How about an Enfeebling Magic thread?

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Originally Posted by Economizer

Glorious necrobump since not many RDM threads seem to focus on Enfeebling.

I know Saboteur boosts potency of enfeebles, but perhaps with Addle it could also increase the spell interrupt rate on mobs, such as a 5% chance spells the mob is casting will be interrupted for no reason, or just an increase in the spell interrupt rate from taking damage.

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Compared to what Addle does now, this addition would be a big help to it.

It would pretty awesome if this were a native effect of Addle, actually.

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Originally Posted by SpankWustler

It would pretty awesome if this were a native effect of Addle, actually.

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Honestly I was thinking that Red Mages wanted this spell to somehow be special for them and this is how they could have that, and that mobs casting the spell will be a pain in the butt if Addle had this natively. Still, I can see where a five minute ability would make this a pain to the point of wanting it natively.

Good idea, but needs to be native anyway, but then WHM's get it.

SE also needs to create a new line of enfeebles that are RDM only and that NM's are not resistant to. I want to apply all those effects they be giving BLU.

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Originally Posted by Economizer

Honestly I was thinking that Red Mages wanted this spell to somehow be special for them and this is how they could have that, and that mobs casting the spell will be a pain in the butt if Addle had this natively. Still, I can see where a five minute ability would make this a pain to the point of wanting it natively.

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Oh, right! I kind of forgot the spell that I keep buried on line four of my WHM macro palette and use only as a Voidwatch proc actually enfeebles monsters. I think the monsters forget, too...

They really should have made Addle suck far less, and if White Mage getting something that sucked less worried them, made it Red Mage-only.

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Originally Posted by saevel

SE also needs to create a new line of enfeebles that are RDM only and that NM's are not resistant to. I want to apply all those effects they be giving BLU.

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I'd rather enfeebles be redesigned with some of the effects changed so that we can have some actual enfeebling instead of using spells to outright avoid stuff. I doubt mobs would be immune to paralyze if its effect was "Attack Down & Accuracy Down" instead of "randomly prevents an action". Break could be treated as a stun with a root attached, and so on. Sure, it doesn't work like it did in Final Fantasy VI or VII or X, but they'd fit in the context of an MMORPG.

Another thing to consider would be spells building off each other. Say, Bio's Attack down acting as a booster for Paralyze's effects, or perhaps Slow acting as a booster to Addle. That at least creates a pseudo chain of spells that need to be casted.

Oh, and Dia/Bio being exclusive of each other needs to go away. Giving Attack Down and Defense Down to a mob is not exactly OP, game-breaking or anything.

Personally, considering that addle is mostly used (as a voidwatch proc~) whenever the mob is unable to be silenced, I'm surprised they didn't consider buffing it to actively penalize the target if it does cast spells. Something like:

Addle: Decreases enemies magical accuracy and increases spellcasting time. Saboteur: Target takes damage whenever a successful spell is cast.

Or make it so that spells cast whilst under the effect of Saboteur'd Addle take twice as long to recharge.

Why even stop there, change the all the current debuffs to have an extra more potent effect whilst under Saboteur? (and then half the recast timer on Saboteur)

Slow : Targets job abilities and weapon skills take twice as long to ready. RDM gains a fast cast bonus depending on strength of targets slow.

Paralyze : The next weapon-skill used is automatically paralyzed (although, I'd imagine just interrupted would suffice) and is disabled for the next X+ weaponskills. (Only 1 weaponskill maximum can be disabled at a time)

Blind : Enemies nearby take +X damage whenever target afflicted misses.

Dispel : Removes an additional buff. Buffs cast upon target wear off 250-500% faster.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

I'd rather enfeebles be redesigned with some of the effects changed so that we can have some actual enfeebling instead of using spells to outright avoid stuff. I doubt mobs would be immune to paralyze if its effect was "Attack Down & Accuracy Down" instead of "randomly prevents an action". Break could be treated as a stun with a root attached, and so on. Sure, it doesn't work like it did in Final Fantasy VI or VII or X, but they'd fit in the context of an MMORPG.

Another thing to consider would be spells building off each other. Say, Bio's Attack down acting as a booster for Paralyze's effects, or perhaps Slow acting as a booster to Addle. That at least creates a pseudo chain of spells that need to be casted.

Oh, and Dia/Bio being exclusive of each other needs to go away. Giving Attack Down and Defense Down to a mob is not exactly OP, game-breaking or anything.

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All our enfeebles are pre-49, any changes to them will also effect WHM, BLM and SCH.

We like to enjoy Dia III at 15%, but BLU/RDM can do Dia II (10%) + Frightful Roar (10%) for a combined defense reduction of 20%. They every debuff under the sun available to them, granted most have "gotchas" attached to them. The idea was for SE to create similar spells for RDM, not available to WHM / BLM / SCH, that allow a RDM to reduce the targets status and reduce it's capability's. Reducing the target's defense is mathematically the same as enhancing everyone's attack, thus you can indirectly buff your alliance. This would be inline with what the dev's vision of RDM is.

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Originally Posted by saevel

All our enfeebles are pre-49, any changes to them will also effect WHM, BLM and SCH.

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I don't believe in spell exclusivity on RDM because the class by concept borrows from other classes. The application and use of the stuff they borrow is what should make the job unique, not whether RDM has spells others do not.

As far as enfeebles, I was aiming directly at the stuff that works in absolutes. It's why I'd suggest something like turning Paralyze into Attack Down & Accuracy Down, with values scaling along with Enfeebling Skill. This makes T2 somewhat moot if you make changes, but I wouldn't loose sleep over T2 enfeebles going away forever and RDM getting something else in place of it. Hell, RDM merits need an overhaul anyways.

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Reducing the target's defense is mathematically the same as enhancing everyone's attack, thus you can indirectly buff your alliance. This would be inline with what the dev's vision of RDM is.

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Except that Bio could then be used to mitigate incoming damage. Having both spells stack would also make it seem like the spell is not there to just take up space. Nerf the DoT on Bio if the combined DoTs seem to be too much, but both effects should be usable on the same mob.

Would like to see this spell set that has points to waste on Frightful Roar.

And is casting Dia2 because no one else can.

And is having to sub rdm while meleeing- you know what, your scenario is just all kinds of terrible.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

I don't believe in spell exclusivity on RDM because the class by concept borrows from other classes. The application and use of the stuff they borrow is what should make the job unique, not whether RDM has spells others do not.

As far as enfeebles, I was aiming directly at the stuff that works in absolutes. It's why I'd suggest something like turning Paralyze into Attack Down & Accuracy Down, with values scaling along with Enfeebling Skill. This makes T2 somewhat moot if you make changes, but I wouldn't loose sleep over T2 enfeebles going away forever and RDM getting something else in place of it. Hell, RDM merits need an overhaul anyways.
Except that Bio could then be used to mitigate incoming damage. Having both spells stack would also make it seem like the spell is not there to just take up space. Nerf the DoT on Bio if the combined DoTs seem to be too much, but both effects should be usable on the same mob.

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They should make enfeebling magic job specific on RDM for the same reason Aflatus / Cure V / pretty much all of WHM, is job specific to WHM and why -ja nukes are job specific to BLM. It creates a role for each job to fill and prevents players from abusing one job over the others. This is a thread about buff RDM's enfeebling capacity to make it actually useful, would be counter productive to make awesome debuffs then give them to everyone else.

Monster vs Player melee damage formula works differently then us to the monster. I believe our friends have been busy figuring this out. We've all known for years that defense becomes useless after a certain easy to reach point. That's why turtle PLD's have went the way for the dodo long before Abyssea was every created. You mitigate more damage by killing the target faster then by attempting to reduce it's attack.

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Originally Posted by Neisan_Quetz

Would like to see this spell set that has points to waste on Frightful Roar.

And is casting Dia2 because no one else can.

And is having to sub rdm while meleeing- you know what, your scenario is just all kinds of terrible.

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It was to prove a point, that BLU has more enfeebling capability then RDM. The fact that enfeebling is completely useless is irreverent to that comparison. That BLU's don't even bother trying to use their enfeebling magic in favor or their offensive magic proved my point.

Every BLU I've seen in the past three weeks in VWNM has been /RDM, half were using staves, the other half were sword + boarding it with Mag.Acc swords. It's enough to make your eyes bleed, but apparently that's become the new "standard" for BLUs now.

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Originally Posted by saevel

It was to prove a point, that BLU has more enfeebling capability then RDM. The fact that enfeebling is completely useless is irreverent to that comparison. That BLU's don't even bother trying to use their enfeebling magic in favor or their offensive magic proved my point.

Every BLU I've seen in the past three weeks in VWNM has been /RDM, half were using staves, the other half were sword + boarding it with Mag.Acc swords. It's enough to make your eyes bleed, but apparently that's become the new "standard" for BLUs now.

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The fact that you can comprehend that magic accuracy sword BLUs are terribad, but not quite grasp that cure/haste-only rdms are equally terribad utterly baffles me.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

I don't believe in spell exclusivity on RDM because the class by concept borrows from other classes. The application and use of the stuff they borrow is what should make the job unique, not whether RDM has spells others do not.

As far as enfeebles, I was aiming directly at the stuff that works in absolutes. It's why I'd suggest something like turning Paralyze into Attack Down & Accuracy Down, with values scaling along with Enfeebling Skill. This makes T2 somewhat moot if you make changes, but I wouldn't loose sleep over T2 enfeebles going away forever and RDM getting something else in place of it. Hell, RDM merits need an overhaul anyways.
Except that Bio could then be used to mitigate incoming damage. Having both spells stack would also make it seem like the spell is not there to just take up space. Nerf the DoT on Bio if the combined DoTs seem to be too much, but both effects should be usable on the same mob.

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RDM is quite a bit different from the previous game and enters in territories such as Mystic Knight and so on, and unlike previous games they do have a specialty, they specialise in Enfeebling and as such they should have unique spells in that field and I mean outside of merits.

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Originally Posted by saevel

Monster vs Player melee damage formula works differently then us to the monster. I believe our friends have been busy figuring this out. We've all known for years that defense becomes useless after a certain easy to reach point. That's why turtle PLD's have went the way for the dodo long before Abyssea was every created. You mitigate more damage by killing the target faster then by attempting to reduce it's attack.

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My model has the formula nearly working the same way, except that monsters have a lower cRatio floor at 1.0 and generally have ridiculously high Attack values. I mean like 1,500-2,000 Attack being common for strong NMs.

It's typically more that Defense is useless in small numbers, and becomes increasingly effective until the cutoff point at 1.0 cRatio. The problem is, in order to reach those relatively nice returns, you need assloads of defense - like full turtle 1k-2k defense. Stacking enough Defense-specific buffs to get that sort of rating is just counterintuitive because of all the powerful offensive buffs you give up in doing so, and because no matter what monsters will never score below 1.0 cRatio on you (meaning you can't ever fully mitigate damage).

Likewise, because cRatio caps, the difference between something like 2 Defense and 500 Defense is absolutely nil - allowing people to use abilities like Berserk and Counterstance with absolute impunity on stronger monsters.

There is no 1.0 floor for mob cRatio; I tested. However mobs get positive level correction when fighting players, which means it's virtually impossible to get cRatio that low when fighting high level mobs.

Ig-Alima (lvl 120) hitting a pld who has 1000 defense would be working with a 2.06 cRatio (or maybe 2.11; little fuzzy there). If the pld miraculously gained another 1000 defense (2000 total), Ig-Alima would still have a 1.53 (or 1.58) cRatio against him.

Also, the claim that 1500-2000 is common for strong NMs seems unsubstantiated. The only known attack value we have is 1059 for Ig-Alima.

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Originally Posted by Daniel_Hatcher

RDM is quite a bit different from the previous game and enters in territories such as Mystic Knight and so on

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I'd say enspells lean in that "application and use of the stuff RDM borrows" direction. Sure, it was inspired by Mystic Knight, but if it were taken straight from Mystic Knight, we would have Spellblade and would be casting nukes through our swords (something I'd outright welcome, mind you).

That being said, RDM is hardier than your standard mage, but weaker than your average warrior. It'd make sense for them to use their (self-cast) buffs or Job abilities to lean one way or the other to make up for what they lack vs the standard mage or warrior.

Connected to this is a point I brought up in the DRK nuke thread: just because we borrow spells does not mean said spells should work exactly the same as those form the jobs we borrow them from. Nukes in particular are subject to this because Elemental nukes follow the damage ruleset that BLM follows...which clearly favors BLMs. Which means one job gets spells they can use, the others have wastes of space and little more. A spell cast by a BLM or WHM or SCH should look or act different when cast by the melee-caster hybrids (PLD, DRK and RDM). Fire from a RDM should be different from Fire from a DRK, which would be different from the "original" version cast by BLM or SCH. That way you have uniqueness in terms of gameplay without having to add something completely different to make the job seem "unique".

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and unlike previous games they do have a specialty, they specialise in Enfeebling and as such they should have unique spells in that field and I mean outside of merits.

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Which hasn't exactly panned out. The fact that Final Fantasy's debuff spells are for the most part absolutes don't help at all. Which goes back to what I said several posts ago: redesign enfeebles to work and be balanced in a standard MMO setting instead of trying to port the effects straight out of a console FF and then be forced to make your mobs immune to said effects to prevent said effects from making the encounters trivial or outright nerf the effects when cast by player characters (see: Break).

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Originally Posted by Greatguardian

My model has the formula nearly working the same way, except that monsters have a lower cRatio floor at 1.0 and generally have ridiculously high Attack values. I mean like 1,500-2,000 Attack being common for strong NMs.

It's typically more that Defense is useless in small numbers, and becomes increasingly effective until the cutoff point at 1.0 cRatio. The problem is, in order to reach those relatively nice returns, you need assloads of defense - like full turtle 1k-2k defense. Stacking enough Defense-specific buffs to get that sort of rating is just counterintuitive because of all the powerful offensive buffs you give up in doing so, and because no matter what monsters will never score below 1.0 cRatio on you (meaning you can't ever fully mitigate damage).

Likewise, because cRatio caps, the difference between something like 2 Defense and 500 Defense is absolutely nil - allowing people to use abilities like Berserk and Counterstance with absolute impunity on stronger monsters.

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GG you do realize I was the person who came up with the 1.0 Ratio idea originally, it was shortly after ToAU was released and I had leveled up /BLU for my RDM. I went out testing some defense values (Pro IV + Cocoon + Taco) and saw absolutely no difference fighting VT monsters. Knowing that monsters do not have ridiculously high attack, without some sort of buffs (berserk) or them being a DRK, I had to figure out why I wasn't forcing their damage to the 0.5 floor we know. I never thought of there being a positive level correction and their formula scaling completely differently then ours. I had assumed that if I could get the monster to 0.5 that it would start hitting for 0 similar to what happens with us.

Testing has recently shown that while there isn't a 1.0 ratio floor, vs anything bigger then you the chances of you getting under 1.0 are rather slim. And even then the actual benefit would be small.

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RDM is quite a bit different from the previous game and enters in territories such as Mystic Knight and so on

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Actually not really. Enspells are the only thing different, otherwise RDM is ~exactly~ the same as in FFI, FFIII, and FFV. If you doubt this pick up the GBA / DS versions and find out. Their cheap and relatively easy to find on amazon.

That is actually the problem with FFXI now, SE focused too much on keeping RDM like it was in previous FF's. RDM has always had white magic but not as a good as WHM, had black magic but not as good as BLM, and wore armor and swords but not as good as Fighter. You were limited to four members and whatever jobs you chose you had to stick with, for this reason the RDM typically replaced either the THF or BLM. In III and V you could class change so you had a bit more personal choice. I liked RDM as it was good at clearing out ash & trash mobs during the dungeon exploration portion and could switch to buffs / debuffs / healing during the dungeon boss portion. In FFV RDM was the same although severely limited to level 3 magic which made the job virtually useless after midgame. At the end of FFV all jobs paled compared to freelancer / mimic which gained the powers of all mastered jobs and thus was radically overpowered. For a good portion near the beginning to middle RDM was useful as you could switch out the "sub" ability between battles.

Those idea's are great for console RPGs as it allows the players to experiment and play around, they don't work for a MMO because nobody will accept less then "optimal". Instead of (Fighter / Thief / Red Mage / White Mage) you get (Fighter / Fighter / Fighter / White Mage). The first group is my favorite to play, the second group is the absolute easiest to win the game on, so easy you'll think the game's a joke.