Divine Might II: Make your own Ark Earring!

[Tanama]

http://killingifrit.com/images/zilart/zm14.jpg

After reading a particular post (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/29797-How-would-you-like-certain-items-to-be-changed?p=396243&viewfull=1#post396243) in this thread (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/29797-How-would-you-like-certain-items-to-be-changed), I immediately thought of what updated DM earrings would be like post-Seekers of Adoulin and this is what I came up with.




Those earrings are pretty wild but after some time passed I remembered years ago, wishing there was a DM earring made for DRG that had STR+2, Polearm skill +5, Attack+5 and Increases "Jump" damage. So then I thought it would be even better if after finishing the DM II fight, you were rewarded with a blank "Ark Earring" much like the Moonshade Earring where you choose the stats on it.


Ark Earring
[Ear]All Races

Lv.99 All Jobs

For the Ark Earring you are given five slots. For those five slots you may choose:


2 Attributes
2 Stats
1 Job Specific Upgrade

*You may not choose the same augment twice.

Attributes List



Stats List



Job Specific Bonus



The Job Specific Bonus also affects subjobs. The idea behind this is to gain a lot more out of your SJ and to empower it even more on your main job.

Below is a list of the Job Specific Augments


"Berserk" = Duration: 00:03:00 → 00:04:00 | Recast 00:05:00 → 00:04:00
"Boost" = Increases Attack by 50%
"Divine Seal" = Increases "Cure" potency by 2.5x | Recast 00:10:00 → 00:03:00
"Elemental Seal" = Grants "Magic Atk. Bonus" +30 | Recast 00:10:00 → 00:03:00
"Convert" = Exchanges HP ↔ MP at a 1:2 ratio instead of 1:1 | Recast 00:10:00 → 00:03:00
"Sneak Attack" "Trick Attack" = Damage +40%
"Cover" = Duration 00:00:15 → 00:01:00 | Recast 00:03:00 → 00:02:00
"Last Resort" = Duration 00:03:00 → 00:04:00 | Recast 00:05:00 → 00:04:00
"Call Beast" = Allows BST or /BST to call greater fiends and some uncharmable mobs.




Grants an additional song effect
"Barrage" = Adds three extra shots. | Recast 00:05:00 → 00:03:00
"Hasso" = Increases STR by +12 and +5% JA Haste for a total of +15% JA Haste
Ninjutsu = Grants Elemental Seal like magic accuracy and damage + 50%
"Jump" "High Jump" = Causes Jumps to critical hit and damage +40%
"Blood Pact: Rage" "Blood Pact: Ward" = Rage damage +40% | Ward duration is doubled
Blue magic = damage increased by x1.75 and buff duration is tripled
Grants an additional "Phantom Roll" effect
"Maneuver""Overload" = Maneuver bonus doubled | Overload rate is reduced by 3/4
"Samba" = Haste samba adds an additional 5% JA haste | Samba duration is doubled
"Light Arts" "Dark Arts" = All magic skills +50

*These stats and upgrades are made with post-Seekers of Adoulin updates in mind so for example, Last Resort has the 15% JA haste for 2handers.

So, I am curious to see which stats would you add to your Ark Earring. Please share you thoughts below.

Rules:


You may make as many earrings as you like
You may only wear one earring at a time


Notes:
The stats on lists above are meant to be wild as this mission: Divine Might II, hypothetically takes place in a post-Seekers of Adoulin world. Reason being the dev-team saying that after SoA is released weapons and gear with higher values than what we have now will be made.
Personally, I do not believe the development team would ever place stats that high on an earring.
________________________________________________

Use this templace if you please:

Ark Earring
[Ear]All Races

Lv.99 All Jobs

2 Attributes, 2 Stats and 1 Job Specific boost.

EDIT: Adjusted the Stats list

More feedback is welcome, Thank you.

[Toadie-Odie]

I like the idea presented here and I would like to give more thought on to what types of augements I would like to see in the list, but as a career BST I would like to point out that you can't use Call Beast as /BST.

I think the Job Specific augments should be for things that are available for use as subjobs, otherwise the earrings won't have quite the same appeal as the originals did when they were more relevant.

[Mirage]

I'd never be able to live with just one of those earrings. Some augments are just too good to not get, and at the same time it would completely gimp one of my other jobs if I didn't have it.

In particular, I think the job specific bonuses need to go, or they need to always be active and automatically change as you change jobs.

Also, I think the stats are biased towards melees, and lack some desirable mage stats, specifically in the "stats" section. For example, summoner gets almost nothing out of it. BP delay reduction is easily cappable and you can swap out of it right away to maximize damage. Perpetuation cost doesn't increase damage either, and most people are able to regenerate MP using any avatar already, and their MP expenditude is limited by BP delay. There should at least be an additional "enhances blood pacts" stat that would both directly increase BP damage (perhaps as a percentage) and enhance buffs from BPs. A massive amount of Conserve MP and Blood Boon should be available too.

The fast cast augment should also be greater. 5% is not a whole lot, compared to the power some of the melee stats have.

I also think the barrage augment should be changed. As it is, it will only have a very minor impact on damage output. with capped accuracy, the chance of even firing every single arrow in an unaugmented barrage is pretty low, unless my calculations are incorrect, the chance of hitting with 10 out of 10 arrows at 95% accuracy is only 59% (with 11 hits it is 56%). Additionally, barrage is on a 5 minute timer, futher devaluing the power of this augment when you look at total damage output.

It should at least add a chance of missed barrage hits not cancelling subsequent hits in addition to increasing the max hits.

[Tanama]

@Toadie-Odie: The idea behind the Call Beast augment was to also allow /BST to summon one of the greater fiends thus making BST as a subjob more desirable. Thank you for the suggestion.


@Mirage: You are totally correct. I did not spend enough time coming up with more attractive mage stats. A lot of those stats would be overlooked because of the more powerful ones as you pointed out. Thank you for that. I'll review them and make changes accordingly.

About the aspect of completely gimping your other jobs, perhaps that can be remedied if you were allowed to make eight or an unlimited amount of earrings. The catch being that you can only equip one at a time and not pair them.


In particular, I think the job specific bonuses need to go, or they need to always be active and automatically change as you change jobs.
That's the idea.

[Mirage]

So if you are war, you get the warrior bonus, then if you change to drg, you automatically get the drg bonus?

[Tanama]

Assuming you have two Ark earrings, one with Berserk augmented and the other with the enhanced Jump effects, yes.


EDIT: As explained in my original post, the job specific augments also affect sub jobs. Say you wanted to play WAR99/DRG49 and have enhanced jumps, you'd make an ark earring and choose the Jump/High bonus stat. That ark earring would also affect Jump and High Jump on DRG as a main job as well.

[Mirage]

So you intend for us to be able to quest several of them, then.

But no, that's not what I meant. I meant that the earrings would be too specialized if those job specific augments were available, and that they probably shouldn't be available in that case. Unless you got all of them, depending on job selection.

[Tanama]

Right.

At first I thought of only one earring being able to be made but your reply made me realize being able to make as many as you'd like would make more sense. I realized only having one would be as limiting as our merit point system is today, especially with only being able to max three merit weapon skills.

[Teraniku]

Shield is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY overpowered. Ochain and Aegis cap @ DEF 40 so I'd say put it in the 34-36 range for DEF.

here's the best non relic shield in the game that is obtained as a battlefield reward:

http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120409012728/ffxi/images/0/07/Adamas.png

Using this as a template and modifying your stats on the shield

EV's Tower Shield

Def 36
HP +40 MP +40
Light +30 Dark +30 Damage -15%
Shield Bash +20
"Enhances Pallisade effect"

This is a pretty decent compromise, Keeps the damage reduction, and enhancing Pallisade effect overcomes it's lower chance to block due to it being a Tower Shield.


*The earrings are about right on the money though*

[Mayoyama]

If they did make these earrings.. there's no way they would allow us to make more than one....

[Economizer]

At first I thought of only one earring being able to be made but your reply made me realize being able to make as many as you'd like would make more sense. I realized only having one would be as limiting as our merit point system is today, especially with only being able to max three merit weapon skills.

Well, if the intent is to let players repeat the fight repeatably for more and more earrings, then this fight has moved from the "incredibly stupid idea" category into the "idea SE will probably never implement" category for me, which means I not longer feel like replying would be a bad idea.

One argument I've had against upgrading the stats of certain items, beyond perhaps just scaling them up (like making Rajas, Tamas, and Sattva Ring scale up to +7 of their stat), is that you can only have one of them. For example, your non-augmented Divine Might II earrings would force players to choose between jobs because of how good the stats are. When you have to choose between options, you either find yourself losing the versatility of the job system or having a clearly best option.

Moving more back to the idea of being able to get multiples of these, you'd quickly clog your inventory with them, because you'd want as many of them for various macros as possible. This is more true of mage jobs then melee jobs, since stats tend to be situational, and your currently listed ones are no exception.

On this point, I feel that you have too many stat options, and some of them are somewhat overpowered, while others are just redundant.

One example that comes to mind is going as a Black Mage, and getting two of these earrings, and augmenting them as follows:

Earring 1

Magic Attack Bonus +10
Magic Accuracy +10
Fast Cast +10%
Elemental magic casting time -8%
Enhances "Elemental Seal" and reduces recast time
Earring 2

Magic Attack Bonus +10
Magic Accuracy +10
Fast Cast +10%
Elemental magic casting time -8%
Enhances "Light Arts" and "Dark Arts" effect

Wear both full time, BLM/SCH, pop Dark Arts, wear something that gives 4% Fast Cast, and enjoy capped casting speeds, better Magic Attack Bonus then Novio/Hectate's combo, with a super buffed nuke every three minutes (or less with merits), and massive amounts of magic accuracy all the time.

Sound broken yet?

Let's go through this list by list:


Attributes List



The most STR/DEX/AGI/VIT/INT/MND/CHR you see on any earring is currently +4. The most Attack you see on earrings currently is about +10, the most Ranged Attack you see is about +4, or +10 based on a latent that is up half the time, and the most Magic Attack Bonus you see is about +7. Accuracy, Ranged Accuracy, or Magic Accuracy you see on any one Earring currently is at +4. The most Evasion seen on an earring is +8.

Breaking these current maximums is a big deal, especially on an earring that will have other stats in one slot, that you can hold multiple of.

Keep in mind that SE still wants people to do other content, such as still fighting Jailer of Love for the Novio Earring, or at least occasionally support crafters, such as on the Ghillie Earring +1. Even the Moonshade Earring which you could only have one of didn't have as much Magic Attack Bonus as a Novio or even a Moldivite, and it is a level 90 earring. You also have people picking two of these stats as well, making it even more threatening to other content, and perhaps even balance.

If you want this earring to ever be a possibility, you'll have to cut these stats down to size.

Ever onward:


Stats List



The same idea comes up here, and then some, but we also have to consider how these augments mash with the previous ones. Additionally, many of the stats are redundant, which will just lead to stacking for more and more oddly specific and inventory clogging combinations.

This list is really just way too long.

There are just so many of these stats that looking them all up for what their current maximums as the first step would be a waste of my time as well. Let's start with cutting a few of them out by eliminating redundancy.

The most obvious redundancy is that of Fast Cast +10% and "X magic casting time -8%". There is no reason to have any of the specific magic casting time reductions as long as Fast Cast is there, and considering they'd stack, that would lead to a dangerously high amount, especially for something that can be on both ears (see the example above).

Next comes combat skills. With the previous Attack/Accuracy stats, you'd just be stacking for the extra attack and accuracy, and +25 Accuracy and Attack in one ear slot seems pretty overpowered, and then you double it. You'd have to pick between one stat set or the other honestly, and given the assumption that they'd both be cut down to size, the Accuracy/Attack options seem more inventory friendly, whereas the cases to be made for skill boosts lie with H2H users and jobs trying to /SUB for a proc WS in Abyssea.

Magic skill has much the same problem when combined with Magic Accuracy, with some exceptions for skills that just need boosted for some effect, much like the situation with H2H.

I could really go on, but really, this just needs to be rewritten from scratch to be less redundant, and less overpowered.


Job Specific Bonus






Many of these are overpowered, with Cover, Overload, and Divine Seal looking like the only remotely reasonable ones. For example, one of the less powerful examples, moving Divine Seal to a three minute cast timer (and lol at the curing buff, but I suppose /WHM might need it since they don't get Divine Veil), would mean a White Mage could do AoE debuff removal every three minutes, which would be a pretty big deal for non-Yagrush owners. This isn't even remotely as big a deal as the big guns, Berserk, Hasso, Last Resort. I'd also like to point out that the BST one of being able to call pets from thin air is not very likely since SE views jug pet costs as part of playing BST.

Almost as important, adding this to the list just clogs inventory much, much more, especially when combining with the previous examples. Easiest way to remedy this would be to just make it be an effect that works on all jobs, and buffs the player. You can only have two of these be useful at any given time regardless, so why not just respect inventory space and have the buffs be always present?

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TL;DR: Only being able to make one of these would be a crime against the job system of FFXI. If multiples of these are able to be made, there are still many issues. Many of these buffs are absurdly overpowered, many are redundant, and the job buffs should be universal so less of these earrings are clogging inventory spaces everywhere.

[hiko]

I like it but its absurdly overpowered, being able to make as many as we want is even more overpowered and unbalanced because some jobs need less inventory than other and they will be able to get more situational (but still broken) earrings

[Tanama]

@Economizer

Thank you for the comprehensive post. Condensing the job ability enhancements into more universal effects is a great idea and yes, a lot of the stats I wrote down are ridiculously high for an earring.

@Hiko

Thanks for your feedback. The absurdity of the stats were done on purpose. I'm thinking about lowering them to today's standards when I have time sometime later.