Thank you for all the feedback.
As mentioned during a previous Freshly Picked Vana’diel, we view the difficulties melee jobs are experiencing at high content levels as problematic. Though pointed out by many already, I too am concerned about the following points for melee jobs:
- Melee attacks are difficult to land.
- There is a large risk due to AoE damage from enemies.
Before we get into the one-hand and two-hand weapon discussion, these two points are a much bigger problem and we understand that something needs to be done to address them.
With that said, the development team has already begun testing out adjustments in stages, and they are in the process of implementing them. At the moment we are supplementing the game with various content to offer variations in equipment that will allow you to secure the needed accuracy, and we don’t plan on stopping after doing this once.
Now then, I would like to go ahead and let you all know what kind of plans we have for the future to address this.
With the current battle formulas, there are aspects between the relationship of accuracy and evasion that create more differences in level status as compared to magic accuracy and magic evasion. This is the result of giving consideration towards that fact that melees are continuously dealing damage with auto-attacks for consistent damage as well as dealing damage through weapon skills and skillchains through TP accumulation.
However, one of the main reasons that players are unable to hit monsters is due to the fact that the gap between monsters’ levels and stats and the players’ item level 119 is extremely large. We’re currently trying to make balance adjustments to the calculations so that it becomes possible to land hits more than now with support and without being at the accuracy cap by gradually reducing the effects of the level status gap in content level 119 and above content. Naturally, however, content level 119 and content level 145 are by no means the same, and when it comes to content level 145 encounters it will still be difficult to land consistent hits without the proper support.
This adjustment is a part of the core game system, so its effects will be on an extremely large scale. Due to this, it will require a lot of testing to employ properly, and as such, it will not be possible to implement in a near version update. However, please know that this is a task that the development team is actively working on at the moment.
Next up: two-hand and hand-to-hand weapon adjustments.
In the February version update, the damage cap was increased; however, with the necessity to focus on accuracy, it’s difficult to select elements to boost damage even higher, which makes it hard to feel the boons from this adjustment.
As a next step for adjustments, we’re looking into implementing job traits that apply damage bonuses when attacking with two-hand weapons and hand-to-hand weapons to jobs that have a heavy emphasis on auto-attacking with these weapons.
Finally, in regard to the risk associated with melees due to AoE attacks, this is largely a problem with the monster design and it’s not simply a case where boosting defense would help, especially since it’s not only the AoE damage, it’s the status ailments that often come with them. We’re currently looking into nerfing these problems, but the starting point is extremely difficult. I just wanted to let you all know that we haven’t forgot about this and will be working on it.
While it has been this way up until now, rest assured that we will be making changes as we move forward. We’ll either be making it possible to deal with the strong effects or one-shot mechanics through some method or scaling back on extremeness when it comes to new monsters added in the future.
We’re proceeding with discussions and measures for various things such as equipment supplementation as well as plans that are still in the planning phases, but please continue to provide your feedback!