Overall Battle System Adjustments for the Future

[Tanama]

With these adjustments could you also make adjustments to weapon skills that have “defense ignored varies with TP”?
Currently we do not have any plans to make adjustments to these kinds of weapon skills.
This is displeasing. Quietus and Camlann's Torment are to remain among the worst of the Empyrian weapon skills until further notice.

It is apparent the JP, EU and NA communities all consider weapon skills with "defense ignored varies with TP" as disappointing. Not recognizing this is a mistake in my opinion and as long as this ideology remains within the development crew, it leaves opportunities for future weapon skills to be added with this plague of an effect that is "amount of defense ignored varies with TP".

[Rezeak]

Why are we back at the point of the dev team ignoring us again or at least feeling like it?

Jan felt like this.

New Director : I'm sorry, I see alot of you feel we haven't been listening to you so I will take time to read the forums and i see you feel the game need readjusting so that's what we'll do ^^.

Player base : \o/ FINNALY, THANK YOU!
Later

Dev Team: This is how we will readjust the game.

Player base : Err, some of that ok but....

Dev Team : This is how we will readjust the game! Oh here's some more bad ideas cause FFXI.

Player base : /sigh

(that's just how i felt it went)

Honestly, though, I see better much more balanced ideas coming from the forums than the dev team.

They are alot of long winded ways i could make this next point like paragraph on how making content that excludes people, by your own admission, is the only content in 1-3 months wll make the excluded people quit but it's much better said this way.

If content is not
1. Fun
2. Accessible
3. Doesn't take over a month and 20 hrs+ game time to get the item you want.

Then your doing it wrong.

As an example of accessiblity
In Nyzle if you had pure AH gear then you should be able to get a peice of gear ever 10 runs on average ( 10 days per peice of gear is fine) as long as you know what to do.
And ofc the better players will get it every 1-2 runs.

[Cabalabob]

This update has gotten more and more disappointing as the thread goes on..

What seemed like an awesome new subjob option for 1 handers in the DRK last resort change turned into yet ANOTHER buff for SAM.

The removal of level correction which was exciting for Everyone turned out to be monsters only so that's now just a buff for monsters.

The pdif change in conjunction with the fact that level correction is still in play means that 1 handers are even more screwed than ever. Sure the ratio cap is being put at the same level as 2 handers but it's still gonna be impossible for 1 handed jobs like Thf or dnc to get anywhere near the cap with the monsters getting a better buff from their def.

And BLU is just getting completely screwed, def raise just means they now need even more BLU skill which they have no place to get it from to compete with high level monsters where the level correction was already killing them.

So what looked like a really promising update has turned out to be just a brainstorming session by the devs while
Eating shrooms..

The update to magic is a nice touch but other than that all these changes are a major let down.

[Asymptotic]

As an example of accessiblity
In Nyzle if you had pure AH gear then you should be able to get a peice of gear ever 10 runs on average ( 10 days per peice of gear is fine) as long as you know what to do.
And ofc the better players will get it every 1-2 runs.

Okay, it's extremely easy to hit floor 80. So, you should currently be able to get a piece of F100 gear every 5 run once you understand the event.

[Zeroe]

Currently we do not have any plans to make adjustments to these kinds of weapon skills.

Are you serious? Honestly, does no one see how much these weaponskills suck? Man, I was debating leaving F11 for the new 14, but still had my doubts. Welp no longer! All I see is an indirect nerf to Drk to buff, wait for it...wait for it....SAM!!!
to have no adjustments to the two worst emps, that have some of the worst trials by emp standards. THESE WEAPONSKILLS ARE TERRIBLE! Why can't your development team see that? So not only is my main job further trashed by nerf, then the defense adjustment making it harder for Drk to already survive, and not even adjusting these weaponskills that by far NEED ADJUSTING! It sickens me how ignorant the development team is to what the playerbase wants.

Here is what you should be doing, so I'm not just ranting >.>
1.) Drk is to OP? Its because of resolution. We never had any "balance issues" before this came along. Remove a hit and move on.
2.) Seriously, adjust the Ignores Defense weaponskills. There all terrible. How is it my emp can only deal 3k INSIDE Abby, but a non emp greatsword can blast out 7ks? (Outside, lucky to even hit a 2k with swaps)
3.) Remove Order lamp floors. Not a single part of "how fast can you guess the order" is skill. Just ignorant design that should be done away with.

If this is any indication of how the future looks not only for my job, but for my weaponskill that's in need of a severely heavy rework, I'm done. This is not what we want.

[Tennotsukai]

Is this implying that they're going to consider adding more to 1hs to increase power further, or limit the increase to 2.25 ratio cap by adding penalties to 1h weapons?



I'd also put forth the following ideas for the Dev Team to go along with the blanket buffing of 1h weapons:

Blue Mage - Blue Magic Attack will require some revisions if you're going to be increasing the Defense of monsters to compensate for the level correction changes. In fact, we need them now too! My proposed solutions are as follows:

A) Allow blue magic attack to gain more from STR and skill, say double or +50% of what we get out of them now. Just add a *2 or a *1.5 to the end of the blue magic attack function (Blue Magic Skill + 8 + STR/2)*2

B) Allow a portion of the main handed weapon's attack to contribute to blue magic attack as well, say 25~33%.

One or the other would be sufficient in making blue magic usable on targets that are higher than 20 levels below the Blue Mage's level. Yeah, it's that bad. Please look into it.


Beastmaster, Summoner, Puppetmaster, and Dragoon - Pet attack is pretty abysmal, and will also require some attention. I'd propose a similar change to suggestion B for blue magic attack:

-Allow a portion of the master's attack and haste to affect their pet. Say 25~33% attack and 33~50% haste.

For instance, the master has 600 attack and 25% haste, allow the pet to benefit from 150~198 of the master's attack and 8~13% of their haste. This solution wouldn't be overpowering and would serve to make pets more useful on the battlefield as offensive tools.


^ This...definitely!

[Tamarsamar]

Repost from another thread, since it's arguably more relevant here:

It's also worth noting that one-handed weapons are at yet another inherent disadvantage against two-handed weapons except at extremely low Delay values, since between 180 and 530 Delay TP returns per hit are calculated so that 100 TP is reached after roughly 60 seconds un-Hasted, but because higher delay/two-handed weapons tend to have higher DMG values, DPS balance tends to be distorted in favor of the weapon types that drop the bigger Weapon Skills. And of course, further exacerbating issues is, among other things, the whole Samurai job . . .

[saevel]

Hmm sorta disappointing. Was hoping for some alternations to how LCF worked. It is nice that player defense LCF might be going away (monsters getting an attack boost if their higher then the player), that alone will make defense kinda important though PDT/MDT still rule.

Making 1H and 2H Ratio caps the same won't change much, will make 1H slightly more viable in zergs or high buff situations. Making it so that 1H gets the same STR boost as 2H would help, or making is that the 15% predicted haste from LR is applied for 1H.

[Sasaraixx]

There are a lot of concerns about these adjustments and it seems as if the dev team isn't hearing the community. I think we would all appreciate a response addressing some of these issues, particularly:

1. Remaining gap between 1-handed vs 2-handed jobs even after the proposed adjustment
2. The effect on blue magic (and it's weakness versus high level monsters)
3. The impact of the change on pets
4. The comparative weakness of defense ignored weapon skills.

We really would like to hear from the dev team on these issues.

[doctorugh]

Is this implying that they're going to consider adding more to 1hs to increase power further, or limit the increase to 2.25 ratio cap by adding penalties to 1h weapons?



I'd also put forth the following ideas for the Dev Team to go along with the blanket buffing of 1h weapons:

Blue Mage - Blue Magic Attack will require some revisions if you're going to be increasing the Defense of monsters to compensate for the level correction changes. In fact, we need them now too! My proposed solutions are as follows:

A) Allow blue magic attack to gain more from STR and skill, say double or +50% of what we get out of them now. Just add a *2 or a *1.5 to the end of the blue magic attack function (Blue Magic Skill + 8 + STR/2)*2

B) Allow a portion of the main handed weapon's attack to contribute to blue magic attack as well, say 25~33%.

One or the other would be sufficient in making blue magic usable on targets that are higher than 20 levels below the Blue Mage's level. Yeah, it's that bad. Please look into it.

Its hard to say how exactly (how much) this will affect physical blue magic, but certainly it will need some sort of boost (x2 att might be too much, esp with no actual lvl correction). As an additional option if SE thinks the above options are too much of a stretch, I wouldnt mind a stance type JA that boosts blue att (50%?) while trading off for either less weapon att or magic damage.

As a side note, was it ever mentioned if magical blue spells were getting adjusted similar to Black magic spells?

[Xilk]

These are exactly the type of changes that should go on the test server.
Plenty of time to experiment with a fundamental change in mechanics would be a great way of looking at balance and play impact.

I think there would be a lot of player interest in testing something like this. Please put them on the test server. won't need to play 20,000 questions that way.

[Cowardlybabooon]

People, we don't want to hear your threats of quitting ffxi when the development team doesn't have time to change something you want in the game today. Regardless of company size they can only effectively focus on a few things at a time without overlapping and messing things up. Wait and see how WSs are affected. This is an overhaul of the entire damage system, they can't make too many changes at once or just spout off predicted answers. They're not omniscient.

[MarkovChain]

Two questions:
1) Will there also be changes to the STR:Atk and DEX:Acc Ratio?
The increase in Ratio is good, but it occurs to me that short of getting 4 Minuets, a perfect Chaos Roll with a DRK in the party, subbing WAR, and using Berserk - many 1H jobs will not be capping Ratio against high level enemies anyway. The extra 30 or so base attack from bumping this up to 4 STR:3 Attack could make a difference.


realistic situation :
even match type mobs, 560 defense. You need 1260 att to cap. A MONK/WAR with double minuets from relic horn is at ~ 1100 with berserk. With dia II you only need ~ 1134 so it's ok. I don't see anything like 4 minuets and chaos being required. Realistically though you want a DDB bard for 4 songs (2 march and 2 minuets) and maybe relic bonus but it's the exact same problem for 2Handed DDs, they don't get 200 attack out of thin air, and clearly not from the str>att conversion. With 150 str they get like 33 attack more from STR>ATT than 1 handed DDs, which is covered by relic weapons already for instance.

Your post make it sound like "2 handed" will cap it easy. But let's face it : DRG won't be able even with maxed buffs, and if you target "HL mobs" well, first it's not HL mobs but high defense mobs, and secondly WAR/SAM will only have berserk available just like 1 handed DD, so they are on the same boat, 30 attack is not what will make the difference. Only DRK will likely fairly easily cap it (still need berserk+2x minuets+dia2 +Last resort otherwise they have no advantage). Let's keep in mind the the ajustement to physical damage taken is going to exclude the use of berserk SYTEMATICALLY out of perfect defense. Let's remember PD is being nerfed to 30 seconds. Let's also recall that at level 75 our 1200 HP leet DDs couldn't afford subbing WAR on weaklings mobs such as colibri in meripos.

Also they have expressed their will to remove level correction (monster > player from the defense of the player PoV) and said they'd compensate it with increased attack to make defense worth a damn, so it's no excluded that defenseless DDs are going to be eradicated even before using berserk.

Let's also face it, when playing your every day FFXI berserk is nearly useless. I know me and mdk have been farming tons of ADL popsets for our glowing weapons, which is done mostly killing up to even match mobs, and I have never seen a difference in farming speed /war or /nin.

[Byrth]

I didn't say "EM monsters with moderate defense." I said "High level monsters" and meant something more like Paramount Gallu. Whether or not you're hitting the ratio cap is less important against low level monsters, but I guess it's worth noting that some DC monsters (http://wiki.bluegartr.com/bg/Hydra_Monk)have over 650 defense. Your Monk wouldn't be benefiting from the 2.0->2.25 cap increase against those monsters even with Berserk, double G-horn Minuets, and Dia II.

If you're failing to cap against a 560 defense monster with Berserk and Dia II, you also won't be capping against Paramount Gallu or even particularly difficult DC monsters without the buffs I listed. Still, if I am in Legion then I have to assume that I would have the buffs I listed and currently on Dancer I would not benefit from the last hundred or so attack. So the change is good. The extra 30 Attack from STR is not a big deal, but it's something else they could give us that would slide the jobs slightly closer together. If they're being nice anyway, why not ask?


As far as 1H vs. 2H, SAM (WS Attack boosts, subs WAR) and DRK (Traits, JAs, subs WAR) benefit from the Ratio cap against these monsters, which becomes important when they are high level. WAR (all it has is Berserk, Warcry, and Attack Bonus II) and DRG (only Attack Bonus II and Angon) are more needy in terms of Attack buffs, but they're still about 50 attack better off when buffless than most 1H DDs.

[MarkovChain]

50 attack is not a serious reason to prefer 2H over 1H DD and I was juste correcting you since you seem to imply that 1 handed DD would require more buffer jobs. Anyway like I said the change to damage taken will make it unlikely to use berserk ... So all in all the adjustement has little impact. It's more of a nerf to 2H-DD than a buff of 1H-DD.

[FrankReynolds]

People, we don't want to hear your threats of quitting ffxi when the development team doesn't have time to change something you want in the game today. Regardless of company size they can only effectively focus on a few things at a time without overlapping and messing things up. Wait and see how WSs are affected. This is an overhaul of the entire damage system, they can't make too many changes at once or just spout off predicted answers. They're not omniscient.

Lol someone quit over on the JP thread because he's pissed about the lack of changes to WS.

[Rustic]

Let's put it this way.

The more things stop mattering, the less complex the game becomes. The less complex the game is in this regard, the fewer challenges you can produce.

People want to pump their attack to insane zerglike heights? Make all the drawbacks matter. MP costs effectively don't matter? Change it. SC's don't matter because we're all spamming WS's at the target and don't give a flying fig? Change it.

L75-99 did a lot to mess with the game, and not all of it was good. Adoulin-era changes should help to improve these, but seriously- there's a ton of options here that should be looked at and tested from the playerbase.

We're the ones out there using what you made. Listen.

[Dreamin]

The majority of the changes are welcome and quite well thought-out.

However, like others have said, I disagree with the proposed changes to merit weapon skills.

I get the feeling that the developer team doesn't quite understand the fundamental problem. In a game where we are able to level and gear 20 jobs, we are essentially being asked to choose 3 to specialize in.

We have the choice between having 4-5 extremely underpowered weapon skills or 3 full-powered ones.

With the proposed changes, we will have the choice between having 4-5 somewhat underpowered weapon skills or 3 full-powered ones.

I don't see that this is an improvement. In order to get the most out of these weapon skills, we're still limited to choosing only 3, which is in direct opposition to the ability to be flexible and versatile in job selection.

That said, once again, the remainder of the proposed changes are excellent ideas and should go a long way toward patching existing issues. I can only hope that the developers will reconsider increasing or eliminating the restrictive and arbitrary cap on merit weapon skills.


The problem is that the Development folks DO NOT play the game the way regular players play them. Hence, they do not understands why most players would rather have the best 5/5 ws than an inferior 1/5 ws.

[saevel]

It seems some people are asking SE to nerf Twilight Scyth.

http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/112776-Dev-Tracker-Findings-Posts-%28NO-DISCUSSION%29?p=5575871&viewfull=1#post5575871

That weapon is only ever used in very specific situations, otherwise it's very weak.

[Fynlar]

Okay, it's extremely easy to hit floor 80. So, you should currently be able to get a piece of F100 gear every 5 run once you understand the event.

I wouldn't say it's *extremely* easy, it's not THAT much easier than hitting F100 is. Still quite possible to be screwed by bad floors/luck

IMO any group that could "easily" consistently clear F80 certainly has the potential to hit F100, and in many cases they'd be better off by just trying for F100

[Okipuit]

I'd like to respond to a couple of questions and feedback that were brought up regarding the battle system adjustments.

Damage and Defense



Right now, without damage reduction gear I am still taking roughly 800 damage or so in Legion from single hits. Using Last Resort or Berserk without any damage reduction gear and we are talking about eating nearly 1500 damage. Even with 50% damage reduction, that's still 750 damage, making it quite difficult to use Last Resort or Berserk. I don't want you to increase the damage cap any more from what it is currently. However, I do agree with adjustments that simply make it so the damage you receive is decreased significantly when you increase your defense.


To briefly reiterate what was announced previously, we will be making adjustments so that:

The maximum value of damage received is increased higher than what it is currently.
It will be possible to reduce damage more than currently.


We've also seen quite a lot of comments mentioning that backline jobs as well as lightly armored jobs would be affected negatively from the aforementioned defense adjustments.

As a general direction on this issue, while the defense of heavy armor jobs and light armor jobs will not be the same, in order to prevent this from becoming too large of a disparity we will be making it so there will not be situations where a certain job is unable to rush in and attack.

As was suggested in feedback, we will be looking into various ways to do this such as increasing the amount of light armor with damage reduction or increasing the amount of evasion gear.

Hate Cap



Please make sure to deal with the hate cap issue properly. I'd really like to see adjustments that make it so the hate cap cannot be reached easily or adjustments that make tank jobs function better as tanks.


We plan on making adjustments to hate.

Producer Matsui will be explaining further details to provide insight on the current situation and how things will be changed. We also received the below message from him as well:



I'd like to take a moment to explain about the current calculation method as well, but I just need a little bit more time.


Regarding Weapons



I think that both one-handed and two-handed weapons need to be adjusted. Raising one-handed weapons up to the level of two-handed weapons is too simplistic of a solution, and comparatively the balance would be maintained through compensation via equipment.

Current situation:
Accuracy: One-handed weapons < Two-handed weapons
Damage: One-handed weapons < Two-handed weapons

Proposed adjustment:
Accuracy: One-handed weapons > Two-handed weapons
Damage: One-handed weapons < Two-handed weapons


Please understand that the adjustments that we are currently looking into for weapon adjustments are not the end. We would like to have each weapon have their own special traits, and the adjustments will take place step by step.

Finally, in regards to weapons that deal non-elemental damage, specifically the Twilight Scythe.

The below is a simple compilation of the opinions we've seen on the forums:

Leaving it the way it is currently is fine
It needs to be adjusted

Leave the effect as it is and lower the damage value
Change it to the same effect as Murasamemaru (WS are non-elemental damage)
Increase the jobs that can equip it



Due to the fact that adding more jobs to this weapon doesn't lend itself very well as a solution, I'd like to remove this as one of the options; however, we would like to hear everyone's opinions for and against adjustments to Twilight Scythe. We would like to proceed carefully with this, but please keep in mind that just because one opinion is greater in volume does not mean that we will base our decision solely on that.

[Gannon]

I would say leave the Twilight Scythe as it is. It's damage is already lower than most of the newer scythes and the non-elemental damage is only on melee swings, so WSs are still normal slashing damage.

[ThaiChi]

In regards to the twilight scythe, why don't you guys just give us more weapons that provide this effect? Like previous hidden effect weapons that would deal a different type of damage. Bourdonasse being a blunt damage lance, Joyeuse being a piercing sword, etc. You can keep Murasamemaru rare because that effect only applies to weaponskills, while common weapons with non-elemental magic damage will provide us a rather favorable (imo) solution. Perhaps give them very nice and unique designs like Twilight Scythe?

[Catmato]

Leaving it the way it is currently is fine

This is the correct answer.

Edit: Formatting

[Economizer]

We've also seen quite a lot of comments mentioning that backline jobs as well as lightly armored jobs would be affected negatively from the aforementioned defense adjustments.

As a general direction on this issue, while the defense of heavy armor jobs and light armor jobs will not be the same, in order to prevent this from becoming too large of a disparity we will be making it so there will not be situations where a certain job is unable to rush in and attack.

As was suggested in feedback, we will be looking into various ways to do this such as increasing the amount of light armor with damage reduction or increasing the amount of evasion gear.

This is a problem with backline jobs, especially if you happen to be a Tarutaru (actually Tarutaru has problems with any position they'd be taking damage).

While having stuff like evasion being able to mitigate damage for lighter classes is a nice prospect, many backline jobs don't have great defensive stats.

Some jobs have methods that are supposed to cope with this, such as essentially being able to participate in a battle from a safer, ranged position, such as Black Mages.

Other jobs have to run in for various reasons however. While this risk is supposed to be part of playing the job, it will now be increased without having an increased payoff for increased risk.

Bards, Corsairs, Scholars, White Mages, and eventually Geomancers having to run into combat to apply some buff run into this risk.

One example that comes to me particularly is that of a White Mage, although this example may apply in some ways to other jobs. A few years back, the then dev team made comments about wanting White Mages to be encouraged to have more situations where it could stand in the fray. They added stuff like Afflatus Misery, Cura, Esuna, and Auspice.

Since then, this has been pretty much ignored, and I feel that increase damage from standing in the fray will remove any long term occupation of the front line for White Mage permanently. Obviously, not every situation will be friendly to this play style, but the options for it are nearly non-existent. I think that intentionally standing in the fray, with relevant buffs or armor to indicate this, should be rewarded with its own set of trade offs, not just penalized.

Finally, some time ago, White Mage had the option of a piece of armor called Divine Breastplate, opening up the possibility of the occasional, but decidedly rare piece of heavy armor for White Mage. This piece had more defense (50) then any other piece of armor in the game for years.

The newest piece of rare heavy armor for White Mage is Sublime Breastplate, which has 60 DEF, which is even less then the Manteel body pieces (63) from Sea, and way less then other heavy armors (70-81). Maybe it won't be better then other heavy armors like back in the day (especially since it is doubtful that there will be a White Mage breastplate with the damage taken -11% of the 80 defense Laeradr Breastplate), but White Mage breastplate armors should give defense boosts competitive with other pieces of extremely heavy armors, especially considering how rare they are.


Regarding Weapons


I think that both one-handed and two-handed weapons need to be adjusted. Raising one-handed weapons up to the level of two-handed weapons is too simplistic of a solution, and comparatively the balance would be maintained through compensation via equipment.

Current situation:
Accuracy: One-handed weapons < Two-handed weapons
Damage: One-handed weapons < Two-handed weapons

Proposed adjustment:
Accuracy: One-handed weapons > Two-handed weapons
Damage: One-handed weapons < Two-handed weapons

I'm not sure I'm understanding this correctly, but unless the ratio caps for attack are the same on both weapons, we will always have the problem that 1h weapons are inferior to 2h weapons in every situation found in a party.

I think that having the maximum ratios be the same for both classes of weapon but have the base Accuracy and Attack calculations be different may be an acceptable way to have 1h and 2h weapons be different if that's the decided outcome.

-

Another issue is that Dual Wield lowers TP gain. This isn't an issue in low Haste environments since players using Dual Wield will be making a valid trade off, but in party fights with a full set of buffs the benefit of a higher attack speed is nullified and the drawback of lower TP gain remains.

Due to this fact, there are situations where certain gear setups lead jobs known for the trait like Dancer to benefit from only wielding a weapon in one hand.

Obviously, the attack speed bonus Dual Wield cannot be increased past the delay reduction cap, and having more then a certain amount of Dual Wield when there is sufficient Haste present will go mean the extra Dual Wield goes to waste. But having more Dual Wield then necessary should do nothing rather then lowering TP gain.


Finally, in regards to weapons that deal non-elemental damage, specifically the Twilight Scythe.

The below is a simple compilation of the opinions we've seen on the forums:

Leaving it the way it is currently is fine
It needs to be adjusted

Leave the effect as it is and lower the damage value
Change it to the same effect as Murasamemaru (WS are non-elemental damage)
Increase the jobs that can equip it



On the Twilight Scythe, I haven't really heard any issues. But if there is an issue to be found, I'd say it is that magic damage aren't preferred over Dark Knight's melee attacks with the Twilight Scythe. This isn't the fault of the Twilight Scythe I think, but instead from magic damage sources being too weak even compared to a substandard melee weapon.

I think the best solutions would either be to do the first or second of these, with the first being obviously preferable.


Ensure that the buffs to magic damage ensure that a decently geared and buffed player can always outdamage a decently geared Dark Knight with a Twilight Scythe without nerfing the Twilight Scythe.
Make mobs that are supposed to resist certain damage types actually take added damage from magic.


Please continue with the adjustments to magic damage before even considering changes to the Twilight Scythe further.

Another thing to do before changing the Twilight Scythe would be to better define why it is considered troublesome, with actual situations defined, so feedback can be given on these.

[Xilk]

I think the contast of acc and attack advantages between 1h and 2h weapons is an interesting idea. However, I also don't see how that would be different from players simply compensating w/ gear.

As far as twilight scythe goes... I seems fine to leave it the way it is. It really doesn't seem like that big a deal. A Drk is gonna sacrifice damage (GS-REsolution and no WS's) to use it in niche situations.
As a bst main, I'd LIKE it if bst could use it also :P WE really don't have any good scythes to use, and even though its our 2nd highest skill weapon, we have no good ws's or weapon options for it....

I like it when some jobs even if they are better on a 1 hand or 2 hand would have an option for the other. Mnk can use staff if a situation called for it (though footwork probably better) and PLD though usually on sword/shield combo, can use GS.

Its cool that bst has a 2h option, but that option is super weak...

I got a bit side-tracked, but really I don't see a need to change twilight scythe... if anything, add it to war and bst.. but even that's not that big a deal.

[Helel]

Why is twilight scythe even being discussed lol? Is this a serious issue on the JP side or something? It's a completely useless weapon, unless you fail at stunning things like bulwark or gambit. If anything, it needs to be buffed so it's actually useful...

[solidous]

I'd like to respond to a couple of questions and feedback that were brought up regarding the battle system adjustments.

Damage and Defense



To briefly reiterate what was announced previously, we will be making adjustments so that:
[list]
The maximum value of damage received is increased higher than what it is currently.


So you are going to make it harder for me to participate in legion and Odin II on my main job DRK. Please don't do this I already get crap for being a Taru.

[Zeroe]

Honestly don't even know why there bothering adjusting some of these. Twilight Scythe? Honestly? Fix Redemption! Would be nice if a weapon you work hard for, "Actually Does More Than Subpar!"

Please explain to us why ignore defense weaponskills are being "ignored." In hardly any situation are they useful. Stop wasting time with adjustments like twilight scythe that don't even need adjusting.

[saevel]

He's only repeating what the Dev's said to the JPs. The devs are pretty much only listening to the JPs now, can't blame them as they most likely don't speak English and can't read these forums directly. The CR's are just translators at this point in time.

[Demon6324236]

Can blame them, have them take 5 seconds to tell our rep to let us know we don't matter to them, not to hard.

[Caketime]

Can blame them, have them take 5 seconds to tell our rep to let us know we don't matter to them, not to hard.

But that would dispel the illusion of the dev team giving a damn about what we have to say! :(

[MarkovChain]

So. PUP is getting a buff from accuracy, but except retarded content like legion, the accuracy bonus is not very useful to 1 handed DD. On the other hand if it end ups being an accuracy nerf for 2H DD, it's going to be hilarous. Somehow I think they'll stick to content where accuracy doesn't matter like they always did...

[Sargent]

In regards to damage taken on Mage jobs, and in particular SMN, I would like to make a suggestion. Can you increase the range on using Pet Commands to equal that of casting spells. Since Blood Pacts etc are essentially the Summoner's spell against the mob, this should make sense.

[Tamarsamar]

I particularly like the "1-handed Accuracy" proposition (though I would need to drastically rethink my equipment if it were to go through), but as mentioned earlier, unless you equalize the Ratio caps for both weapon types, there will still be imbalance.

Honestly, as utterly broken as Duel Wield is, the way things are inherently designed right now, 1-handed weapon users need it just to play catch-up! If Dual Wield ended up being problematic again after increasing the power of 1-handed weaponry, I would rather nerf Dual Wield itself than all 1-handed weapons in general.

[Mirage]

Twilight scythe is cool as it is. I would however not be opposed to additional weapons with special damage types being added. Of course, with their own strengths and drawbacks. Having certain weapons that ignore some types of defences or resistances while at the same time perhaps not having optimal stats or WSes attached to them would just bring more variety to the game, and allow people to develop alternate tactics for certain fights. It's all fun and excitement.

And I dunno about you others, but in my head, it have always made sense that one-handed weapons would be more accurate, while two handed weapons would hit harder. I'm not sure if it would be enough of a buff, but I really think 1-handed weapons should let the user get a significantly higher innate hit rate than if using a 2-handed weapon.

[detlef]

And I dunno about you others, but in my head, it have always made sense that one-handed weapons would be more accurate, while two handed weapons would hit harder. I'm not sure if it would be enough of a buff, but I really think 1-handed weapons should let the user get a significantly higher innate hit rate than if using a 2-handed weapon.I feel like if you look at doing something IRL, you'll be both more accurate and hit harder if you grip something with 2 hands.

[Kincard]

Honestly, as utterly broken as Duel Wield is, the way things are inherently designed right now, 1-handed weapon users need it just to play catch-up! If Dual Wield ended up being problematic again after increasing the power of 1-handed weaponry, I would rather nerf Dual Wield itself than all 1-handed weapons in general.

Matsui at one point talked about adjusting how powerful Haste was as a stat, hopefully he'll think of Dual Wield too if the dev team decides to do something with that.

Because of the delay cap, the place where 1-handers really fall behind (high buffed situations VS high level monsters) Dual Wield often ends up being a hindrance, because a lot of the time you end up overgearing in DW and you shave off TP-per-hit for no benefit. You can work around that by removing DW gear as needed (NIN's ideal gear with double marches keeps only Suppa as DW gear now), but this is highly annoying because you need to create multiple gear sets based on if the bard use marcato, if the bard has aoidos manchettes +2, gjallarhorn, langeleik or fairie piccolo. Before the hopes /DRK Last Resort for 1Hers was stomped by the devs, people were actually discussing having BLUs drop DW spells in the middle of battle based on their last resort up/down status. This isn't really strategic or fun; it's just annoying.

[Demon6324236]

But that would dispel the illusion of the dev team giving a damn about what we have to say! :(What illusion? If it was any more clear they would have just come out and told us, so very thin line between where we are, and where we should (at very least) be right now at least. Though in reality we should be just a bit behind the JP community in terms of importance, and the fact we are not gives me the feeling of being ignored, especially when our responses are not that of real responses, but rather the words meant for the JPs, translated, and given to us. Which means were still ignored as much as ever, but the JPs might get some influence.

[Yinnyth]

As was suggested in feedback, we will be looking into various ways to do this such as increasing the amount of light armor with damage reduction or increasing the amount of evasion gear.

The only way evasion currently works as a defensive option is if you have utsusemi to soak up some of your bad luck. Defense is not the only underused defensive statistic that needs adjusting.

[Trumpy]

utsusemi is great and all but if the monster spams AoE shadow wiping moves it pretty useless. or moves that go thru shadows, I never understood this other than a gimmick for certain fights. This wont make pld the goto tank if mnks and such can do jsut as well.

[Motenten]

I feel like if you look at doing something IRL, you'll be both more accurate and hit harder if you grip something with 2 hands.

Well, you're more likely to hit what you aim for, but you'll also be more limited in what you can aim for. If you're just getting glancing blows against your targets, it's harder to change approaches. Also, it's a lot easier to predict where that huge hammer is going than that quick little rapier, so easier for the target to evade. That would be an effective reduction in accuracy (ie: +evasion = -accuracy) even if the accuracy itself didn't change.

Basically, there's plenty of "real life" arguments that can be made either way, so it's not worth getting hung up over.

[FrankReynolds]

I'd like to respond to a couple of questions and feedback that were brought up regarding the battle system adjustments.

Damage and Defense



To briefly reiterate what was announced previously, we will be making adjustments so that:

The maximum value of damage received is increased higher than what it is currently.
It will be possible to reduce damage more than currently.


We've also seen quite a lot of comments mentioning that backline jobs as well as lightly armored jobs would be affected negatively from the aforementioned defense adjustments.

As a general direction on this issue, while the defense of heavy armor jobs and light armor jobs will not be the same, in order to prevent this from becoming too large of a disparity we will be making it so there will not be situations where a certain job is unable to rush in and attack.

As was suggested in feedback, we will be looking into various ways to do this such as increasing the amount of light armor with damage reduction or increasing the amount of evasion gear.


So to be clear: You're planning on Increasing the importance of defense by increasing damage taken, increasing damage reduction from defense and adding new gear that has more defense and / or completely negates damage to compensate?

This sounds like a move to add new gear that features different stats instead of gear with better stats. How clever of you. Now people won't have to complain about how they have to do 5,000 hours of one event to add .03% to their DPS. Instead, they can do one event for 5,000 hours in order to get a piece of equipment that adds .03% to their defense.




Regarding Weapons



Please understand that the adjustments that we are currently looking into for weapon adjustments are not the end. We would like to have each weapon have their own special traits, and the adjustments will take place step by step.

I hate to be the one to say this, but you really need to test all of this stuff on the test server and then go live with it all at once. If you do this in bits and pieces it will be incredibly aggravating for the end users to constantly have to adjust to.


Finally, in regards to weapons that deal non-elemental damage, specifically the Twilight Scythe.

The below is a simple compilation of the opinions we've seen on the forums:

Leaving it the way it is currently is fine
It needs to be adjusted

Leave the effect as it is and lower the damage value
Change it to the same effect as Murasamemaru (WS are non-elemental damage)
Increase the jobs that can equip it



Due to the fact that adding more jobs to this weapon doesn't lend itself very well as a solution, I'd like to remove this as one of the options; however, we would like to hear everyone's opinions for and against adjustments to Twilight Scythe. We would like to proceed carefully with this, but please keep in mind that just because one opinion is greater in volume does not mean that we will base our decision solely on that.

Why are you adjusting niche weapons that most people don't care about when you have literally thousands of requests for changes to mythics/Relics/Empyreans that actually matter?

I say leave it how it is and fix some more important weapons / weapon skills instead.

[Merton9999]

We've also seen quite a lot of comments mentioning that backline jobs as well as lightly armored jobs would be affected negatively from the aforementioned defense adjustments.

As a general direction on this issue, while the defense of heavy armor jobs and light armor jobs will not be the same, in order to prevent this from becoming too large of a disparity we will be making it so there will not be situations where a certain job is unable to rush in and attack.

As was suggested in feedback, we will be looking into various ways to do this such as increasing the amount of light armor with damage reduction or increasing the amount of evasion gear.

As any fixes through gear are considered, please keep in mind inventory restrictions. If there are no plans to increase the bag size, having to carry around extra pieces for defense could indirectly force backline jobs to further gimp themselves in other areas just to survive.

The same consideration should be given for the proposed changes to elemental magic. I wouldn't bother going for that extra variety of earth and water nuking if it required adding higher INT gear to my bag that replaced pieces from my other sets.

[Camate]

Greetings everyone!

Producer Akihiko Matsui's hip hasn’t been feeling all too well lately, and he wanted to say thanks to everyone who was concerned and gave him some kind words. He also wrote a short message about what he has been up to and his plans for an upcoming post, which I would like to share with you.



Last weekend we were able to implement roughly 90% of the monsters’ special attack data for Adoulin (still needs adjustment though).

This week we will be discussing and finalizing how we will be implementing the even more special aspects. Up until two years ago this was work that I was doing myself, but since I had been gone for a bit I consulted with the current lead to cautiously perform the implementation work. Honestly, it was a lot of fun (hopefully I was of some use to the lead).

There is still a ton of other things to do, but I would like to make a post as promised about the logic and calculations related to enmity, what is going on currently, and how we plan to fix it heading towards Adoulin. Hang in there just a short while longer.

[Tassidaru]

In regards to the 2hand vs 1hand, I do have an idea, increase the crit hit rate of 1handed weapons, (at least melee hits). IRL, a gsword or say a big hammer has to smash through armor, where a small sword or dagger can slip in between layers of armor to strike the flesh underneath.

[Demon6324236]

Greetings everyone!

Producer Akihiko Matsui's hip hasn’t been feeling all too well lately, and he wanted to say thanks to everyone who was concerned and gave him some kind words. He also wrote a short message about what he has been up to and his plans for an upcoming post, which I would like to share with you.I hope he gets to feeling better, and I am happy he still continues to give us updates, however, there are two subjects which seem to be getting skipped over and I would like them to be addressed at some point if possible, preferably in our next update on all of this.

VOIDWATCH DROP RATES & NEW SP ABILITIES!?

We have had a very long time since our last update on the new SP abilities, and in the adjustments for VW, there was no mention of anything to do with drop rates. These both need to be updated, and we need to know how Producer Matsui feels about both of these currently as well as what he plans to have changed. VW drop rates are still a massive, and growing, problem with players obtaining items from VW, as time goes by, more people get the gear, and stop doing that NM, which leads to more and more people stopping. The ability to use Voidclusters to remedy that problem does not work because the cost is much to high. As for the SP abilities we need to know what to expect so that we can inform you of adjustments we would like as well as prepare for the inclusion of the abilities so we know what ones are useful where, and how to use them correctly, rather than getting them and being clueless.

[Edyth]

In what nonexistant version of FFXI are DRK and Twilight Scythe too powerful, and where can I get it?

For God's sake, leave the scythe as it is.

[Yarly]

either increase the jobs that can use twilight scythe or leave it alone.

[Mefuki]

The ability to use Voidclusters to remedy that problem does not work because the cost is much to high.

Indeed. Significantly lowering their cost, say 10K instead of 100K each, would work to make VW more accessible to more players. Lest you be concerned about VW becoming too easy or something, please recall that you already set up the system to only allow players to buy 5 per conquest tally, so it's a non-issue.

Also, when are we going to get that effort:reward system that we suggested ages ago? A particular number of kills, trading dozens of Crystal Petrifacts, a combination of both, it doesn't matter (to a certain extent) just make a system where we can make progress. And, no, Pulse cells don't count because, you know what? I can't actually get any Cells for, say, Ephemeron because no one has them to sell because no one does wants to do Aello. It's all about Qilin.



As for the Twilight Scythe, leave it as it is. People barely use already but it has a niche function, which is fine because at least it has a function. And in regards to more jobs wanting to be on it, maybe the fact that more jobs want to use a weapon that they have no skill in is indicative of the utter inefficiency of casting magic. This issue extends beyond Black Magic by the way (BLU "magical" magic spells") so don't just adjust Elemental magic when the time comes for adjustments.

[Calamity]

I also say, leave twilight scythe as is. I see no way in which is is overpowered. It merely provides a tactical option in certain cases and a little extra variety to a job that, in my opinion, could use it.

[Mirage]

Well, you're more likely to hit what you aim for, but you'll also be more limited in what you can aim for. If you're just getting glancing blows against your targets, it's harder to change approaches. Also, it's a lot easier to predict where that huge hammer is going than that quick little rapier, so easier for the target to evade. That would be an effective reduction in accuracy (ie: +evasion = -accuracy) even if the accuracy itself didn't change.

Basically, there's plenty of "real life" arguments that can be made either way, so it's not worth getting hung up over.

That's what I was getting at. I get the impression that you would telegraph your attacks more when using a huge, two handed weapon.

[Silvers]

Maybe this is the vodka talking, but has anyone on the development team considered raising the -delay cap for 1handed weapons in addition to the other changes the team has proposed? Giving 1 handed weapons the old -90% delay cap or close to it should be an option to consider even if for at least the light armor jobs.

Speed(-delay cap): One-handed weapons > Two-handed weapons
Accuracy: One-handed weapons > Two-handed weapons
Damage: One-handed weapons < Two-handed weapons

This maybe be a good place to start, then workout the advantages of individual weapon classes/types and better define them from there.

[Doombringer]

Maybe this is the vodka talking, but has anyone on the development team considered raising the -delay cap for 1handed weapons in addition to the other changes the team has proposed? Giving 1 handed weapons the old -90% delay cap or close to it should be an option to consider even if for at least the light armor jobs.

Speed(-delay cap): One-handed weapons > Two-handed weapons
Accuracy: One-handed weapons > Two-handed weapons
Damage: One-handed weapons < Two-handed weapons

This maybe be a good place to start, then workout the advantages of individual weapon classes/types and better define them from there.


the thing is, delay reduction increases damage more and more as the delay gets reduced and reduced. so an extra 10% delay reduction at the HIGH end would probably work out to an insane amount of DPS.

so it would absolutely improve 1-handers standing, but it might end up swapping positions entirely when taken with the ratio change they were talking about earlier.

[Babekeke]

Any reason that we can't have the same max HP scaling that we had in the earlier levels, all the way up to 99? This alone would decrease the chance of being 1-shotted (and give cure 6 some use).

[Okipuit]

Greetings everyone,

Below is a message from Akihiko Matsui in regards to adjustments to Twilight Scythe.



Greetings,

I appreciate all of the posts discussing the Twilight Scythe. I'm especially thankful that there was feedback that was both for and against making adjustments.

I also saw posts that were extremely emotionally charged that didn't offer reasons why they didn't want it to be changed. Though I have taken note of your feelings, I cannot use posts with these types of statements and feedback as reference, regardless of whether or not they are for or against adjustments.

With that said, based on the feedback we have received, the development team has looked into this again and has decided to make adjustments to the stats of Twilight Scythe.

Looking at each job individually, there are variations in what they are good at and what they are not so good at. (This would be the aspect known as job characteristics.)
These variations are altered through the addition of equipment/items and through job adjustments, and linked to the compatibility of content. Furthermore this is linked to the variations within a job itself.

These variations are a matter of degrees and will become a topic of where we draw the line; however, there are various methods to perform adjustments.

For example:
Adjustments to jobs
Adjustments to equipment and items
Adjustments to content
So on and so forth…

With that said, we feel that currently dark knight’s level of variation is much higher than that of other jobs, and since it seems that you share the same understanding we have come to the decision to revamp the stats on Twilight Scythe.

While we are still fleshing out the specific adjustment plan, we are thinking about the below:

Add a risk to the weapon, such as when equipping Twilight Scythe, every time an attack is made, you lose HP (overlaps with the effect of Soul Eater)
Add the effect as an enchantment which would decrease the frequency of it activating
Have the effect activate at a constant rate only when remaining HP is below a certain value.
Additionally, make it so the rate is increased depending on the amount of HP left.


In regards to other weapons and weapon skills that deal non-elemental damage, we feel that at the current point in time they are within the allowable range and will not be adjusting them.

Also, in regards to the power of elemental magic, once we have performed the revamps we will make a decision for this. (Of course, we will be letting you know about new adjustment plans and ideas as we go.)

[Tamarsamar]

I think somebody needed to spell out to him why Twilight Scythe is actually an underwhelming weapon as it is right now.

[Muras]

...didn't offer reasons why they didn't want it to be changed.

I think a lot of people outside Japan feel this way about it BEING changed, because nobody understands why you're doing it. You want reasons but you're not doing any better yourself.

People don't want it changed because it's only useful against a couple mobs in the game anyways. On everything else, people will use their already better weapons such as relics/mythics/empyreans.

I just find it odd how SE makes adjustments to things that have already been out for ages only because they make new content that doesn't work with older stuff. This is just like the "adjustments" to things like Perfect Defence (In the game for years without issue) and Embrava. Things were fine until you added content that demanded their use. The game events/designs themselves are broken, not the method which the players use to beat them.

[Helel]

In case it wasn't blatantly obvious, the reason why it should not be changed is because the weapon is a useless piece of crap. To be totally honest, I really don't care, because the weapon is so entirely useless that I would never use it anyway. You can change the scythe's base damage to 1, and it wouldn't affect a single thing. That's why this change is pointless, but, by all means, go ahead.

[Malthar]

How about this for an adjustment:

Every time you equip the twilight scythe and attack, including weaponskills, the additional effect "death" might backfire and proc on the player instead.

This would dissuade the overuse and correct the imbalance of using the twilight scythe.

[Babekeke]

When this NERF is carried out, could the name of it be changed to "Drop Me", since it's situational usefulness will no longer exist. This will let us know that it's time to get rid. Thanks.

[Mirage]

But Okipuit, Twilight Scythe isn't overpowered! You shouldn't change it. I don't even have drk leveled so this isn't just bias talking.

[Metaking]

Well if you wish for a reason for it not to be changed at this time if you have a monster with 75% or more pdt but a weakness to magic with twilight as it is now we have only 2 jobs that can reasonably keep hate off the mages, those being a mnk which can use any weapon it has with its formless strikes, the other being Drk with twlight which in all honesty even with formless' slight dmg penalty (10% at full merits and poping it with relic body) does not even remotely keep up with Mnk. Only advantage twilight would have would be access to a magical weapon skill, tho sadly its kinda weak, and only some gear to support it, and to make matters worse drk really isnt a Damage over time job there something like 28% tping dmg 2%magic dmg 70%weapon skill dmg which when compared to mnk, which is 50-70% tping dmg and the rest weapon skill its rather easy to see who has the advantage there.

Now some people might be saying why did i not include sam or the jobs using req, well the sam weapon is rare, tho in truth much much much more powerful than twilight, sam it self is like 5-10% tping dmg with the rest being weapon-skill dmg, which with that gk not only is doing non-elemntal dmg the weapon itself( 111 dmg which excluding the R/E/M is the 3rd highest dmg gk before considering its +15 str) is rather high on the dmg end, and gains an attack bonus of up to 33%. That gk with sams natural ability to gain tp while doing nothing easily puts it ahead of twilight and in most cases ahead of formless as well.

Now on to req really its a 1handed weapon skill so at best 45% tping dmg and 55% weaponskill to more realistically like 60% to and 40% weaponskill so not horrible but the problem comes in when you not only make it a mnd based weapon-skill (not to much str and mnd gear that has other useful dd stats) but then you put a hefty attack penalty on it (20 ish %) putting it greatly behind the other 3 options for everyone but blu and maybe war. In closing twilight is fine as it is, its not leading the pack heck its not even in second place its near the bottom, all of your proposed nurf will simply make people take mnks or that rare sam with the gk, and worse yet, push even more drk to great sword only status, which.... something isnt right about a job not using its iconic weapon.

[Kysaiana]

Twilight scythe has 2 maybe 3 uses anymore. BR II cerberus and killing elementals faster. You could argue Flans/Slimes as well but there's few times were you're not just better off powering through with a better weapon. The only thing that needs changed is to add more weapons like this for more jobs. If they want people to bring BLM to deal damage, they're going to have to increase MP efficiency and damage a lot more than what was proposed already.

[FrankReynolds]

Seriously? Seriously? Things like Thief's Knife are still in regular use by almost every single thief in the game and you wonder why people don't feel like changes need to be mad to the twilight scythe?

Perhaps an explanation as to what exactly is being done with the twilight scythe to spark the interest is in order. Is there some piece of content that is being repeatedly beaten exclusively through abuse of the twilight scythe? What exactly is the thing doing that has everyone up in arms? I don't think I've ever even seen one equipped in a battle.


When this NERF is carried out, could the name of it be changed to "Drop Me", since it's situational usefulness will no longer exist. This will let us know that it's time to get rid. Thanks.

Item Description: This scythe used to have a couple of minor uses, but we nerfed it. You can just toss this if it lands in your loot pool.

[saevel]

While we are still fleshing out the specific adjustment plan, we are thinking about the below:

Add a risk to the weapon, such as when equipping Twilight Scythe, every time an attack is made, you lose HP (overlaps with the effect of Soul Eater)
Add the effect as an enchantment which would decrease the frequency of it activating
Have the effect activate at a constant rate only when remaining HP is below a certain value.
Additionally, make it so the rate is increased depending on the amount of HP left.


Yeah it's a crock of BS.

We gave very specific reasons why it shouldn't be touched. It's a weak weapon that is useful it only a very limited situation.

Not that your going to tell the devs this anyway. The CR's are in passive mode only now, just translating what the devs are posting on the JP forums. You can tell cause it'll be posted in Japanese then a day or so later it's translated for here. The Dev's never respond to any posts made by the NA or EU players.

[Calamity]

How about this for an adjustment:

Every time you equip the twilight scythe and attack, including weaponskills, the additional effect "death" might backfire and proc on the player instead.

This would dissuade the overuse and correct the imbalance of using the twilight scythe.

Malthar, please stop trolling and take your whiny, petty, childish "I lost pet th so you deserve what you get" mentality and keep it to yourself.

[Arek]

I was on the "no adjustment to Twilight Scythe" side. I rarely use it, It's very situational.

With the adjustment, I'm gonna probably drop it on the ground. :(

[Malthar]

Malthar, please stop trolling and take your whiny, petty, childish "I lost pet th so you deserve what you get" mentality and keep it to yourself.

Ex-squeeze me?! I have every right to comment, just as you do. And how dare you call me a troll?!
If that wasn't a personal attack, I don't know what is.

Camate, be a good fellow and look into this, will ya?

[Calamity]

Ex-squeeze me?! I have every right to comment, just as you do. And how dare you call me a troll?!
If that wasn't a personal attack, I don't know what is.

Camate, be a good fellow and look into this, will ya?

It's trolling because you're not here to offer any sort of helpful insight or feedback. Every single post you've made on the subject has had the express goal of fanning the flames and, as I already said, just pettily laughing at drks, and supporting the nerf, all because YOU lost your pet th, and for no other reason. How is this not trolling?

[Malthar]

First, drk is my favorite job and bst is my second.
Second, I don't support any kind of nerf to any kind of job, but I do understand that sometimes it is necessary for balance.
Third, SE said they *are* going to nerf the twilight scythe and they gave examples of what could be done. I just gave an additional example of what can be done.

This is not trolling. This is offering my suggestion. Now I suggest you stop trolling me and let me freely express myself.

[Calamity]

Serves you guys right. Where were you when they were attacking bst? First bst, then drk, then ... This is how it happens. They come for your neighbors and you are glad that it was not you, so you do nothing. Then they come for you and you wonder why.

Just this. Done talking to you now.

[StingRay104]

Greetings everyone,

Below is a message from Akihiko Matsui in regards to adjustments to Twilight Scythe.

Ok i'll give a decent explanation about Twilight Scythe. Twilight Scythe is just fine were it is at. It is no where near the most powerful scythe out there, however it is quite useful as a tool against monsters with high defense or absorbs physical damage. The weapon is actually well balanced considering the lvl 99 aspect of the game. The problems with the so called over powered nature is actually due to the fact that DRK is the only job that benefits from non elemental damage on it's strikes. SAM has a similar weapon known as murasamemaru which makes all weaponskills non elemental as well. In fact if you decrease the capabilities of this weapon then murasamemaru is next so might as well do the same to it. People just want unique weapons that are in fact useful on every job such as twilight scythe, they are not in any way asking for the weapon to be down graded, they want better quality weapons like this for their jobs. Murasamemaru is a unique weapon that is very situational so it hasn't seen the this type of back lash.

As for the claims that DRK is too overpowered, again it is because of the route that current endgame has taken and not the job. In fact DRK is still underpowered. DRK should be able to easily outparse jobs like war and SAM while going all out, and usually killing itself to do so, yet it still has trouble keeping up. SAM as a job is very well balanced and meets the base concept of the job, and should be a basic model of the type of balance a job should have. Taking this into consideration, all other jobs should be balance in accordance with this concept. DRK is about using dark magic to inhibit it's foes while stealing their strength for themselves, as well as sacrificing themselves for extreme damage.

Again I say do not nerf Twilight Scythe as there is no logical reason to do so, in fact the suggestions you provide are incredible stupid. Enchantment aspect makes it really pointless as it would run out of charges and then would have be reacquired or it would only be used once every 20-24 hours for a recharge. As for the hp consumption method, ok so you want it to be souleater? If this is the path you choose I demand the same be done for formless strikes as well. Finally only activated under certain hp%, well guess what % hp people are gonna stay at. So the last option is not gonna fix anything. This weapon is fine, just focus on making other jobs happy by fixing their jobs and not nerfing current jobs or gear.

[Malthar]

Be careful. You might get accused of trolling.

[Ophannus]

Can the NA community team please explain to the NA community what kinds of arguments/discussions are transpiring on the JP boards with regard to Twilight Scythe? I think it's a mystery to us why Twilight Scythe is being considered 'overpowered' for Dark Knights by Japanese players. To North Americans and European players, Twilight Scythe is a useful tool in certain and specific situations(mobs that have high physical resistence or shields i.e Cardamom Custard, Pil) but besides those few examples, Twilight Scythe is a very lackluster weapon compared to Ragnarok, Apocalypse or other weapons with simply higher base damage(even the fire path STR Magian Scythe/Greatsword are better).

Is it because no other job has the advantage of bypassing special defenses and shields like a Dark Knight with Twilight Scythe does? Does that create an advantage that only Dark Knight has the ability to exploit? I suppose, although MNK has Formless Strikes, PLD, BLU, RDM have Requiescat and a few other jobs have something similar. I'd say instead of adjusting Twilight Scythe, give other damage dealing jobs a similar weapon/ability/trait to be able to overcome special defense temporarily or occasionally.

[Drivont]

Be careful. You might get accused of trolling.

lol move on, broski! :P
that right there is trolling. A better man would've just walked away. But you just gave into the fact that you're wanting to be petty, and proved it.

[Nervosa]

Rather then changing stuff, how about you stop adding dumb gimmicks and "shields" to mobs that require the player base to exploit such items or abilities.

[Catmato]

I also saw posts that were extremely emotionally charged that didn't offer reasons why they didn't want it to be changed.

How would we justify not changing it if no one on the English forums has any idea why you want it to be changed? It is in no way over-powered. If you really feel that it is overpowered, then keep the hidden effect as it is and ditch the Add. Effect: Death altogether.

Edit: grammar

[FrankReynolds]

Can the NA community team please explain to the NA community what kinds of arguments/discussions are transpiring on the JP boards with regard to Twilight Scythe? I think it's a mystery to us why Twilight Scythe is being considered 'overpowered' for Dark Knights by Japanese players.

I don't know why they originally brought the whole idea up, but I did read the first few responses on the JP forum to this latest post and they basically said that the proposed changes were dumb ideas.

[Hashmalum]

I don't even own a Twilight Scythe or have DRK leveled, but I know that if they go through with this craziness, it will have a very negative effect on my relationship with the game. Why? Because we will be on notice that any item we have can have its stats arbitrarily changed seemingly at random and no arguments that we make to the contrary will have any effect, because we aren't JP and our opinions don't matter. While the dreaded Hand of Baransu previously would viciously thrash our jobs, our game mechanics, and our monsters, it did not stoop so low as to riffle through our Gobbiebags. (The closest it ever came to this was when someone fixed a dropped decimal point on the PUP Abyssea job-specific weapon.) But now, I'm going to second-guess every single major item I'm considering trying to get. Will some future craziness spread through the JP forums, asking for a nerf on this item? How can I possibly know? I don't understand the alien moon logic at work here. Every DRK and their mother is making a relic great sword because Ragnarok became a god, and then some underpowered scythe gets hit with the nerf bat--WTF, SE?

[Hashmalum]

Oh, and if SE wants people to bring BLMs, then maybe they could make magic damage good for something other than procing weaknesses. Oh, wait, there's a coming overhaul to nuking spells that's supposed to improve them. So why not wait and see how well it works before doing anything drastic? And BTW, what exactly is the problem with DRK of all jobs having a non-physical damage dealing mechanism when you gave them three different types of drain, Endark, and elemental nukes?! I guess you'd better nerf those too!

[Zeroe]

I just...can't believe...Were wasting our money for "balance" updates like this. This is one of the dumbest and idiotic ideas to implement, when already we need more serious matters adjusted. I'm honestly at my limit with how much more I can take of these crap shot responses and updates.

[Minikom]

solution is easy and semple: stop creating mobs with shield and PDT def like cerberus and hydras.
Twilight Scythe is ok, just useful sometimes, jp ppl should stop crying for nothing and start enjoying more the game, SE should listen more NA side and less JP side but they care more about how much money they can lost if they dont listen JP ppl.

when something is useful, that will be neft, Ukkos Ws, PD, Embrava, Souleater and now nerfing Twlight scythe, why they cant use that time to fix enlight + add effect on exalibur instead of waste time on LOLTwlight scythe. always more important things than need to attention and they just give shitty answers about that.

we should just go to JP foroms and post there whatever we want using Google traslate and see if we can get it!

[Yenecol]

I do not play dark knight at all and I think this is idiotic. You have better things to do than worry about some weapon they pull out once in a blue moon. Instead of wasting time thinking how to nerf it, just remove it from the game - at least that way people get their inventory space back. Heck, while you are at it, why not nerf every other piece of twilight gear? Have twilight knife give the mob HP, TP, and MP instead since quad attack is powerful. Have twilight belt put the players under the effect of gravity and amnesia. If you equip twilight helm and body, have it kill you instead! Sure, destroy it all - Shinryu didn't take any of our time, right?

Keep this up and we'll take our money elsewhere.

[Lollerblades]

Sqaure - Enix breaking the game 1 nerf at a time under the banner of balance ...

I don't have a problem with TS it's a very situational piece that has quite a limited use. Leave it as it is , if it ain't broke don't fix it. It's basically going to be Nerf > +1 Inventory space.

[Raucent]

since SE wants to change the scythe no matter what we say why not give them a breakdown of where there ideas for change would Fail:

Auto Hp drain on swing (overlaps with Souleater): depending on the HP drain people would be more likely to toss the then more harmful then beneficial weapon to the floor.

adding the effect as an enchantment : if the enchantment works like an enspell at that point it would override Endark

Making the weapon work at X% hp: depending what % you set the Bar at it may work, as an example of what will NOT WORK heres this


Zareehkl scythe
(Scythe) All Races
DMG: 91 Delay: 528
Latent effect:
Increases rate of "Triple Attack"
Lv. 71 DRK

Latent effect

Active while HP ≤ 25% (red

in Todays current Game RED HP is almost always 1 hit from Death which is far too much of a gamble just to have attacks deal non elemental damage

[Babekeke]

Can the NA community team please explain to the NA community what kinds of arguments/discussions are transpiring on the JP boards with regard to Twilight Scythe? I think it's a mystery to us why Twilight Scythe is being considered 'overpowered' for Dark Knights by Japanese players. To North Americans and European players, Twilight Scythe is a useful tool in certain and specific situations(mobs that have high physical resistence or shields i.e Cardamom Custard, Pil) but besides those few examples, Twilight Scythe is a very lackluster weapon compared to Ragnarok, Apocalypse or other weapons with simply higher base damage(even the fire path STR Magian Scythe/Greatsword are better).

Is it because no other job has the advantage of bypassing special defenses and shields like a Dark Knight with Twilight Scythe does? Does that create an advantage that only Dark Knight has the ability to exploit? I suppose, although MNK has Formless Strikes, PLD, BLU, RDM have Requiescat and a few other jobs have something similar. I'd say instead of adjusting Twilight Scythe, give other damage dealing jobs a similar weapon/ability/trait to be able to overcome special defense temporarily or occasionally.

I may be wrong, but this was first mentioned along with the changes to defense. Therefore I think that whereas TS is currently NOT overpowered, the devs anticipate it being overpowered when the change comes in (though the only way I can think of this being the case is to full-time defender and def food to keep your def high and not take as much damage, while not feeling the attack penalty whilst using TS).

Complete BS of course, as the WS would completely suck lol.

[Sasaraixx]

Can the NA community team please explain to the NA community what kinds of arguments/discussions are transpiring on the JP boards with regard to Twilight Scythe? I think it's a mystery to us why Twilight Scythe is being considered 'overpowered' for Dark Knights by Japanese players. To North Americans and European players, Twilight Scythe is a useful tool in certain and specific situations(mobs that have high physical resistence or shields i.e Cardamom Custard, Pil) but besides those few examples, Twilight Scythe is a very lackluster weapon compared to Ragnarok, Apocalypse or other weapons with simply higher base damage(even the fire path STR Magian Scythe/Greatsword are better).

Is it because no other job has the advantage of bypassing special defenses and shields like a Dark Knight with Twilight Scythe does? Does that create an advantage that only Dark Knight has the ability to exploit? I suppose, although MNK has Formless Strikes, PLD, BLU, RDM have Requiescat and a few other jobs have something similar. I'd say instead of adjusting Twilight Scythe, give other damage dealing jobs a similar weapon/ability/trait to be able to overcome special defense temporarily or occasionally.

I have not been playing at all lately but I check the boards frequently. I was curious why all of this attention was being given to the twilight scythe when there are seemingly more important things worthy of the dev teams time. I was baffled further because no one on the NA boards seemed to think there was a need for an adjustment at all . . . so I went over the the JP forum to take a quick peak. From the bits I read in response to Matsui-san's latest post, the response sounds similar to the NA side.

Some of the posters were discussing the pro's and cons of the adjustments that were mentioned in the dev post. Many people seemed to dislike the idea of HP penalties as this would just increase the workload of the healers. Aside from those responses the posts that received the most likes basically summed up what I read here. My favorite post and the one with the highest amount of likes that I saw basically said:
1. the dev team isn't thinking about these changes
2. there is only surprise and disappointment at these 180 adjustments
3. although the dev team is supposed to be thinking about "balance," what in the world are you all doing?
4. looking at these proposed adjustments, the scythe will become a piece of trash that no one will use
5. I thought the policy now was not to nerf but to strengthen elements that were falling behind, but all we've had are nerfs and nerfs.

That doesn't sound too different from what I see on the NA board. That thread is over a 100 pages long, but after taking a quick peek I still don't see why this is being considered. There are a lot of posts discussing how the scythe should be changed (with minimal likes) but I didn't see the why. Along with those are posts like the one I mentioned. People seem frustrated with yet another nerf and the feeling that the dev team isn't listening to the player base.

[Seha]

This is a nighly useless nerf. How many people does it take to get the message through that: it doesn't need a nerf. Or a change at all.
Like mentioned before Formless Strikes, Quick Draw and Requiescat all do the same thing, but better. And Murasamemaru is much more useful too since it works on ws on a job that only does that.

Stop nitpicking over such an inconsequential item and move on. Just remove death if you want, not like it procs on nms anyway.

[Mirage]

I was on the "no adjustment to Twilight Scythe" side. I rarely use it, It's very situational.

With the adjustment, I'm gonna probably drop it to the ground. :(

On the ground. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAYL5H46QnQ)

[Arek]

On the ground. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAYL5H46QnQ)

Edited, English is not my 1st language. ^^

[Caketime]

When I go out adventuring and we kill something that drops a shiny that we all have, we give that drop to the floor. The floor has collected enough pirate hat seals and unwanted baubles to be the greatest pirate ever, but soon it will get a new toy: the Twilight Scythe.

[Dreamin]

I know exactly why the devs are making these changes - they have absolutely NO 1st hand knowledge as to how these items are being used by the actual playing customers at all. The new producer has admitted that he barely plays the game and he's not even cap on his main job. So how do you think he knows how items are actually being USED by the players in real game situations and not what's on paper at all or just listening to what 'some players' are complainting about on this forum.

My suggestion to SE is to assigned at least 1 in game-job per developer/QA/internal testers. required them to become expert in that job in real in-game (end game situation as well as non-end game). They have the ability to just assign whatever weapons/levels/skills/armors their char needs so that shouldn't be hard and they wouldn't need to go through the grind to level/skill up and instead can just use these gears in real game situations.

Until then, my opinion is that they will keep doing adjustments that makes absolutely no sense at all.

[Soidisant]

The Twilight Scythe changes are a complete joke. There is already a penalty for using Twilight Scythe, you suffer an absolutely massive drop in DPS. It is situationally useful but not overpowered. Maybe if it was a Greatsword and still did full Reso damage I coukd understand but you're basically sacrificing your WS damage to deal non-elemental melee damage. And that melee damage is vastly inferior to normal Apoc or Ragna melee damage.

Sure it makes DRK useful for 2 Salvage V2 bosses but other jobs can be safer/quicker on the ascent up to the bosses so it levels out. And one of those bosses you can brute force through anyway.

If Twilight is overpowered then so is MNK having an obscene counter rate for the full run (which it isn't, it's a perk of the job that makes it well suited to Salvage)

Some jobs are just better suited for certain mobs/events. The problem is that people are blinkered and can't look past certain jobs even if another job would be good for the event (i.e. I'm sure BLU would be good for Hydra and Cerb)

[Mirage]

Edited, English is not my 1st language. ^^

I wasn't correcting you, I was just linking to a funny video.

"To the ground" is probably fine.

[Rezeak]

Firstly, Twilight Scythe is one of the better things about DRK and i don't understand why you want to nerf that aspect of DRK. Either way, i'm with the community with this one.

Either way, i find it disappointing that you feel DRK has too much variation considering pre-resolution most DRKs only wanted a reason to use absorb spell/magic and some difference between scythe and great sword but you threw more DMG at us and messed up your precious balance and then decided to hold back on the magic update we had asked for, for like err 6 years+.

The way i feel is that if you nerfed resolution, i would be fine with that and maybe you can fix absorb spells for us at the same time. But if your going to be taking the other aspects of DRK away so that all it is, is a WAR or SAM with stun that certainly will give me a good reason to quit.

[Shenul]

I'm a main DRK, and here's the deal with Twilight Scythe: I keep it on-hand in case there's some mob that's being silly (Glavoid, the Urganite boss in Abyssea-Grauberg, slimes if I'm bored...).

It's not a bad scythe when it comes to damage, I mean, I mained it until my magian fire path scythe was done. But as soon as I got far enough with that scythe, the Twilight Scythe got backlined. I'm a casual player, too, so I don't have anything super awesome, like an Apoc or the like, but even for me, it's meh damage.

Instead of removing the usefulness, add in more weapons like it so that the usefulness gets spread out. Make the cost for it being on the weapon a slightly higher than average delay, don't have any additional effects, and just keep the weapon average for level 90 otherwise. People won't maintime them, but you'll see people hold onto them.

And really, I think it'd be funny to see the Twilight Sword, only equippable by RDMs and PLDs :p

[SpankWustler]

Greetings everyone,

Below is a message from Akihiko Matsui in regards to adjustments to Twilight Scythe.

Right now, casting spells for magic damage is so cumbersome compared to just hitting a thing that it is easier to use an otherwise horrible weapon on something with a physical shield than cast spells on it. Outside of a physical shield situation, no one with a half-decent weapon would ever currently use Twilight Scythe.

I'm not sure "make the already highly situational weapon worse" is the right approach to this situation, rather than looking at why most players desperately want any alternative to casting spells for non-physical damage purposes and considering if the incoming changes to Elemental Magic might address this properly.

[HimuraKenshyn]

I feel like instead of moving forward SE is moving backward in time making silly inane decisions leave the weapon ALONE it is not in any way game breaking and basically a slap in the face if you nerf it as many things you have done in the past to alienate your player base.

Again the twilight Scythe is niche weapon for hand full of mobs your changes equate to total inventory -1 and a kick in the ass and time to drop kick the stupid thing. Your changes are beyond stupid at this point thanks for not listening again.........

What really pisses me off the most tho instead of working on real game issues this is what you spend your GD limited resources fixing shit that isn't broke in the least as I bang my head against my desk............

[Mefuki]

Translate and send off Spank's post please, Community Team. He summed it up perfectly and respectfully.

[Yinnyth]

Reading over these posts regarding Twilight Scythe from the players, I feel a bit confused. Pretty much everyone seems against the idea of it being nerfed. The most common argument why it should not be nerfed seems to be that it's either useless or only useful in rare situations. If it's so close to worthless though, I have a hard time believing so many people would rise to its defense. How many people would complain if they nerfed something like Dokumori: Ichi or Goblin Gavotte? I get the feeling that the scythe is more useful than everyone is letting it seem.

This is the natural human reaction, so it's understandable that this would be the most common argument made. I think Spank sums up the entire argument better than anyone else: (paraphrasing)"The Twilight Scythe is only useful in situations where the devs try to force us to use non-physical damage. If the magic system were not so cumbersome, the Twilight Scythe would not be half as popular as it currently is."

The devs point of view on this appears to be: (paraphrasing)"DRK's utility is disproportionately high currently. In addition to being one of the top-tier physical damage dealers, they have access to stun, buff stealing, self-healing, and thanks to twilight scythe, they are actually better at circumventing battle mechanics like PDT and physical shield than any other job. Future battles we wish to add would be rendered far-too-easy by a group of 4 drks with a brd and healer, so we have no choice but to nerf the scythe."

Both are legitimate points of view, I must admit. Ultimately though, I feel I must side with the devs on this topic. Even formless strikes is affected by MDT and magic shield, plus it can only be used 3 minutes out of 10. Twilight Scythe can be kept on 100% of the time and ignores all forms of all resist. I can see how this would disrupt their ability to add challenging fights in the future.

[Mirage]

But Twilight Scythe doesn't have an extremely high DMG rating, using it doesn't enable any particularly good WSes, and WSes are of course still of normal damage type. Monks can formless strikes with their vere/spharai and use vsmite and shit. With scythe, you're stuck using... idk cause i'm not a drk, but guillotine? Or is the merit WS marginally better?

[Ezekieal]

Probably just better off removing Twilight scythe from the game entirely. Then maybe the dev team can work on something that affects more than say 3 people >.>

[Alpheus]

The devs point of view on this appears to be: (paraphrasing)"DRK's utility is disproportionately high currently. In addition to being one of the top-tier physical damage dealers, they have access to stun, buff stealing, self-healing, and thanks to twilight scythe, they are actually better at circumventing battle mechanics like PDT and physical shield than any other job. Future battles we wish to add would be rendered far-too-easy by a group of 4 drks with a brd and healer, so we have no choice but to nerf the scythe."


Stat stealing and self healing via drain and the like don't work as a reason to say DRK is versatile because on anything worthwhile those NMs have a crap load of Dark resistances, also the buff stealing is atrocious as well I think it's actually worse than Aura Steal. The only other self heal DRK has is from Apoc which requires you to un-equip the Scythe in question. Also I don't recall a MNK's Formless Strikes being bound by any form of magical or resist checks that Twilight Scythe, Requiescat and Murasamamaru aren't bound to as well (essentially I'm saying it's my understanding that they all work the same). Also a MNK w/ the augmented Relic body can push their Formless Strikes damage up to only experiencing an 8% penalty in Damage and that's not even mentioning that a MNK can simply Vsmite a Phys Immune Mob only to have it's aftermath piggyback damage onto formless strikes, or how w/ the right relic equip and meditate up SAM can 2hour and do more than the 3 WS afforded to them w/ a Murasamemaru.

Yes something should be done to make nukes worth a damn but this change is just an awful lot of negative for no net positive at all. If SE is worried about future battles than maybe they should take the time to program fights where, oh I don't know, the SAMs are amnesia'd the DRKs are perma slowed and para'd and the MNKs are also Amnesia'd and then they nullified all the usual suspects when it comes to bypassing shields who's weakness is non elemental damage.

Although even if such a fight existed it would just point out the glaringly obvious; going out of your way to punish people for using a job in a game they pay for makes you look small especially when you're in a position to affect things on such a large scale.

EDIT: Also Camate & Friends you have on hell of a job props on being able to keep going.

[Economizer]

I'm going to quote the last post because I want to directly contrast it with what NA players are saying.




How can our feedback be useful at all when you're raising this issue based on the JP player's feedback without telling us exactly what the problem is?

You say that we have a situation where Dark Knight is too powerful at something. You don't say exactly what that situation is, leading us only to speculation.

The only part here that makes sense is players making statements without a list of fact, and that's mostly due to a small handful of Dark Knights with kneejerk reactions to any balance changes, and players who assume you know what we are talking about, and players who feel that you don't listen to us because you're coming to us based on another conversation without properly explaining what's going on.

With only speculation we cannot accurate gauge or even formulate what situation the weapon is in from your viewpoint, only the current one we have. Without your viewpoint we cannot agree to nerfs because we don't know the extent of any problem.

So I can only go on baseless speculation and the analysis of the Twilight Scythe that the English speaking community has, and that's that the Twilight Scythe does crappy damage, and only has a very niche and even then sub par usage at doing damage to mobs that are immune or resistant to physical damage but need magical damage.

Note that not only is this view gaining steam, it's the initial response I had previously, so nothing is really changing, because you are not adequately explaining the conversation or reasons that lead to this decision. Regardless, I will quote part of that post, since it had multiple topics, and was pages ago:




Expanding on this, the general idea is that there will be no need to nerf the Twilight Scythe if magic damage actually does what it is supposed to do, especially since Dark Knights will still be able to cast magic on mobs regardless of such a weapon. And if there is a need to nerf the Twilight Scythe, it wouldn't be truly apparent until the buffs to magic damage are implemented.

But you already seem to have come to a decision, even if the reasoning hasn't adequately been explained to English speaking players.

Again, I can't stress enough that we will only be making shots in the dark about this until it is adequately explained, and even if by some chance our guesses are good, we still feel stressed and annoyed that we're only hearing part of this conversation.

For my shot in the dark, if you must be nerfing the Twilight Scythe, based on my assumption that the issue is that Dark Knights can do damage to monsters that have physical shields or resistances but are supposed to be weak to magic, then tie it to the Dark Knight's magic pool, and make hits cost magic essentially.

Basically, make the special damage from the Twilight Scythe be a latent that requires MP, and each strike will either drain a small amount of MP or have a chance at draining a slightly larger amount of MP. If the issue is that the Twilight Scythe is doing what MP is supposed to be doing, then make it cost MP.

But please, if you actually care about our feedback, please give a better explanation for what you feel the problem with the Twilight Scythe is, with specific examples and situations where it performs better then it should. Otherwise we'll just be giving guesses about what the problem is and won't be giving the quality feedback we are capable of, and there won't be any understanding.

[Alpheus]

I can get behind each swing taking MP would provide nice synergy w/ Entropy.

[tyrantsyn]

You know this is nothing new. And we've seen this before, just in different form's. Feed back is ask for and their response is that no one made a clear argument towards the reason why not to do something.

Any one else remember the load they gave us when they ask us whether or not we'd like to see the level cap go to 99 or 100, or when the ask us to vote on which jug pet's we'd like to see next?

There's just no way to win with these guy's when they get it in there head that something's wrong and require's fixing. They knew before they ask us they were going to adjust the thing. And my guess is they just wanted to gauge reaction to it so they can see how much of the player base was against it.

I'd also look at it like this, WAR's new SP is base on 30 sec + of non elemental damage. Seems kind of bad to have a weapon out there that allow's you to do this full time with out the use of a 1 hour timer. I'm sure some one on the other side look at this and said "oh geez, maybe we should get a adjustment on that weapon."

Anyways, it's niche weapon that look's really nasty and before long it's one perk will be gone or cripple to a point it's just not enjoyable to use. +1 inventory and on to the next piece.

Thanx for reading
Ty

[Mefuki]

Reading over these posts regarding Twilight Scythe from the players, I feel a bit confused. Pretty much everyone seems against the idea of it being nerfed. The most common argument why it should not be nerfed seems to be that it's either useless or only useful in rare situations. If it's so close to worthless though, I have a hard time believing so many people would rise to its defense. How many people would complain if they nerfed something like Dokumori: Ichi or Goblin Gavotte? I get the feeling that the scythe is more useful than everyone is letting it seem.

This is the natural human reaction, so it's understandable that this would be the most common argument made. I think Spank sums up the entire argument better than anyone else: (paraphrasing)"The Twilight Scythe is only useful in situations where the devs try to force us to use non-physical damage. If the magic system were not so cumbersome, the Twilight Scythe would not be half as popular as it currently is."

The devs point of view on this appears to be: (paraphrasing)"DRK's utility is disproportionately high currently. In addition to being one of the top-tier physical damage dealers, they have access to stun, buff stealing, self-healing, and thanks to twilight scythe, they are actually better at circumventing battle mechanics like PDT and physical shield than any other job. Future battles we wish to add would be rendered far-too-easy by a group of 4 drks with a brd and healer, so we have no choice but to nerf the scythe."

Both are legitimate points of view, I must admit. Ultimately though, I feel I must side with the devs on this topic. Even formless strikes is affected by MDT and magic shield, plus it can only be used 3 minutes out of 10. Twilight Scythe can be kept on 100% of the time and ignores all forms of all resist. I can see how this would disrupt their ability to add challenging fights in the future.

Hmm, you know, I think I'm starting to see where SE is coming from. Requescat and Murasamemaru are WS only so if you're fighting a monster with a physical shield, you're not going to do much to it using melee because you can't get TP.

It would be one thing if it was, perhaps, a Sword that only RDM could wear or something but DRK is one of the FFXI melee powerhouses and even after figuring in the lowered DPS of Twilight Scythe, they're still doing a ton of damage compared to the 0 that every other melee is doing. Why use magic on physical shield or -PDT monsters when you can just cap out the Haste on some DRKs in your party and be done with it and with minimal penalty. Maybe this is one of SE's attempt to get away from "Melee Fantasy XI" that some have cheekily called it.

Thinking about it now, I'm torn. At first I thought this adjustment was just utterly pointless. Now, I'm not quite so certain.

[Jaberwocky]

Can we please crossdress in FFXI now?

[Nebo]

I appreciate all of the posts discussing the Twilight Scythe. I'm especially thankful that there was feedback that was both for and against making adjustments.

I also saw posts that were extremely emotionally charged that didn't offer reasons why they didn't want it to be changed. Though I have taken note of your feelings, I cannot use posts with these types of statements and feedback as reference, regardless of whether or not they are for or against adjustments.

Not that it matters, because it is very clear that this conversation is only happening with the developement team and he JP playerbase....

...But I suspect you are getting "emotionally charged" responses because this entire subject of conversation is obsurd.

The fact that even one hour of developement resource, funded by my subscription fees, is being wasted on something as stupid as adjustments to Twilight Scythe is enough piss me off.

Why?

It is NOT because Twilight Scythe is overpowered. This change will not ruin the world for DRKS.

It IS because of the overwhelming amount of things that ACTUALLY NEED attention in this game that are consistently ignored by the developement team and are completely devoid of developement team response on these discussion boards.

And this is what we get. Freaking Twilight Scythe adjustments? Are you kidding me with this Bullsh*t?

[Soidisant]

Reading over these posts regarding Twilight Scythe from the players, I feel a bit confused. Pretty much everyone seems against the idea of it being nerfed. The most common argument why it should not be nerfed seems to be that it's either useless or only useful in rare situations. If it's so close to worthless though, I have a hard time believing so many people would rise to its defense. How many people would complain if they nerfed something like Dokumori: Ichi or Goblin Gavotte? I get the feeling that the scythe is more useful than everyone is letting it seem.

This is the natural human reaction, so it's understandable that this would be the most common argument made. I think Spank sums up the entire argument better than anyone else: (paraphrasing)"The Twilight Scythe is only useful in situations where the devs try to force us to use non-physical damage. If the magic system were not so cumbersome, the Twilight Scythe would not be half as popular as it currently is."

The devs point of view on this appears to be: (paraphrasing)"DRK's utility is disproportionately high currently. In addition to being one of the top-tier physical damage dealers, they have access to stun, buff stealing, self-healing, and thanks to twilight scythe, they are actually better at circumventing battle mechanics like PDT and physical shield than any other job. Future battles we wish to add would be rendered far-too-easy by a group of 4 drks with a brd and healer, so we have no choice but to nerf the scythe."

Both are legitimate points of view, I must admit. Ultimately though, I feel I must side with the devs on this topic. Even formless strikes is affected by MDT and magic shield, plus it can only be used 3 minutes out of 10. Twilight Scythe can be kept on 100% of the time and ignores all forms of all resist. I can see how this would disrupt their ability to add challenging fights in the future.

Twilight Scythe is obviously useful otherwise people wouldn't care one jot like you said. However, is it that useful and overpowered that it needs nerfing? No. The solution isn't to nerf Twilight Scythe, it's to make magic actually worth a damn so it's viable to use.

I mean lets not beat about the bush. What the Twilight Scythe nerf boils down to is this.

SE has made content that heavily encourages players to take the absolute minimum amount of people along due to reward progress and the way gear/stats unlock. Then at the end of this content they have added 2 bosses that encourage/require magic damage which is far less efficient than melee damage for the rest of the run. So players have to choose between A. Taking melees who can circumvent the mechanic or B. Taking a magic DD who is basically surplus to requirements for everything except the boss. It's essentially a choice between taking 3 people or 4.

Like I currently go SCH DRK THF. If there was an efficient magic DD who could do as well as a melee for the rest of the run then they could replace either the DRK or THF. BLU could possibly fill that hole for Hydra/Cerb but none of us have it geared whereas all 3 of us have RDM/BLM/SCH geared and 2 of us SMN geared, they just aren't viable.

Nerfing Twilight Scythe will change nothing. It will not suddenly make people take some form of magic damage. MNK + SAM are better for circumventing PDT than Twilight so nothing changes there. Brute forcing Cerberus will still be more convenient than taking a mage. And people will just opt to do a different zone for Hydra drops if they make it too much of a pain to kill. It doesn't really help that the 1 zone where magic damage is the most useful drops plans that have no mage jobs on them.

As long as there is a way around taking magic DD, people will continue to do so unless magic damage is brought up to par with melee damage in terms of DPS and efficiency.



And possibly the reason why people are getting emotional and bitter about the nerf is simple. Nobody was complaining about Twilight Scythe pre-salvage V2. This pure and simply comes down to people going 'It's not fair, X job/set-up can do this but I can't!'. If it was about Twilight Scythe being overpowered, where were all the complaints when DRK's were used for Pil's shields and the such. Heck, that was even back when switching to Twilight Scythe was only really a DPS loss for a handful of DRKs.

[FrankReynolds]

Twilight Scythe is obviously useful otherwise people wouldn't care one jot like you said.

It's not quite that the scythe is overly useful or even often used. It's the context.

It's like having your oncologist tell you that instead of scheduling chemotherapy for your daughter and working on a cure, he decided to flatten all the tires on your ford festiva because you are 5 pounds over weight and you could use the exercise from walking. I mean you may in fact benefit from the walking, but does it really make sense for a highly educated and extremely well paid professional to be spending yours and theirs time that way?

They should post a list of all the things they are working on and let all the players rank them based on what we think is most important. Because they obviously have no idea what it is that matters to people and / or they just don't think our opinions matter at all.

Most people who don't want it nerfed don't care about the weapon itself. It's really not an important aspect of the game. It's all about all the other things that are not being done... the ones that actually matter.

[SNK]

All this crap over a scythe that has marginal uses at best?

[Nervosa]

All this crap over a scythe that has marginal uses at best?
Because while asking for advice, SE doesn't seem listen to half the user base and constantly "adjusts" things because we use it to make things easier.

[Caketime]

Can we please crossdress in FFXI now?

Hahaha, oh wow. Wear a corset while you play. Everybody wins!

[Yinnyth]

Most people who don't want it nerfed don't care about the weapon itself. It's really not an important aspect of the game. It's all about all the other things that are not being done... the ones that actually matter.

Ask 100 people what matters in the game, and you'll get 100 different answers. Case in point:


Can we please crossdress in FFXI now?
He's probably not being serious, but there are most likely people out there who do want that. #cheesesammich

It appears that most people here measure "overpowered" by how quickly it can kill an average enemy. Sure, you wouldn't use twilight scythe against a qutrub under normal circumstances. But FFXI is a lot of running, talking to NPCs, and killing trash mobs. This is all punctuated by epic, memorable, and sometimes challenging boss fights. Let's assume magic damage does get balanced fairly. Why would you even bother with that mess when DRK can do it all? What do the BLMs do when you're faced with an enemy who's strong to magic damage? They don't get a weapon they can equip which allows them to surpass what the melees are capable of. Why should DRK have a weapon which (when properly buffed) overshadows what nuke jobs are capable of?

I agree with Soidisant because without any other changes, nerfing this weapon would do nothing for the state of the game. But even if they buff magic to the point where it's useful to have a blu or blm or geo or nukie sch, etc along... why would you even bother with that mess when you could just use the same damned jobs you already have leveled, the same damned strategy you're already familiar with, and just equip a different weapon. The Twilight Scythe makes DRK the single most versatile DD in the game. SE's choices are to either buff other jobs up to the same level of versatility as DRK(probably just by giving them their own version of the scythe) and make harder content, or just nerf the scythe. I'd estimate that it takes less time to nerf the scythe than it takes to balance all future content taking the scythe into account.

[Toadie-Odie]

I agree with Soidisant because without any other changes, nerfing this weapon would do nothing for the state of the game. But even if they buff magic to the point where it's useful to have a blu or blm or geo or nukie sch, etc along... why would you even bother with that mess when you could just use the same damned jobs you already have leveled, the same damned strategy you're already familiar with, and just equip a different weapon. The Twilight Scythe makes DRK the single most versatile DD in the game. SE's choices are to either buff other jobs up to the same level of versatility as DRK(probably just by giving them their own version of the scythe) and make harder content, or just nerf the scythe. I'd estimate that it takes less time to nerf the scythe than it takes to balance all future content taking the scythe into account.

You make a really good point here and after reading everything posted in this thread about this scythe, it makes a lot of sense. It makes sense to me to nip a potential balance blunder in the bud than to either:


allow it to go through and fix it later after the damage to the game has been done
attempt to change everything they have so far in the works to adjust for the potential effects of the scythe


I'm not sure if how they went about it was the right thing to do, but it is better than ninja nerfing it.

[Kincard]

Twilight Scythe isn't even that useful for Cerb, because if you have an extra person (probably a THF) along you can just have him spam Aeolian Edge to keep the physical resistance on him down. It's useful for Hydra if he decides to spam Pyric Bulwark but I think that monster in general should be looked at because it's retarded that the fight can drag on for 25 minutes longer than it should because he won't stop using it on top of the fact he can triple crit you for 1k+ damage.

It kills Armed Gears pretty well though, I must say! Hurray for beating up level 75 content.

Twilight Scythe isn't exactly a hard weapon to get (blue/brew shinryu and you'll have it in like 5 or 6 runs most likely), which is one thing people need to keep in mind. Comparing it to a REM weapon makes no sense since those take literally over a hundredfold in the amount of time it would take to get a Twilight Scythe. It's not even as hard to get as a Fire Magian if that's your thing. Considering the amount of effort to get it, it would still be a pretty good weapon even if they nerfed it within reason.

It does create a bit of a problem that whenever they create content that's telling us "bring a mage to deal magic damage" we compensate by bringing a form of melee-magic damage (Formless Strikes, Twilight Scythe etc), but as others have said this has more to do with how useles magic damage is rather than special melee abilities being overpowered. I'm more for leaving the Twilight Scythe as is because if the magic damage issue is fixed the Twilight Scythe will lose its worth significantly anyway.

[Metaking]

twilight scythe isnt doing magical dmg monsters that take extra magical dmg do not take extra from it monsters with mdef do not take less. After str vrs vit att vr def there is a check against a weapons dmg type [blunt 1 blunt 2 slashing piercing] as well as a general dt check(barrier tusk might prove general dt check is before dmg type tho), twilight is just ignoring the check for both.

[Kincard]

It's not magic damage no, but anytime it's used it's used because that's what would otherwise be wanted (flans, slimes, Cerb, bulwark etc etc). The problem was never that Twilight Scythe was overpowered though. Taking for example salvage, the problem is that bringing a BLM/SCH/whatever nuker would help on Cerb/Hydra significantly, but the problem is that I don't need them the rest of the run and they just end up being dead weight. It wouldn't be such a problem if salvage gave you points and then you bought plans with the points, but instead they're drops that need to be shared amongst the amount of people you take in.

I think that proposed Elemental magic change they're talking about will help it a lot if it gets to a point where tier 2s and such can basically be used as "normal attacks" for BLMs and RDMs. Add in some more stuff like Seidr Cotehardie, too.

[Yinnyth]

It's not magic damage no, but anytime it's used it's used because that's what would otherwise be wanted (flans, slimes, Cerb, bulwark etc etc). The problem was never that Twilight Scythe was overpowered though. Taking for example salvage, the problem is that bringing a BLM/SCH/whatever nuker would help on Cerb/Hydra significantly, but the problem is that I don't need them the rest of the run and they just end up being dead weight. It wouldn't be such a problem if salvage gave you points and then you bought plans with the points, but instead they're drops that need to be shared amongst the amount of people you take in.

But why would you bring that person BLM, when they could simply go DRK and equip Twilight Scythe? It's a better option than bringing a BLM who could simply equip Claustrum when enemies are strong to magic(because Claustrum is worse for physical damage than Twilight Scythe is for non-phys, non-magic damage.)

Twilight Scythe currently replaces magic damage because it's simpler.

[Vinedrai]

inb4
1)thf has too much th+. we are adjusting thief's knife so that it will only affect the initial treasure hunter rank in a certain situation which no one would ever figure out.
2)smn has too many avatars and versatility is a b***h so we are droping all the avatars and presenting you one ultimate avatar, the cutiest wutiest enigmatic cat: Ca!... Cai!... oh crap, we totally forgot about it, what was its name again?
3)we found out that sam is not currently as OP as we envisioned since the very first day. step aside you inferior DDs! with the next version update, you will be able to dual wield great katanas!... but only while you have your flag from "/jobemote sam" up on your back.

[Thoraeon]

A few things bug me about the suggested adjustments to the merit weaponskills.

Most people who have 5/5 in 3 weaponskills are not going to put less merits in so they can have other weaker weaponskills. People spend millions of gil to upgrade 90 emps to 99 and relics from 95 to 99. What makes you think that they would downgrade their one of their best weaponskills?

Since you can merit combat skills for 4 weapons fully, why not make it so you can fully merit 4 weaponskills?

I have a 99 Twashtar, a 99 Ragnarok, and a 95 (soon 99) Annihilator. As such, I have Resolution, Exenterator, and Last Stand all at 5/5. If I wanted to level another job, lets say Samurai, I would have to drop one of these in order to compete with other Sam's. Basically, until something is done about the merit weaponskill cap, I cannot use another job that depends on merit weaponskills.

[FrankReynolds]

inb4
1)thf has too much th+. we are adjusting thief's knife so that it will only affect the initial treasure hunter rank in a certain situation which no one would ever figure out.

I would love it if they did that. The way that they have it set up so that thief has to wear all that gimp crap is total BS. I sort of wish they would just remove that job from the game at this point. It really sucks how much they have screwed that job.


Ask 100 people what matters in the game, and you'll get 100 different answers. Case in point:

....

He's probably not being serious, but there are most likely people out there who do want that. #cheesesammich



The thing is... I've actually seen people asking for cross dressing before. Never heard a peep about this weapon before though. Can you honestly say that there aren't a million other more important things to fix right now? IS the twilight scythe really something that we need to be doing right now?

[Metaking]

But why would you bring that person BLM, when they could simply go DRK and equip Twilight Scythe? It's a better option than bringing a BLM who could simply equip Claustrum when enemies are strong to magic(because Claustrum is worse for physical damage than Twilight Scythe is for non-phys, non-magic damage.)

Twilight Scythe currently replaces magic damage because it's simpler.

actually in cases like that your generally better off bringing a blu or a rdm who have req sets as well as a nukeing set, also part of blms problem is when was the last time you saw a Real balls deep blm, there not that common anymore, you got a better chance of a blu with a full nukeing set than finding a blm pushing it to the limit.....

[saevel]

actually in cases like that your generally better off bringing a blu or a rdm who have req sets as well as a nukeing set

This.

Anyone with access to Req can make Cerb look stupid easy. It's such a large difference that I've since build a Req set for my WAR/SAM. I go in charging with Reso and when it gets down to 30~40% HP, or when my Reso's start doing ~1K I'll switch to sword and board and spam Req. Fight goes faster. A SAM with that Uptalla GKT could do the same thing. Twilight scyth is not that great because it's only TP damage that ignores -DT not WS damage. DRK gets a large portion of it's damage from WS's so to equip a Twilight scythe your already cutting your damage to less then 50%.

[Riggs]

se has not changed at all, they come in and make posts about how they listen to feed back but its all lies they care nothing for their player base opinions, why not just do what you really want to do, delete abyssea and all its gear and put everyone back to level 75. I've already canceled 2 accounts and if this nerfing continues i'll be canceling my last account

[Yinnyth]

se has not changed at all, they come in and make posts about how they listen to feed back but its all lies they care nothing for their player base opinions, why not just do what you really want to do, delete abyssea and all its gear and put everyone back to level 75. I've already canceled 2 accounts and if this nerfing continues i'll be canceling my last account

I'll cancel my 3 accounts if SE does not go through with nerfing Twilight Scythe. Then I'll cut off my own hands and run around punching people in the face with my bloody stumps until the police catch up and taze me into submission. They'll try to handcuff me, but I'll just slip right out and continue my freakish rampage. Bereft of other options, they'll be forced to taze me repeatedly and eventually my heart will beat its last and I will pass from this world to the great MMO in the sky where the devs actually implement my every idea, my dad lets me eat ice cream for breakfast, and the police let me stump-punch as many faces as I want.

The stakes have been raised!

[SpankWustler]

Then I'll cut off my own hands and run around punching people in the face with my bloody stumps until the police catch up and taze me into submission. They'll try to handcuff me, but I'll just slip right out and continue my freakish rampage. Bereft of other options, they'll be forced to taze me repeatedly and eventually my heart will beat its last and I will pass from this world to the great MMO in the sky where the devs actually implement my every idea, my dad lets me eat ice cream for breakfast, and the police let me stump-punch as many faces as I want.

I had to look at the name beside this post three times to make sure I didn't stumble drunkenly to my computer in the middle of the night and type it. Freakish rampages are my favorite kind!

And yeah, this change isn't that big a deal. I'd still much rather the Development Bros use their resources to treat the whole disease of "Castingpsellssucksitis" than spend time fixating strangely on this one symptom involving one item in one situation. It's a matter of principle, I guess?

Still, if with Spring's approach and the budding of the first flower, a young Development Bro feels that funny urge to make something worse burning in his heart; I'm happy it's on so small a scale.

[MarkovChain]

Why is twilight scythe such an issue ? People will end up using monk instead because that's (nearly) the only way for a 2-man strategy to kill bhaflau Remanant II boss. Instead you might want to change cerberus' behaviour when it's HP gets low. Actually abusing scholar or SMN's enspell is probablya possiblity too, just need enough curing which SMN can't do. Instead of preventing X job to succeed at Y SE should probably learn from their past failures (embrava, PD). Salvage is clearly designed for melee DD so make it so ... by reducing the DD output penalty at low HP.

[Yinnyth]

To be completely honest, I don't care either way if they nerf Twilight Scythe or not. I can see where they're coming from when it comes to this topic, so there is reason. But it has not yet grown to the point where it's a major problem with the game. I do, however, take exception with all the people popping out of the woodworks claiming the scythe really isn't all that powerful so it shouldn't be nerfed.

As for whether or not this is a waste of time, sometimes you've got to just let the dog chew his bone. There are ALWAYS better uses for your time. No matter how good the thing they implement is, there is always something better they could have implemented.

[raps1355]

Can the scythe even proc on NM?

[Rustic]

I know exactly why the devs are making these changes - they have absolutely NO 1st hand knowledge as to how these items are being used by the actual playing customers at all. The new producer has admitted that he barely plays the game and he's not even cap on his main job. So how do you think he knows how items are actually being USED by the players in real game situations and not what's on paper at all or just listening to what 'some players' are complainting about on this forum.

My suggestion to SE is to assigned at least 1 in game-job per developer/QA/internal testers. required them to become expert in that job in real in-game (end game situation as well as non-end game). They have the ability to just assign whatever weapons/levels/skills/armors their char needs so that shouldn't be hard and they wouldn't need to go through the grind to level/skill up and instead can just use these gears in real game situations.

Until then, my opinion is that they will keep doing adjustments that makes absolutely no sense at all.

In fact, I'd happily suggest that devs get a decent "native guide" to the endgame (Oh, look- BlueGartr right over there on the Internets!) and ride-along for some actual gameplay time on the stuff they're considering nerfing. I'm sure there's a TON of Twilight Darkles out there who'd be happy to show them the actual useful/uselessness of the weapon.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CAxJsqqoTr8/T615M2ZdGoI/AAAAAAAApY4/2Fi8GeI_NNs/s1600/183993+-+artist+ponykillerx+badass+hoof_boots+scythe+twilight_sparkle+vampire.png

Most probably look less silly than this, but you never know. I've seen people doing Dynamis in opaline.

[Quetzacoatl]

Why are you adjusting niche weapons that most people don't care about when you have literally thousands of requests for changes to mythics/Relics/Empyreans that actually matter?

I say leave it how it is and fix some more important weapons / weapon skills instead.

This, this, this, and this. I really see no reason to nerf Twilight Scythe at all...it's a balanced Scythe that doesn't encroach on Apocalypse, Liberator or any other niche scythe in the game. What's the actual complaint about it anyhow? The death proc? That only just works on normal enemies, it would be overpowered if it worked on any NMs. And if we're worried about how much damage it deals per swing, I can guarantee that something like Nirastamo or Wroth Scythe have a higher DMG rating and would out-damage Twilight Scythe pretty easy.

[Earwig]

I think what SE is trying to get at is the fact that DRK can do too much stuff, so their solution is to cut off some of the less-used tools that drks have and let other jobs shine, and the non-elemental damage is one of the things that they don't really wan't drks to be able to use as efficiently as other jobs. It's not so much about the scythe being OP as the drk being OP.

[Yinnyth]

This, this, this, and this. I really see no reason to nerf Twilight Scythe at all...it's a balanced Scythe that doesn't encroach on Apocalypse, Liberator or any other niche scythe in the game. What's the actual complaint about it anyhow? The death proc?

The fact that its damage ignores all damage reduction which increases the utility of DRK and decreases the need for jobs which specialize in magic damage, including DRK's own magic capabilities. It detracts from build diversity as well as their new talking point: "fostering skillful play". Why would you nuke when you can just keep swinging when Ultima puts up energy shield?

To your credit, there are other, more obvious issues contributing to the same problems. To SE's credit, they are examining revisions to be made to those issues as well. Just because one thing is not the biggest contributing factor does not mean it deserves to be overlooked.

[Metaking]

well the problem is twilight scythe isnt even the worse offender Murasamemaru is yea its only restricted to weapon skills, but sam doesnt really need to melee to gain tp. Now unless drk somehow gets a powerful magical weapon skill, or se fixes infernal i dont see twilight as broken, i mean common its a dot weapon on those mobs(Cerberus ext) for a job that sucks at dot. Also personally i see war as having more flexibility as they can use just about any melee dmg type, and use it well, its really se's fault for not using a rock paper scissors (blunt > slashing > piercing >) type set up for monsters pdt, and probably should give monsters with strait -pdt a similar amount out of +mdt.

[Calamity]

The fact that its damage ignores all damage reduction which increases the utility of DRK and decreases the need for jobs which specialize in magic damage, including DRK's own magic capabilities. It detracts from build diversity as well as their new talking point: "fostering skillful play". Why would you nuke when you can just keep swinging when Ultima puts up energy shield?

The problem is: what magic capabilities? SE has it in their head that DRK is this tremendously versatile job. And while, yes, there are a number of different things we can do, how many of them are useful? We have a whole series of absorb spells with dust resting on them, elemental nukes, which under the very best of circumstances, are worthless. Really the best of our magical capabilities lie in Drain, Drain 2, Endark and Infernal Scythe. Pretty sad. And this is why we use twilight scythe. It gives us the capability that we seem to have been initially intended to have, the difference being, the scythe actually works. So what's the deal SE? Are we supposed to be a multi-talented, versatile job, or just another mindless DD?

[Yinnyth]

The problem is: what magic capabilities? SE has it in their head that DRK is this tremendously versatile job. And while, yes, there are a number of different things we can do, how many of them are useful? We have a whole series of absorb spells with dust resting on them, elemental nukes, which under the very best of circumstances, are worthless. Really the best of our magical capabilities lie in Drain, Drain 2, Endark and Infernal Scythe. Pretty sad. And this is why we use twilight scythe. It gives us the capability that we seem to have been initially intended to have, the difference being, the scythe actually works. So what's the deal SE? Are we supposed to be a multi-talented, versatile job, or just another mindless DD?

The Twilight Scythe does nothing to decrease how mindless DRK is. I'm not sure if that's the point you're making or not, but I personally don't think any job should be mindless. Yes, DRK's nukes are underwhelming. Partly because the nukes suck overall, partly because DRKs never carry around nuke gear, and partly because there's hardly any good nuke gear available for DRKs. Even if they boost DRK's magic, even if DRKs are given access to more nuke-boosting gear, why would any DRK bother to gear up for nukes if they can just keep hacking away with the gear they already posess?

You are correct that the system does not work like it should, but there are several factors leading to this and Twilight Scythe is one of them.

[FrankReynolds]

The Twilight Scythe does nothing to decrease how mindless DRK is. I'm not sure if that's the point you're making or not, but I personally don't think any job should be mindless. Yes, DRK's nukes are underwhelming. Partly because the nukes suck overall, partly because DRKs never carry around nuke gear, and partly because there's hardly any good nuke gear available for DRKs. Even if they boost DRK's magic, even if DRKs are given access to more nuke-boosting gear, why would any DRK bother to gear up for nukes if they can just keep hacking away with the gear they already posess?

You are correct that the system does not work like it should, but there are several factors leading to this and Twilight Scythe is one of them.

Here's a fun analogy for the current situation.

There are two restaurants. Let's call them restaurant A and restaurant Z. They both have the same 20 items on their menu. The managers of restaurant A and Restaurant Z both notice that only two dishes on the menu ever sell in any substantial numbers, while customers tend to dislike the other 18 dishes. Let's say it's the chicken and the fish.

In order to fix this problem and get some action on the 18 other menu items that are constantly going bad and having to be thrown out:

Restaurant A decides to Make the fish and the chicken taste like crap.

Restaurant Z decides to remake all the other menu items so that they are of a similar quality and diversity as the fish and chicken dishes that are so popular.

Which restaurant do you suppose manages to keep it's doors open longer?

[Tamarsamar]

Here's a fun analogy for the current situation.

There are two restaurants. Let's call them restaurant A and restaurant Z. They both have the same 20 items on their menu. The managers of restaurant A and Restaurant Z both notice that only two dishes on the menu ever sell in any substantial numbers, while customers tend to dislike the other 18 dishes. Let's say it's the chicken and the fish.

In order to fix this problem and get some action on the 18 other menu items that are constantly going bad and having to be thrown out:

Restaurant A decides to Make the fish and the chicken taste like crap.

Restaurant Z decides to remake all the other menu items so that they are of a similar quality and diversity as the fish and chicken dishes that are so popular.

Which restaurant do you suppose manages to keep it's doors open longer?

This analogy would make more sense, were all the jobs not already buffed to high-heaven and beyond. If anything, I'm glad that our new producer has the guts to finally say "enough is enough" and start throwing in some nerfs in an attempt to counteract the obviously out-of-control power creep among the players (and, consequently, the monsters that need to be made in order to provide some semblance of a skill challenge, which players inevitably exploit the crap out of some skill and complain that said monsters are too hard to face otherwise).

Of course, what I take objection with is some of the decisions of what to nerf. Twilight Scythe, as the focus of this thread has been shown upon, is really meaningless in the grand scheme of things, and the fact that it's used at all shows only how broken the fights it's used for are, more so than how powerful the Scythe itself is.

To extend your analogy, Restaurant Z ups the quality of all 18 of its other dishes, at great cost to the company. The end result, however, is that the customers are now only eating the chicken and the sloppy joe. People love the restaurant but start to complain when they notice the prices on their favorite meals rising. Somewhere down the line, costs need to be cut.

What Matsui is proposing is that we spend less money on the quality of the steak. Very few people have cared thus far about the steak, and the few steak fans there are seem a bit offended by this proposal.

[Phogg]

Edit: Not worth the bother, won't be considered anyway since this is the english forums.

[Riggs]

I'll cancel my 3 accounts if SE does not go through with nerfing Twilight Scythe. Then I'll cut off my own hands and run around punching people in the face with my bloody stumps until the police catch up and taze me into submission. They'll try to handcuff me, but I'll just slip right out and continue my freakish rampage. Bereft of other options, they'll be forced to taze me repeatedly and eventually my heart will beat its last and I will pass from this world to the great MMO in the sky where the devs actually implement my every idea, my dad lets me eat ice cream for breakfast, and the police let me stump-punch as many faces as I want.

The stakes have been raised!

You miss read or i was probably not very clear in what i wrote, its not just the scythe that bothers me its just the tip of the long list of nerfs SE has dished out for the last year.

Its always been my though that SE brought out abyssea to keep people playing until they fixed 14 but when not everyone then swapped to 14 they though crap we are going to have to fix this game now to make future content, but they had upped the gear so much with abyssea they are having to nerf some to give them room for future equipment.

[Yinnyth]

Here's a fun analogy for the current situation.

There are two restaurants. Let's call them restaurant A and restaurant Z. They both have the same 20 items on their menu. The managers of restaurant A and Restaurant Z both notice that only two dishes on the menu ever sell in any substantial numbers, while customers tend to dislike the other 18 dishes. Let's say it's the chicken and the fish.

In order to fix this problem and get some action on the 18 other menu items that are constantly going bad and having to be thrown out:

Restaurant A decides to Make the fish and the chicken taste like crap.

Restaurant Z decides to remake all the other menu items so that they are of a similar quality and diversity as the fish and chicken dishes that are so popular.

Which restaurant do you suppose manages to keep it's doors open longer?

A good analogy, but remind me again why an executive chef would care that people love his fish and chicken so much that they're willing to eat it night after night without even trying the eggplant parmesan? In the restaurant, it's a non-issue. Just keep serving up what the customers love.

In this game when that happens, we complain about every fight being handled the exact same way, just with a different weapon equipped. We also complain that DRK has an unfair advantage over the other jobs and every job deserves their own version.

I suppose that is a direction they could wind up taking for this problem: give every job their own Twilight Scythe. Magic jobs would need to be boosted up to the point where they're better at magic damage than the twilight weapons though. That would most likely result in BLM becoming a stronger job in all events and BLM becoming ubiquitous. Difficulty for all current events would take a small drop, as long as you bring a nuker in your setup. And when they balance future events, they'll have to factor in the fact that every job can ignore damage resistence. How do you make a difficult fight when everyone is capable of ignoring all defenses, but do it without making twilight weapons required in order to win?

I dunno, it seems to me like it would just be less work in the long run if they nerf twilight scythe just a bit.

[FrankReynolds]

This analogy would make more sense, were all the jobs not already buffed to high-heaven and beyond. If anything, I'm glad that our new producer has the guts to finally say "enough is enough" and start throwing in some nerfs in an attempt to counteract the obviously out-of-control power creep among the players (and, consequently, the monsters that need to be made in order to provide some semblance of a skill challenge, which players inevitably exploit the crap out of some skill and complain that said monsters are too hard to face otherwise).{/quote]

Wasn't the whole point of raising the level cap supposed to be increased power?

To extend your analogy, Restaurant Z ups the quality of all 18 of its other dishes, at great cost to the company. The end result, however, is that the customers are now only eating the chicken and the sloppy joe. People love the restaurant but start to complain when they notice the prices on their favorite meals rising. Somewhere down the line, costs need to be cut.

Costs only need to be increased if you have a shitty chef and his new improved meals don't garner high return rates and new business. In this case, a lot of new restaurants have opened in the area and people who like steak no longer have to decide between a crappy steak or an excellent chicken. They can just go to the place across the street that has both. So what do you do to keep their business? Do you improve your recipe to compete? Or do you just make all your food equally bad? So that all of your customers feel let down?

And let's be honest with ourselves here. These people are not mercenary coders / chefs. They are on salary. It doesn't cost any more to nerf twilight scythe than it doesn't to add a new dagger or club with the same effects. It doesn't cost any more to develop a fight that doesn't rely on crappy mechanics to prolong the win. This is a decision to not do anything new or inventive with future fights. Nothing more, nothing less. That would probably be fine if people actually liked the mnechanic that they are trying to keep, but in reality, people seem to feel that the mechanic is cheap and over used, which is what lead to the use of the scythe in the first place.


A good analogy, but remind me again why an executive chef would care that people love his fish and chicken so much that they're willing to eat it night after night without even trying the eggplant parmesan? In the restaurant, it's a non-issue. Just keep serving up what the customers love.


The problem with that view is that this restaurant (FFXI) is not full every night (far from it), so crapping up a dish only exasperates the problem. If you want people who are not huge fans of the steak etc. to keep coming back and / or possibly bring friends, you need to make the items that interest them worth ordering.

No one ever says
"Hey guys, let's head to that one restaurant that used to have awesome steaks. I heard they made the steak really crappy now, so we can all order the risotto that sucks just as badly and know that we aren't missing out on a great steak. YAY!!!!!"

[Yinnyth]

Anologies can be fun, and they can help to highlight some aspects of a situation that would be otherwise overlooked, but you should never consider them to be a perfect parallel. You can't brush off the realities that people bring up just because they don't fit into your analogy the way you'd like.

It doesn't cost any more to nerf twilight scythe than it doesn't to add a new dagger or club with the same effects.

If you have people on salary, they receive the same money every month (or agreed upon timeframe), so the cost is measured in time. Which takes longer?

1. Nerfing one weapon.

2. Creating 10 weapons equal to one unique weapon, balancing magic damage so it falls in line with melees new abilities, then balancing fights so they can still pose a threat.


This is a decision to not do anything new or inventive with future fights.
This is a decision to not burn bridges. Imagine a weapon which always hits regardless of evasion, perfect dodge, shadows, flying, etc. If the weapon has no significant downside, then it makes it impossible for devs to use any of those options for future fights, and possibly force them to make some current fights harder if the presence of that weapon is significantly increasing success rate beyond what it should be.


That would probably be fine if people actually liked the mnechanic that they are trying to keep, but in reality, people seem to feel that the mechanic is cheap and over used
PDT is cheap and overused? I'm more tired of melee zerging everything than I am of enemies who have phys shield, PDT, or cerb who it was actually well-implemented on.


which is what lead to the use of the scythe in the first place.
People don't use the scythe because phys resist is "cheap and overused." People use the scythe because it works. The problem is that the scythe is far too simple and far too effective so people would never even consider using a different solution.

For delicious irony's sake: That would probably be fine if people actually liked melee zerging everything all the time, but in reality, people seem to feel that strategy is cheap and overused.

[hiko]

People don't use the scythe because phys resist is "cheap and overused." People use the scythe because it works. The problem is that the scythe is far too simple and far too effective so people would never even consider using a different solution.


salvage boss
no! people use twilightDRK because for >80% of the run(no special resist) DRK is better than other jobs that can also do magic dmg and bringing one more player is a big slow down for event completion.

and with incoming magic changes casting=>reso might become the new best combo

[Yinnyth]

Reading the majority of your post makes me believe that you agree with the points I raised, but the "no!" on the second line confuses me and forces me to reconsider that possibility. Do you disagree that people use the scythe because it's simple and effective?

[hiko]

Reading the majority of your post makes me believe that you agree with the points I raised, but the "no!" on the second line confuses me and forces me to reconsider that possibility. Do you disagree that people use the scythe because it's simple and effective?

i disagree that TS is "far too effective".
IMO it's just less ineffective than other 'physical DD' and less effective than hybrid DD for the boss.
people go with DRK because 80% of the run DRK dont use TS and is one of the most effective DD.

[Okipuit]

Hello everyone,

Below is a brief message from Producer Akihiko Matsui.



Matsui here.

I'm sorry I haven't been making much of an appearance on the forums lately.

Especially since I promised that we would be releasing information related to the enmity system and calculations, I realize I continue to make you all wait. I'm sorry to disappoint you all again and I'm sure there are some of you thinking "don't apologize, just tell us the essentials."

Unfortunately a lot of things came up suddenly which led to me becoming extremely busy this week and wasn't able to write anything up. I'm really sorry about this and I'd like to ask for just a bit more time to get you all the information you've been waiting for.

[FrankReynolds]

Anologies can be fun, and they can help to highlight some aspects of a situation that would be otherwise overlooked, but you should never consider them to be a perfect parallel. You can't brush off the realities that people bring up just because they don't fit into your analogy the way you'd like.


If you have people on salary, they receive the same money every month (or agreed upon timeframe), so the cost is measured in time. Which takes longer?

1. Nerfing one weapon.

2. Creating 10 weapons equal to one unique weapon, balancing magic damage so it falls in line with melees new abilities, then balancing fights so they can still pose a threat.

This assumes they don't already have to do all that... which they do. And I'll be honest here. I don't really care if it does cost more because it's the right thing to do. If they want to keep costs down so bad, they should have just made another online chess game instead of an MMO. These are expensive.



This is a decision to not burn bridges. Imagine a weapon which always hits regardless of evasion, perfect dodge, shadows, flying, etc. If the weapon has no significant downside, then it makes it impossible for devs to use any of those options for future fights, and possibly force them to make some current fights harder if the presence of that weapon is significantly increasing success rate beyond what it should be.

The only thing I see receiving a significant boost to success rate is the ability to not bring a blue or a blm. This has to do with Dark being a far better damage dealer than them. Not with a certain weapon.


PDT is cheap and overused? I'm more tired of melee zerging everything than I am of enemies who have phys shield, PDT, or cerb who it was actually well-implemented on.

Yes, it's over used. It's a cheap way to make magic relevant instead of addressing the problems with magic. It's a lazy way to build diversity and it leads to people creating lazy methods of overcoming diversity.


People don't use the scythe because phys resist is "cheap and overused." People use the scythe because it works. The problem is that the scythe is far too simple and far too effective so people would never even consider using a different solution.

For delicious irony's sake: That would probably be fine if people actually liked melee zerging everything all the time, but in reality, people seem to feel that strategy is cheap and overused.

Zerging all the things has nothing to do with magic sucking. If all things were equal and a group of mages could kill any old thing just as fast as a group of Melee could, people would just add mages to the zerg set up. That wouldn't make instant death moves go away, or change peoples minds about wanting to kill an NM once every ten minutes instead of once a day.

[Dekar]

Hello everyone,

Below is a brief message from Producer Akihiko Matsui.

I certainly respect the fact that Matsui went out of his way to mention that he's been busy. It's way better than just ignoring. Thank you, Producer Matsui!

[Dohati]

personally, i'd rather just wait to hear anything unless it had been like.... months and months w/ no word. it got my hopes up that i'd actually get to hear more news and i was just dissappointed with "sorry no stuff /o/ <3"

[Yinnyth]

Yes, it's over used. It's a cheap way to make magic relevant instead of addressing the problems with magic. It's a lazy way to build diversity and it leads to people creating lazy methods of overcoming diversity.

I've tried thinking of a way in which they could successfully replace PDT as a mechanic for encouraging players to use the more complex and less practiced magic system as opposed to the much simpler melee system, but I'm drawing a blank. If causing enemies to take less damage from melee attacks is the lazy way to encourage magic usage, what is a better-thought out method?


Zerging all the things has nothing to do with magic sucking.
I apologize for not being more clear on this topic. For now I'll put aside the fact that you don't see the connection between the rise of the melee zerg and the decline of the use of magical damage. My point was that although it is not the only factor involved, the special properties of the Twilight Scythe make it a contributing factor for why melees are generally chosen. Even enemies who are given PDT in order to hinder melee zerging can still be melee zerged by drks.

[Economizer]

I've tried thinking of a way in which they could successfully replace PDT as a mechanic for encouraging players to use the more complex and less practiced magic system as opposed to the much simpler melee system, but I'm drawing a blank.

Have the mob take increased magic damage.

It's essentially the same result, but you can't just use a weapon to bypass the physical damage doing less damage.

To be completely honest, I have no clue why elementals don't take increased magic damage of the element they're weak to. Resists on the elements they're strong to essentially do the opposite, so why not have mobs that are supposed to be weak to certain elements have negative resists? Use the mobs weakness and you could find yourself doing 12.5%~25%~50~100% more damage then normal, for an example implementation. There has to be a method that would make more sense then just having more magic accuracy on the target, casting Stone on a Thunder Elemental should do some serious damage!

[Yinnyth]

That's something I've honestly always wondered too. It always seems to be reduced magic damage for certain elements, never increased magic damage from certain elements. Always bugged a me a little that "weak to ice" meant "they're more likely to take full damage if you cast ice instead of something else". Changing that is definitely something I'd like to see added to the "fix the magic system" list of things to do.

But more to the point I was originally raising when responding to FrankReynolds, if giving enemies PDT is the "lazy" way to increase magic's utility, how is giving enemies negative MDT any less lazy?

[Raucent]

giving enemies increased resistance to physical damage alone is a lazy way when they could do something to try to make magic/SC more appealing, such as idk maybe lock an enemies 2hr for 30 secs or something by magic bursting off a lvl 3 or something. That gives an incentive to bring Mages and bring SC back into the game

[Yinnyth]

Drk can magic burst. Your healer can magic burst. Any job can magic burst with the right SJ. If all it takes is a magic burst to weaken the enemy to the point where you can melee zerg them again, that's what players will do. Magic burst, then zerg. It's the same thing that happened with Twilight Scythe in the first place. They tried to decrease the appeal of melee zerging by giving PDT to enemies, so players just equipped weapons which ignore PDT and melee zerged anyways.

[Kincard]

I always thought it was kinda funny that historically, when you ran into monsters like flans in other FF games, normal hits would do plain ridiculously awful damage (like 1-10), basically requiring you to fire off a magic spell or spend like half an hour in the same regular battle (Or run away I guess). The fact that they chose to go against that sort of design philosophy in an MMO of all things strikes me as odd since MMOs typically like to accentuate these things further in order to make all classes desirable.

[Sp1cyryan]

Matsui here.

I'm sorry I haven't been making much of an appearance on the forums lately.

Especially since I promised that we would be releasing information related to the enmity system and calculations, I realize I continue to make you all wait. I'm sorry to disappoint you all again and I'm sure there are some of you thinking "don't apologize, just tell us the essentials."

Unfortunately a lot of things came up suddenly which led to me becoming extremely busy this week and wasn't able to write anything up. I'm really sorry about this and I'd like to ask for just a bit more time to get you all the information you've been waiting for.

In the more formal words of Cardcaptor Sakura,

Ganbatte kudasai!

[ManaKing]

SO there hasn't been any mention of new SP abilities for quite some time now. I was wondering if they were almost done or if they are getting delayed?

ALSO RDM SP2 for enfeebling is still undesired while an SP that we will basically use to get improved Haste and Phallanx 2 for partys would be appreciated. Please go back to your original design.

[FrankReynolds]

I've tried thinking of a way in which they could successfully replace PDT as a mechanic for encouraging players to use the more complex and less practiced magic system as opposed to the much simpler melee system, but I'm drawing a blank. If causing enemies to take less damage from melee attacks is the lazy way to encourage magic usage, what is a better-thought out method?

Hmmm. They could increase magic damage taken dramatically instead of lowering physical damage. Or, they could increase NM HP dramatically so that Zergs are no longer fast enough to kill them before they go all buck nutty. That would of course mean that they would have to weaken those Insta-death moves that they are so fond of, so that people could actually survive a longer fight. They could also increase the amount of damage that magic does in general. The changes they are making are a good start. To be honest though, we probably shouldn't talk about any ideas that would be better. The dev Bros seem to really feel a need to be unique snow flakes. Mentioning something on these forums is like a guarantee that they will do something different instead just to be original.



I apologize for not being more clear on this topic. For now I'll put aside the fact that you don't see the connection between the rise of the melee zerg and the decline of the use of magical damage. My point was that although it is not the only factor involved, the special properties of the Twilight Scythe make it a contributing factor for why melees are generally chosen. Even enemies who are given PDT in order to hinder melee zerging can still be melee zerged by drks.


Melee are generally chosen because:

* Magic Damage is unreliable
* Bouncing hate amongst Mages makes for a super dangerous fight
* Melee DD are not as squishy as mages
* Melee have much higher HP and can thus survive longer without cures and or survive bigger hits
* Events have time limits that force people to use the fastest method only
* NMs have stupid death moves that make long fights unsurvivable
* Many Non-time-restricted fights have drop rates so low that they are only worth it if you can repeat them quickly
* Magic damage is too slow
* Magic damage cannot be buffed to high heaven like melee damage
* MP Is finite. Swinging a stick/sword/axe etc. costs nothing.

There are probably a thousand other reasons and Twilight Scythe is probably at the bottom somewhere.

[Byrth]

Melee are generally chosen because:

* Magic Damage is unreliable
* Bouncing hate amongst Mages makes for a super dangerous fight
* Melee DD are not as squishy as mages
* Melee have much higher HP and can thus survive longer without cures and or survive bigger hits
* Magic damage is too slow
* Magic damage cannot be buffed to high heaven like melee damage
* MP Is finite. Swinging a stick/sword/axe etc. costs nothing.

There are probably a thousand other reasons and Twilight Scythe is probably at the bottom somewhere.

I've underlined the criticisms of magic damage that aren't really valid. Mages are actually more durable than melee in my experience because they can wear 50% PDT almost all the time (no need for TP gear), generally have access to Blink/Stoneskin, etc. Defense hardly matters, so their lack of it is unimportant. Manawall makes BLM the least-one-shottable job in the game. Back before people really figured out how to do Voidwatch, I know I ended up holding quite a few VWNMs on my BLM/RDM between Manawall and temps and it sure wasn't because the derpy support suddenly got good enough to keep people alive.

The ones that I deleted could be summarized by the one I bolded, which is the real issue with magic damage as I see it. If the outlined changes or implemented, magic DPS is going to increase a lot.

The final two underlined issues run contrary to one another. The way you buff magic damage isn't through a +11 MAB Dream Shroud, it's through Evoker's Roll, Refresh II, and Ballads. The reason you buff magic damage this way is because MP is finite (as you say). It's not really a weakness of the damage type, but rather is the way the damage type is limited. If having buffs lets you chain nuke constantly instead of resting half the time, then buffs increased your DPS by a factor of 2. That's less than melee's factor of 5 with Haste, but it's still something. If SE implements their outlined changes, this weakness will be alleviated somewhat but mage jobs will also get less durable. I don't know how it will shake out for final usage.

[Yinnyth]

Hmmm. They could increase magic damage taken dramatically instead of lowering physical damage. This is functionally the same change as giving enemies PDT, except that they'd also have to adjust enemy HP to be higher to maintain a battle of roughly the same duration.


Or, they could increase NM HP dramatically so that Zergs are no longer fast enough to kill them before they go all buck nutty. That would of course mean that they would have to weaken those Insta-death moves that they are so fond of, so that people could actually survive a longer fight. So a fight against an enemy with 1 billion HP, but he lacks the ability to one-shot. Yeah, I'd still choose melee damage instead. Even though you can't zerg him all the way to death, anything that deals damage is eventually going to cap out enmity on a fight that long, and I don't want him running around after ranged damage. Heck, I'd even zerg the fight as much as I possibly could, just to put a large dent in him as early as possible.


They could also increase the amount of damage that magic does in general. The changes they are making are a good start. This is the simplest, and best first-step to be taking, imo, and I am very glad it is something that SE is looking into. On its own, however, I doubt it will be enough.

[FrankReynolds]

I've underlined the criticisms of magic damage that aren't really valid. Mages are actually more durable than melee in my experience because they can wear 50% PDT almost all the time (no need for TP gear), generally have access to Blink/Stoneskin, etc. Defense hardly matters, so their lack of it is unimportant. Manawall makes BLM the least-one-shottable job in the game. Back before people really figured out how to do Voidwatch, I know I ended up holding quite a few VWNMs on my BLM/RDM between Manawall and temps and it sure wasn't because the derpy support suddenly got good enough to keep people alive.

The ones that I deleted could be summarized by the one I bolded, which is the real issue with magic damage as I see it. If the outlined changes or implemented, magic DPS is going to increase a lot.

The final two underlined issues run contrary to one another. The way you buff magic damage isn't through a +11 MAB Dream Shroud, it's through Evoker's Roll, Refresh II, and Ballads. The reason you buff magic damage this way is because MP is finite (as you say). It's not really a weakness of the damage type, but rather is the way the damage type is limited. If having buffs lets you chain nuke constantly instead of resting half the time, then buffs increased your DPS by a factor of 2. That's less than melee's factor of 5 with Haste, but it's still something. If SE implements their outlined changes, this weakness will be alleviated somewhat but mage jobs will also get less durable. I don't know how it will shake out for final usage.

I don't wanna pick all that apart, but a few points:

When I say Melee characters are not as squishy as mages, what I mean is that melees can both do damage and take damage at a high rate without stopping. BLMs have to stop doing damage almost entirely to use manawall, rock all that -DT gear and keep up those buffs. Melee characters just whack away as if the damage never happened. They have plenty of HP, so back liners have plenty of time to heal them.

Refresh only counts as a boost to damage if the fight actually last long enough to need the MP. Almost every relevant event is chiefly concerned with damage speed. Not duration. Mages can't keep up the damage. As soon as stoneskin / blink is down, they pretty much have to hit pause on doing damage. In a zerg, spells will get interrupted, melee swings / WS will not. In a timed event like NNI or Legion etc. what are they going to do? If they get hit, they have to reapply buffs to keep nukes from getting interrupted.


Kinda getting off track. The point was that Zergs didn't start happening because of melees being better damage dealers. Zergs started happening because that was the fastest / safest way to win. Nerfing this scythe won't change that. To change that, the fights have to be adjusted.

If SE wants magic damage to be more relevant, they need to make mages better damage dealers, because that's all that really matters until they fix emnity and tanking and adjust the fights themselves to cater to more than just 2hr/temp item /WS spamming.

I know it's asking a lot, but it's what we pay for right?



This is functionally the same change as giving enemies PDT, except that they'd also have to adjust enemy HP to be higher to maintain a battle of roughly the same duration.

Except that melees can not use weapons / abilities to change this. Magic will always do better damage in this situation. Which means they can leave the scythe how it is without ruining all future battle scenarios.


So a fight against an enemy with 1 billion HP, but he lacks the ability to one-shot. Yeah, I'd still choose melee damage instead.

You can't have anything but zergs until you up the HP enough to make the fights last. This has nothing to do with which form of damage is better.

The idea would be to make NMs that can do consistent damage to your ally so that your healers actually burn through the MP pool if people don't manage hate and damage taken well enough. Meaning that those DDs everyone loves so much might actually have to slow down damage to keep from getting their faces eaten. In this case, having back line damage dealers can be a boon. Especially ones that can avoid taking AOE damage / debuffs and shed some hate from time to time.

[saevel]

SO there hasn't been any mention of new SP abilities for quite some time now. I was wondering if they were almost done or if they are getting delayed?

ALSO RDM SP2 for enfeebling is still undesired while an SP that we will basically use to get improved Haste and Phallanx 2 for partys would be appreciated. Please go back to your original design.

Their hoping we forget about it so they can add it in a later adjustment, probably part of SOA or right after. They won't mention anything about RDM's 60m Elemental Seal -1 and put it in anyway.

To the rest, Magic will never ~EVER~ be anywhere close to melee damage until SE makes nukes cast much faster. The single biggest issue with magic damage is it simply takes too long to do. And while there are those using a certain third party application to cast in one sec then switch to another right before the damage is done, you can't base the battle system around that. Get nukes down to the point where a mage can be slapping them down non-stop and then we can talk about magic damage being remotely comparable to melee damage.

[Yinnyth]

To the rest, Magic will never ~EVER~ be anywhere close to melee damage until SE makes nukes cast much faster. The single biggest issue with magic damage is it simply takes too long to do.

I disagree. There are several ways to make magic damage worthwhile without touching casting times. If, for example, they boosted the damage nukes do by 300%, everyone would start using blms regardless of the cast times. That's taking things a little too far, but you get the point.

I don't think the casting times should be adjusted downwards too much. Doing so would decrease the usefulness of fast cast, quick magic, and chainspell. It is also my belief that long cast times are a fundamental game mechanic. Having all nukes cast instantly would feel as wrong as having all melees capable of meleeing from halfway across the zone.

[saevel]

I disagree. There are several ways to make magic damage worthwhile without touching casting times. If, for example, they boosted the damage nukes do by 300%, everyone would start using blms regardless of the cast times. That's taking things a little too far, but you get the point.

I don't think the casting times should be adjusted downwards too much. Doing so would decrease the usefulness of fast cast, quick magic, and chainspell. It is also my belief that long cast times are a fundamental game mechanic. Having all nukes cast instantly would feel as wrong as having all melees capable of meleeing from halfway across the zone.

Increasing their damage by 300% won't matter, it's still not enough by a long shot. Someone above already pointed out that a BLM's (SCH & RDM) damage shuts down when they get the monsters attention. This forces them to stay under the 10,000 CE threshold (they would have LONG since capped VE). Do you want to know how long it takes me to hit 10,000 CE? About 20s if not superbuffed, much much less if I'm getting march's. Once I'm at that 10,000 CE I have zero problems with the monster smacking me, I have a DT set if things get serious but otherwise I just keep hitting it, and hitting it, and hitting it harder until it stops twitching. A BLM doesn't have that luxury.

That is why nukes need to be made much faster and SE has already noticed this. Why do you think their considering making the cast times on T2's and T3's that much lower? So that nukers can spam them nonstop as a form of magic DPS. Higher tiers are reserved for initial strikes or when you have time to concentrate it, otherwise you'll be spamming your nuke macro just like RNG's spam their RA macro.

Also cutting casting times does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to the usefulness of FC. Reading that made my head hurt, it's like trying to say lowering a weapons delay reduces the usefulness of haste, you can't possibly be that clueless on damage mechanics. Reducing the cast times of a 4s spell by 50% has the exact same effect as reducing the cast times of a 60s spell by 50%. Both result in a 100% increase in spell casting speed. Which leads into the other part of SE's proposed changes, making it so that thunder and ice aren't the only powerful nukes so that when their recast is down you can still cycle to the others instead of waiting. BLM's will be cycling three different elements while depleting their MP supply like rangers deplete their ammo. In this way refresh / MP effects will act as DPS buffs by enhancing the speed of their damage recovery. They still won't be as powerful as melee but it's better then "proc only" like we are now.

I've said it before, I've played many different MMOs and amongst those have played magic DPS class's. None of them cast FFXI slow. The slowest attacks are a few seconds with long cooldowns.

[Yinnyth]

Increasing their damage by 300% won't matter, it's still not enough by a long shot. Someone above already pointed out that a BLM's (SCH & RDM) damage shuts down when they get the monsters attention. This forces them to stay under the 10,000 CE threshold (they would have LONG since capped VE).

That is a problem with the enmity system, which also needs fixing and also will be a problem with your proposed change of vastly reduced casting times. BLMs will still pull hate with faster magic, then suddenly they're tanking or kiting. If they're kiting, they briefly stop everyone's damage. If they're tanking, they're also in range of those annoying AoEs which can silence, paralyze, plague, stun, terror, etc. In some battle situations, I suppose it might be ok to put your blm up there on the front line and spam nukes, but in most they'd do better from far away.


That is why nukes need to be made much faster and SE has already noticed this. Why do you think their considering making the cast times on T2's and T3's that much lower?
So DRKs might consider spending the time casting one every now and then. Also, at low levels, people frequently have to solo or duo now, and it'd help BLMs through the grind a bit. Also, as you later mentioned, it will likely become the bread and butter for mages to do low damage frequently instead of large damage spikes. This is different from ALL magic casting very quickly, however.


Also cutting casting times does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to the usefulness of FC. Reading that made my head hurt, it's like trying to say lowering a weapons delay reduces the usefulness of haste, you can't possibly be that clueless on damage mechanics.
Only if every time you successfully swing your weapon, it animation locks your character for 2 seconds before you can swing again. Fast cast doesn't even touch the animation lock. The faster a spell is, the less useful fast cast becomes for it.


I've said it before, I've played many different MMOs and amongst those have played magic DPS class's. None of them cast FFXI slow. The slowest attacks are a few seconds with long cooldowns.

I've played some too. I didn't like them. That was one reason why: mages didn't feel magey. Also, just because other MMOs do it doesn't mean it's right for FFXI.

I'm not saying faster spells couldn't make magic more useful, I'm just saying:
1. It's not the only way they could fix magic
2. It's not the way I want them to fix magic

[saevel]

The stupid is strong here. Now I remember why I had him on ignore, back you go.

[Yinnyth]

If you always ignore people who disagree with you, then I'm afraid no one will ever be able to convince otherwise when you make absolute statements such as:

Magic will never ~EVER~ be anywhere close to melee damage until SE makes nukes cast much faster.

There are always other options.

[Camate]

Hello everyone,

Below is a brief message from Producer Akihiko Matsui.



Matsui here.

I'm sorry I haven't been making much of an appearance on the forums lately.

Especially since I promised that we would be releasing information related to the enmity system and calculations, I realize I continue to make you all wait. I'm sorry to disappoint you all again and I'm sure there are some of you thinking "don't apologize, just tell us the essentials."

Unfortunately a lot of things came up suddenly which led to me becoming extremely busy this week and wasn't able to write anything up. I'm really sorry about this and I'd like to ask for just a bit more time to get you all the information you've been waiting for.


Hello everyone!

I created a new thread with Producer Akihiko Matsui's post about the enmity system here (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/30629-Enmity-System-Explanation-and-Planned-Adjustments?p=402769&viewfull=1#post402769). Please check it out when you have a moment! :)

[scaevola]

That was one reason why: mages didn't feel magey.

Based on what?

[Yinnyth]

Based on what?

To be honest, based on my own personal opinions. You can feel free to like other games as much as you like. But I prefer when magic systems are either complicated and difficult to work towards your needs (Magicka, for example), or at the very least a completely different system from other characters. In FFXI, the mages are seperated from the melees not only in what they can do, but in how long it takes them to do it. I would rather have mages take 10 seconds to do 10,000 damage than take 1 second to do 1,000 damage.

This is just my personal opinion on the matter, however. It is important that each person has an opinion of their own and discusses it.

[Miiyo]

Magic will never ~EVER~ be anywhere close to melee damage until SE makes nukes cast much faster.

You forgot to add "if the mob is resistant to magic ." Otherwise, the words of a crazy one are pretty tragic. O~hohohoho

[Lemoncloak]

Could we get some more advanced environment interactions for battle content?

The other day I had to fish some guild fish on the ferry in Phlanauet Channel. I began thinking about how cool it would be to pop a mob on the ferry and have 15 min to defeat him. As the ferry passes under a bridge, the mob could move or duck or enter a different "phase" of combat.

Is this impossible?

[Horadrim]

Could we get some more advanced environment interactions for battle content?

The other day I had to fish some guild fish on the ferry in Phlanauet Channel. I began thinking about how cool it would be to pop a mob on the ferry and have 15 min to defeat him. As the ferry passes under a bridge, the mob could move or duck or enter a different "phase" of combat.

Is this impossible?

FFXI's systems are a bit old for that. FFXIV will likely have something like that over time.

[Athomik]

All i see from SE is NERF NERF NERF all the good things this game has and break all our fun , everytime you change anything on game everything goes wrong , and more people stop to play the game , i hope this isn't on purpose to see if we move to 14 cause that will never happen we won't spend again years of our live like we did for 11 to do time consumin things like hell and such other things,,, just stop it with nerfs and finally bring something really good so we all can have fun and play it excitment has we want .

[Demon6324236]

All you see is nerfs, what I see is them legitimately trying to make the game better by not having a series of zergs as the entity of the meat of content. What is Meebles? Zerg everything is most of the objectives, thats all the bosses are. What is VW? Zerg all of the NMs riding temps from procs. What is Dynamis? You proc things and then zerg them to death, or if its a NM, simply zerg it do death riding PD. What is Legion? You zerg NMs to death riding PD. What is Salvage? You zerg specific enemies for pathos removal, then once you get far enough in you just zerg everything else down unless it is special and effects a NM spawn. What is Odin II? Zerg. Limbus? Zerg. See my point here? We do a slight variation on the same thing for nearly every event in the game released since post-Abyssea, Abyssea did the same thing mostly, but you had to proc still, and some mobs had gimmicks that hurt zerging like absorbing damage.

So where you see armies of nerfs, in this case I actually see a chance they will do a good thing.

[Dreamin]

All you see is nerfs, what I see is them legitimately trying to make the game better by not having a series of zergs as the entity of the meat of content. What is Meebles? Zerg everything is most of the objectives, thats all the bosses are. What is VW? Zerg all of the NMs riding temps from procs. What is Dynamis? You proc things and then zerg them to death, or if its a NM, simply zerg it do death riding PD. What is Legion? You zerg NMs to death riding PD. What is Salvage? You zerg specific enemies for pathos removal, then once you get far enough in you just zerg everything else down unless it is special and effects a NM spawn. What is Odin II? Zerg. Limbus? Zerg. See my point here? We do a slight variation on the same thing for nearly every event in the game released since post-Abyssea, Abyssea did the same thing mostly, but you had to proc still, and some mobs had gimmicks that hurt zerging like absorbing damage.

So where you see armies of nerfs, in this case I actually see a chance they will do a good thing.

But the player base has ALWAYS been about ZERG. For those that love the old stuff (pre abyssea), there are the Colibris merit camp, AV Zerg attempt (and then SE whack everyone on the head and took that away), PW, old school Dynamis (pull/sleepga/ZERG for regular mobs and ZERG+Cure Bombs on Bosses), Einherjar, etc, etc...Reason the playerbase end up going that route is because it IS the most efficient way to kill and accomplish things.

In their fantasy, SE keep thinking that they can influence the playerbase to get away from such. Do you know why they keep having that fantasy??? Because the producer/director does NOT understands how the playerbase AT ALL. NONE. ZERO. If they really honestly want to influence the playerbase, they need to become one themselves 1st and foremost.

[Horadrim]

But the player base has ALWAYS been about ZERG. For those that love the old stuff (pre abyssea), there are the Colibris merit camp, AV Zerg attempt (and then SE whack everyone on the head and took that away), PW, old school Dynamis (pull/sleepga/ZERG for regular mobs and ZERG+Cure Bombs on Bosses), Einherjar, etc, etc...Reason the playerbase end up going that route is because it IS the most efficient way to kill and accomplish things.

In their fantasy, SE keep thinking that they can influence the playerbase to get away from such. Do you know why they keep having that fantasy??? Because the producer/director does NOT understands how the playerbase AT ALL. NONE. ZERO. If they really honestly want to influence the playerbase, they need to become one themselves 1st and foremost.

I understand what you're trying to say, but this sentence makes no sense -- and the idea is a little asinine.

To understand how to fix an improve some of the games elements what they need to accept is that their ideas about what the game should be don't mean shit. The teams working on FFXi have, for a long time, had an incestuous love affair with this bastardized view of how the game should work and do their best to forego logical changes that would make it better for everyone involved.

No, I don't mean changes that we beg for, I mean changes that would fix things -- whether we like them or not. The biggest problem is they swing, rather obnoxiously, between listening to the player base way too much and listening to them way too little. There's never a happy median between the two extremes and more often than not we end up with 30% of the games jobs being useless for most of its content.

Since Abyssea released (Which I think was a logical evolution of the game executed rather poorly), DRG, PUP, SCH, PLD, RDM, and RNG have lost significant bearings (some of them even before that). SCH only got back in because of Neo Nyzul, and that's about it. Frankly, in my opinion, serious adjustments should have been made to the entire job system to re-balance it before they even started considering new jobs. Some jobs should have lost things, some should have gained things, and the end result should have been a set of 20 jobs rebalanced for universal usefulness and utility.

Instead we're about to get tossed two more overlapping jobs and system changes we can only hope fix some of the issues -- yet that people who know the numbers behind the game, as you can see above, are already pointing out might not even have that huge of an effect.

Frankly, I wish they'd working on balanced, strategic challenges and content instead of flashy, gimmicky nonsense meant to just waste our time and so poorly designed that it makes a quarter of the jobs in the game irrelevant.

[Chimerawizard]

How are the changes to elemental damage coming along?

Last time you mentioned it was...January. You didn't forget about it did you?

[Demon6324236]

Not only that but are you going to be changing elemental magic more radically? Last time it was mentioned the update would have basically doubled BLM's damage it seemed like, but with all of the DDs getting double damaged weapons, we would need elemental magic to at very least be tripled to stand up to it now...

[Spectreman]

Yes WAR is overpowered...geez...you people need to math some things out and see the slight % that a fully pimped out job XYZ really does over a fully geared job ABC. It's not as massive as you chicken littles make it out to be. The fact that you (not "you" random cryer #1,234,987,567 that I'm quoting) cry over it all the time, is the reason why the developers have to waste time thinking about boosting 1 handed utility jobs to make up for some imagined unfairness. 1 handers had their 6 years in the spotlight. Rightly pure DD that can't steal, treasure hunt, cast ninja or blue magic, or do dance spells were buffed to make them actually do good damage with 2 handed weapons. Shocker, I know. But let's not forget our history.


Fell Cleave gave more gil to warriors than all other abilities in the game combined helped players through all these years. WAR is OP.

[Demon6324236]

Fell Cleave gave more gil to warriors than all other abilities in the game combined helped players through all these years. WAR is OP.I can FC on any job in the game, it just takes longer on other jobs. Besides that, when did a jobs ability to make Gil have anything to do with being over powered?

I still think 1handed jobs need buffs, which is mostly what that post you quoted seemed to be talking against, but so far as WAR against SAM and DRK, no, they are all basically balanced, so much so to the point they have very few differences between the two, and its not often 1 of them is specifically requested over another.