New 2-hour Abilities

On behalf of every warrior everywhere: Please tell the developers that if they really believe a complete immunity to damage is balanced with a worse version of Formless Strikes, we're happy to swap abilities with samurai and call it a day.

This warrior two hour offers nothing to warriors that MS can't do with the raw physical power Mighty Strikes (and Tomahawk, as Byrth pointed out). You asked for other suggestions, we gave them. Pick one please and use it instead of your idea.

This thread could use the picture of the dartboard where every default field is "boost SAM".

jokes aside. SAMs new 2h is very powerful. in comparism to their new 2h most pf the other new ones look like a good laugh.

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Originally Posted by Kalilla

The development team needs to make sure that players will use these abilities. There would be nothing more insulting to players than adding new 2 hours that we'll never use.

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Not just insulting, but every ability slot, every byte of memory used on an ability no one wants will prevent countless possible future improvements from being made for years to come. And of course developer time is all too scarce these days, so that must not be wasted either. I honestly believe that no new ability at all is better than one that is bad.

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Originally Posted by Camate

Greetings!

Thanks for all the feedback thus far on the new 2-hour abilities.
Along with the feedback from the test server, we will be sure to utilize it for further adjustments.

In regards to effect durations and values, they will most likely be adjusted before they are implemented to the live server so please try them out first on the test server and get a feel for them. We are looking forward to hearing your thoughts after testing them out.

We are getting closer to the final stretch to implement these abilities on the test server, so hang in there just a bit longer.

Additionally, we made a few corrections to two of these new abilities. (The original list posted yesterday has been corrected as well.)

• RDM:
  Incorrect: Grants an increase to the effect and effect duration of enhancing magic.
  
  Correct: Grants an increase to the effect of enhancing magic.

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Regarding the RDM two-hour, there are reports that the effect increase is less than 2x. This is unacceptably underwhelming. The new two-hour should not offer less than triple potency, and should apply to all Enhancing magic, from Protect to Gain spells. Anything less is worthless compared to Chainspell. The new two-hour, while in effect, should also be immune to dispelling effects.

Merits should adjust the duration of the Job Ability while in effect, the duration of which should start at a minimum of a minute, to account for the time spent actually casting the spells. The duration of the affected spells should be enhanced by Composure.

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Originally Posted by Sotek

RDM has always been more of an enfeebler, if anything SCH is more of an enhancer. Give us this 2Hr so I can enjoy the delicious irony of having a 2Hr that would double the potency of Embrava, but never will since their recasts are linked. Well I assume they're linked at least, and their effects wear off if you use the other 2Hr to avoid exploiting COR to stack two 2Hrs.

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Players need to stop regurgitating this falsehood. RDM was never an enfeebling specialist, nor has S-E ever advertised it as such; if there was ever a point that the dev team implied it was or should become a better enfeebler(over other jobs with the same potential), I'd welcome a source to that reference.

Until merits, RDM didn't even have tier 2 Paralyze/Slow/Blind effects, NIN got tiers one and two natively, as well as a tier 2 poison effect parallel to RDM. BRD has always had more unique enfeebles in it's songs, as well as a more powerful slow. BLM had native control of the elemental DoTs, where RDM didn't. DRK had Stun and Absorbs, PLD had Flash. Until merits, the only unique enfeeble in RDM's powers was Gravity. Not to mention that, prior to WoTG, WHM, BLM, and SMN had superior native INT and MND stats to improve potency of said spells, to include a slightly more exclusive equipment inclusion (and example here would be Seer's from the Promathia era). Even DRK has superior Dark magic skill for superior Bio damage.

More importantly, with the exception of three or four spells, most of these enfeebles were underwhelmingly inefficent against most boss-level monsters. It was the unique combination of Bio, Poison, Gravity and Bind that made RDM any sort of threat. In the time after Aht Urgan, even this was made irrelevant.

It's the players alone under the delusion that RDM is some kind of enfeebling specialist; everyone was desperate to easily label the class and simply latched on to it's A ranked Enfeebling skill, the usefulness of which is debatable.

RNG needs some love the new 2h is nothing special, its at best 15min JA material and our old 2h does half the dmg of an Aftermath Crit...

A full enmity reset on top of the new 2h would be a way in the right direction.

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Samurai
Meikyo Shisui excels in instantaneous power. On the other hand, the new 2-hour ability is for cases where an enemy's AoE damage is too strong and getting close is dangerous. It will allow you to evade special attacks while dealing damage.

*Magical attacks will not be evaded, but will be made so that the damage received is 0. This will not have any effect on breath attacks, though.

With this ability we are aiming to make it possible to have a stable way of fighting by increasing defensive capabilities and diverting your time in battle towards enhancing offense capabilities.

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Stop designing bosses/NM's that require everyone to be invincible or else they get 1 shot by unavoidable AOE. This is unfun for both the melee AND the mages, but even more unfun for mages.

We should not have to employ PD/sam 2 hour strats in order to beat things, damage should be both avoidable AND curable, not unhealable and unavoidable. It seems you actually ENJOY designing bosses this way, as you are adding new ways for players to be invincible and still deal damage. Why?

Please realize how mind numbingly boring it is as a mage/support job to play in PD/embrava 2 hour zerging environments.

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Originally Posted by Hashmalum

Not just insulting, but every ability slot, every byte of memory used on an ability no one wants will prevent countless possible future improvements from being made for years to come. And of course developer time is all too scarce these days, so that must not be wasted either. I honestly believe that no new ability at all is better than one that is bad.

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QFT and forwarded to the "To the director" thread, made a few general points about useless abilities while at it x.x hopefully I'm not speaking crazy /sigh.

It greatly concerns me that Beastmaster's new 2-hour is not on the list.

They must actually, legitimately think it's okay.

So, I'm confused. Is the new Dancer 2 hour going to be finished once any flourishes are used 3 times, or does each category get 3 uses?

Either way I don't really see this as being too useful for content like Neo-Nyzul. Lets be serious, the concept of this 2 hour should be offence vs trance's defensive use, not "Well this one makes use of flourishes like how trance uses waltzes and steps just because!"

So I would propose adding one of the following additional effects to the DNC's 2 hour in addition to the reset-timer / 3 re-use flourish effect one of the following ways:

1) While under the effect of the 2 hour, doubles all damage output from the dancer.

Since pretty much all of our flourishes are combat related, this has good synergy with the concept of having this 2 hour be offense related. Just being able to use 3 combat flourishes back-to-back isn't enough to make DNC desireable for events - this would atleast give dnc some zerg potetial.

2) While under the effect of the 2 hour, makes any effects the dancer receives from enhancing flourishes AoE.

Remember how dancer was originally supposed to be a front-line support job? Apparently the devs don't since all we've been getting are solo damage boosting abilities lately. This ability would help get dancer's to lots of events and would justify the short duration. The ability to shoot 200-300 tp into the other melee or pass on some forced crits to sam weaponskills with climactic would help incorporate DNC into a melee-zerg 2 hour strategy nicely. Most importantly, this has a large benefit for dnc who don't have rudras, while also giving those who do a nice boost!

I understand that the devs have envisioned certain uses for each new 2 hour with an offensive use, now you have to ask:

Exactly what content situation would this ability be needed for? Right now even with the changes, this has no desirability or synergy for strategies, thus giving players no real reason to seek out a dancer for events. Other than needing to quickly finish off a mob solo, I can't see a situation where this would be useful - I'm tired of dancing solo, and I already have an ability on a 3 minute timer that lets me use Reverse/building/climactic to the maximum effect!

The bst community would still like to hear a practical application for killing our pet for stoneskin. Enlighten us please?

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Originally Posted by Sunrider

Players need to stop regurgitating this falsehood. RDM was never an enfeebling specialist, nor has S-E ever advertised it as such; if there was ever a point that the dev team implied it was or should become a better enfeebler(over other jobs with the same potential), I'd welcome a source to that reference.

Until merits, RDM didn't even have tier 2 Paralyze/Slow/Blind effects, NIN got tiers one and two natively, as well as a tier 2 poison effect parallel to RDM. BRD has always had more unique enfeebles in it's songs, as well as a more powerful slow. BLM had native control of the elemental DoTs, where RDM didn't. DRK had Stun and Absorbs, PLD had Flash. Until merits, the only unique enfeeble in RDM's powers was Gravity. Not to mention that, prior to WoTG, WHM, BLM, and SMN had superior native INT and MND stats to improve potency of said spells, to include a slightly more exclusive equipment inclusion (and example here would be Seer's from the Promathia era). Even DRK has superior Dark magic skill for superior Bio damage.

More importantly, with the exception of three or four spells, most of these enfeebles were underwhelmingly inefficent against most boss-level monsters. It was the unique combination of Bio, Poison, Gravity and Bind that made RDM any sort of threat. In the time after Aht Urgan, even this was made irrelevant.

It's the players alone under the delusion that RDM is some kind of enfeebling specialist; everyone was desperate to easily label the class and simply latched on to it's A ranked Enfeebling skill, the usefulness of which is debatable.

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Red mage was labeled an enfeebling class, because it was the best bet for landing enfeebles on a high level mob. All the other jobs you named had better things to do during a big fight than worry about landing enfeebling magic. Not to mention the fact that most of them weren't as good at landing them with the exception of one or two spells. I don't know what you thought red mage was, or what you thought it should be, or what the devs thought it was. But, it was there to enfeeble and cast haste / refresh %99 of the time and do whatever else you thought it was supposed to do the other %1. Devs can call it a flying pig if they want, but if it walks like a duck...



On Topic: The adjustments to dancers 2 hour seem pretty blah. I'm not even sure where that you would use this outside of just trying to make some cool numbers on your screen. Perhaps we could get some details as to how the devs plan on having this used, because it looks to me like it should just be a short recast offensive ability. Maybe to get just one more kill before getting timed out of dynamis? I dunno.

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Originally Posted by Calamity

The bst community would still like to hear a practical application for killing our pet for stoneskin. Enlighten us please?

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Come on, that's easy. When you are fighting a BIG NM and a BIG AoE is about to wipe you out, and your pet is going to die, you can pop it and survive that BIG hit while everyone else andyour pet dies...

You know for zerg situati.. ohyeah... right....

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Originally Posted by FrankReynolds

Red mage was labeled an enfeebling class, because it was the best bet for landing enfeebles on a high level mob. All the other jobs you named had better things to do during a big fight than worry about landing enfeebling magic. Not to mention the fact that most of them weren't as good at landing them with the exception of one or two spells. I don't know what you thought red mage was, or what you thought it should be, or what the devs thought it was. But, it was there to enfeeble and cast haste / refresh %99 of the time and do whatever else you thought it was supposed to do the other %1. Devs can call it a flying pig if they want, but if it walks like a duck...

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What you're talking about is the roles players forced the class into, not what it is actually tailored to do. SMN could land Silence on Suzaku as reliably as a RDM, would you call it an enfeebling specialist then? RDM was the most popular choice for healer in after Aht Urgan, did that make it a more specialized healer than WHM?

The players might have popularly chosen the RDM to enfeeble, but that didn't make it specialized nor properly equipped for the task, much less in the face of superior enfeebling powers on other classes, such as the examples I previously mentioned. Nothing you said invalidates my statements.

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Originally Posted by Zadimortis

It greatly concerns me that Beastmaster's new 2-hour is not on the list.

They must actually, legitimately think it's okay.

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I share your concern. I'm also concerned that Red Mage's new 2-hour is not on the list, because unlike Beastmaster's fundamentally misconceived ability, RDM's is actually fixable, and most of the fixes are trivially easy to do. It needs to last long enough for us to cast all the spells it can boost, the potency enhancement needs to be higher, and the enhanced spells need to be undispellable like Embrava is. Of those three things, the first two are just numbers. And nobody should say the third is impossible or too hard; after all, there are even certain monsters that use the same TP moves to put up undispellable buffs. (For example, look at the crabs in Walk of Echoes conflux #1--they use the same TP moves as normal crabs, but the Defense Boost status from their Scissor Guard is undispellable, whereas for normal crabs anywhere else, it can be dispelled easily.)

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Originally Posted by Sunrider

What you're talking about is the roles players forced the class into, not what it is actually tailored to do. SMN could land Silence on Suzaku as reliably as a RDM, would you call it an enfeebling specialist then? RDM was the most popular choice for healer in after Aht Urgan, did that make it a more specialized healer than WHM?

The players might have popularly chosen the RDM to enfeeble, but that didn't make it specialized nor properly equipped for the task, much less in the face of superior enfeebling powers on other classes, such as the examples I previously mentioned. Nothing you said invalidates my statements.

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It is what it is guy. You can tell everyone your a ballerina if you want, but that doesn't mean your gonna be in the next presentation of the nut cracker.

It doesn't matter what the devs say a job is supposed to be. It only matters what the job can do well. You can say red mage shouldn't be an enfeebler, but that's not gonna make them a DD or an enhancer, or whatever else you wish it was.

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Originally Posted by Byrth

DNC: I'm not really sure what you're saying here. We can use 3 Flourishes back to back? Okay, that's nice I guess. It's pretty much a gimp Meikyo Shisui then? Definitely better than what we had. I would recommend extending the duration back to 60 seconds and reducing all flourish recasts, but you've already clearly decided not to do that.

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Yeeeeah. At least this is BETTER than the piece of crap we were going to get.
However, I'd definitely like to see some improvements. I'm glad to see we'll be able to do more with this, but there is NO REASON to not use this 2 hour for 3 Reverse Flourishes. I mean, if it's supposed to give us full use of Flourishes, I'd love to be able to do a few Building + Climactic WSs while Reversing for more TP, but with only 3, I'm going to Climactic before 2 houring, then use 3 Reverses. Building would be a waste at that point.

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Originally Posted by Kalilla

The development team needs to make sure that players will use these abilities. There would be nothing more insulting to players than adding new 2 hours that we'll never use.

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you mean like the beast one? If I want stoneskin I'll /whm or /rdm and keep my pet tyvm.

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Originally Posted by Okipuit

Hey everyone,

The new 2-hours were developed based on the idea that they would share the existing 2-hour ability's recast timer and players would be selecting which ability to use based on the situation. Instead of these being a higher-tier or universal abilities that can be used for any situation, they are abilities that are designed to be used for specialized conditions.

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I wish I could say thats what these are, or that there were alot of different situations in this game right now, sadly to say that would be a lie.

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Below are the envisioned applications of some abilities as well as planned adjustments.

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Please tell me how some of these should work, like RDM, or BST. Please tell me how they are being adjusted to make them worth using over our current ones, or over other jobs abilities.

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While Mighty Strikes offers a lot of physical damage through critical hits for a period of time, the idea was to add a way to attack enemies that have strong resistances to physical damage.

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As many have said, Mighty Strikes will do more damage in almost any case than this especially because this does not work on Weapon Skills. The only situation in which this is worth while is when you have a constant permanent Amnesia effect on you!

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Based on testing and feedback, we are planning to make adjustments to extend the effect duration to 60 seconds. (Planning to make this change during this week’s Test Server update.)

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On top of this, add the effect to Weapon Skills. Its really sad that the best 2-hour you could come up with for WAR is just a copy of a Merit Job Ability for another job!

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The new 2-hour ability can be used for cases where just turtling up with Invincible and letting an enemy wail on you will not turn the tides of the fight, since you can enhance your defenses while reducing an enemy’s HP with the reflected damage.

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The problem is the defense needs to be enough to keep you alive, while damage has to be enough to actually matter, any case you would even think of 2-houring as a PLD for a defensive maneuver, you would be taking to much for you to just block alone. Not to mention, that in any case this game has got to the point with tanking where if you want damage done, the DDs hit it, if the PLD is tanking it, damage is not being done, or needed.

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As mentioned previously in the post about adding an enmity boost effect to this ability, we understand the problems with the enmity cap. We plan on considering this for paladin in general and not limiting it only to the new 2-hour ability effect.

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As mentioned previously in the post following your last. Adding enmity to this effect means nothing as of now, and means nothing if you add these abilities before fixing that problem. If my power is out, and I plug in a toaster I just bought from Wal-Mart its not doing any more for me at my house than it was when it was sitting on the shelf at the store. I am happy the problems are understood, or you think they are, but just understanding them means nothing, because until something is actually done about it anything relevant to it will have to be changed again later anyways.

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In addition to INT and MND, we will also be adding CHR to the stats that are lowered.

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Still not a ton of uses for this that I see when compared to the overwhelming power of Soul Voice buffs, but however, I will leave you to it, not every ability is meant for zerging or melee power, and its nice to see a mage that helps other mages.

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Meikyo Shisui excels in instantaneous power. On the other hand, the new 2-hour ability is for cases where an enemy's AoE damage is too strong and getting close is dangerous. It will allow you to evade special attacks while dealing damage.

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So basically this is Perfect Dodge, it lets you evade all attacks, all, attacks, and gives you more power on your Weapon Skills on top of it for each you dodge. Do you see how much of a slap in the face that is to THFs? THFs get to dodge, but they get no stronger and they do not dodge everything thrown at them.

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Magical attacks will not be evaded, but will be made so that the damage received is 0. This will not have any effect on breath attacks, though.

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What the hell is this? You already made this 2-hour better than both Invincible, and Perfect Dodge, but now, you allow a SAM to not even be effected by magic!? I thought it was bad that you stole the Merit Job Ability of MNK, and made it a 2-hour for WAR, but now you have made a 2-hour that is effectively Perfect Dodge, Invincible, Perfect Defense, and Impetus, all in a single ability! For people who preach balance, you sure have a shitty sense of it.

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With this ability we are aiming to make it possible to have a stable way of fighting by increasing defensive capabilities and diverting your time in battle towards enhancing offense capabilities.

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With this ability you threw balance out the window for 5 minutes and thought you would create the single most powerful 2-hour ability in the game for any non-supportive job!

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Trance is an ability that allows the player to take advantage of Waltzes and Steps, while the new 2-hour ability makes it possible to utilize Flourishes to the maximum. The advantage of this ability is that it makes it possible to always use the maximum effect for Building Flourish, Reverse Flourish, Climatic Flourish, etc., as you are granted 5 finishing moves.

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How about you grant unlimited Finishing Moves for the duration. Maybe then it will be a little better off, instead of an instant 5 alone.

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There have been requests asking for the recast times for Flourishes to be reduced or removed. The reason we did not do this is as you can expect, due to consideration for Reverse Flourish.
While it's not our intention to allow for weapon skills to be used continuously without limitations, it would be nice to be able to utilize Flourish II and Flourish III continuously, so we will be changing the effects as outlined below to allow for instantaneous damage.

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I understand your not wanting us to be able to WS back to back, that would be terrible for something that lasts 1 minute, and may only be used every 120 minutes, which means at most 1 time in any event in the entire game that I have ever been made aware of. Not only that, but you could limit it, maybe give us 5 times we can use Flourish abilities at no cost during its duration, with no cool-down on them either, that should be fair for its duration/recast of the entire ability.

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Reduce effect duration from 60 seconds to 30 seconds

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Why is it that any time you start to enhance an ability that sucks, you make the duration go to shit in return for its effect. Again, we get at most 1 use in any event in the game unless you are counting on the luck of a Corsair to give you another use of it.

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In addition to the Flourish recast timer being reset, it will be possible to use Flourish continuously up to a total of 3 times.

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3 times... not worth a 2-hour recast yet again. Really, please look at the limitation you put on these effects. Look at the power that Perfect Defense gives, or Embrava, these make sense, they are amazing powers and give you a real enourmous boost, not to 1 person, but an entire party or Alliance! This is lack luster yet again.

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The effect will wear off when either 30 seconds elapses or Flourish is used 3 times.

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I don't even feel like replying to this, for lack of words. All I can say is make it last the full duration no matter what, it shouldn't make a giant difference.

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During this week's Test Server update, we will be adding white mage's 2-hour ability as well the warrior adjustment listed above and fixing related bugs.

We are planning to address the bard and dancer adjustments in the following Test Server update.

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You have alot more adjusting to do for them to be balanced or worth-while. As for WHM's, when under the effect of it, every party member better be immune to every status effect in the game. If not, this will be stupid, it should become the ultimate shield against ailments, end of story.

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Amongst the feedback we have been receiving, there have been a lot of comments about changing the effects, reducing the 2-hour recast time, removing the shared recast timer aspect, and other ideas for largely changing the concept. It may take a bit of time to discuss and look into all of these, but we are planning to spend time on this without rushing implementation so that these are abilities that everyone is satisfied with.

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I am happy you want to make everyone happy. I am sorry to tell you that you have a very, very, very, long way to go before that happens, because alot of your abilities are terrible right now, or need worked on so much they could become worth while. The worse part in all of this, is that alot of them could easily be fixed such as RDM's, yet we still have no word on them, and so far as it seems they will be made even worse before better. I look forward to the next post on these abilities, as I want to tell you yet again my opinion on them. From how things seem to be changing around here, I feel as though my opinion is finally worth voicing. So please expect a long, thought out, reply from me each time I see a post of interest.

I would love to hear the dev's input on the DRG 2-hour. As it stands now it is very insignificant to be called a two-hour. It's more along the lines a beefed up Spirit Link.

All these new 2 hours are rather bad, some even downright atrocious. All EXCEPT Samurai.... which pretty much got a brand new 2 hours that is as potent as 4 other jobs old 2 hours..... Could you please go back to the drawing board and come up with a better idea, one that does not suck this bad. And please fix the new 2 hours for Red Mage and Beastmaster for crying out loud. The whole communities already said what they have to say and how to fix these, but it seems that you do not even want to consider any of the suggestion at all....

New BLU 2hr could benefit from a fulltime "Diffusion" effect during its duration that allows Harden Shell and Pyric Bulwark to become AoE for the party and a massively potent accuracy bonus for spells should be added so we don't have our physical spells 'miss' and fail to take effect on difficult mobs.

Hey SE can you please discuss drk, the drk community would love to hear your vision for the job class, and how you intend both 2hrs to function. As of right now drk's new 2hr is a embarrassment and does not provide the power I believe you intended it to have. Sam old 2hr is so much better than drk's new 2hr. With the 2hr activated we have to land 2-3 attacks to gain one ws is laughable when a sam goes from 0 to 300tp instantly. Furthermore, sam get to do 3 ws with there 2hr no matter what, while drk struggles to get anything close to 3 ws. lastly If the mob has no tp to drain the ability is almost useless. What the rational behind drk's new 2hr? Which one is our zerg 2hr? Or do we even have a zerg 2hr?

Having a tp drain on melee attacks as a 2hr is so underwhemming, what made you think of that?? Its a cheap version of Meikyo Shisui without the instantaneous power

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Originally Posted by Cljader1

Hey SE can you please discuss drk, the drk community would love to hear your vision for the job class, and how you intend both 2hrs to function. As of right now drk's new 2hr is a embarrassment and does not provide the power I believe you intended it to have. Sam old 2hr is so much better than drk's new 2hr. With the 2hr activated we have to land 2-3 attacks to gain one ws is laughable when a sam goes from 0 to 300tp instantly. Furthermore, sam get to do 3 ws with there 2hr no matter what, while drk struggles to get anything close to 3 ws. lastly If the mob has no tp to drain the ability is almost useless. What the rational behind drk's new 2hr? Which one is our zerg 2hr? Or do we even have a zerg 2hr?

Having a tp drain on melee attacks as a 2hr is so underwhemming, what made you think of that?? Its a cheap version of Meikyo Shisui without the instantaneous power

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The HP one sucks, only a counter balance for Souleater which is your real power, or at least was when it was good. TP one is good, it locks the enemy down by draining its TP and making it your own, effectively removing your enemy from being able to use their TP dependant attacks while giving you the power to destroy your enemies. This is even more improved by the fact everything is now a zerg, which means mobs are getting tons of TP, and you are draining even more of it off the mobs for you to use in your zerg.

i have to agree that dnc 2h seems like a poor sam 2h.

also, why reduce the duration when you put another limit to 3 uses ?
that's just telling us "burn it like a sam" while it could have a little more strategic use given the chance to see how the fight goes.
you can't even use flourishes 1 without wasting at least a third of it.

if you want theses new 2h to be on par with the old... i'd say you better improve some of the old 2h instead of making some of the new as bad.

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Originally Posted by Demon6324236

The HP one sucks, only a counter balance for Souleater which is your real power, or at least was when it was good. TP one is good, it locks the enemy down by draining its TP and making it your own, effectively removing your enemy from being able to use their TP dependant attacks while giving you the power to destroy your enemies. This is even more improved by the fact everything is now a zerg, which means mobs are getting tons of TP, and you are draining even more of it off the mobs for you to use in your zerg.

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Without ws's there is no zerg, waiting 2-3 attack rounds for a ws during a 30 second 2hr is hardly a zerg, and lord forbid if you miss. 30 seconds is to short, duration should be longer, and there should be no penalty for souleater while the 2hr is active

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Originally Posted by Calysto

i have to agree that dnc 2h seems like a poor sam 2h.

also, why reduce the duration when you put another limit to 3 uses ?
that's just telling us "burn it like a sam" while it could have a little more strategic use given the chance to see how the fight goes.
you can't even use flourishes 1 without wasting at least a third of it.

if you want theses new 2h to be on par with the old... i'd say you better improve some of the old 2h instead of making some of the new as bad.

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At least you dont have to drain your flourishes from the mob, because is dnc was treated like the bastard child that is drk you'll pull your hair out.

Twilight Scythe > War new 2hr

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Originally Posted by FrankReynolds

It is what it is guy. You can tell everyone your a ballerina if you want, but that doesn't mean your gonna be in the next presentation of the nut cracker.

It doesn't matter what the devs say a job is supposed to be. It only matters what the job can do well. You can say red mage shouldn't be an enfeebler, but that's not gonna make them a DD or an enhancer, or whatever else you wish it was.

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First off, a ballerina may not perform in the Nut Craker, but that doesn't make her any less a ballerina.

I'm not disputing what the players push onto a job, what I'm saying is that whatever the players want to believe, the mechanics are more honest--I'm not even talking about what I wish it was, I'm simply looking at what's always been there.

An example would be pre-Aht Urgan exp parties--everyone was hard up to spend ten minutes at a time taking out IT+ mobs, it was a while before someone had the bright idea to chain T-VTs for lower but faster exp at greater net gains. The mechanics were always available to net better exp on weaker mobs, even if we ignored it.

I'll put it this way: you can use the end of a screwdriver to hammer nails, and if its your heart's desire you can hammer stuff with that screwdriver butt all day long... but in the end, its just not a very good hammer. You can call RDM an enfeebler all you want, but that still doesn't change the fact that--given it's tools and comparing jobs with similar, exclusive, or even superior tools--RDM is and always was a mediocre enfeebler. Now, that doesn't stop anyone from using it to enfeeble exclusively; I'm simply saying that was never what the class was suited for, that's just not it's specialty. And--given that RDM was never particularly designed to be a superior enfeebler, adding that it was never intended or advertised to be--then its as absurd and unproductive to beg for enfeebling updates as it has been to beg for AoE powers.

And for the record, RDM's enhancing powers have always been head and shoulders above it's enfeebling capabilities, otherwise it wouldn't be so famous for it's survivability.

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Originally Posted by Okipuit

The new 2-hours were developed based on the idea that they would share the existing 2-hour ability's recast timer and players would be selecting which ability to use based on the situation. Instead of these being a higher-tier or universal abilities that can be used for any situation, they are abilities that are designed to be used for specialized conditions.

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This is definitely apparent with the better of the new abilities, but some of them just lack potency or are based on situations that never arise. I'll give three specific examples.

The Good: Bard - Good concept and good execution! While melee damage being favored over magic damage make this new ability very situational, it does exactly what it is meant to do.

This ability tears the magic defense and resistance of monsters apart in a situation where Soul Voice would have...uh...added a few more INT to people one at a time? This is a good situational ability.

The Bad: Warrior - A good concept that ends up being less potent than a current option. Unless the new ability affects weapon-skill damage, it will be worse than Mighty Strikes + Tomahawk for all situations.

Literally the only time this new ability would pull ahead is if a Warrior made the horrible decision of using Ukko's Fury (Raging Rush) instead of Upheaval (King's Justice) while Mighty Strikes was active in that situation. Please, don't balance new abilities around people doing something horribly wrong.

The Ugly: Beastmaster - Something in the concept itself is flawed. Beastmaster is already a defensive powerhouse and doesn't need a defensive ability that sacrifices the pet.

A level 86 sheep that costs me less than 1,000 gil could probably survive Vana'diel's equivalent of full-on nuclear war if my little tarubroro were hiding in a safe spot with Pet: -% Damage Taken stuff on, and that sheep would still have the energy to attempt to mate with a nearby Carbuncle and re-populate the earth. Other stuff is even heartier than that!

Beastmaster doesn't need more defense in any sense, much less defense that requires giving up its best defense even for a moment. Giving up the pet for a large amount of damage over a short time would be a much better pet-sacrifice concept.

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Originally Posted by Cljader1

Without ws's there is no zerg, waiting 2-3 attack rounds for a ws during a 30 second 2hr is hardly a zerg, and lord forbid if you miss. 30 seconds is to short, duration should be longer, and there should be no penalty for souleater while the 2hr is active

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You miss the point. Right now if you do Legion or ADL you want Perfect Defense because you want to survive TP attacks they throw at you along with normal hits. A DRK with this ability can put a lock down on a mobs TP, and make their own zerging power faster & more deadly with it. Normally while zerging ADL your waiting 4~5 hits for your WS, then you bust it out, and ADL uses his moves too which includes Tera Slash. Use this 2-hour, and now your WSing every 2~3 hits, without the fear of that Tera Slash coming down and instantly killing people. The same goes for Legion mobs which have this kind of thing going for them, it allows you to put a stop to them TPing and instead boost your own TP from it, allowing you to do more damage, and them to do less. The duration does suck but the ability in itself is very sound!

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Originally Posted by Demon6324236

You miss the point. Right now if you do Legion or ADL you want Perfect Defense because you want to survive TP attacks they throw at you along with normal hits. A DRK with this ability can put a lock down on a mobs TP, and make their own zerging power faster & more deadly with it. Normally while zerging ADL your waiting 4~5 hits for your WS, then you bust it out, and ADL uses his moves too which includes Tera Slash. Use this 2-hour, and now your WSing every 2~3 hits, without the fear of that Tera Slash coming down and instantly killing people. The same goes for Legion mobs which have this kind of thing going for them, it allows you to put a stop to them TPing and instead boost your own TP from it, allowing you to do more damage, and them to do less. The duration does suck but the ability in itself is very sound!

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So basically SE gave drk a situational 2hr to deal with ADL, and you assume this ability will not get any resistance. I dont understand why drk 2hr have to be so sitituational, en-tp drain....really. I can already get off absorb-tp off every 30 seconds, and before the absorb-tp nerf drks was able to absorb 100% tp in one shot without the 50% mob's current tp cap. If you want to control ADL why not line up 3-4 drks and alternately cast absorb-tp, most drk have around a 30 sec recast on the spell. But a en-tp drain with no other special buff is underwhemming and very very situational. I could understand the 30 sec duration if the en-tp drain also effected ws. But as it stands right now, drks main contributions is it zerg, SE needs to add an extra buff to this 2hrs like a percentage raise in str and att while the 2hr is active.

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Originally Posted by Cljader1

So basically SE gave drk a situational 2hr to deal with ADL, and you assume this ability will not get any resistance. I dont understand why drk 2hr have to be so sitituational, en-tp drain....really. I can already get off absorb-tp off every 30 seconds, and before the absorb-tp nerf drks was able to absorb 100% tp in one shot without the 50% mob's current tp cap. If you want to control ADL why not line up 3-4 drks and alternately cast absorb-tp, most drk have around a 30 sec recast on the spell. But a en-tp drain with no other special buff is underwhemming and very very situational. I could understand the 30 sec duration if the en-tp drain also effected ws. But as it stands right now, drks main contributions is it zerg, SE needs to add an extra buff to this 2hrs like a percentage raise in str and att while the 2hr is active.

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The reason why is because no matter what SE will never give us abilities worth the 2-hour timer itself, which is what you seem to want. The ability to lock down mobs TP attacks for that time while boosting your own damage seems good to me, it could obviously be better but at the same time ask for to much and you will get nothing, on the other hand, look at everything else they adjust, SE giveth, and SE taketh away, upgrade DNC? Psh~ give it something better but cut the duration in half, its just how they work, I am not saying the 2-hour is the best ever, but I am saying its better than what you could have gotten and its not all to bad.

Scarlet Delerium says Hello

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Originally Posted by Demon6324236

The reason why is because no matter what SE will never give us abilities worth the 2-hour timer itself, which is what you seem to want. The ability to lock down mobs TP attacks for that time while boosting your own damage seems good to me, it could obviously be better but at the same time ask for to much and you will get nothing, on the other hand, look at everything else they adjust, SE giveth, and SE taketh away, upgrade DNC? Psh~ give it something better but cut the duration in half, its just how they work, I am not saying the 2-hour is the best ever, but I am saying its better than what you could have gotten and its not all to bad.

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Why should we take lackluster 2hrs, en-tp drain could probably be worked into a dark magic spell form with high recast, but it not a viable 2hr. I mean look at sch original 2hr now that a REAL 2hr, SE moved heaven and earth to rework there 2hrs. Why cant drk's ask for the same treatment, btw war new 2hr is crap too, I can do there 2hr with my twilight scythe and I have more than 30 seconds with it too. Can't you see the garbage that being given to us, when SE put there mind to something you get something like sch's Tabula Rasa. SE put the same time into drk like you do sch please, a 30 sec tp melee drain is just unacceptable.

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Originally Posted by Cljader1

So basically SE gave drk a situational 2hr to deal with ADL, and you assume this ability will not get any resistance. I dont understand why drk 2hr have to be so sitituational, en-tp drain....really.

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http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/...0529223886.jpg

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Originally Posted by SpankWustler

The Ugly: Beastmaster - Something in the concept itself is flawed. Beastmaster is already a defensive powerhouse and doesn't need a defensive ability that sacrifices the pet.

A level 86 sheep that costs me less than 1,000 gil could probably survive Vana'diel's equivalent of full-on nuclear war if my little tarubroro were hiding in a safe spot with Pet: -% Damage Taken stuff on, and that sheep would still have the energy to attempt to mate with a nearby Carbuncle and re-populate the earth. Other stuff is even heartier than that!

Beastmaster doesn't need more defense in any sense, much less defense that requires giving up its best defense even for a moment. Giving up the pet for a large amount of damage over a short time would be a much better pet-sacrifice concept.

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This so much. The new 2-hour is ugly and useless. I could get behind an ability that sacrifices my pet. I could get behind an ability that is defensive in nature. What I can't get behind is one that grants a defensive buff at the expense of the pet which only benefits the beastmaster.

Bst desperately needs something that gets them into party content, because as it stands now, it only gets invited to participate when people want a last spot filled after an hour of shouts or to pre-75 content where it doesn't really matter who comes on what jobs. Therefore, make the healing, status removal and stoneskin party-wide buffs when the pet is consumed (without modifying the high amount of stoneskin). This would make the concept at least somewhat useful (in that it would be at least better than what it is now), even if it's just in an "oh shit" type of situation. Of course, granting offensive buffs would be much better, such as att+, crit hit rate+, or crit hit damage+, something along the lines of what embrava did for sch.

But as it is now, giving up your pet for a defensive buff for the bst exclusively is just a bad ability and will never be used.

I'm also curious as to what the dev team thought the use of this ability would be when they dreamed it up. The gulf between how the devs think bst is played and how players actually play it seems to be really wide at the moment though.

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Originally Posted by Cljader1

Why should we take lackluster 2hrs, en-tp drain could probably be worked into a dark magic spell form with high recast, but it not a viable 2hr. I mean look at sch original 2hr now that a REAL 2hr, SE moved heaven and earth to rework there 2hrs. Why cant drk's ask for the same treatment, btw war new 2hr is crap too, I can do there 2hr with my twilight scythe and I have more than 30 seconds with it too. Can't you see the garbage that being given to us, when SE put there mind to something you get something like sch's Tabula Rasa. SE put the same time into drk like you do sch please, a 30 sec tp melee drain is just unacceptable.

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Tabula Rasa took how long before they added Kaustra & Embrava? You do know they didn't come with a SCH originally right? It was years before they were added, just like Alexander & Odin for SMN. The 2 best 2-hours in the game right now started as decent or bad 2-hours and turned into the best 2-hours in the game when they were added onto with abilities only able to be used under their effects, so using Embrava/Tabula Rasa as an example doesn't work so well.

As for WAR's, look at my extremely long reply to our latest info on these, I have part of that post as a response to the info on our wonderful~ 2-hour for WAR, its just Formless Strikes with a much longer recast. I'm not saying that we should just deal with the bad, I'm saying there are worse and you ignore the good your ability has. One of the most complained about parts of events right now is that everything has attacks that do way to much damage, this gives you the power to limit those massively by removing the TP from them as they get it, then fire it back at them for more damage than you had before. BST gets to gain defense by losing their best defense, RDM gets to have slightly stronger buffs that are barley better and the duration is to short to even buff properly, let alone others like Embrava does. Your not getting the short end of the stick, DRK is a nice 2-hour, there are much worse around right now.

Back when you originally posted you asked what their vision is for DRK, I cant tell you what their vision is, but I can tell you what I believe it to be. DRK is a job that takes its enemies power for its own, and turns the enemies power against them so they are easier to destroy. Examples of this are all throughout the job, Drain, Aspir, Absorbs, Dread Spikes, even the Mythic enhances those effects for your Absorbs, the job is about making your enemy weaker, while making yourself stronger, Blood Weapon did this too, as it stole their HP and gave it to you, and now this does the same but with TP, so you steal their TP, and make it your own weapon to crush them with!

IF you leveled BST with the intent of it being a party job, You leveled the wrong job...

BST since inception has been the solo job of FFXI. Abyssea barely changed that for a little while, And even then in time, It once again became the solo job of FFXI.

While it could use some nice Party specific boosts i suppose, a 2hour would not be the solution to that.

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Originally Posted by Sunrider

First off, a ballerina may not perform in the Nut Craker, but that doesn't make her any less a ballerina.

I'm not disputing what the players push onto a job, what I'm saying is that whatever the players want to believe, the mechanics are more honest--I'm not even talking about what I wish it was, I'm simply looking at what's always been there.

An example would be pre-Aht Urgan exp parties--everyone was hard up to spend ten minutes at a time taking out IT+ mobs, it was a while before someone had the bright idea to chain T-VTs for lower but faster exp at greater net gains. The mechanics were always available to net better exp on weaker mobs, even if we ignored it.

I'll put it this way: you can use the end of a screwdriver to hammer nails, and if its your heart's desire you can hammer stuff with that screwdriver butt all day long... but in the end, its just not a very good hammer. You can call RDM an enfeebler all you want, but that still doesn't change the fact that--given it's tools and comparing jobs with similar, exclusive, or even superior tools--RDM is and always was a mediocre enfeebler. Now, that doesn't stop anyone from using it to enfeeble exclusively; I'm simply saying that was never what the class was suited for, that's just not it's specialty. And--given that RDM was never particularly designed to be a superior enfeebler, adding that it was never intended or advertised to be--then its as absurd and unproductive to beg for enfeebling updates as it has been to beg for AoE powers.

And for the record, RDM's enhancing powers have always been head and shoulders above it's enfeebling capabilities, otherwise it wouldn't be so famous for it's survivability.

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The players didn't push it on the job. The job was designed to do a bunch of different things. It turns out that it was better at one of them than anyone else, so that became it's calling card. Red mage may have had a limited amount of unique enfeebles, but having all the spells in the world isn't going to help if you can't land them with any consistency, which red mage could and other jobs couldn't.

I don't care if you know everything there is to know about cooking and you have a degree in engineering and you can sing like mariah Carey while simultaneously winning the tour de France on a unicycle. If you show up in my driveway every Wednesday and empty my trash... Even if everyone you know is better than you at emptying trash. Even if you do a crappy job at it and get garbage all over the street. Even if you are far better at a million other things. You are not a singer or an athlete or an engineer or a chef. You are the garbage man.

Likewise, I don't care if bard can DD like crazy, or if red mage has lots of nifty buffs or if ninja can cast slow. That's not what their job is. I don't care about their side hobbies. I only care about what they bring to the group. That's how they get labeled tank, support, en-feebler. Maybe they will give Red mage some awesome new buffs that affect the party, or something that makes them an amazing DD, and then we can change the title to something else. But that's not what they were in the past and you can't change that. You can only change the future.

PS: If my hammer is wacky and misses the nail all the time, but the screw driver hits the nail on the head every time, then yes. I will build an entire house with a screw driver.

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Originally Posted by Okipuit

Hey everyone,

The new 2-hours were developed based on the idea that they would share the existing 2-hour ability's recast timer and players would be selecting which ability to use based on the situation. Instead of these being a higher-tier or universal abilities that can be used for any situation, they are abilities that are designed to be used for specialized conditions.

Below are the envisioned applications of some abilities as well as planned adjustments.

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Really? I gotta be honest, the devs didn't really think that logic through. The game, as it is now, does not possess the highly situational state of affairs it used to. It's like the dev team designed these abilities back in 2007 and just shelved them until now. Back then, honestly, they probably would have seen a fair amount of use. Today? not gonna fly. Unless they fully intend to return the game to the hypersituational state of affairs with Seekers of Adoulin, then there's really no justification for this, and even then, the players' mindset has changed so much that we're still not going to happily accept hyper situational abilities. Moderately situational but still useable with some frequency? Sure, those are always nice. However, most of these abilities are not even remotely close to that point.

Currently, the "specialized conditions" in which these abilities would be useful either do not exist or can only be found in one, singular instance. Giving us 2hours to deal with things that aren't in the game yet is stupid, especially if you're not going to tell us that you're planning that.

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Originally Posted by Okipuit

[*]Warrior
While Mighty Strikes offers a lot of physical damage through critical hits for a period of time, the idea was to add a way to attack enemies that have strong resistances to physical damage.

Based on testing and feedback, we are planning to make adjustments to extend the effect duration to 60 seconds. (Planning to make this change during this week’s Test Server update.)

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Like others have said, unless this is changed so that it also applies to weapon skills, mightystrikes + tomahawk will still be more useful against the mobs the devs are thinking of, especially because tomahawk helps every party member.

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Originally Posted by Okipuit

[*]Paladin
The new 2-hour ability can be used for cases where just turtling up with Invincible and letting an enemy wail on you will not turn the tides of the fight, since you can enhance your defenses while reducing an enemy’s HP with the reflected damage.

*As mentioned previously in the post about adding an enmity boost effect to this ability, we understand the problems with the enmity cap. We plan on considering this for paladin in general and not limiting it only to the new 2-hour ability effect.

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So, instead of turtling up with PDT-100%, you're turtling up with PDT-whateveryourshieldblocks% and reflecting some of the damage back. You said that you'd be adding enmity equal to invincible to it, and I may simply have missed it, but does the reflect damage generate any enmity? If it doesn't, it needs to. Broken enmity system or not, when you give pld an ability meant to deal damage, and it doesn't do the one thing pld needs dealing damage to do (generate enmity), it defeats the purpose.

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Originally Posted by Okipuit

[*]Samurai
Meikyo Shisui excels in instantaneous power. On the other hand, the new 2-hour ability is for cases where an enemy's AoE damage is too strong and getting close is dangerous. It will allow you to evade special attacks while dealing damage.

*Magical attacks will not be evaded, but will be made so that the damage received is 0. This will not have any effect on breath attacks, though.

With this ability we are aiming to make it possible to have a stable way of fighting by increasing defensive capabilities and diverting your time in battle towards enhancing offense capabilities.

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Get rid of the damage boost. This is already a very powerful defensive ability, the damage boost is absolutely overkill if you're going to make it that effective. Honestly, this sounds like a tank ability that you should have given ninja or pld, and if you had done that, you know full well there would have been no accompanying damage boost.

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Originally Posted by Okipuit

Amongst the feedback we have been receiving, there have been a lot of comments about changing the effects, reducing the 2-hour recast time, removing the shared recast timer aspect, and other ideas for largely changing the concept. It may take a bit of time to discuss and look into all of these, but we are planning to spend time on this without rushing implementation so that these are abilities that everyone is satisfied with.

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It's very good, and VERY reassuring that you're willing to take the time to discuss and debate these abilities, and I'm absolutely thrilled that you've got no intention of rushing the process. Thank you for that. However, there are somethings that we absolutely need addressed before we can give much further feedback:

- We need to know what the deal is with your logic behind bst's new 2hour, because it is horribly inappropriate and inadequate, and we've really gotten nothing but silence and ambiguous mutterings about it. It makes absolutely no sense as a defensive ability. It's more akin to a suicide ability like mijin gakure. It's not just bst, either, the devs are being far to silent on the abilities as a whole, unless they decide to change them. We would greatly appreciate if they would make clear what there intentions were for each ability so that we can more easily understand what they're willing to give us and what we should be aiming for.

- We need to know how much you're leeway willing to give with these abilities. Is completely redesigning any of them even in the realm of possibility? Or are we stuck with these general ideas, and limited to adding to them and tweaking them to make them work more towards what we think would be useful?

- We need to know what the devs had in mind when they're creating these abilities. I'm not asking for "what new stuff are you planning to add" specifically, but "what types of new monsters are you planning to add that these abilities would suddenly be useful?" because most of the new 2hours don't seem to have been designed with current NMs and endgame events in mind. I'm not asking specifics, this is a matter of "you're obviously planning to change up how NM fights work, can you give us any hints/ideas as to what you've got in store so that we can give you better feed back on what we'd need to be able to respond to such fights?" This is a good thing, because it seems like the devs have recognized that right now, every fight is pretty much just negate all damage and kill it as fast as possible, which sucks all the fun out of the fights, but you can't give us this stuff and say "here's a bunch of super situational stuff you guys don't need right now. *wink*"

These three points, if nothing else, really need to be addressed if you want us to give you quality feedback, especially as to whether these abilities were planned around new, future content, rather than current existing stuff, because without that being explicitly stated, and giving us some idea as to what said content might entail, we're only going to be able to give feed back based on what we know, which is going to be "Perfect Defense, Embrava, KILLKILLKILLKILL" without question.