Increasing skillchain limit

[Malthar]

Hello SE,

Would it be possible to increase or unbound the number of weaponskills that can participate in a skillchain? Currently, the limit is 6, and 2 for light or darkness. Very few people ever go up to 6, but if the limit were increased it would be more of an incentive for people to go up to and past 6 for increased damage.

Thank you for your consideration.

[machini]

Hello SE,

Would it be possible to increase or unbound the number of weaponskills that can participate in a skillchain? Currently, the limit is 6, and 2 for light or darkness. Very few people ever go up to 6, but if the limit were increased it would be more of an incentive for people to go up to and past 6 for increased damage.

Thank you for your consideration.

If I understand correctly, there is no actual limit on how many WSes can be chained together. What limits it is the fact that the window in which each successive weapon skill must be performed shrinks with each successive weapon skill, so that after six the window no longer exists. With sufficient TP generation (and a lack of stun, paralyze, terror, and petrify), a decent DNC at attack speed cap can do back to back to back 5 part double darknesses, and a SAM (and, in theory, a THF) can do the same with six parts (on light for SAM, Darkness for THF).

The one problem I can see with increasing the number of steps in a skill chain is how the damage scales with each successive step in a skill chain. A six-step double darkness is going to do 225% of the damage of the WS that caused it. If you add in capped skillchain bonus, which some jobs can get, you're looking at 3.375x damage on that second light or second dark. Given that it's still fairly easy to hit 50k Rudra's Storms, even if it's infrequently, on a mob that is weak to piercing, or on SAM for a mob that is weak to slashing, you could be looking at, currently, well over 300k damage off that second Darkness or Light. And that's not including all the damage that precedes it. The first Darkness or Light, under those circumstances, could well do approximately 300k itself, with two SAMs or two THF/DNC/BRDs coordinating. Which means you can do, as it stands, more than 800k damage in two steps of a six step skillchain with appropriate buffs, and under favorable conditions. Even in normal conditions, with appropriate buffs, you're looking at 400k damage in two steps of a six step skillchain.

This is also the reason why following a Light or Darkness with a second Light or Darkness ends the skillchain. Assuming that, with good buffs, moonshade earring, and 2-3 THFs/DNC/BRD/SAMs coordinating, you could easily have 10k Fudos and 10k Rudra's Storms pumped out back to back to back. That's 145k damage, easily, with two or three people coordinating, and could possibly be done with any job combinations that all have access to Light or Darkness properties. If there's sufficient TP generation, you could go much higher. I know when I'm at attack speed cap, doing skillchains with a partner, I can almost always reach 2kTP before it's my turn again. Sometimes higher. Which means now you're pumping out even larger Rudra's Storms, Tachi: Fudos, Victory Smites, Camlann's Torments, etc, etc.

If you increase the maximum length of skillchains, going base on current progression, along with removing the "following a light or darkness with itself ends the skillchain" rule, at 8 steps you'd be looking at easily 217k damage, or 300k damage at 10 back to back to back Darkness/Lights.

The only way you could really increase the maximum length of skill chains would be by increasing the window, which means any job that can already do six step solo skillchains could easily do 7, 8, 9, 10, or whatever steps, assuming they don't get interrupted. That would be an insane amount of damage, especially if those were back to back to back Darkness or Light. And if they're all Darkness, or all Light, that makes it trivial to repeatedly magic burst off of those. Throw in another 100k/+ damage for a good BLM, and you're taking out delve NMs, vagary NMs, pretty much anything that is not outright immune to physical or magical damage, in 18 to 30 seconds. Sixty, tops, assuming no interruptions.

[Songen]

If i am not mistaken, there is a dmg cap of 99,999 on anything, so even if your dmg is supose to be 200,000, it'll be capped at 99,999. to be honest, increasing the window option for SCs sounds viable since you need quite a bit to build it upto that point

Even if your fighting a strong mob, likely hood of it AoEing to disrupt your SC is quite high with something like paralyse or knock back depending on the mob

[Urmom]

Yeah the dmg cap stops the higher dmg which for most situations kind of calls in to question the reason for making such a long easily stoppable chain.

[Nyarlko]

The reason that light/darkness stops at two in a row is due to the way that sc elements work, not due to restrictions on the dmg cap. If windows were increased, there would be more reason to try aiming for extending sc lengths, which I don't see as a bad thing. There is no reason to change how lv3/lv4 works though.. Could even cause problems with Aeonics, so don't think it's really something that would need to change. ^^;;

If the window capped at a lower limit of 2sec, then that should be enough to allow 2-3 players to keep a lv1/lv2 going and sounds like actual fun. XD I think they'd have to add a cap to the MB and SC dmg bonuses based on steps as well though, or we could end up looking at 99999 Scissions, which while amusing could be unbalancing enough to break what little game balance exists.

[PristineChicken]

I'm under the impression that the limit is a display limit only. Considering I've seen some end-game NMs die in ~3 WSes, it would imply there isn't.

[Jakuk]

Hello SE,

Would it be possible to increase or unbound the number of weaponskills that can participate in a skillchain? Currently, the limit is 6, and 2 for light or darkness. Very few people ever go up to 6, but if the limit were increased it would be more of an incentive for people to go up to and past 6 for increased damage.

Thank you for your consideration.

So no one goes upto 6 (mostly because of the cap) so why raise it?


I'm under the impression that the limit is a display limit only. Considering I've seen some end-game NMs die in ~3 WSes, it would imply there isn't.

Pretty sure it was tested and shown it is indeed capped at 99999

[Nyarlko]

So no one goes upto 6 (mostly because of the cap) so why raise it?

The reason is not due to the cap on the number of ws allowed to participate in a multistep sc though, it's the decreasing window for continuing them. Anything over 3step gets rather tricky to continue due to the timing (and broken by even a small lag spike) and gamers tend to prefer reliable/guaranteed results so risk/reward is deemed low enough for most to dismiss trying. Raising the window's lower limit would allow for us to go past the current 6step limit, so it could open up strategy possibilities if it was raised to 2sec at least.

[Jakuk]

The reason is not due to the cap on the number of ws allowed to participate in a multistep sc though, it's the decreasing window for continuing them. Anything over 3step gets rather tricky to continue due to the timing (and broken by even a small lag spike) and gamers tend to prefer reliable/guaranteed results so risk/reward is deemed low enough for most to dismiss trying. Raising the window's lower limit would allow for us to go past the current 6step limit, so it could open up strategy possibilities if it was raised to 2sec at least.

I'm all for raising the window, but I still don't see many if any people going past 6step bar the first couple of days.

[Nyarlko]

I'm all for raising the window, but I still don't see many if any people going past 6step bar the first couple of days.

Of course not, gamers are lazy by nature. :3
We will always take the path with the highest risk:reward ratio. Status quo for most until it's found that it's worth the effort to make any changes.
After it's been tested that increasing your sc = increased damage over time, then that would become the new status quo. XD
If it came out as a non-significant increase in non-MB setups, then it would just get relegated to niche use, but I can't think of any situation that it would be a bad thing to have available at least. ^^

[Urmom]

Pretty sure it was tested and shown it is indeed capped at 99999
Indeed. Easiest way to test was the delve nm that you could keep doubling the dmg it took for other sources. When your ws takes off as much hp as your strongest ws it's clear that's the real cap. Though it was shown some things can go past. Specifically barrage for the purpose of actual cap seemed to just count it as multiple shots though did some weird roll over thing for the display