Immanence Balance Discussion

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rooj

It doesn't matter if Immanence can miss. The people who only bring mages to content are still going to only bring mages to content, who cares if it takes a few more minutes to beat a boss, when they are under the impression content can never be cleared with melee.

---

Nobody thinks that, maybe the the exception of t4 stuff.

The difference in maintenance is just a canyon wide. That's all.

But the changes to evasion and aoes and the like, and the change to defense, might start changing this drastic imbalance.

Edit: The critical disparity presently is that melee need a lot of upkeep across tiers of content which mages generally do not. If you have melee, you need a healer to watch them and you probably need a geo to protect them (and/or perhaps a bard--scherzo or summoner).

Mages also all generally love the same buffs as the guy providing them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rooj

It doesn't matter if Immanence can miss. The people who only bring mages to content are still going to only bring mages to content, who cares if it takes a few more minutes to beat a boss, when they are under the impression content can never be cleared with melee.

---

Not true at all. As the game changes, strategies change. People bring whatever works best in most cases. Otherwise, people would still be bringing SAM to everything and we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Samurai Fantasy XI.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rooj

It doesn't matter if Immanence can miss. The people who only bring mages to content are still going to only bring mages to content, who cares if it takes a few more minutes to beat a boss, when they are under the impression content can never be cleared with melee.

---

The main reason why I think it does matter is because of Stratagems. I believe a 550 JP Scholar has a 33 second Stratagem recharge rate, which is quite fast considering they can hold 5 of them. Even then though, they still have to be careful when managing their stratagems.

Hooooowever, in regards to Olor's suggestion of making Immanence change spells to physical magic (making it subject to accuracy instead of magic accuracy), then those stratagems become even more precious. Every time a spell misses, they would waste a stratagem, and potentially drop a skillchain. Thus, the outcome would be that Scholar skillchainers would face the exact same accuracy challenges as any other skillchainer, which would make them less exclusively attractive. Another aspect is that I don't believe Scholars have comparably abundant access to physical accuracy in their gear, so it would give physical jobs the advantage for skillchain duty in the really hard fights. Scholars would probably need even more accuracy buffs to cap.

Now I was trying to imagine the potential outcomes of this, and it seems to me that if by any means Immanence was nerfed directly, such as with Olor's suggestion, then Rangers would simply take over Scholars as preferred skillchainers since they can use powerful 100% accurate Magic WSes from a safe distance. So melee players would still probably be out of a job. Still, even as a melee player, I think that would be a faaaaar more acceptable scenario, given that Rangers at least need to build TP, and therefore still need to overcome accuracy barriers to skillchain.

That's why I instead suggested changing the way Magic Burst bonuses were calculated to be based on SC damage rather than the # of steps. Perhaps even a modifier based on the SC tier (Ex: a 2-step darkness would provide a better MB modifier than a 2-step Scission).

If recalculated correctly, then the Magic Burst bonus should still be good if the Skillchain hits hard enough. The direct benefit would be that both melee and ranged jobs would have an advantage over Immanence, and players would be forced to solve the accuracy problem without side-stepping it entirely. For example, A party would get much more damage from Magic Bursting a 5~10k Darkness made by a physical job rather than a Scholar making 0~300 dmg Scission.

EDIT: I also wanted to add that if Immanence is de-emphasized and Physical DD are desired again, then they are going to need more than just Geomancers to reach the hit cap on the 1600+ ACC fights. So that would mean a demand for bards, red mages, cors, etc!! Two birds with one stone!

I really like the practical approach you're bringing to this Shyles. I think BRD would still need the potency of their ACC etc songs to be increased to be worth taking for the most part, but you're right that a new meta would probably help a lot of jobs that are struggling now.

Quote:

---

EDIT: I also wanted to add that if Immanence is de-emphasized and Physical DD are desired again, then they are going to need more than just Geomancers to reach the hit cap on the 1600+ ACC fights. So that would mean a demand for bards, red mages, cors, etc!! Two birds with one stone!

---

Would it? We're at a point in the game where alliance fights are almost never practical and it is impossible to rotate in buffing/enfeebling jobs to perform their singular roles. The more support jobs you tack on, where does that leave room for tanks, melee, and healers?

Quote:

---

Now I was trying to imagine the potential outcomes of this, and it seems to me that if by any means Immanence was nerfed directly, such as with Olor's suggestion, then Rangers would simply take over Scholars as preferred skillchainers since they can use powerful 100% accurate Magic WSes from a safe distance. So melee players would still probably be out of a job. Still, even as a melee player, I think that would be a faaaaar more acceptable scenario, given that Rangers at least need to build TP, and therefore still need to overcome accuracy barriers to skillchain.

---

I brought up ranged jobs as a consideration because I almost feel like all these calls to weaken mobs to the point of irrelevance misses the point. In another post, you said there should never be a "safe" distance to skillchain. I would counter with "but distance should never be irrelevant." As the job exists now, if you took away their biggest selling point, what would a job like RNG have left beyond the odd piercing-weak target like last month's Ambuscade?

If Immanence was ever nerfed and RNG indeed became the next desirable skillchainer, would you want to nerf RNG again?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ketaru

Would it? We're at a point in the game where alliance fights are almost never practical and it is impossible to rotate in buffing/enfeebling jobs to perform their singular roles. The more support jobs you tack on, where does that leave room for tanks, melee, and healers?

---

(thumbs up for good questions!) Melees in these hard fights would certainly create a demand for other support jobs, but I agree with your concern to a degree. Unless the melee already has about 1200~1250 unbuffed accuracy, melee or mixed party strategies in T3+ Reisenjima fights would almost certainly mean larger alliances, which means higher HP scaling. I think that is offset (albiet very slightly) by the addition of white damage and higher WS damage that physical DD provide.

When chatting with Byrth a while ago (who also mains DNC, but much better than me.. lol), he told me that he had tested a small-alliance melee strategy on T3+ fights, but basically as the only DD. The party was basically made up of a PLD, WHM, a Mythic DNC, and then as many support jobs necessary to hit cap, which was basically all of them... He was able to cap both hit and haste on Maju (pre-EVA nerf), but it took about 1400 accuracy plus a Geo, bard, red mage, corsair all providing as much ACC+ and EVA- as possible. In my LS, Llewelyn said he had to do the same thing to hit Maju as BLU. So it's possible, but admittedly nowhere near practical in the current meta. The gear requirements alone make Immanence+MB strategies much easier.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ketaru

In another post, you said there should never be a "safe" distance to skillchain. I would counter with "but distance should never be irrelevant." As the job exists now, if you took away their biggest selling point, what would a job like RNG have left beyond the odd piercing-weak target like last month's Ambuscade?

---

As a minor correction, I said that there should be "no safe jobs". There are many ways a developer can add hazards to ranged classes without blurring the line between melee and ranged. IMO, highlighting a ranged job's mobility is far more interesting than highlighting their ability to stand at a safe range. But that is probably a topic for another discussion. The main point is that in the current metagame, the safety gap between melee and ranged is too massive, and SE needs to find ways to reduce that gap if there is going to be any semblance of balance in this game. It's a very valid concern though, and I think that there is really no easy answer since we don't truly know the extent of the software/hardware limitations the new team is dealing with right now. I have some pipe dream ideas, but they would likely involve an unreasonable amount of development :p.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ketaru

If Immanence was ever nerfed and RNG indeed became the next desirable skillchainer, would you want to nerf RNG again?

---

I certainly wouldn't lobby for it. As I mentioned before, Rangers have to deal with same accuracy problems as the rest of us. It's far less gimmicky than Immanence. I think it would also benefit other jobs to some degree, with the first beneficiaries being support jobs. And given Ranger is a physical DD job, I think it might help the developers get a better picture of offensive hurdles facing all physical DD right now. That is just speculation, but if Immanence is ever nerfed, then we will almost certainly see a new metagame, and it would be interesting to see how players adjust to it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shyles

As a minor correction, I said that there should be "no safe jobs". There are many ways a developer can add hazards to ranged classes without blurring the line between melee and ranged. IMO, highlighting a ranged job's mobility is far more interesting than highlighting their ability to stand at a safe range. But that is probably a topic for another discussion. The main point is that in the current metagame, the safety gap between melee and ranged is too massive, and SE needs to find ways to reduce that gap if there is going to be any semblance of balance in this game. It's a very valid concern though, and I think that there is really no easy answer since we don't truly know the extent of the software/hardware limitations the new team is dealing with right now. I have some pipe dream ideas, but they would likely involve an unreasonable amount of development :p.

---

That's an interesting concept with ranged DD using mobility as advantage instead of safety. But since you interrupt when moving, I don't know how that'd work. Very interesting idea though.

I don't think XI's connection speed, or that of most games to be honest, can keep up with movement sensitive fights/jobs. That's probably why we don't get a lot of fights that have things you need to move out of.

When I played XIV 2.0 (at launch), there were many videos of people dying to "hot spots" that they were clearly out of but the server made a calculation and decided the player didn't make it out in time. I've played other movement-sensitive games where this wasn't a problem.

Point is, as was discussed in the AMA:

Quote:

---

Byrth: FFXI was designed with dial-up modem internet speeds in mind. It sends UDP packets about twice a second and caps their size at ~1.25KB. Thus, the maximum bandwidth of the server-client connection is approximately 2.5KB/s. Game performance in demanding situations (like zoning or fighting multiple monsters) could be dramatically improved if you increased the frequency or size limit of these packets. Is it possible that you would consider doing either of these things?

FFXI_Devteam: [...]this would be difficult to address. It would require making changes to various aspects of the game engine itself, so it’s actually much more difficult than what one may assume.

---

Not sure if it was mentioned, but Immanence is basically just a ranged magic based weapon skill. As such with any magic based weapon skill it cannot miss, only be resisted to the extent that is does 0 damage. Regardless it would still Skillchain as any melee/ranged magic based weapon skills would, even if they do 0 damage. It is based on timers of a JA and not on TP gain to perform the actions required to make a skillchain. To an extent SAM, DNC and BLU have access to a similar abilities with Konzen-ittai, Wild Flourish and Chain Affinity. DNC having access to be able to perform this action even more often than SCH.

So should we nerf DNC ability to skillchain more often than a SCH can with similar mechanics?

Unless I'm mistaken, Immanence has already been nerfed once, making it so that shadows absorb the spell being cast. So personally i don't feel that a even further nerf needs to be done.

You are correct that no magic-ws's miss and of course correct that Immanence is based on stratagem charge's JA timer, but proper spacing of JAs or multiple scholars makes this a non issue.

I don't want a game where Immanenced spell from a reasonably geared SCH can "miss". Because it is based on timers, it should be able to hit reliably. That said, there's something wrong with magic accuracy having no relevance towards the ability. I don't want Immanence to have a hit-rate cap (like melee strikes do).

In hard content for a person's group (whatever that may be), there is no downside to Immanence. There's no downside to sidelining melee unless the boss specifically is strong against mages (or has lots of shadows, like you brought up). The GEO, BLMs, SCHs all love the same buffs and you can frequently only use offensive buffs with mage-oriented strategies because defensive buffs aren't needed. Even on fights with wide magic aoes, like say Meteor, it's typically not that hard to toss a curaga to the BLMs.

If it didn't have such a tremendous impact on the balance, I don't think many people would care.

On the other hand, the changes SE has been making look promising. Perhaps melee oriented strategies will become more appealing when the AoE changes affect relevant content. If they continue with these changes, perhaps no nerf is needed.

I don't want to see SCH nerfed because nerfs suck.

Basically what it seems like people are arguing is that Immanence created skillchains should be based off of the enfeebling magic scale, where spells are resistible. Which is not how it works, Immanence makes a skillchain based off of elemental magic spells, which even a level one character can land on any mob in the game, albeit for 0 damage in most cases. If they intended for Immanence based skillchains to be resistible i would think that there would have been spells incorporated that are resistible.

I am unsure of exactly when Immanence was made available to SCH, as whether it was a new JA recently or always available from when SCH could attain level 87. Either way it only became prevalent method for creating skillchains with the changes made leading up to and post magic burst update. So it appears that immanence was intended to work how it is, but i cannot speak for SE. It would nice if SE would speak on this matter and clarify.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Eckamus

I am unsure of exactly when Immanence was made available to SCH, as whether it was a new JA recently or always available from when SCH could attain level 87. Either way it only became prevalent method for creating skillchains with the changes made leading up to and post magic burst update. So it appears that immanence was intended to work how it is, but i cannot speak for SE. It would nice if SE would speak on this matter and clarify.

---

I *think* Immanence has been available ever since 87 has been available, though it doesn't matter.

I wasn't playing when Immanence became the norm but I suspect 550 JP Bonus also made it a lot more attractive.

I don't think it matters what SE intended. There are a lot of changes they've made to the game because players used something differently than SE intended (most famously Ninja tanking--so far that originally a single shadow absorbed an AoE's affect on a player) or came to rely too heavily on something (Embrava would be a good example) or waypoint-zombie'ing the first Fracture kills.

But again, I'm really glad they're taking the proactive approach of "let's fix what's broken" rather than "let's break what works", partly because the latter route helps noone.

To put melee and ranged, which has less of a gap to close, on par with a job that can skillchain by JA use only will take quite a bit of adjustment with how the game currently is. There are further adjustments to be made yet, but with the AoE and massively negative effects that can criple any melee. Mainly Amnesia, I don't really see things shifting any time soon. Only becoming more difficult and further separating the player base, if a further nerf to Immanence takes place before things are able to be properly balanced for melee. Properly balancing melee/ranged is the problem and not Immanence itself. That's why i don't see the point in nerfing Immanence, since it was there before and has only been used commonly as it is the most reliable source for skillchains in current endgame content. Not to mention SCH has seen its fair share of nerfs over the years.

With proper balancing, I see nothing wrong with the way Immanence currently works. Since balance would offer several ways to achieve the same goal. Then melee can beat on things and feel good about themselves for being strong and mages can still explode things, since explosions are cool.

Immanence getting a "magic accuracy" check seems a good compromise, however, ultimately I don't think it will change anything.

Plainly speaking, FFXI at this point is too big and has too many abilities to be "balanced". Even if SCH was nerfed a bit, they would still use it for the safety it offered (not to mention, the nerf wouldn't affect top-tier SCH anyway)

All a nerf would do is make more people play as BLU, the next OP job.

A nerf changes nothing, the others jobs need to be raised to be on par with the OP jobs, since OP in FFXI is just another way to say competent.