A command to shut off the skillchain properties of weaponskills.

[OmnysValefor]

In the current design of endgame, the maximum number of melee players wanted in most fights is 2.

Or one if the tank can reliably land weaponskills (or if Atonement is an option) or if the melee can self SC (DNC / SAM) or TP's fast enough enough to SELF-SC incidentally reliably (extremely geared DNC / SAM / BLU).

There are a few reasons that melee aren't welcome. Melee require healing, hasting, babysitting for debuffs. Melee take a lot of damage, are more prone to random deaths, and can be neutered entirely with Amnesia.

The biggest contributor is that a second or third melee is a wasted spot. There's no room for them to WS, so all they're doing is contributing to the bosses buildup of TP, the effort the healer needs to put in, distraction from watching the tank, and the enmity that the healer generates. This is true in the simplest of content, like Capacity Point parties. They're also costing a spot that could be replaced with another nuker or GEO or COR (or BRD if its buffs are made relevant again).

I propose the ability for a player to shut off their ability to skillchain with a command like /noSkillchain or /nosc. I would even go so far as to say that while this mode is enabled, that players Weapon Skill Damage should be increased by say 10%.

Then, if you two BLUs chaining CDC for Light, the monk can type /nosc and freely weapon-skill without interfering with the SCs. Tanks can freely WS.

I imagine that when you use a ws, like Asuran Fists, it places a debuff on the boss for Gravitation and Liquefaction and the next WS has to correspond to SC or overwrites the debuffs. Why can't a person just disable their own debuffs. If this is how it works programmatically, it shouldn't be hard to disable the appliance / conflict with sc-debuffs. There are weapon skills that have no skillchain properties (Spirits Within, Sanguine Blade) but they tend to do awful damage on high end content (due to magic accuracy, and whether the person has an MAB set for the WS).

I would apply a 3-minute-cooldown to the usage of this command so that it can't be exploited by any means. However, if you have 3 melee and one were to die, it would be nice if the non-skillchainer could activate skillchains again and replace his fallen comrade.

/nosc should either apply to pets as well or have a /noscpet command too.

- - -

I don't for a moment believe that this will fix the lack of desire for melee jobs, much more needs to be done, but with haste-capping being so easy to attain, there is so little reason to bring more than what is needed to create a skillchain, even on easier content.

And none of this touches on the fact that if one or two SCHs is useful on the boss, which is usually the case, the only one near the boss is usually the tank.

Endgame needs a lot more work than this, but this would be a start.

[Olor]

I think this is a clever and creative idea that would help melees a bit. Support.

[cengeal]

Interesting idea. I would be more excited to see it added to trusts, particularly August. However, I foresee a small issue: This could discourage people from attempting to make multiple step SC's. At the same time, it would help if players in general would try to create these and focus on making them. For example, if you had 2 BLU's and a MNK, you could make a 2 step Light by doing Ascetic's Fury > Savage Blade > Chant Du Cygne. I still like the idea though, if anything it would be a great addition to the trusts.

[OmnysValefor]

Interesting idea. I would be more excited to see it added to trusts, particularly August. However, I foresee a small issue: This could discourage people from attempting to make multiple step SC's.

In many cases, people already don't bother with multi step skillchains, in large part because people TP so ridiculously fast. I know there's a bonus to damage from multi step skillchains but you also have people sitting on excessive amounts of TP which means lots of TP fed to the boss.

And yeah, trust commands like /trust nows or /trust nosc (in which they do ws, but they don't make/break skillchains) would be nice. Wanted that for a long time.

[OmnysValefor]

Also, if double darkness is part of your plan, say for bursting Death, plenty of melee reliably tp fast enough to open (1) and close (3) a three-step skillchain. There's still no justification for a third melee, or second if you can use the tank like Rudra's Storm > Requeiscat > Rudra's Storm, Shoha > Requiescat > Rana, or Savage Blade > Chant du Cygne > Requiescat.

[Malichi]

Maybe make it so Magic WSs comtribute to Magic Bursts if performed after a SKillchain instead of cancelling the skillchain like any WS does now yeah? Hehe 2 Summoners can make light with Predator claws to Flaming Crush and Mgic burst Apogee'd Magic BPs AND Magic burst Garland of Bliss! Just an example^^

[Ketaru]

If we're going to explore this line of thought to bring more melee back to the frontline, it might be worth asking a question: at such a point in the game where meleeing is faster than ever, is it still good design (or, indeed, was it ever good design) for enemies to get TP from regular melee attacks?

[Malichi]

If we're going to explore this line of thought to bring more melee back to the frontline, it might be worth asking a question: at such a point in the game where meleeing is faster than ever, is it still good design (or, indeed, was it ever good design) for enemies to get TP from regular melee attacks?

Is there no 119 gear with subtle blow on it? I ask because it seems that you've been slammed by mobs in your TP gear. Of course it's a good design, if you were an Apex Crab and suddenly some crazy knife wielding adventurer started poking the bejeezus out of you, would you just sit there and lazily pinch them, or would you fight back with all you got to attempt to survive. If you take the TP gain from melter attacks away it would kill some of the realism and a lot of the challenge. At that point we might as well be fighting bags of marshmallows.

[Malichi]

Melee attacks not melter attacks. My bad on the typo.

[Ketaru]

Is there no 119 gear with subtle blow on it? I ask because it seems that you've been slammed by mobs in your TP gear. Of course it's a good design, if you were an Apex Crab and suddenly some crazy knife wielding adventurer started poking the bejeezus out of you, would you just sit there and lazily pinch them, or would you fight back with all you got to attempt to survive. If you take the TP gain from melter attacks away it would kill some of the realism and a lot of the challenge. At that point we might as well be fighting bags of marshmallows.

Where did you parse, "Oh, he's making a suggestion about TP adjustments, maybe he's feeding the mob too much TP?" Because that certainly is not my experience. It's probably not anybody's experience if their only skillchainers is literally a guy wearing glasses using tier I nukes.

But hey, if we're going to talk about realism in a fantasy realm, first of all, tell me what TP actually is because, according to online sources, it stands for "Tactical Points." It is the numerical value of your finesse and technique in battle. Just because you exert yourself your hardest to defend yourself doesn't mean you're going to do it well.

I only suggested what I did because there seems to be an impractical disparity that severely stacks the deck against melee jobs. A BLM could magic burst 99K damage and feed the target a minimal amount of TP. A meleer infrequently using weaponskills will feed far more than that for the same amount of damage. Are we interested in making melee jobs more viable or aren't we? Because if we are, I think this is something we actually need to talk about.