Where is the Dual Wield adjustment?

[Byrth]

SE announced they would be eliminating the penalty to TP/hit that is caused by excess Dual Wield in the September update earlier this year. When it didn't arrive in September, I assumed that it would be in the October update and didn't say anything. Now it's October and there's no Dual Wield adjustment, so where is it?


For those of you wondering what I'm talking about, delay reduction is limited to -80%. If you have capped magic haste (448/1024) and capped gear haste (256/1024), you have 68.75% Haste and need 36% Dual wield to hit the 80% delay reduction cap.
(1-(448+256)/1024)*(1-X) = .2; X = 0.36
If you have 50% Dual Wield instead, you still only get an 80% delay reduction. The problem is that Dual Wield reduces your TP/hit, so you want to use as little of it as possible. For most jobs, 36% isn't such a problem. Traits only go up to 35% Dual Wield (Ninja, level 85), so jobs can just stop using Dual Wield equipment in situations where they are pushing up against the delay cap without it.


That is, until you use Haste Samba. With Haste Samba, the math becomes:
(1-(448+256+101)/1024)*(1-X) = .2; X = 0.065
So if you're using Haste Samba (5/5 merits), you only need 6.5% Dual Wield to hit the delay cap. So you suffer a pretty substantial TP/sec penalty for having Dual wield that you don't need, which is (ironically) worse the more Dual Wield traits you have. To be clear, you are not getting less TP/hit than you ever do without DW gear, but if you had much less Dual wield you would be getting more TP/hit and swinging at the same speed.

Taking Dancer as an example, adding Haste Samba on top of capped magic/gear Haste allows us to drop 6% Dual Wield in gear without leaving the delay cap, but offers no further benefit. So Haste Samba, which must be maintained, costs us 350 TP, and so forth, lets DNC use Windbuffet Belt +1 instead of Shetal Stone. That is the entire benefit.


If they had made the changes they proposed, Haste Samba would have increased TP/hit for Dual Wield jobs. It still wouldn't have really reduced delay very much and it would still be smart to swap Windbuffet +1 for Shetal Stone, but I would also have gotten a lot more TP/hit (21%, +11 TP/hit for me) for having it up.



tl;dr:
It looked like they were going to give Haste Samba a useful buff as the only source of JA Haste that affects Dual Wielders. Two updates after their implementation date, it's not here. Where is it?

[Camate]

Originally we had looked into making adjustments so that when reaching the lowest limit of attack delay from dual wield and haste effects, the excess dual wield effect would not affect TP gain, but we realized that there were technical difficulties for achieving this.

Additionally, if we were able to change the way dual wield works, there wouldn’t be much of an effect for players who swap out their equipment while under the effect of haste.

[Byrth]

You didn't give Daken to Dancer despite the fact that it is the only job almost always affected by excess Dual Wield. So Daken isn't a replacement for the other proposed changes, and feedback on Daken is irrelevant.

[Malthar]

Camate, this is bad news. How come Grekumah didn't deliver it this time? :-P

[Olor]

I like Byrth's entire post was pretty much about DNC and the response was Daken. Come on Camate, you can do better than that.

[Catmato]

Speaking of dual-wield, how about giving every job the ability to equip two weapons, but with a delay penalty for jobs without the trait?

[Selindrile]

Yes please, give every job "Dual Wield 0" if they don't have further, which doesn't give any delay benefit.

[Jeanna]

I like how this is replied to within 12 hours, but the numerous posts of dozens of people with 401s have been completely ignored. :(
/end derail
Also TIL dnc = nin. Who knew?

[Camiie]

I tried equipping a shuriken on my DNC so I could take advantage of Daken, but it won't equip for some reason. I tried with a Chakram but I just couldn't get Daken to proc. Camate said I should try it, but it's not working. What's going on here, guys?! Do I need to file a bug report?!

[Daniel]

Dual Wield is first and foremost a ninja trait, when they were considering changing DW it was for ninja... not for dnc. In addition, as a ninja I have to forgo duel wield gear all the time so saying dnc is the only job affected makes no sense. I got a super cool solution for you though, if dual wield is so important to your job they should just take away haste samba and problem solved.

[Finuve]

Dual Wield is first and foremost a ninja trait, when they were considering changing DW it was for ninja... not for dnc. In addition, as a ninja I have to forgo duel wield gear all the time so saying dnc is the only job affected makes no sense. I got a super cool solution for you though, if dual wield is so important to your job they should just take away haste samba and problem solved.both jobs have dual wield, leaving dancer broken because you have some weird notion of it being a ninja priority skill is absurd

[Camate]

You're absolutely correct that Daken has nothing to do with dancer. I apologize for failing to address the core issue here.

While the aforementioned dual wield adjustments were specifically in relation to ninja, we will be passing along your feedback to the development team for adjustments to other jobs, including dancer, that also have dual wield.

Again, apologies for not grasping the initial comment before posting information that I had to share!

[Crevox]

You're absolutely correct that Daken has nothing to do with dancer. I apologize for failing to address the core issue here.

While the aforementioned dual wield adjustments were specifically in relation to ninja, we will be passing along your feedback to the development team for adjustments to other jobs, including dancer, that also have dual wield.

Again, apologies for not grasping the initial comment before posting information that I had to share!

Very nice response. I'm glad the misunderstanding was addressed.

[Byrth]

You're absolutely correct that Daken has nothing to do with dancer. I apologize for failing to address the core issue here.

While the aforementioned dual wield adjustments were specifically in relation to ninja, we will be passing along your feedback to the development team for adjustments to other jobs, including dancer, that also have dual wield.

Again, apologies for not grasping the initial comment before posting information that I had to share!

Thank you very much! Please let me know what they say!

[Xsilver]

Now that Dakan exists, perhaps similar traits can be created for DNC or THF. Maybe letting THF able to shoot crossbow bolts between hits for status ailments, or DNC to do acrobatic/somsersault hits like Lilisette in between dagger swings. Unlikely due to having to create new animations but just a thought.

Also if JA delay can be removed or mitigated for the following job abilities: Maneuvers/Rune Enchantments/Steps. Basically any core JA that's requires an 'upkeep' for the job to function. The developers have mitigated a lot of JA delay from Ranged Attacks over a year ago to allow Rangers to shoot again with less delay after a shot. See if its possible for Steps/Manuevers/Rune Enchantments. Otherwise, make steps have a permanent 'Presto' effect(inflict 2-3 levels of Daze at a time for DNC main), give RUN a JA that when activated, allows the next Rune Enchantment to give you 3 runes of that element simultaneously, 3-5min recast.

Finally increase the duration of Manuevers to last forever like Light Arts and Dark Arts so a PUP doesn't need delay their autoattacks 2-3x per minute to upkeep the maneuvers they want if they like the Manuevers that are currently on. Of course if they change manuevers or a manuever is expended, that's different. If a PUP uses 3 Manuevers, those Manuevers should never wear or be dispelled like Light Arts/Dark Arts, unless the PUP changes them(will replace the latest Manuever) or if the Manuever is expended from an attachement.

[Camiie]

I always thought that Kick Attacks would be fitting for DNC even while using Daggers. That could be a thing, but I'm going to sadly assume that spaghetti code and lack of planning makes such a thing impossible.

[Ulth]

You know what would really give dual wielding jobs a nice boost? Having R/M/E weapons work from the off hand.

[Selindrile]

While I don't have an issue with this, and think they actually should. This would only affect a tiny tiny percent of the population that have 2 RMEs for one job that can Dual Wield them, I wouldn't really factor this into job balance as it applies to so few people. That said, it wouldn't remotely break anything, so I don't see any reason not to do this as well.

[Camate]

Alrighty, I checked with the development team to see if they have anything else planned in terms of dual wield adjustments since they experienced technical difficulties with the previously announced idea.

It seems like at the moment they are looking into making adjustments to equipment with dual wield bonuses, and moving forward they would like to set equipment stats while paying special attention to the issue at hand. Apologies that there isn’t much more information at the moment, but rest assured they are looking into it and once there is more information available I’ll be sure to share!

[Metaking]

getting more DW gear isnt really the issue all the dw jobs can get the 36% dw needed to cap delay (assuming gear and magic haste are caped), the problem is dw can hurt you. Sadly because its not possible for the server to figure out when you have to much DW it makes most other ideas short of converting part of Dw to jobability haste kinda not work

[Triston]

getting more DW gear isnt really the issue all the dw jobs can get the 36% dw needed to cap delay (assuming gear and magic haste are caped), the problem is dw can hurt you. Sadly because its not possible for the server to figure out when you have to much DW it makes most other ideas short of converting part of Dw to jobability haste kinda not workMy interpretation of Camate's post would be that the dev team would release gear with LESS DW on it, so as to give players more leeway before running into the delay cap. And by "adjustments to equipment with dual wield bonuses," I would assume that means taking existing equipment with DW on it, reducing that DW slightly and replacing that stat budget with... say, Store TP and Haste. They would of course have to leave DW on accessories or restrict these changes to light armor only, so as to not give the 2h jobs even more sources of Store TP to work with, but it should help the 1handers.

[Byrth]

Alrighty, I checked with the development team to see if they have anything else planned in terms of dual wield adjustments since they experienced technical difficulties with the previously announced idea.

It seems like at the moment they are looking into making adjustments to equipment with dual wield bonuses, and moving forward they would like to set equipment stats while paying special attention to the issue at hand. Apologies that there isn’t much more information at the moment, but rest assured they are looking into it and once there is more information available I’ll be sure to share!

Thanks!

In order to properly compensate, we'll need a variety of equipment equipment with -20~30% Dual Wield.

[Metaking]

well unless they do something like "converts DW to haste II" it wont help, cuz 99% of dw's are well over the 25.~% haste cap, and excluding blu with clubs or a job dwing hand axes most weapons are to low of tp gain a hit for stp (without bing obseanly high) to have much effect. I guess you do something like Dw+10 Delay +10% type things as well >.>;

[Ulth]

well unless they do something like "converts DW to haste II" it wont help, cuz 99% of dw's are well over the 25.~% haste cap, and excluding blu with clubs or a job dwing hand axes most weapons are to low of tp gain a hit for stp (without bing obseanly high) to have much effect. I guess you do something like Dw+10 Delay +10% type things as well >.>;

Dual Wield lowers delay which lowers the amount of tp you get per swing. That's why people switch their gear so they have the least amount of dual wield they need depending on how much haste they get. Something with dual wield +10 and delay +10% would cancel each other out.

I do have an idea to deal with the tp problem of dual wield jobs that would be easy to write in if Camate wants to pass it along. All they would have to do is write in a minimum value that you can get from an attack, so after a point it doesn't matter how low your delay goes.

[Atomic_Skull]

Bring back the TP floor. Removing it was an terrible idea from the time when SE's idea of "fixing" jobs that needed help was to nerf the jobs that were actually good. In fact I'd say that this is one of the crown jewels of awful ideas from that time.



I do have an idea to deal with the tp problem of dual wield jobs that would be easy to write in if Camate wants to pass it along. All they would have to do is write in a minimum value that you can get from an attack, so after a point it doesn't matter how low your delay goes.

Interesting that you should say that because this is how it actually used to work before the TP floor nerf back in 2006. You always got 5TP per hit no matter how low your delay was. But then DRKs 2H jobs whined constantly about MNK and NIN 1H TP gain so SE decided to "solve" the issue by nerfing 1H TP gain instead of you know, actually fixing the problem.

I think they need to ease back a little on the multi hit WS TP nerf as well. Getting full TP per hit was silly but nerfing it to 1TP per hit was typical SE overreaction. It should have been proportional to your delay with an upper ceiling to prevent MNK abuse of the relic knuckles (which was the original target of the nerf)

[Kincard]

The knee-jerk reaction of every player that posts on the OF and kept demanding that they stop nerfing jobs and just constantly give players more power is exactly why years after Abyssea lots of things that should've been nerfed have not been, especially Ochain, Aegis and Daurdabla. When it came time early-Adoulin for them to try outdating RMEs (before the great RME butthurt of 2013) they actually recognized how stupidly broken Ochain/Aegis/Daurdabla were and decided that that would be the "cap" on how strong shields and instruments get. It's probably also the reason why Geomancer (and to a lesser extent RDM and COR) gets buff after buff so that it can actually hope to keep up with BRD.

As for bringing back the TP floor, I don't really think that'll help a lot considering how they upped one hander TP gain by quite a bit, and one handers don't necessarily reach for the low delay weapons like they did in the past sometimes. Dual Wield- gear is probably a good option at this point since that gives more power of customization to the player, and hell, isn't that a big reason why we play XI instead of some other MMO anyway? The only problem with that is that it would make inventory bloat even worse for Dancers especially, so personally I think they should still go with the whole "make dual wield not reduce TP" thing if they can solve whatever technical issue they ran into, it's not like that would suddenly break Ninjas or something, and also it makes it more intuitive for players that can't be bothered to constantly check how much buff haste they have.

[Atomic_Skull]

The knee-jerk reaction of every player that posts on the OF and kept demanding that they stop nerfing jobs and just constantly give players more power is exactly why years after Abyssea lots of things that should've been nerfed have not been

Giving 2H jobs parity with 1H would have been the correct response not nerfing MNK and NIN while simultaneously catching other less powerful 1H jobs in the crossfire. There was probably a better way to fix RNG being overpowered than by turning it into a literally useless job too.



When it came time early-Adoulin for them to try outdating RMEs (before the great RME butthurt of 2013)

The fact is people poured years of their life into those weapons with the assurance from SE that they would never be outdated. Obsoleting them would have caused people to ragequit and with the subscriber base as small as it is SE can't afford to loose any more players. SE should never have made items like that in the first place but they did and now we are stuck with them. Like it or not SE has to do what the players want now because the players pay the subscriptions. They simply can't afford to say "don't let the door hit you on the way out" anymore.


As for bringing back the TP floor, I don't really think that'll help a lot considering how they upped one hander TP gain by quite a bit

I don't recall that when did this happen and what did they do?

[Kincard]

I'm not saying some of their nerfs in the past weren't bad, I'm saying players have mistakenly taken this stance that you should never nerf anything, and that is what has led to a lot of problems in the game today. I get the feeling that the team has a better grasp of the way the FFXI metagame works now and if they were given free reign to nerf things as they liked, you wouldn't have just one useful tank and as lopsided DPS classes and screwed up enmity. The best symbol of this "no-nerf" policy is the RME shields and instruments.

I'm all too familiar with the RME thing because I was one of those upset players, but if we were going to look at the game's design as a whole, its clear that items that make the player nearly invincible to damage (Ochain/Aegis) and an item that doubles a job's effectiveness (Daurdabla) are things that would be nerfed in just about any other game. Keep in mind this really has nothing to do with outdating RMEs, because the shields and harps were singled out as things that weren't going to be updated even before the whole ilevel thing was in full swing. The timeline looked something like this:

1. Skirmish comes out, some weapons better than RME, people get nervous and ask about it on the forums
2. They respond and say that we'll get betterer RMEs in time, except for shields and instruments
3. Ninja patch for Achuka's Tapioca-Polo-Anime Fists adds skill, amazing ilevel stuff starts to show up on Marjami/Yorcia, actual nerdrage happens
4. They quickly start making plans to make RMEs goodlier again
5. ??????
6. Rem's Tales are released, chronicling the folly of the invasion of King Totally-Not-Matsui

So even before they got the whole "oh wait, we better make RME useful again because people are mad" message, they already recognized how broken the shields/harp were. Although at least they have dealt with the bard problem by continuously buffing other support classes, especially GEO. I have no idea how they plan on making NIN and RUN as invincible as PLDs are, and when they do, I'm sure they're still perplexed as to how to fix enmity because if you make it too easy to hold hate, every single battle in the game would become a tank and spank with an invincible PLD just standing there while everyone else chips its HP away.

As for the TP thing, I guess I made a mistake. They actually increased the TP gain of all weapons. This happened alongside the Weapon Skill updates a few months ago. Point is that the TP floor wouldn't really be nearly as useful nowadays since there really isn't stuff like Hornetneedle anymore to abuse with anyway.

[Atomic_Skull]

4. They quickly start making plans to make RMEs goodlier again

Their original plan was to allow you to unlock the WS and then /drop the original weapon and that's when the nerd rage happened. They clearly wanted people to just toss their RME and move on and only relented when they realized they'd actually loose subscriptions over that.




As for the TP thing, I guess I made a mistake. They actually increased the TP gain of all weapons. This happened alongside the Weapon Skill updates a few months ago.

What exactly did they do, because I don't recall that.

[Kincard]

I'm feeling a bit too lazy to actually look this stuff up, but while they did say they were going to unlock the weapon skills (and they did anyway, for Empyreans), they also had proposed RME upgrades that lacked the ilevel skill before ilevel skill became a thing (They gave examples with one-handed swords).

The TP thing is just that, its just a simple increase in the amount of TP you get per swing.

[Byrth]

Well, the issue they're having is with their current pipeline. In the simplest case, it's:


Base Delay -> Delay Reduction (Dual Wield, Martial Arts, Delay-%, etc.) -> Adjusted Delay
1) Adjusted delay -> TP formulas -> TP/hit
2) Adjusted delay -> Various forms of Haste -> Effective melee delay



What they would need to do instead is:
1) Base Delay -> Delay*(1-MIN(1-0.2/(1-Haste%),Delay Reduction available) )-> TP formulas -> TP/hit
2) Base Delay -> Delay Reduction -> Various forms of Haste -> Effective melee delay

So they'd have the monkey around fairly deep in their own machinery and add a new function or two, exposing total Haste earlier, and changing the pipeline. Specifically, they'd probably leave effective melee delay calculation the same and add a new function to feed in to the TP Formulas. It's not impossible, but I can't really fault them too much for being afraid to touch that code.


Edit:
For the record, such a change would amount to a ~5% DPS increase for Dancer when I implement it in the spreadsheets. I made the assumption that equipment Haste would still be capped during WS.

I assume it would be similar for other DW/Martial Arts jobs (probably a slightly larger DPS boost for some), so it would have given Haste Samba value in this way. Not spectacular, but a buff to Haste Samba nonetheless.

[Atomic_Skull]

I'm feeling a bit too lazy to actually look this stuff up

I'm not:



Matsui here.

I have some follow-up information regarding how we plan to build on relic, mythic, empyrean, and Walk of Echoes ("coin") weapons (I'll refer to them as RMEC below. Apologies that I left out coin weapons in my last post).

There are many who feel upset and uneasy regarding the recently introduced weapons, as well as the information that has been conveyed until now. So while this information is still not finalized, I would like to give a bit more insight into our plans.

We are planning to unlock the special weapon skills that are granted from RMEC weapons when you have upgraded them to their level 99 form (this includes non-afterglow weapons, and shield/instruments will not be included in this). However, we plan on adding some conditions that fall in line with the jobs that can equip the respective RMEC weapons.

As we have yet to finish all the testing as to whether or not we can do this, please let me again reiterate that this is not yet finalized.

Due to the nature of this topic, we definitely need to proceed carefully, so despite the fact that I'm only mentioning this at the idea level, I understand that the level of disappointment will be quite great if I say that it is too difficult to accomplish this after all, and I was thinking it would be best to let you all know once it took a bit more shape.


The original plan was to unlock the RME WS and then toss the lvl 99 weapon. After that was posted the thread pretty much exploded with nerd rage.




The TP thing is just that, its just a simple increase in the amount of TP you get per swing.

I could not find anything about that so I'm going to assume you're wrong. I certainly don't see any difference in TP per hit.

[Gannon]

I could not find anything about that so I'm going to assume you're wrong. I certainly don't see any difference in TP per hit.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/42614-Jun-17-2014-%28JST%29-Version-Update

The changes to TP gain happened at the same time as the changes to TP displayed.