Feedback on new job abilities

SMN - For a 2 hour, it's only 30 seconds. Given the charge up for the BP, and the fact that the next closest analogue (Chainspell) is a minute, the effect, I feel, should be lengthened to a minute. I would also suggest that avatars shorten the charge time when a BP is used. Other than that, I absolutely love this ability.

PUP - I'm going to split this up into the ones that I've tested so far. Although I do love seeing the 2 hour effect on the automatons when the ability is used. There are a couple of general issues I would like to note. The first thing I noticed is that when the automaton uses a 2 hr ability, the log reads "<pet> uses .." It appears that the ability name has been replaced by a "." The other thing that I noticed is that for abilities that have an effect, there is no indication in the log that the effect has worn off. This might be significant for abilities like Manafont and Chainspell.

Eagle Eye Strike - Feels too weak, especially for a level 99 2 hour ability. For comparison, Armor Shatter does about 2600 points of damage against weak EXP enemies, while PUP Eagle Eye Shot, using the same settings, equipment, and enemy, does 2100. Eagle Eye Strike, I feel, should do significantly more damage, at least 3000 or even 3500, considering that this is a level 99 2 hour ability.

Manafont - This ability is really good. I like how the puppet keeps casting until the effect wears off. I wouldn't change a thing with this ability.

Chainspell - It works like normal, but the one thing that I noticed is that the automaton seems to focus on enhancing spells more than anything. For example, I has a triple ice maneuver up, and I used the PUP 2hr to trigger Chainspell. The automaton started with casting Protect/Shell/Phalanx/Haste before casting the nukes. Outside of that, it seems to be working fine.

Mighty Strikes - I tried it out, and I don't like it. It doesn't mesh well with my automaton, even how I would use it. I would suggest replacing Mighty Strikes with Hundred Fists.

I'll look into the other 2 hours later.

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Originally Posted by Keyln

SMN - For a 2 hour, it's only 30 seconds. Given the charge up for the BP, and the fact that the next closest analogue (Chainspell) is a minute, the effect, I feel, should be lengthened to a minute. I would also suggest that avatars shorten the charge time when a BP is used. Other than that, I absolutely love this ability.

PUP - I'm going to split this up into the ones that I've tested so far. Although I do love seeing the 2 hour effect on the automatons when the ability is used. There are a couple of general issues I would like to note. The first thing I noticed is that when the automaton uses a 2 hr ability, the log reads "<pet> uses .." It appears that the ability name has been replaced by a "." The other thing that I noticed is that for abilities that have an effect, there is no indication in the log that the effect has worn off. This might be significant for abilities like Manafont and Chainspell.

Eagle Eye Strike - Feels too weak, especially for a level 99 2 hour ability. For comparison, Armor Shatter does about 2600 points of damage against weak EXP enemies, while PUP Eagle Eye Shot, using the same settings, equipment, and enemy, does 2100. Eagle Eye Strike, I feel, should do significantly more damage, at least 3000 or even 3500, considering that this is a level 99 2 hour ability.

Manafont - This ability is really good. I like how the puppet keeps casting until the effect wears off. I wouldn't change a thing with this ability.

Chainspell - It works like normal, but the one thing that I noticed is that the automaton seems to focus on enhancing spells more than anything. For example, I has a triple ice maneuver up, and I used the PUP 2hr to trigger Chainspell. The automaton started with casting Protect/Shell/Phalanx/Haste before casting the nukes. Outside of that, it seems to be working fine.

Mighty Strikes - I tried it out, and I don't like it. It doesn't mesh well with my automaton, even how I would use it. I would suggest replacing Mighty Strikes with Hundred Fists.

I'll look into the other 2 hours later.

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Eagle Eye shot is weak for a reason. Do this:
Sub blm, and take sharpshot out to west ronfaure. Make certain your puppet has > 101 str (102, 2 fire maneuvers is enough, do not use Cirque hands, because DEX influences sharpshot's regular ranged attack damage; this is sharpshot's fSTR cap at level 99), additionally don't wear cirque pants, and temporarily take out any ranged skill merits you have, so that you have 417 skill; use choke on a bunny, which ensures it has 1 vit, and then deploy for a ranged attack. If you get that right, it should give you 786 damage, every time. Next, repeat the process (with the same amount of skill, str, and dex) with Eagle Eye Shot. Theoretically, you should see 3930 damage every single time (if you stay consistent, and it's a straight 5x multiplier like regular EES). If you see over 3k, but less than 3930, it means that it's likely a 5x multiplier, but ignoring the regular attack's dex mod. If you see less than 3k, it means that they completely changed the formula for pup, and made it even weaker than EES already is.

Also worth noting, your numbers should, if you do everything correctly, be identical every time (ie: no +/- 1, they will be the exact same number), as well as being divisible by 3, and for EES, by both 3 and 5. If you get an EES result that does not cleanly divide by 3 or 5 (it has to cleanly divide by both, no decimals), then it means they really messed with sharpshot's EES numbers.

SMN is disappointingly short. Especially because of the stupid BP charge up timer. You're barely able to get 4-5 BP off before it's over. Since no SMN is likely to use this over Perfect Defense outside of some rare solo fight, I wish it was just a 10 min recast ability.

DRK Certainly more useful than Blood Weapon, but also really short. Still, drains about 30-40 TP a swing so enough for 1-2 free WS.

PLD didn't try combining with Palisade and Reprisal to see if it stacks yet. But seems to be a good block rate and much higher damage reflection than Reprisal. Considering Invincible is fairly useless, this 2hr seems marginally better.

PUP I only tried EES so far. Can't really say I was disappointed with the damage since it's EES. I was more surprised it didn't outright miss than anything. It's hard to be worse than Overdrive.

One brief thought:

If you were going to improve the PLD 2 hour (which I strongly advise, as "marginally better than Invincible" is not useful enough IMO), one possible option, if you can make it work, would be to convert each evaded attack to a hit for 0 damage and no added effect, simply to allow the possibility for shield to proc and the enemy to take damage. I was rather frustrated popping the 2 hour and looking at "miss... miss... miss...".

To be fair, though, I also think Invincible should be given a full minute, so maybe that's just me.

I wanna make sure I hammer this point home; Pup's EES has been nerfed, such that it's actually WEAKER than player EES. It uses a 4x multiplier, instead of the 5x one the player EES uses, and then, for some bizarre reason, tacks on 6 damage at the end.

I think the smn 2-hour is great. Its alot of fun to use and flexible in its use. You can spam attacks or buffs, or whichever ones you want in the situation.

the bst 2-hour is completely lackluster. I can't generate enough motivation to try to find additional uses... its an "OH CRAP!" button which I don't need or want.


Pup

As far as the Eagle Eye Shot goes, I'll check that out in a bit. The practical test will not be how it compares the the rng EES, but how well it scales' w/ sharpshot's particular mechanics on level 99 content.

I'm not a RNG.. I really don't have the experience to say the exact problems w/ EES or pup's version. I know I've seen 2k armor shatter's and if EES can't top that on higher level mobs, its really pretty lackluster...

from what I've read and tested, mnk, smn, thf and drk 2 hours are pretty good.
pup, dnc, pld, war could use some tweaks.

the rest are fail.

Especially bst, I would rather wait 3 more months for something better to be worked out than to hav the gimpy cannibalize ability added.

There are two major flaws with pup's EES as I can see it, that, while it has a higher potential damage than rng's EES by about 6-800 damage(depending on the rng's weapon), it won't ever be able to be any better. The first is simply that rng's EES can crit. When I was playing with it, rng's EES with crit, due to dead aim, gave silly numbers. The second, and more important one, is that a significant portion of sharpshot's ranged damage comes from its fSTR, which, to cap at 99, requires an aggravating 101 dSTR (Read: It requires your puppet have 101 more str than the target) which is only likely to ever happen in abyssea where nothing matters anyway.

Sure, I can break 4k with sharpshot's EES, but that's only if I load up on thunder manevers (sharpshot's ranged attacks have a significant dex mod) and cast choke on a wild rabbit in east ronfaure to ensure that it has 1 vit, but that's totally practical.

Aside from that, Mighty Strikes is garbage because it requires the harlequin head, which is rather costly to your damage to use, and our best MS ws is hard to really determine, because by theory, it should be bone crusher (3 hit, damage varies with TP), but string shredder is stronger than bone crusher, even when it doesn't crit, unless it's against something weak to blunt damage.

Benediction and Invincible really need no comment, benediction is straightforward and invincible, though not exactly something we need, is the same, subject to the annoying imperfections of pld's invincible (still takes magic/break damage, lasts all of 30 seconds, and doesn't mean much with enmity now, due to how horrible enmity is borked).

For Chainspell, I just pulled cuelebre (no FC atma, no mana booster, no relic+2 pants, just to be sure; was using vicissitude, MC, and zenith, for Regen/MDB/DT, just to see the number of spells cast), and after getting the link off, with stormwaker situated, I popped it. Over the minute it lasted, she got off a mind blowing 12 spells, which is basically 1 spell per 5 seconds (1 second to decide, 4 for global recast, I assume). However, it should be noted that, since I was casting with no attachments, that meant no scanner. the first 6 spells were completely resisted silences, until I finally gave in and through on an ice maneuver, after which she proceeded to blizz4 over and over until CS wore. Basically, for stormwaker, chainspell sets all the category recasts to 1, but does nothing to influence casting order, so stormwaker will still cast Buff -> enfeebles -> Nukes, unless you remember to put on your ice maneuver/s (and that also means no ice maker)

Still, 12 blizz 4s (with power cooler and 1 ice maneuver) adds up to 1584 mp, so in all likelihood, it would really be more like 9-10 nukes, maybe 11 if you manage to get off economizer without killing your time. It'll be the same situation with thunder IV, too, give or take a nuke. It's not as bad as it could have been, but it's not as good as it could have been, either.

For Manafont, I did the same thing as stormwaker, same atma/gear (focus on pet-DT and staying alive; no refresh, because I wanted to see if the puppet would burn all it's MP before the effect ended). in the 60 seconds no MP was used, caroline got off 4 T5s (Bliz was cast before I used the JA, so fire -> aero -> water -> fire; remember, cuelebre spams slowga, so that influenced which spells), but basically, she cast nothing but nukes, as expected, and did pretty much exactly what spiritreaver always does if you leave it deployed, nuke every 15 seconds until aspir gets triggered, if the target is aspirable, so basically, thus just gives you 4 (5-6 with fast cast) extra nukes before spiritreaver starts casting aspir/runs out of MP. Oh Joy. That's a bunch of nukes we would have gotten anyway, half of which will only have 1 ice maneuver for ice maker to proc.

I don't suppose anyone could test out THF new 2 hour? The description is a little ominous and noone has any idea how much damage it does, or if it stacks with SA, TA and/or WS.

Edit: nvm I just read on BG that it's not on the test server yet ><

Did some testing today for SMN 2hr. Potential of 9 BPs in a row. Use BP, use 2hr, 7 BP, use last BP after 2hr ends.
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/th...002#post351002

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Used dolls in {A} Altepa the first time, tested on Melo Melo this time so wouldn't have to worry about attacking another mob. Ignore the damage XD, was naked(also using Ducal Guard, Minikin, and Razed Ruins atmas) and using Garuda(wind -perp and bp time-) trial staff. Looks like 7 is max with the 'extra' one for the reset after 2hr wears. So potentially 8 in a row? Alittle more powerful then I thought was going to be. Barring you have the MP pool, para, other status ailments, etc. lol. Any thoughts? ^^
http://i49.tinypic.com/inhb1i.jpg

***EDIT***

Just had a thought! No one will probably read this before I answer, but: Does the 2hr reset an already used BP? Going to go test now. x.x I'm duuumb, should have thought of that before.!

***EDIT2***
It does indeed reset the BP timer. So potentially 9 BP in a row. Use Bp, use 2hr, then use last bp after 2hr wears.
http://i50.tinypic.com/20g1ild.jpg

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For smn, although the ability is pretty sweet(though I'm hoping the merits they add for the new 2hrs will go to duration for this) I don't see it topping perfect defence. PD is completely dominating the smn 2hr, other avatars and Odin's 2hr are pretty much going to waste because of Alexander. The only way I can see to fix this is to put Odin and Alex on their own 10 min ability but give them a 2hr spell recast(unaffected by fast cast or haste). This would open up smn as a really nice Zerg option with the new 2hr: O&A ability > PD > ele siphon > new 2hr > avatar > BP rage spam. Would also make Odin more accessible for fun (seein as he's useless anyway) without unnerving you by wasting your 2hr.