Adjustments to Embrava and Perfect Defense

I think that's both in and out of perspective. Nidhogg and Co. were created when much less equipment existed and most of the equipment that did exist was overtly awful.

Moving back and back in time towards Rise of the Zilart, the list of useful stuff from Nidhogg and Co. expands a bit. Also, so much of the equipment was so awful back then that getting the best or second-best piece could mean no longer needing to use a piece of equipment that rightly should never have existed.

Right now, Legion is relatively new and its equipment is as relevant on paper as it will ever be. The crafted sets from Legion will probably become easier to craft, but that won't make them any better.

Although, I imagine already having so much equipment that isn't cat-poop-on-fire-shaped-into-the-likeness-of-your-dead-fiance makes it much harder to add equipment that people find appealing. So, maybe there's a Catch-22 here and Legion is roughly as rewarding as the average modern event can be, after all?

Also, sorry, but I couldn't resist...

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Originally Posted by Byrth

Pugiunculus.

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Half pug. Half homunculus.
http://th05.deviantart.net/fs70/200H...is-d4k0979.jpg

That's pretty much what I'm going for. Given that these options exist and we can't have events justified by the horridness of alternatives anymore, Legion is approximately as rewarding as a level 75 event was just before the level cap increase, when there existed a lot of 70-75 armor.

Many Samurais did Salvage purely for Usukane feet and body. Compared to that level of effort, Legion isn't bad.

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Originally Posted by Byrth

For WAR, Legion offers Kumarbi's Akar (Regen set)

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Can you be serious a minute.

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For WAR, Legion offers Kumarbi's Akar (Regen set) and C.Feet. It is also the major source of Ormolu ingots and the only source of Honors.

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BWAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHAHAHA

Sorry had to get that out.

There are some decent upgrades for mages, but the vast majority of the gear is 1~2% improvement at best, if it even has improvement. Legion is mostly for people to say their doing something rather then spamming the same old content.

I AM serious. Seriously running around regening 12 HP/tick like a boss!

Haters gonna hate.

Checking out my invo (mnk).

4 items come from dynamis (one of them being a relic)
8 items come from AH (mostly bcnm or crafted stuff)
13 items from abyssea
3 from voidwatch (with 2 being AH able)
3 from meeble
3 from salvage
4 from artifact
1 from walk of echoes
1 from legion (AH-able)
1 from sky
2 from neo nyzul
2 from hnms
3 from sea/limbus
1 random from imperial standing rank

For my WAR:

5 from Dynamis (Ragnarok included)
9 from AH
15 from Abyssea (Ukon and augmented items included)
12 from Voidwatch (9 buyable if you include bodies)
0 from meeble (but some day 1)
0 from artifact
1 from walk of echoes
2 from Legion
1 from Sky
4 from neo nyzul
4 from sea
1 from limbus
1 from campaign
2 mission reward (Moonshade and Rajas)
1 that I apparently didn't count anywhere because this only adds to 58 and I have 59 items in my inventory


I'm using a pretty minimal set at the moment because I'm just out testing, but these are the basics.

Sums up pretty much that they do everything wrong. 3 years after abyssea gear is still relevant.

Well, more like 2 years, but you have to remember that most of the crap we used before Abyssea was ~5 years old. Gear turnover in this game is very slow, which is what used to make it seem worthwhile to farm for slight upgrades. Now people look at small increases in performance through gear and basically blow it off because something good is going to come out in a year that outdates it.

I don't agree, in the gear I listed you still find level 75 stuff that I kept

4+ items come from AH (mostly bcnm or crafted stuff) including .. an earth staff
3 from salvage
4 from artifact
1 from sky
2 from hnms
3 from sea/limbus
1 random from imperial standing rank

They failed to replace basic gear. Those gear include stuff like rajas/brutal earring, sea gorget, black belt, defending ring,
basic AF, a boomerang, byakko... There are rooms for upgrade to these items but they just don't want too and prefer introducing downgrades for melee or WS gear. They have no clear vision of "items upgrade" either as many meeble items beat other options too when you would think harder content should be better, but no !

They advertised legion as hard with super awesome abjurations (DA+2 on gloves guys !). It's not the case, but many people think they do. They also made several post at one point and basically told us that arise and meteor dropped from legion (which we didn't see lol). I mean I think it's the first time they have actually given such contribution to an event by explaining what it drops. And now this thread. They are quite desperate I would say.

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Originally Posted by Camate

With that said, we will not be lowering the difficulty because there are people who feel that the battle is too difficult. Instead, we would like players to collect better gear from slightly easier content, work out a battle strategies, and rise to the challenge.

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Whenever the devs make excuses about anything and ask for our patience or whatever, I'm going to mercilessly throw this back in their collective faces. Enjoy!

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Originally Posted by MarkovChain

Checking out my invo (mnk).

4 items come from dynamis (one of them being a relic)
8 items come from AH (mostly bcnm or crafted stuff)
13 items from abyssea
3 from voidwatch (with 2 being AH able)
3 from meeble
3 from salvage
4 from artifact
1 from walk of echoes
1 from legion (AH-able)
1 from sky
2 from neo nyzul
2 from hnms
3 from sea/limbus
1 random from imperial standing rank

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You are essentially proving my point. Legion's proportion of useful equipment is more or less the same as the vast majority of events added in the last several years. About ~20% useful spread out amongst the 20 jobs and ~80% crap. Count up the useful pieces from VW, WoE, Neo-Limbus, etc., divide by the total number of items in each event, and you will find similar proportions (~10%-25%). We already know SE throws a lot of junk gear into its events. This is not new. Does that mean we should just stop playing all new content?

Did YOU yourself refrain from doing Meeble Burrows because you discovered it had one or two good MNK pieces, but the majority of the other items are crap? Of course not. As a WHM + SMN-gearing player, would I automatically condemn the event and all of my MNK friends who want to do it simply because there isn't anything I need from a WHM + SMN perspective? Of course not.

Nobody is denying Abyssea has the highest concentration of useful gear of any event in recent memory. In fact, the event surprisingly blew away the ~10-25% percentage and brought it to something like ~80% or higher. Everybody made it their business to get full sets of all the AF3 gear. We KNOW this already. Stop comparing apples and oranges.

What you keep irrationally refuting is the proposition that anyone who does Legion is not doing it because they are elitists, but simply because they are looking for some fun, challenging content to min/max their characters when they have everything else for their jobs.

When people come back to the game now, I make sure to tell them not to do Legion or bother with it in the least until they're totally capped out on other content. Having the hardest events in the game offer arguably the smallest upgrades is really just a way to avoid power creep. We have all the other gear, so we're willing to work for increasingly minor upgrades to the jobs we like. Minor upgrades don't offer a power-creep problem.

Once you cap out on other content, what do you do? You either focus on aesthetic upgrades, minor functional upgrades (like Khepri Jacket), or stop attempting to upgrade your character in a meaningful way and just do the events that you find fun. I view Legion both as fun (requires coordination of multiple people that can't be pants-on-head retarded) and offering small functional upgrades to my jobs. I prefer this to farming gil to buy Khepri Jacket/Kecks or farming gil to make my weapons glow because, though those might improve me more or make my character more unique, they wouldn't be very fun for me.

I do Legion and Provenance these days. The only R/Ex Legion drop I've gotten that I really wanted was T.Head, which I uncursed. The only thing I have gotten from Provenance that I use sometimes is Wanion belt. Still no Myrmex Mittens or Tessera's Saio, and I enter every Provenance run assuming I'm going to suffer for an hour to make ~200k gil average. Compared to that, Legion is a rewarding breeze.

A large fraction of my Legion shell also does Ballista just because they find it fun. I'm not quite willing to jump into the "you are spending time playing FFXI but aren't upgrading your character in any way" bandwagon, but I'll at least keep doing Legion just for fun.

I never understood the point of getting gear to get better gear in PvE MMOs. PvE MMO should be more about story, quest, and helping others. Gear wise, I always looked at FFXI as Story > level > Helping other > Gear.

In that of you can completed the story at your level you don't need more levels.
In that to help other you needed to be higher level then them.
In that being geared to your level can make things easier but not the difference in not being able to do something.

But almost all of the story can now be completed with the 78 abbysea sets and a level 99 party of 2-4. So my hubby and I are almost done every quest, mission in the game without doing Weapon upgrades quests.

Now in a PvP MMO that makes sense to me because then you're fighting other people where better gear over comes skill.

If nothing else, I guess it will make more sense to call it Embrava instead of Aura. Although in some newer titles it has been similar to what it is going to be just as well.

With that said, why is it called Embrava instead of Aura again? I forget if there was any discussion about it when it was introduced (Japanese version is Aura though).

I guess it's like why Kaustra is Kaustra, instead of Merton...

Hahah, oh, but I digress... dommaind.

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Originally Posted by Kraggy

Er, but AV WAS beaten, eventually.

I don't see a problem here, adding content that can't be 'beaten' TODAY, being there when players are geared up through content to be released over time.

And to those alluding to the resources SE devote to creating such content being wasted, well, yeah, I'm sure many players could say that about content THEY can't aspire to completing for various reasons. Given these resources are likely pretty minor in the great scheme of things, that's not an argument worth worrying about IMO.

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Yeah after the level cap was upped, and a few times at the 75 cap initially by Kclub dark zergs which was later nerfed, then by exploiting a sort of terrain glitch and a battery of BLM's which was deemed an exploit and patched.

At the 75 cap AV was never beaten the "proper" way to this day no one really knows exactly WTF was the proper way to beat AV.

Edit: Would seem some one already beat me to including this info, guess that's what i get for being late to the conversation...

Not that I ever did AV back in the day, But i'm pretty sure SE expected you to lock his chainspell/manafont/benediction and kill him the normal way.

IIRC meteor was the main thing that fucked everyone up (maybe bracelets ga spells? idk)

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Originally Posted by Raksha

Not that I ever did AV back in the day, But i'm pretty sure SE expected you to lock his chainspell/manafont/benediction and kill him the normal way.

IIRC meteor was the main thing that fucked everyone up (maybe bracelets ga spells? idk)

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Except there was no way to lock out his 2hr's until after he used them, namely Benediction / Chainspell. If you didn't have a WHM lock out Benediction he was basically invincible, and your why had to use their 2hr within a few seconds of AV using his, if lag happened then you had to get wait another long a$$ time for him to bene again. Chainspell Meteor was much the same way, you had to have a RDM immediately use CS and even then you had to ride out at least one wave of Meteor spam, something that usually wiped a few alliances.

And that's only ~after~ they patched him, initially there was no way to lock out Benediction / Chainspell meteor. Groups have fought him for 24+ hours straight rotating alliances (NA -> JP) and still couldn't kill him. Then a group found out the wall glitch and used a couple of PLDs running in and building hate then running away and sticking him in the corner. On the other side was a bunch of BLMs nuking away to slowly bring him down. They killed him and he dropped absolutely nothing, no title no treasure pool, absolutely squat. Was a huge issue back then, that SE would create a super boss that had no drops. SE soon patched away the glitch, and much later added "drops" and lowered his HP. Soon an alliance of KC drk's were able to beat him by killing him before he could 2hr meteor spam / benediction. Entire servers were collecting people to make AV attempts until SE nerfed soul eater. After that AV become something people would die on "for the lulz", they lowered it to 2hr max time but it didn't make any difference.

I think we know exactly how to beat him. I don't think there are any more secret mechanisms, SE just expected it to be a long and incredibly difficult/frustrating fight. Here's how the fight was supposed to go:
1) Get awesome Tanks, more than you need, so AV can't kill them faster than they unweaken. - This was possible at 75 with Aegis PLDs.
2) Hold AV while you break his regen by spamming the same element as the day.
3) Also lock AV's 2-hour triplets at the same time by following his 2-hour with your own.
4) At this point you have a monster with low Regen that can't 2-hour and a reliable holding team, so you basically just fight a really long fight whittling him away down to 0 HP.

The problem is that this strategy became totally impossible when they introduced the 2 hour time limit. Not to mention that it was essentially impossible to start with because when AV came out COR and Revitalizers didn't exist and we all legitimately had to wait 2 hours before we could 2-hour again so any mess-up potentially extended the fight 2 hours. If I had to guess, I'd say this was designed to be about an 8 hour fight at 75 assuming nothing went wrong, and partial wipes would add on from there.

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Originally Posted by Byrth

The problem is that this strategy became totally impossible when they introduced the 2 hour time limit.

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The Adjustment of Virtue: A Tragic Comedy in One Act

Developer A: So, how do we change this fight that's based on abilities with a two-hour recharge time?

Developer B: Let's just give it a time limit of two hours, like the other fight we just adjusted.

Developers A-D applaud. Developer E scampers up the scaffolding, presumably in celebration; he begins disrobing and destroying the stage in turn.

Developer C: I ate a stray cat once.

Developer A: Whole?

Just gonna pose this to the devs:

Don't you see that impossible or extremely difficult content ends up driving players to seek out exploits, 3rd party tools, and possibly RMT more than they otherwise would? I don't think you want that, but it's what you're promoting when you start dangling the carrot too far out of reach of even the best players.

I used to be absolutely dead-set against their use, but now with the attitude you've expressed, I've changed my tune. While I can't say I'll be using anything illegal, I certainly will no longer think poorly of or report anyone doing so. As long as the house feels it's ok to stack the deck against the players, I have no issue with anyone who wants to try and even their odds. It may not mean much to them, but I apologize to anyone I've given a hard time to on this subject. Do what you gotta do, people. I now completely understand.

Now back to the devs. If my mind can be changed by your "new" stance, what do you think others are thinking? What about those who were already using those methods? Don't you think they might feel emboldened? What about those on the fence? You don't think you just gave them a nice hard shove in a direction you don't want them to go? Really think about what you're doing here guys.

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Originally Posted by Byrth

I think we know exactly how to beat him. I don't think there are any more secret mechanisms, SE just expected it to be a long and incredibly difficult/frustrating fight. Here's how the fight was supposed to go:
1) Get awesome Tanks, more than you need, so AV can't kill them faster than they unweaken. - This was possible at 75 with Aegis PLDs.
2) Hold AV while you break his regen by spamming the same element as the day.
3) Also lock AV's 2-hour triplets at the same time by following his 2-hour with your own.
4) At this point you have a monster with low Regen that can't 2-hour and a reliable holding team, so you basically just fight a really long fight whittling him away down to 0 HP.

The problem is that this strategy became totally impossible when they introduced the 2 hour time limit. Not to mention that it was essentially impossible to start with because when AV came out COR and Revitalizers didn't exist and we all legitimately had to wait 2 hours before we could 2-hour again so any mess-up potentially extended the fight 2 hours. If I had to guess, I'd say this was designed to be about an 8 hour fight at 75 assuming nothing went wrong, and partial wipes would add on from there.

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The infamous official AV video showed that it was an 8+ hour fight the way the dev team did it--remember the accusations that the dev team were using debug/GM mode tricks of some sort to reset 2 hours, because we saw the same players using 2 hours on the same in-game day? They weren't, they just fought the damn thing long enough for the in-game week to wrap over. This also fits with their statements about how the way we were trying to kill it was "too fast", as well as the fact that they initially designed Pandemonium Warden to be a grueling endurance match against 20 forms each with a ton of HP. They came from the crazed, brutal old-school online gaming culture of EverQuest 1 that thought that literally spending all day to kill a mob once (never mind the weeks needed to farm the pop items!) was totally reasonable.

I'm guessing that the other thing they expected us to do was to have multiple outside parties killing pets and being ready to rotate into the alliance that was actually fighting AV when there was a mass casualty event like Meteor. The fact that this would mean that of the dozens who fight AV, only 18 would even get the title and a handful would get drops of any kind was just one of those classic old-school FFXI screwjobs, like having up to 64 people farming Dynamis for one egomaniac's weapon.

Then they took this same design mentality into an era where everything was on a timer because something something legal liability something something what's "instancing"? something, only just barely watered down enough to avoid riots, and that's why we get these ridiculous NMs that we need ridiculous abilities to beat and ridiculous statements from the dev team about it. They just have never adjusted to the fact that there is massive competition and people will leave rather than stick it out when faced with bullshit, they never adjusted to the mentality of producing an ongoing user experience rather than a static product handed down from on high, and they never adjusted to the fact that their core audience is aging and shrinking and doesn't have the spare time or patience that they did when they were younger.

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I'm guessing that the other thing they expected us to do was to have multiple outside parties killing pets and being ready to rotate into the alliance that was actually fighting AV when there was a mass casualty event like Meteor. The fact that this would mean that of the dozens who fight AV, only 18 would even get the title and a handful would get drops of any kind was just one of those classic old-school FFXI screwjobs, like having up to 64 people farming Dynamis for one egomaniac's weapon.

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AV originally had no drops or title as was confirmed by the first group to kill him using the wall glitch. Those were added MUCH later, when they made it "killable". AV (and PW who originally had infinite forms not 20) were designed as ultimate boss's that high level players would throw themselves against time after time for the "challenge". Most of us weren't that stupid and recognized the BS, though some still insisted that they could somehow kill those two. Think artificial content extension.

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Originally Posted by saevel

AV originally had no drops or title as was confirmed by the first group to kill him using the wall glitch. Those were added MUCH later, when they made it "killable". AV (and PW who originally had infinite forms not 20) were designed as ultimate boss's that high level players would throw themselves against time after time for the "challenge". Most of us weren't that stupid and recognized the BS, though some still insisted that they could somehow kill those two. Think artificial content extension.

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And remember the temp bans SE handed out to the first LS that "beat" AV using wall hacks? Leave it to SE: "You defeated our unbeatable timesink?! Account suspended! Problem?"

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Originally Posted by Hashmalum

...they never adjusted to the mentality of producing an ongoing user experience rather than a static product handed down from on high....

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This is precisely the problem. They do not understand that mechanics in a single-player console RPG do not work in an MMO.

Hmm...i wonder why SE is trying so hard to kill their playerbase.

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Originally Posted by Vortex

Hmm...i wonder why SE is trying so hard to kill their playerbase.

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need the pl in FF14 and not in FF11 >.<

This has probably already been said but this thread is too long to read everything :P

Embrava = DD buff.
Basically Embrava is a play of bravery from older FF games. It Is the end all, be all melee DD buff. DDs have no need for refresh. It is pointless to replace regain with refresh, if you thought regain was so broken, why not replace it with another DD buff like attack or double attack. Or, you could have just lowered the cap on regain to 3 a tick. I mean COR gets a 5 tick regain roll, i don't see how it is so broken. Perhaps you thought it took one of cor's niche's, that is the only reason I can see for taking away regain. Also, if you are going to lower the duration by so much, I don't see why it couldn't be kept at its full potency. It really is not that game changing as it seems over a short time span.(see below) Furthermore, if you want Embrava to be useful for mages as well, why not just add faith that is locked under tabula rasa as well? It would give Refresh, Fast Cast and Mabb/Macc and would make far more sense.

In all honesty everything Embrava does can be done by other jobs.
Capped Haste - double march + haste spell
-So instead of bringing 2/3 schs, replace one with a second bard
5 tick regain - Tacticians Roll
-Bring a second cor if you really need this, you never really stacked these anyway, because the main cor usually did fighters/chaos on high end mobs.
Regen - this was the only really unique thing embrava did as embrava + Regen V gives a huge hp recovered over time.

Agree, Embrava just put all those in one neat little package, that is until the upcoming adjustment. Scholar can still give TP via Adloquium spell which can be stacked with Tactician Rolls. Personally the upcoming adjustment is just making it more inconvenient for the alliance to set up optimal buffs. You end up having to swap around party members to get the best buffs.

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Originally Posted by Pebe

Furthermore, if you want Embrava to be useful for mages as well, why not just add faith that is locked under tabula rasa as well? It would give Refresh, Fast Cast and Mabb/Macc and would make far more sense.

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Only if RDM gets Embrava and Faith while using Chainspell, kay?

Hello everyone!

I would like to share a message from Producer Akihiko Matsui in regards to the adjustments for Perfect Defense and Embrava.

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Originally Posted by Akihiko_Matsui

Hello. Matsui here.

I apologize, but I wasn’t able to secure any time to respond to this topic in full today due to meetings, so I will start off by just informing you all of the conclusion that we made and the reasons for the decision regarding the adjustments to Perfect Defense and Embrava.

We will be holding off on implementing the adjustments to Perfect Defense and Embrava in the upcoming version update. (The battle content adjustments that were based on the adjustments to Perfect Defense and Embrava will still be implemented as planned.)

At the time of last week’s post we had been moving forward based on the idea that we would be implementing these adjustments in the December version update; however, considering the below points we have decided to push it back it.

• We have not explained the thorough reasoning to all of you posting and reading the official forums, nor have we explained to the entire community who browse and operate fan sites.
• It was thought that these adjustments would be implemented in conjunction with the new special abilities.

The amount of text for the specific explanation as well as the future plan has become quite large, so I’d like to take some time tomorrow and the next day to get everything organized (I’m a slow writer).

Thank you very much.

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That's pretty interesting.

He actually wants to take the time and explain it too us? That's a change of pace. Tho the explanation of why embrava is going from a Regain to a Refresh would be a welcome explanation.

Holy crap, get your Nyzul group ready. We will get the new floor jumps and items at 80 while embrava is still 12.5 mins!

The thing that really scares me is the fact they admit to not having explained their entire reasoning behind it. Shouldn't they have done that first?

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Originally Posted by Cowardlybabooon

Holy crap, get your Nyzul group ready. We will get the new floor jumps and items at 80 while embrava is still 12.5 mins!

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Shhh, let's try to not make SE think twice about this.

imo it shows that the producer finnaly got around to listening to us.

as for the reasoning, Embrava and PD are overpowered is the reason they need a nerf, but the holding off on it is probably more to do with the way they are adjusting the content is nowhere near enough to offset the loss of PD and Embrava (especially in legion)

it's positive either way.

Thank you for taking the time to actually listen to our feedback. And really appreciate that the Director is willing to give us full proper explanation on the reasoning behind it. I am really glad at this change of attitude, and wish that this will be the tone moving forward. Embrava is not just used on endgame, but it is quite convenient to use on other things as well in abyssea and outside. It is one of the best 2 hours ever designed in this game, why not use it as aspiration on how to design the perfect 2 hours ability and implement it forward to other jobs.

Update is probably next week since xmas stuff usually comes with update.

I hope they do this with all nerfs in the future, give a detailed reason. While few people play just one job anymore, for those that do, nerfs, like the one proposed, can really impact where they fit in on end game. And, please, never, ever, use the "balance" excuse. The jobs have become just way too complex to use that excuse.

Also, S/E, thanks for holding off on doing this.