Dev Input Requested: Macc/Meva Changes

[Dekusuta]

I'll provide some dissent here. As an Idris geo, the set-ups were quite specific to the point of being really biased. 2 Geos were often needed on some of the end tier mob to guarantee vex/attune; always.

I would argue requiring a geo vex/attune for every fight seemed really weird to me. And it's not like Bards suddenly can do these things. Geos remain the only job that can provide vex/attune
and frailty is not nerfed.


I think they can still tweak the mobs m.eva and /m.acc down more to appease people however. Change is never easy. It should also be made clear that Geo hasn't lost their position in the party, though dual Geos maybe less desirable now, so the job warz stuff that keeps cropping up seems meaningless.
I'm more concerned they make sure people can still easily clear the high end content that they very clearly designed with the bugged Geo magic bubbles in mind but it appears they haven't adjusted the mob values sufficiently to account for the reduction in the geo magic bubble's potency. That to me hasn't been made clear yet.

[Nyarlko]

BRD was not required for sky gods .... all they did was ballad ... and more ballad. There wasn't a single "end game" event that BRD was required for, though they were used for melee zergs but melee zergs weren't the only strategy that existed.

I did Minne/Ballad on pld(s), Minuets/Etudes on melees depending on jobs, Ballads/Etudes on BLMs, Minuet/Prelude on RNGs, etc. It was far, far more than "only ballads". The bards you knew musta been lazy ones. :x I was well known for my headless chicken impression, what with all my party hopping and song spamming and running around to "target" aoe songs. XD

So the first thing SE needs to do is low enemy boss stats across the board by 10~20%. Things need to be brought back into the realm of realistic difficulty instead of this OMFGWTFBBQ that we then must exploit a glitch to overcome. Now SE needs to introduce some ways for all the central support jobs to raise player / lower enemy stats by decent amounts instead of the smidgen that we've been traditionally allowed to. The recent buff to Frazzle and Distract were a decent start but it's not nearly enough to balance out content. The buffs to BRD were nice for melees but they aren't nearly enough considering how OMFGWTFBBQ powerful their offensive stats are.

The lowering across the board thing apparently already happened this month, and from the goofing around that I've done so far on lower-end endgame stuff, it really does have a pretty large impact. The problem that I'm hearing about is that the highest end (clvl140+) stuff is a lot harder now. I'm pretty sure that the cause of this is the linear mob lvl+1 stat formula. Physical accuracy/evasion is relatively easy to test for so it's verifiable that mobs gain effective eva+34 per level over ours (aka: we need acc+34 in order to maintain the same hit rate per level.) So you would need acc+374 to hit a lv130 mob, acc+714 for a lv140, or acc+1054 for a lv150, in comparison to a lv119 of the same family... We were looking at a baseline of ~1820-1890 acc to cap vs a lv150 pre-update (variance due to the "Evasion Bonus" trait,) which is insane. Though I'm sure the baseline has dropped a bit, that doesn't affect the lvl+1 scaling out of reach for the majority of players.

I know that this thread is about magic acc/eva, but it's a serious PITA to test for magic acc/eva and there's no way to actually verify any values, so I'm using the verifiable physical values to illustrate. I am nearly certain that the magic values (and all other stats/attributes) follow the same linear pathing as the physical ones, so it shouldn't be too hard to imagine how easily it can get out of control at the highest end.

The level scaling needs to either be converted to a sliding scale so that lvl+1 gains are lower the larger the gap between player/mob, (which could allow for even higher level targets being possible,) or if that is an impossibility, then lower all defensive derived stats gained per level significantly.

[Smokenttp]

The lowering across the board thing apparently already happened this month, and from the goofing around that I've done so far on lower-end endgame stuff, it really does have a pretty large impact. The problem that I'm hearing about is that the highest end (clvl140+) stuff is a lot harder now. I'm pretty sure that the cause of this is the linear mob lvl+1 stat formula. Physical accuracy/evasion is relatively easy to test for so it's verifiable that mobs gain effective eva+34 per level over ours (aka: we need acc+34 in order to maintain the same hit rate per level.) So you would need acc+374 to hit a lv130 mob, acc+714 for a lv140, or acc+1054 for a lv150, in comparison to a lv119 of the same family... We were looking at a baseline of ~1820-1890 acc to cap vs a lv150 pre-update (variance due to the "Evasion Bonus" trait,) which is insane. Though I'm sure the baseline has dropped a bit, that doesn't affect the lvl+1 scaling out of reach for the majority of players.

I know that this thread is about magic acc/eva, but it's a serious PITA to test for magic acc/eva and there's no way to actually verify any values, so I'm using the verifiable physical values to illustrate. I am nearly certain that the magic values (and all other stats/attributes) follow the same linear pathing as the physical ones, so it shouldn't be too hard to imagine how easily it can get out of control at the highest end.

The level scaling needs to either be converted to a sliding scale so that lvl+1 gains are lower the larger the gap between player/mob, (which could allow for even higher level targets being possible,) or if that is an impossibility, then lower all defensive derived stats gained per level significantly.

pretty much this.At lvl 135+ (some apex parties even aparently took a hit as well) things start to get off hand but at 140+ things become pretty much completely unrealiable, altough they probably tought that frazzle + focus + langour could achive the same effect of the past they forgot one little important detail that is if frazzle gets resisted things become straight impossible anyway, and since we cant verify macc values its pretty hard to gauge whats wrong. they either screwed up geo spells (unlikely but possible) or the macc vs mevasion function has insuficient values on high level mobs. we had an idris geo on kirin and an mugrgleis rdm fully loaded on macc and the said rdm was not able to even land frazle on kirin , even tough it could do it just fine pre update even with geo bubbles down so they probably screwed somewhere.

[OmnysValefor]

I'll provide some dissent here. As an Idris geo, the set-ups were quite specific to the point of being really biased. 2 Geos were often needed on some of the end tier mob to guarantee vex/attune; always.

I would argue requiring a geo vex/attune for every fight seemed really weird to me. And it's not like Bards suddenly can do these things. Geos remain the only job that can provide vex/attune
and frailty is not nerfed.


I think they can still tweak the mobs m.eva and /m.acc down more to appease people however. Change is never easy. It should also be made clear that Geo hasn't lost their position in the party, though dual Geos maybe less desirable now, so the job warz stuff that keeps cropping up seems meaningless.
I'm more concerned they make sure people can still easily clear the high end content that they very clearly designed with the bugged Geo magic bubbles in mind but it appears they haven't adjusted the mob values sufficiently to account for the reduction in the geo magic bubble's potency. That to me hasn't been made clear yet.

Tried to just let my sub run out, but heh, had to reply to this.

I agree completely.

A decently geared Aegis or well-geared RUN (RUN also has to overcome prejudices inspired by people echoing former truths) is required for most content in the game. SE forgot about Ninja (as a tank) but at least the tanking roll has 2.

The Healing role, in serious healing situations requires a WHM especially now that a key protection (vex/attune) has been nerfjusted.

I hate that content has been balanced around two bugs (offensive m.acc, defensive m.eva) for literal years but the balance now is smarter.
* GEO no longer offers the best of almost every kind of buff in the game (of the ones it offers). It's best at some (nothing compares to frailty and malaise, but these have high resource cost in that either will be one of geo's two main bubbles), Little compares to Fury, Haste, and situational acc buffs (since you're already got the GEO there).
* While being merely good at others.

That seems... alright.

PLD and RUN (uninformed people aside), are in a similarly good situation.

Mages aren't terribly imbalanced in non-Death situations.

Most DPSre within a reasonable range of balance, or they're really great at punching things.

I still think some of the old jobs need some mechanic updates, abilities and traits that have been useless for years. PLD for instance isn't nearly as fun to play as RUN, nor does it offer as much utility.

But wth, I don't even play anymore.

[Nyarlko]

pretty much this.At lvl 135+ (some apex parties even aparently took a hit as well) things start to get off hand but at 140+ things become pretty much completely unrealiable, altough they probably tought that frazzle + focus + langour could achive the same effect of the past they forgot one little important detail that is if frazzle gets resisted things become straight impossible anyway, and since we cant verify macc values its pretty hard to gauge whats wrong. they either screwed up geo spells (unlikely but possible) or the macc vs mevasion function has insuficient values on high level mobs. we had an idris geo on kirin and an mugrgleis rdm fully loaded on macc and the said rdm was not able to even land frazle on kirin , even tough it could do it just fine pre update even with geo bubbles down so they probably screwed somewhere.

The update this month lowered all (non-HTB) clvl mobs' baseline combat stats, which lowers the baseline derived stats, but if they didn't touch the lvl+1 formula, then (using an imaginary baseline phys_acc number since I haven't found out the new numbers yet) this is basically moving our acc reqs for 119+ content from "874+34*(mob_lvl-119)" to "800+34*(mob_lvl-119)".. The vast bulk of the requirement is not in the baseline, but in the level adjustment portion.. A whopping acc+1054 for a lv150 mob in fact, and that portion does not appear to have been touched at all. :/ Values are most likely different for macc (mob meva), but same system means that it's not hard at all for mob defenses to quickly get out of reach for most of us.

If the devs are not willing to adjust the lvl+1 value at this time, then perhaps a good stopgap would be to change the "Accuracy ++" vorseal to cover all forms of accuracy (melee/ranged/magic) instead of only melee. I know I gain at least 150acc just by zoning in and most of the complaints so far have been focused on Escha/Reisenjima 140+ NMs, so it might be enough to bridge the gap.

[Domille]

It's time to bump the iGarbage level.

[Nyarlko]

It's time to bump the iGarbage level.

I think that ship has already sailed. ><;; Can you imagine the backlash if all current gear was obsoleted by default? Given that the devs seem to be pretty adamant about not raising ilvl past 119, and given that just about everything below 140 appears to be quite doable by the majority, I just don't see the devs going this route. They are just not going to see any actual "need" to do so.
Honestly, I would be happy if ilvl cap was raised as long as current ilvl119 gear was overhauled and given appropriate higher ilvls. Especially weapons would need this treatment, as I believe there are 3x distinct "tiers" of 119 weapon skill+ currently, and similar stratification within armor slots.

There's also the issue of trivializing lower tier content associated with raising effective player level, which is something I'm pretty sure the dev team would prefer to avoid.. Right now I'd say the simpler, effective, and easier to implement solution would be addressing the mob lvl+1 values since it is likely to be equal or easier to do than the macc/meva adjustment we just got.

[Domille]

I think it'd be damn hilarious. all 119 gear becomes complete trash at a new 129 bump. That'd be the single new most epic day ever on ffxi.

That being said, they have to come up with SOMETHING.

As it stands, people are already resorting to SMN burns. That's instant game over.

Either revert geo changes (never happen). Lower all mob stats even further (might happen). or bump iGarbage, it's been what 5 years now? (needs to happen). You don't get to START an ilvl trend at the END of a game, and bump it one single time.

Leaving things as they stand, does -not- work.

[Nyarlko]

Just shy of 4yrs, and bumping ilvl is equivalent to raising the level cap. Not arguing against doing so, but I just can't see the devs doing so.