content?

Did YOU yourself refrain from doing Meeble Burrows because you discovered it had one or two good MNK pieces, but the majority of the other items are crap? Of course not. As a WHM + SMN-gearing player, would I automatically condemn the event and all of my MNK friends who want to do it simply because there isn't anything I need from a WHM + SMN perspective? Of course not.

Nobody is denying Abyssea has the highest concentration of useful gear of any event in recent memory. In fact, the event surprisingly blew away the ~10-25% percentage and brought it to something like ~80% or higher. Everybody made it their business to get full sets of all the AF3 gear. We KNOW this already. Stop comparing apples and oranges.

What you keep irrationally refuting is the proposition that anyone who does Legion is not doing it because they are elitists, but simply because they are looking for some fun, challenging content to min/max their characters when they have everything else for their jobs.

[Byrth]

When people come back to the game now, I make sure to tell them not to do Legion or bother with it in the least until they're totally capped out on other content. Having the hardest events in the game offer arguably the smallest upgrades is really just a way to avoid power creep. We have all the other gear, so we're willing to work for increasingly minor upgrades to the jobs we like. Minor upgrades don't offer a power-creep problem.

Once you cap out on other content, what do you do? You either focus on aesthetic upgrades, minor functional upgrades (like Khepri Jacket), or stop attempting to upgrade your character in a meaningful way and just do the events that you find fun. I view Legion both as fun (requires coordination of multiple people that can't be pants-on-head retarded) and offering small functional upgrades to my jobs. I prefer this to farming gil to buy Khepri Jacket/Kecks or farming gil to make my weapons glow because, though those might improve me more or make my character more unique, they wouldn't be very fun for me.

I do Legion and Provenance these days. The only R/Ex Legion drop I've gotten that I really wanted was T.Head, which I uncursed. The only thing I have gotten from Provenance that I use sometimes is Wanion belt. Still no Myrmex Mittens or Tessera's Saio, and I enter every Provenance run assuming I'm going to suffer for an hour to make ~200k gil average. Compared to that, Legion is a rewarding breeze.

A large fraction of my Legion shell also does Ballista just because they find it fun. I'm not quite willing to jump into the "you are spending time playing FFXI but aren't upgrading your character in any way" bandwagon, but I'll at least keep doing Legion just for fun.

[kewitt]

I never understood the point of getting gear to get better gear in PvE MMOs. PvE MMO should be more about story, quest, and helping others. Gear wise, I always looked at FFXI as Story > level > Helping other > Gear.

In that of you can completed the story at your level you don't need more levels.
In that to help other you needed to be higher level then them.
In that being geared to your level can make things easier but not the difference in not being able to do something.

But almost all of the story can now be completed with the 78 abbysea sets and a level 99 party of 2-4. So my hubby and I are almost done every quest, mission in the game without doing Weapon upgrades quests.

Now in a PvP MMO that makes sense to me because then you're fighting other people where better gear over comes skill.

[Dragoy]

If nothing else, I guess it will make more sense to call it Embrava instead of Aura. Although in some newer titles it has been similar to what it is going to be just as well.

With that said, why is it called Embrava instead of Aura again? I forget if there was any discussion about it when it was introduced (Japanese version is Aura though).

I guess it's like why Kaustra is Kaustra, instead of Merton...

Hahah, oh, but I digress... dommaind.

[Nala]

Er, but AV WAS beaten, eventually.

I don't see a problem here, adding content that can't be 'beaten' TODAY, being there when players are geared up through content to be released over time.

And to those alluding to the resources SE devote to creating such content being wasted, well, yeah, I'm sure many players could say that about content THEY can't aspire to completing for various reasons. Given these resources are likely pretty minor in the great scheme of things, that's not an argument worth worrying about IMO.

Yeah after the level cap was upped, and a few times at the 75 cap initially by Kclub dark zergs which was later nerfed, then by exploiting a sort of terrain glitch and a battery of BLM's which was deemed an exploit and patched.

At the 75 cap AV was never beaten the "proper" way to this day no one really knows exactly WTF was the proper way to beat AV.

Edit: Would seem some one already beat me to including this info, guess that's what i get for being late to the conversation...

[Raksha]

Not that I ever did AV back in the day, But i'm pretty sure SE expected you to lock his chainspell/manafont/benediction and kill him the normal way.

IIRC meteor was the main thing that fucked everyone up (maybe bracelets ga spells? idk)

[saevel]

Not that I ever did AV back in the day, But i'm pretty sure SE expected you to lock his chainspell/manafont/benediction and kill him the normal way.

IIRC meteor was the main thing that fucked everyone up (maybe bracelets ga spells? idk)

Except there was no way to lock out his 2hr's until after he used them, namely Benediction / Chainspell. If you didn't have a WHM lock out Benediction he was basically invincible, and your why had to use their 2hr within a few seconds of AV using his, if lag happened then you had to get wait another long a$$ time for him to bene again. Chainspell Meteor was much the same way, you had to have a RDM immediately use CS and even then you had to ride out at least one wave of Meteor spam, something that usually wiped a few alliances.

And that's only ~after~ they patched him, initially there was no way to lock out Benediction / Chainspell meteor. Groups have fought him for 24+ hours straight rotating alliances (NA -> JP) and still couldn't kill him. Then a group found out the wall glitch and used a couple of PLDs running in and building hate then running away and sticking him in the corner. On the other side was a bunch of BLMs nuking away to slowly bring him down. They killed him and he dropped absolutely nothing, no title no treasure pool, absolutely squat. Was a huge issue back then, that SE would create a super boss that had no drops. SE soon patched away the glitch, and much later added "drops" and lowered his HP. Soon an alliance of KC drk's were able to beat him by killing him before he could 2hr meteor spam / benediction. Entire servers were collecting people to make AV attempts until SE nerfed soul eater. After that AV become something people would die on "for the lulz", they lowered it to 2hr max time but it didn't make any difference.

[Byrth]

I think we know exactly how to beat him. I don't think there are any more secret mechanisms, SE just expected it to be a long and incredibly difficult/frustrating fight. Here's how the fight was supposed to go:
1) Get awesome Tanks, more than you need, so AV can't kill them faster than they unweaken. - This was possible at 75 with Aegis PLDs.
2) Hold AV while you break his regen by spamming the same element as the day.
3) Also lock AV's 2-hour triplets at the same time by following his 2-hour with your own.
4) At this point you have a monster with low Regen that can't 2-hour and a reliable holding team, so you basically just fight a really long fight whittling him away down to 0 HP.

The problem is that this strategy became totally impossible when they introduced the 2 hour time limit. Not to mention that it was essentially impossible to start with because when AV came out COR and Revitalizers didn't exist and we all legitimately had to wait 2 hours before we could 2-hour again so any mess-up potentially extended the fight 2 hours. If I had to guess, I'd say this was designed to be about an 8 hour fight at 75 assuming nothing went wrong, and partial wipes would add on from there.

[SpankWustler]

The problem is that this strategy became totally impossible when they introduced the 2 hour time limit.

The Adjustment of Virtue: A Tragic Comedy in One Act

Developer A: So, how do we change this fight that's based on abilities with a two-hour recharge time?

Developer B: Let's just give it a time limit of two hours, like the other fight we just adjusted.

Developers A-D applaud. Developer E scampers up the scaffolding, presumably in celebration; he begins disrobing and destroying the stage in turn.

Developer C: I ate a stray cat once.

Developer A: Whole?