To the Devs: In Response to JP Dev Post Regarding Trust

[Nyarlko]

In response to the dev post here, I would like to bring up again what I mentioned here.

Since you are soliciting feedback regarding "must have" Trusts, (particularly those essential to success for a new player,) the ones that immediately come to mind are: Shantotto II, Moogle, and Kupofried.

Shantotto II cuts exp grinding time by literally half (or possibly more.) I'm in the habit of leveling alts and have done it both with and without her, and the difference really is that huge for a new character. She's also our best DD trust even in ilvl content. We desperately need permanent/scheduled availability for her.

Moogle and Kupofried both ease the grind, and more than the non-guaranteed once-per-year availability during May would be appreciated as well.


Once again, I'd like to request that the Trusts which were made available via ROE be replaced in the Winter/Summer Extravaganza since they are always available now, which means it's pointless to keep them in the Extravaganza. To address someone else's concern about accidentally dropping the ROE ciphers, I'd like to suggest adding a new "Cipher" category to the Curio Vendor Moogles where we could buy quest/mission (including ROE quests) related ciphers for a small price. ^^

[Vashkoda]

Is there a point to posting this if the JP devs aren't going to be reading the EN forum? Well, jic:

The healer trusts (if you don't have the unity ones, then at least Kuipipi and Karaha-Baruha) are especially useful.

Koro-Moru, KoH and Arciella are great for haste and refresh

Kupofried and Qultada's corsair's roll are a must-have for exp/cp

August and Amchuchu are the best tanks (I'm not a fan of Ark-EV but I guess some like her)

Shantotto II as best dd trust

And then there are those with niche uses:
-Selh'teus for keeping the party alive during bad aoes
-Zeid II for reliable stuns
-Nanaa Mihgo for TH and getting extra drops from her random steals (Ark-MR also for TH, or Aldo for an extra 'bully')
-all the DNC trusts for ja proc'ing in Dynamis
-the BRD trusts if their default songs happen to be useful for you
-Star Sibyl for extra nuking power
-Ark-TT for sleepga
-Ferrous Coffin for raise (assuming you're not the only player in your party)

[Nyarlko]

Is there a point to posting this if the JP devs aren't going to be reading the EN forum? Well, jic:

The healer trusts (if you don't have the unity ones, then at least Kuipipi and Karaha-Baruha) are especially useful.

Koro-Moru, KoH and Arciella are great for haste and refresh

Kupofried and Qultada's corsair's roll are a must-have for exp/cp

August and Amchuchu are the best tanks (I'm not a fan of Ark-EV but I guess some like her)

Shantotto II as best dd trust

And then there are those with niche uses:
-Selh'teus for keeping the party alive during bad aoes
-Zeid II for reliable stuns
-Nanaa Mihgo for TH and getting extra drops from her random steals (Ark-MR also for TH, or Aldo for an extra 'bully')
-all the DNC trusts for ja proc'ing in Dynamis
-the BRD trusts if their default songs happen to be useful for you
-Star Sibyl for extra nuking power
-Ark-TT for sleepga
-Ferrous Coffin for raise (assuming you're not the only player in your party)

I'm pretty sure that mission/quest/content rewards are excluded from what they are talking about. ^^;; They are all technically "always available" already after all. That would exclude already scheduled release (ex: Amchuchu comes twice a year thru Extravaganzas), mission rewards (ex: Selh'teus), and non-seasonal content (ex: August is from Sinister Reign and SR is always available.) I'm pretty sure they are asking for stuff like login ciphers, which are not always available, that have a huge impact on how we can play.

Whether or not there is someone actually listening, there is 0% chance of being heard if don't say something. I lost my link to the job posting they put up a while back for the forum comrep, so I have no idea if they've filled the position or not, but there is always hope. ^^ It also may help nudge them in the right direction if both sides of the forum are asking for the same things.

[Aysha]

I would also have to vouch for Sakura too.

Nothing sucks worse than to out-level your weapons and then find yourself unable to hurt a fly around Lv30-40 or so because you can't hit anything, because your weapons are 10+ levels worth of skill out of date. Sakura really helps you keep up with your combat skills and it just seems silly to only allow you to buy him/her/it during one month out of every year.

I would also have to agree with Shantotto II and Kupofried... and yeah, Moogle too. Refresh is make-or-break especially at lower levels.

Amchuchu... I've mixed feelings about. I have seen how awesome they are at later levels, but early levels... I think Trion is better to be honest.

But while we're talking about this... given how they set the DPS bar with Shantotto II .... why not buff a lot of the available DPS trusts so that they are closer to her? I'm not saying to make them all as awesome as she is, but yet... a lot of DPS trusts aren't even worth calling out whatsoever. They don't even do 25% of her damage, even at lower levels. Couldn't we at least buff them to 50-75% of her performance? Especially the ones you gotta quest storylines to get?

I mean, Tenzen and Semih Lafihna are rather powerful in the 30-80 range, but once Semih learns that AoE WS of hers, she's useless (because she'll get you killed or put you in seriously dangerous situations needlessly). Same reason why I don't use Valaineral unless I absolutely must (mules who don't have access to Trion).

[Nyarlko]

I would also have to vouch for Sakura too.

Nothing sucks worse than to out-level your weapons and then find yourself unable to hurt a fly around Lv30-40 or so because you can't hit anything, because your weapons are 10+ levels worth of skill out of date. Sakura really helps you keep up with your combat skills and it just seems silly to only allow you to buy him/her/it during one month out of every year.

I would also have to agree with Shantotto II and Kupofried... and yeah, Moogle too. Refresh is make-or-break especially at lower levels.

Amchuchu... I've mixed feelings about. I have seen how awesome they are at later levels, but early levels... I think Trion is better to be honest.

But while we're talking about this... given how they set the DPS bar with Shantotto II .... why not buff a lot of the available DPS trusts so that they are closer to her? I'm not saying to make them all as awesome as she is, but yet... a lot of DPS trusts aren't even worth calling out whatsoever. They don't even do 25% of her damage, even at lower levels. Couldn't we at least buff them to 50-75% of her performance? Especially the ones you gotta quest storylines to get?

I mean, Tenzen and Semih Lafihna are rather powerful in the 30-80 range, but once Semih learns that AoE WS of hers, she's useless (because she'll get you killed or put you in seriously dangerous situations needlessly). Same reason why I don't use Valaineral unless I absolutely must (mules who don't have access to Trion).

Sakura/Amchuchu are available twice a year from Extravaganzas. Moogle/Kupofried (1x per year, and not sure they are actually guaranteed to be scheduled :?) actually help more in the mid-levels once you get past the 1-2x kills per level-up mark, since before then you are leveling up (and refilling hp/mp) faster than you can run out. Shantotto II is a login cipher, which means that it's not scheduled/guaranteed to show up at all.

The problem with setting Shantotto II as the bar to bring all DD trusts up to is that she uses several pretty unique/uncommon mechanics. Her melee damage is magic (100% melee accuracy and high damage since not using phys dmg formula,) her WS (which are unique) have awesome SC attributes and can close Light for you as soon as ~lvl3 I think it was (Knights of Rotund > "big laser looking thing" = Light lol), and since she seems to get tons of Magic Damage+, her nukes hit pretty hard even though she only casts T1s (which also means she never runs out of mp.) She also has no buffs/debuffs/JAs to eat up time dealing damage.

I'm not sure you could call it "balanced" in the least if every Trust performed at similar levels to her. :/ I'm also not sure how it would be possible to implement without a TON of work, since that would mean they have to bypass/override the normal phys dmg formulas. Even if they did so, that would guarantee that Trusts would be strictly better than non-ilvl players and possibly even into ilvl, which is something the devs are adamant about avoiding if at all possible.

[Aysha]

I'm not asking for them to bring them *up to* Shantotto's power, I said above, like 50-75% would be nice.

I mean, seriously, a lot of these trusts can barely put out any damage whatsoever. A player with decent gear can auto-attack for more than some of these trusts do, and then you have trusts who insist on using poor weaponskills. For example, Nanaa Mihgo loves Wasp Sting for some ridiculously stupid reason. They could at least make her use her top 3 weapon skills at any given time, so that you don't see a 119 Mihgo bust out that Wasp Sting for 900 damage when she COULD have used a Dancing Edge for three times that.

In fact, MOST Trusts that use regular weapons have this same problem. Trion loves Red Lotus Blade (sigh...) is another classic example.

And then we have trusts that just have no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Sure, Darrculin looks cool, but his weaponskills barely tickle whatsoever. He does 1200s with his. Wow. Big whoop.

Then, Shantotto comes along and blasts something for a good 2k, closes a Light/Dark and then lands two 6k magic bursts immediately thereafter. There's just no competition whatsoever. It's like bringing along a Lv75 character in a 119 group.

I think the least they could do is pump the Trusts up at least at 119. Okay, sure they don't want <119 out-performing players (even though Shantotto definitely does, as does Semih Lafinha once she starts busting out the Sidewinders at Lv20-ish) and then you got Trion and Valaineral both with their Savage Blades at Lv30, whenever they actually feel like doing that instead of Red Lotus Blade. You're talking 500 for a Savage Blade vs 90-120 with RLB.

And even if Trusts did out-perform players (which some actually do)... what's the big deal? Nobody groups up for anything <119 anyways. They've created a game that is 99% solo except for endgame, and the endgame stuff is too ridiculous that you wouldn't be using Trusts for anyways unless you absolutely had to. Would we seriously be losing much if players could gain XP a little faster while leveling up?