Relic Adjustments - The balancing act

[Kirschy]

Apocalypse - This relic has taken the hardest fall on the route to 90, both because Dark Knight became less desirable and because Haste became much more readily available. I used to love having Apocalypses in my party when meritting at 75 because I barely ever had to cure them. I have two proposals that should completely reverse this:
* Make the 10% Haste from Catastrophe's Aftermath count as Job Ability haste instead of gear Haste (Sorry, Desperate Blows)
* Change Catastrophe's mods from 40%INT/40% AGI to 40%INT/40%STR.

In general I agree with your idea of having a niche for each weapon, and agree with most of your general changes to relics. Going to add my thoughts on Apoc, since I feel I have a good understanding of DRK and how it works with Apocalypse.

I think aside from the extra haste available in equipment, the attack delay cap is also kind of burden on the haste aftermath of Catastrophe. I feel the best solution would be to make the Haste aftermath a separate category from Eq, Magic, and JA. (It would still conform to the attack delay cap though, obviously.) This allows you to use the haste aftermath to fill in the gaps based on your buffs and setup. In capped conditions without Last Resort, it would only fill in the missing 1.25% haste of JA haste needed to cap attack delay. If you don't have SV Marches or your BRD is not Gjallar and/or has +2 Hands, it can fill in magic haste. And lastly of course, if you have near capped haste in Magic/JA, you can replace equipment haste for alternate stats. Making the aftermath a separate category allows the haste effect to take on different roles without being subjected to any of the caps of each particular category.

I feel in addition to the 40%AGI->40%STR change, the base fTP on catastrophe should be raised to 3.0. I feel Catastrophe is generally a weaker WS when compared to other similar endgame WS.

[Kirschy]

Agreed. Sure, the biggest benefit of this relic isn't as beneficial in Abyssea - MP is nearly infinite and I could cure on my Bard with minimal problems, but people need to remember that endgame content won't stay in Abyssea. Anytime I gear BRD in Abyssea, it's for yellow !! triggers more than the songs. Sure, they still help, just not as much.

And when it comes to Daurdabla, answering a different poster - you only need it on when you're casting the third song. You can still use different instruments to cast the other two songs. You just won't get the 3rd song if Daurdabla isn't equipped.

I feel the biggest increase with Lv90 Gjallar atm is the extra +1 to March. The exclusiveness to Lv90 Gjallar probably won't last long, but as it stands now, it's an extra ~3% Haste if you're not using SV. (Although if you're using SV your best combo is probably March+Minuet and Lv90 Gjallar offers 1% extra haste during that SV combo.)

I'm sure many will argue that between restore chests, and the attack delay cap being relatively easy to hit on jobs like MNK, NIN, and DNC, that the extra +1 march isn't as useful as a Daurdabla. And their arguments would be completely valid. I still feel like I'm getting an exclusive relic boost when using marches on my BRD!

[Insaniac]

Putting some cure potency on Mjollnir would make it a little less of a sacrifice to full time it. Like mentioned it's a DD club. Byrths post was about keeping the weapons in their niche. I was just sticking with that theme. Too much potency and it's out of it's niche.

[Byrth]

Yeah, giving Mjollnir cure potency would make it a full-time weapon. I'm okay with Surya's being the best Curing staff. If the WHM is doing heavy healing, it's going to be silly for them to be on the front line in AoE range anyway because they'll be casting much of the time. As mentioned, the club is already the best DD WHM club, the niche assigned to it. Some WHMs pride themselves on their WHMinja-ing, so it isn't a particularly undesirable weapon. I was just trying to make it a little easier to keep MP up and give Randgrith a situational role.

I'm down with the proposed changes to Apocalypse. I mostly suggested JA Haste because it seemed the least likely to be constantly capped (except for DB or situations where you have Haste Samba/Hasso). Also, giving it another .25 fTP isn't going to hurt.

Also, I think G-horn is going to be a much better instrument outside Abyssea than people are saying right now. Assuming the low-man shift continues, you can expect to not regularly have every Haste buffer or not be able to use Hasso to complete your Haste. Couple that with Bard having Cure 4 now (and still +4 MP/tick from G-horn over the nearest competitor - 13MP/tick with AF3+2 legs), and I think you're looking at a instrument that potentially lets Bard main heal. They have Haste, Cure 4, Curaga 2, all the status -nas, and 13MP/tick, anything RDM could main heal at 75 G-horn Bard should be able to main heal now. The downside is that they need a somewhat durable party, because Bard spends so much of its time spell locked singing.

Mandau/Apoc/Kikoku/etc all have the status effect because it is traditionally associated with their weapon's WSs. Unfortunately, Dagger is Poison. I would have given it Slow (as it isn't taken by another weapon type) but Ukko's Fury slows now.

As far as comments about Excalibur, I'm not sure that one proc every 5 swings for 1000 damage in Abyssea would be overpowered if you compare it to any real DD. Outside Abyssea you're looking at closer to one proc for 400-500 every 5 swings, which is again totally dwarfed by a real DD unless you're fighting a very high level monster (where Excal has always shined). But yeah, making the add effect give enmity is something that has been a long time coming.

I like the idea of enhancing counterstance on Spharai. If we make it remove the Defense penalty and give +10 (or however much it is at each stage) Counter during Counterstance, then there would be no reason to not full-time Counterstance and the original weapon effect doesn't go away. SE might resist it though, as JA enhancements are kind of the realm of Mythics.

So far I've tried to keep weapons similar enough that SE would just have to change numbers instead of actually reprogramming anything (with the exception of the DRG Wyvern-healing thing and the recent Spharai suggestion). I figure if we make the changes easier to make they're more likely to get done.



Our usage of english terms we've made up for different numbers in the damage equations may hinder any translator's ability to get this message across to SE. Does anyone know the JP terms for the same things so we could make a lexicon for the translators?

PS. Sorry if I missed something someone said. I'll try to skim through and update the OP with these suggestions as the day goes on.

[Insaniac]

I would need to do some figuring to see how damage and hate generation on an excal with a a 20% proc rate would stack up against Almace. I wouldn't compare Excal to any other DD because it's apples and oranges. Just running the numbers in my head they might actually be comparable to an Almace in which case I don't see a problem. The only advantage excal would have I think is in the atmas required to achieve that type of damage. With a refresh aftermath you could easily do RR and 2 HP atmas and have quite a bit more survivability than an Almace PLD with similar damage output.

[Humie]

Possable Aegis enhancments

IDEA 1
THE MAGIC STATUS ROUTE
I have been thinking about possable aegis enhancments, SE said they wanted to keep Aegis focused on reducing magic damage not physical and I have thought of a good system that would do that yet keep aegis and ochain holders happy.

At the moment Aegis offers great protection from magical damage but what about magic status?

If they was to add a hidden effect of Enhancing resistance to status alments to the same % as the -% magic damage taken.

i.e. lvl 90 Aegis would be -40% magic damage taken and 40% resistance to status alments.

This would be a huge boost to aegis, allowing Aegis PLDs to have a high resist rates including Death, Doom, Silence, HP down, Amnesia and zombie status ect.

IDEA 2
THE MYTHS AND LEGENDS ROUTE

Acording to the myths and legends of Aegis the Head of Medusa was embosed upon the shield striking fear into all those who looked upon it.

In keeping with the myths and legends of Aegis give it "Enhances all killer traits" with a high proc rate

This would give all aegis users a very high chance of intinidating the monster therfore reducing the damage they would take with out raising the block rate or damage taken

[Frost]

Simple fixes:

1) All the Weaponskills should attain the Accuracy and Attack boosts ANY AND ALL 1-hit Weaponskills already possess.

2) Weapons should not have Attack or Accuracy on them, they should have +Skill on them.

3) Relevant Stat modifiers to weaponskills (Already covered, but I would go 80 if single and 40/40 if dual).



It's also odd that some weapons get an additional effect on the weaponskill as well as an aftermath. Like Drk get Drain And Haste? Staff gets Attack Down And Refresh? The ranged weaponskills get reduced Emnity and Emnity down? G.Axe is Defense Down and "Lowers Damage Taken From Enemies"? Why don't all the relics get that dual bonus?

[Byrth]

I'm fairly sure there's no generic attack bonus associated with the first hit of weaponskills. There are just several one-hit WSs with Attack Bonuses.

[Rambus]

Nope that would be pretty weak. If you want to really make aegis useful again make it an automatic 25% resist rate. One idea is to increase your magic evasion to the point that you reach 25% resist rate on IT mobs. Considering you would need ~330 to cap on them and you start resisting at 200, make it magic evasion +225. Maybe it's too easy to cap then with the appropriate barspell from a WHM, so let's say magic evasion +100 would be great without being game breaking. With a good WHM you'll need ~ 80 in gear only to cap and even if you don't bother you'll have a basic 50% resist rate with WHM and 25% /rdm paired with capped mdt.

Why would it make it weaker? MDT is easy to cap without a shield that gives a huge amount of it.
hint it is why emp shield walks all over relic.

and what is wrong with the idea allowing a block trigger rate only for aegis? that does hover the same lines of "automatic 25% resist rate"

[Werewolf]

I would like to see something done as well, it's no secret Emp. Weapons mop the floor with Relic/Mythic Weapons and require far much less effort and time to obtain which is a bit sad but I'm hoping some future adjustments will help them.

I would also like to see the offhand restriction at least removed, considering that just about every other weapon in the game gets offhand stats I hardly think an additional +10 atk or acc (Magian STR Trial has 24-26 attack, and DEX Trial has 19-21 accuracy) over what someone can get from Magian Trial Weapon and use it offhand is far from game breaking to warrant this restriction; I can see not having weaponskill and perhaps hidden damage modifier and keeping those main hand but the rest should not be restricted in my opinion.

I know if all of a sudden everyones offhand lost stats you'd have a ton of angry players, not to mention Thieves would probably be the most upset.

Also I agree with the aftermath on some needing adjustments, for me Blade: Metsu used to nice for soloing cause I could use it to cap Subtle Blow but now since it is really easy to cap without that now both the weaponskill and aftermath are really useless and that's kind of depressing

I'm really hoping to see some fixes in the updates, but can only ask and hope someone will listen ;_;