solution ideas to the new ws debate

i'll get to the point :MY SOLUTION what about something along these lines? possibly:

quests, or rediculous amount of merits, or items, or target mobs, something, to make it possible to increase the damage of the new weaponskill, on a regular basis. some sort of enhancment bonus added to the damage, so that players can improve the new weaponskills that they like. Its only fair that the player must have all weapon skills for that job in order to be able to improve the new one.

So for example, on drg you could have a regular, and more HQ versions of stardiver, that could eventually beat out drakesbane, even if its not by much. Inside abyessea the super amounts of crit, drakesbane ftw, ok. But outside it would be nice to see some stardiving. But only if you really work at it (like it is with everything in this game)



my reasoning:

keep in mind that players in this game have all sorts of different status, and have only done so many things. What may have seemed easy to you in earlier years of the game, can be more difficult to other players now.

perhaps the dev team sort of goes for a ws that is relatively close, but less damage than some of the higher hitting wss (like drakesbane from nyzule isle or some good empy weaponskills like ukku fury). someone without drakesbane would benefit from stardiver ( i would think anyway ).

This is understandable, and this applies to an empy user without drakesbane too, its not like camlann is the ukko fury of polearms..... (as much as someone with camlann wants the ws itself to do more dmg and uses it for aftermath, once you get this weapon, you quickly see this ws is no jishnu's radiance)

but something else to consider is that the main majority of drgs DO have drakesbane, and that they want to use the new weapon skill too. looking at that ws all this time gets old. and these people are what makes up a very large chunk of long time ffxi players


This keeps newer players occupied at getting drakesbane or whatever else... so as not to skip the hard earned step other players had to take of first having to get that ws. This ws and others must be achieved before being able to get the full potential of stardiver (or whatever weapon skill on whichever job).

I am not sure relic and empy ws should apply really, as they are dependant on the weapon being equiped. If it was that important to make someone jump through further hoops, make them just have to have used the ws on a mob, only if it is once. This way the player will have to obtain the appropriate fake relic (the ones that allow you to use the ws after 12 others), and possibly the nq version of the empy ws.

This is just an idea for a compromise on:
how to balance how easy it is to get a heavy hitting weapon skill without having to get nyzule isle done and/or an empy mythic or relic weapon done.>>> ( meaning: if this ws makes drakesbane not even worth the effort because it is instantly more damage, it instantly renders nyzule isle not worth the effort to many players)
This also allows:
veteran players who have put in all of this effort already and have achieved higher damage numbers with the weapon skill they already have, can now make the new ws more powerful if they so choose in order for it to be a useful alternative

This is not too much work, but enough work to justify being able to access another category to improve your new amazing looking weapon skill, to something worth useing if one was so inclined. Still, it's not like this ws you get gives you aftermath. people will still want empys and other such weapons of course.



sort of focused on drg to make my point, but yea
any better ideas?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dragoon_apprentice

any better ideas?

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Improve them so they don't suck after spending 100 merits to get them. Which is basically what they did, with what you are saying about making us work for great damage, except they decided not to make them worth meriting to 5/5. So instead of having an ass load of work put into great weapon skills, they're just held back so 8 year old lv55-60/one quested multi hit WSs are still relevant at 99. Okay.

they should redecide to undecide what they decided

or something

I cry a little inside every single time someone spells the word 'ridiculous' with an 'e'... R.I.P. English Dictionaries...

When I checked on the test server Last Stand, Apex Arrow, Shijin Spiral, Extenterator, Upheaval, Resolution and Ruinator certainly didn't suck. All of them performed better than any non Empyrean WS. Especially Last Stand which is hands down the best marksmanship WS for RNG (yes better than Wildfire). Apex Arrow is basically sidewinder without the negative accuracy and with an ignore defense component. Ruinator doesn't spike as high as Rampage, but it gets higher numbers more consistently. Upheaval and Resolution are both amazing WS and the best non empyrean WSs in their class. Shijin Spiral gets very close to Victory Smite.

On paper Stardiver looked like it sucked but turned out not to. While comparing it with Drakesbane someone noticed that Drakesbane has a -20% attack nerf on it and apparently has since it was introduced years ago. Stardiver is actually better on high level mobs that Drakesbane because of this.