Overall Battle System Adjustments for the Future

[SpankWustler]

Need to make the haste effect apply to 1H weapons then, would make a very interesting sub.

This is very true. Dark Knight as a sub-job will either be a strong option for several one-handed jobs or just a situational option for Samurai, depending on how the Haste is handled.

[Alhanelem]

DRK is too strong? that's the funniest thing i've heard in a while. DRKs complain pretty much every day about how much weaker DRK is than other DDs...

[Chamaan]

Not a big deal or anything. The WoE item is called Devious Die, not Trick Die. I can totally see the translation there.

[Elro]

You read it wrong. Our standard for WSC and SE's standard for stating WSC is different. SE is stating the final WSC given after level alpha while we use the initial prior to level alpha. We do that because level alpha changes as your level changes yet the base WSC doesn't.

Players: Ruinator = 100% STR (20% per merit) initial, level 80+ has a Level alpha of 0.85 so 100 * 0.85 = 85% final STR WSC.

SE: Ruinator = 85% WSC (17% per merit) final WSC.

So what their saying is changing the tier 1 to 65% final, so something like 75% initial.

Thanks for that explanation. I still don't like the change however since I, like most, always go all in for merits. I'm not willing to sacrifice or compromise damage to get another ws. One of the best and unique aspect of this game has always been the ability to play all jobs on one characters. Limiting us on merit weaponskill totally ruins that for me.

[Alhanelem]

They should not allow you to fully merit them all, but the cap should be increased. However, the poster above is right in the sentiment that pretty much nobody is going to settle for "almost as good."

The whole point of the merit system is speccing your character. If everyone gets to merit all of everything, it fails hardcore in doing that, because everyone becomes the same. That being said, the current limits are not reasonable for the number of jobs most people play on a regular basis. Between 20 jobs, most people will end up playing more than just 3 of them regularly.

Everyone was fine with the idea of at least increasing the limits, so why slap people in the face and say 'we're not going to do that, but we will do this inferior idea instead that doesn't really do much to solve the issue?"

One of the best and unique aspect of this game has always been the ability to play all jobs on one characters

This also erases specialization. the merit system was created to give some specialization in a game that had basically none up to that point. That is why you do not get to max out everything. By allowing people to be better at some jobs than others, you still have reason to pick different people for different jobs- like I can play WAR in a pinch, but you should let this guy over here do it if he is available, because he focused more on meriting for WAR than I did.'

Of course, this view is and will be unpopular because given a choice between "less" and "more", everyone normally chooses "more" because more must be better.

SE: Ruinator = 85% WSC (17% per merit) final WSC.

So what their saying is changing the tier 1 to 65% final, so something like 75% initial.

That doesn't sound quite right though. The way I read it, the final values will be the same as they are now, but the initial values will be higher, so that there is less difference between a level 1 WS and a maxed WS.

[Insaniac]

The merit WS change is not very good. No one wants 2 full power WSs and some combination of 2 to 5 gimped ones. Raise or remove the cap. Everyone will love you for it.

Need more info about the 1h adjustment now!! Making whatever it is main hand only feels kinda wonky. The calculations for 1h and 2h need to be more normalized instead of adding more weird special conditions. I also disapprove of it being a merit category.

Everything else sounds neato so far.

[Eri]

I agree with this sentiment as well. I'm not sure how this is a compromise at all.

What does you Current Merrit Points category tell you? 17% Per Merrit right?

17*5 = 85 .

Chances are that there its absolutly no change to a Tier 5 Merrited WS....

[SharMarali]

The majority of the changes are welcome and quite well thought-out.

However, like others have said, I disagree with the proposed changes to merit weapon skills.

I get the feeling that the developer team doesn't quite understand the fundamental problem. In a game where we are able to level and gear 20 jobs, we are essentially being asked to choose 3 to specialize in.

We have the choice between having 4-5 extremely underpowered weapon skills or 3 full-powered ones.

With the proposed changes, we will have the choice between having 4-5 somewhat underpowered weapon skills or 3 full-powered ones.

I don't see that this is an improvement. In order to get the most out of these weapon skills, we're still limited to choosing only 3, which is in direct opposition to the ability to be flexible and versatile in job selection.

That said, once again, the remainder of the proposed changes are excellent ideas and should go a long way toward patching existing issues. I can only hope that the developers will reconsider increasing or eliminating the restrictive and arbitrary cap on merit weapon skills.

[Alkimi]

Regarding elemental magic I'd also like to see a massive increase in DoT spell damage like Bio/Poison/Burn etc. Like 10 times what it is now (at lvl 99). Perhaps have them scale with the relevant magic skill. As its stands the spells are pretty much useless.

Also, elemental magic MP cost could do with getting reduced even further tbh.

[Asymptotic]

DRK is too strong? that's the funniest thing i've heard in a while. DRKs complain pretty much every day about how much weaker DRK is than other DDs...

Did your server not get Resolution or something?