High Tier Elemental Magic [dev1229]

We have been told twice now (in two years) that high tier elemental magic would receive a boost. The recent skill chain adjustment has made it so that any melee job is able to deal more magical damage than BLM SCH GEO RDM SMN yet again. Why has this not been addressed in the last two monthly updates?

Because we BLMs are not SAM that is why /sigh
But honestly tweaking the magic system is most likely a little harder than the weaponskills. We did get a good adjustment about a year ago or so when they did all that equalization stuff with the elemental magic, have faith, the mages will be back up there soon (I hope anyway).

With a Geo present or a Blm MBing off of a Sam, nuking is actually pretty strong. They've always seemed overly cautious when it comes to boosting magic damage, so they might still be holding to a "wait and see" pattern.

For reference, an Idris Geo using Malaise gives -44 MDB, which makes nukes hit for almost 2.5x as much. Acumen also gives +55 MAB.

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Originally Posted by Malithar

which makes nukes hit for almost 2.5x as much.

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Assuming the monster has 100 MDB to start with (most NMs have 140-200), -44 MDB would be almost 1.8x as much, not 2.5. Furthermore, MDB appears to have a minimum of 50 (or a maximum reduction of -50).

This does interact with target base MDB if you assume it MDB has a minimum of 50 and you can end up with a >2x reduction if you use Bolster. Here is the percentage increase in magic damage compared to base target MDB for Bolstered Indris Malaise and Vidohunir (-98 MDB) assuming that MDB has a minimum value of 50:
http://images.bluegartr.com/bucket/g...9ddd77d20b.JPG
X axis is increasing base MDB and Y Axis is percentage increase in magic damage. So you can see that this combination of debuffs (if it works as we think) will increase damage by almost 190% (2.9x) on monsters with 150 MDB and generally at least doubles magic damage up to 200 MDB, which is probably safely the NM range.

+55 MAB is something like +14% damage for my black mage, so that's nice too.



So the debuffs and buffs are good, but they're not the 5x damage that melees get from Haste.

Was gonna get with Dasva and test just that (minimum 50 MDB or maximum reduction of -50 MDB) this weekend. Good to see that chart, didn't realize that about it. :o And you're right about the amount, was remembering it as Stone I 1390 >> 3018, but was 1690 >> 3018. XD

I checked on this, but currently there are no plans.

I think BLM and nukers in general were balanced to be able to deal high damage "on demand" meaning without having to swing a weapon and gain TP whereas a nuker could theoretically spam nukes back to back until their MP runs dry. Additionally, I think the damage of BLM was set to be lower than a hasted melee because a melee faces risks that BLMs do not such as being killed by AoEs, amnesia, doom, DoT, petrify etc. Melee DPS on any given relevant mob is stymied by TP moves with stun or knockback etc, whereas a BLM can sit back at a safe distance, eat some cookies and drop damage.

It's similar with Rangers too. Everyone thinks Rangers are top tier dd in terms of damage, but RNG DPS isn't that high compared to MNK or SAM, it's just that unlike MNK or SAM, RNG can deal comparable damage(less so actually) but be hateless and safe, away from Arrogance Incarnate or other crappy TP moves. Yet their damage will never beat out a fully hasted melee job because melee face more risks. There's probably an algorithim for calculating proposed DPS changes for jobclasses at SE, whereby there's some function of DPS vs Risk. High risk jobs like melee are higher tier'd DPS jobs than RNG or BLM which deal damage from far away(and are not too handicapped when weakened; unlike melee which are virtually worthless when weakened).

hateless is a new development. magic and rng damage used to be the kings in the game, the trade-off being that it took at most 2 shots from the mob to have a blm or rng pushing up daisies, that was the balance, coupled with MP cost and resulting downtime or the cost of ammo for rangers. and believe me, the same screaming DDs who will not allow tanks to hold hate get now, mages and rangers were hearing it then. Now, ranger was nerfed for most of a decade when they added the "sweet spot" but mages were never nerfed. What happened is that melees were buffed, then buffed, then buffed until they surpassed both. SE recently addressed rnagers and put them back essentially where they originally were, they didn't scale the damage back up but they dramatically reduced the cost of ammo via recycle and gave them enmity tools so they can go all out. They did some of that with the equalization update for mages but it hasn't been anywhere near as effective because top damage hasn't moved, just MP cost. I mean, AM is supposed to be awesome, instead it is universally regarded as a waste of time due to casting time vs. yield, as you can do more damage by casting 3 times in the same time for less MP, and less hate spikes. I'd say OP has a reasonable point. I would also say that if SE made nukers the damage kings again the whining melee rants would drive us to the brink of suicide.

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Originally Posted by Xsilver

I think BLM and nukers in general were balanced to be able to deal high damage "on demand" meaning without having to swing a weapon and gain TP whereas a nuker could theoretically spam nukes back to back until their MP runs dry. Additionally, I think the damage of BLM was set to be lower than a hasted melee because a melee faces risks that BLMs do not such as being killed by AoEs, amnesia, doom, DoT, petrify etc. Melee DPS on any given relevant mob is stymied by TP moves with stun or knockback etc, whereas a BLM can sit back at a safe distance, eat some cookies and drop damage.

It's similar with Rangers too. Everyone thinks Rangers are top tier dd in terms of damage, but RNG DPS isn't that high compared to MNK or SAM, it's just that unlike MNK or SAM, RNG can deal comparable damage(less so actually) but be hateless and safe, away from Arrogance Incarnate or other crappy TP moves. Yet their damage will never beat out a fully hasted melee job because melee face more risks. There's probably an algorithim for calculating proposed DPS changes for jobclasses at SE, whereby there's some function of DPS vs Risk. High risk jobs like melee are higher tier'd DPS jobs than RNG or BLM which deal damage from far away(and are not too handicapped when weakened; unlike melee which are virtually worthless when weakened).

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You should maybe reevaluate your assumption about RNG. Historically, you are correct. However depending on buffs, with Flurry 2 (30% ranged delay reduction, Coursers Roll (unknown/untested value), and Snapshot gear, Rangers are close to the delay cap. Add on top of that the ability to maintain a 4-hit build, and with the right buffs, a 3-hit build, Ranger has gotten a huge boost in the DPS department.

The one thing that holds it back is, unless you are making a party setup for Rangers, it doesn't do well in a mixed setting, like being able to toss war, drk, mnk, and sam all in the same pt. Buffs will vary and will influence dps.

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Originally Posted by Grekumah

I checked on this, but currently there are no plans.

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lol, I know it isn't your fault but that is funny.

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Originally Posted by Draylo

lol, I know it isn't your fault but that is funny.

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This. I'm almost certain I remember a dev post shortly after the original magic revamp that made low tiers much better to spam that said they'd be looking into making high tier spells more attractive.

For what it's worth, I'm happy with the nuking hierarchy atm, but I would really like to see MP costs re-evaluated as a whole. Tier I-III is pretty much fine, but IV and V get a bit too high in their cost. The cost difference between Stone >> Thunder should be lowered greatly as well, just as the damage gaps were. Stone I: 4 MP, Thunder I: 34 MP, base damage difference of 25. Stone III: 64 MP, Thunder III: 129 MP, idk the damage difference, but it's no where near double, as the MP cost is. It's just not enough to justify unless you absolutely need to be nuking an element besides Stone.

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Originally Posted by Grekumah

I checked on this, but currently there are no plans.

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What happened to this?

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Originally Posted by Camate

We’d like to make adjustments to the stats of elemental magic, and in particular, the higher tier spells. While this is still in the planning phase and I can’t make any promises at the moment, we are looking into making adjustments to the ratio of damage to MP of tier-V elemental magic spells so that they can be used better in battle.

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At the very least you can make the tier V spells more MP efficient. Putting aside the fact that I personally don't believe weapon skill damage and elemental damage are properly balanced, there are adjustments that can be made within the magical tiers.

Seriously a 4-5 step weaponskill from a Samurai deals 99k (capped) light damage. The argument that BLM should deal less damage since it doesn't have to be in range is crap, because all damage dealers other than RNG hit the hate cap and have to survive. The fact that they stated they were going to fix something, and suddenly they have no plans means I will likely take a break until it is implemented.

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Originally Posted by Tptn937

The fact that they stated they were going to fix something, and suddenly they have no plans means I will likely take a break until it is implemented.

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do not EVER take such a promise as true. I direct your attention to the beast gear to accommodate reduction of a beast's level 99 thf pet's Treasure Hunter from TH3 (the TH of a naked 99 thf, like our pets) to TH1, the TH of a naked level 15 thf. we were promised the gear-despite SE's protestations to the contrary some forum posters saved the quote so we can prove it-and they announced later they said no such thing, all was well and just deal with things as they are. I mean it doesn't matter now since we no longer have thf pets that can be used in end-game so even if they had kept their promise it would be useless now, but that's not the point. The point is even a promise cannot be trusted. So your break until it is implemented (assuming you were serious and this isn't a phoney rage-quit like most) may very well be a permanent break.

I pray man…I pray, as of recently unless magic burst nuking numbers are kinda low compared to a dd worst part is we got the stupid magic wall while dd can spam ws without any issues/penalties the least they could’ve done was have wall only for 3 or more of the same jobs but allow a mix to not get walled in

Blm Blm = no wall

Blm Blm Blm = wall

Blm sch geo = no wall etc

That could’ve open so many possibilities and new jobs allow to nuke.

Kinda weird how mages always get screwed over the amount of gear we need per spell just to make spells decent is insane a set for this that this and that before you know you’ve used 2-3 wardrobes just to maximize each spell. Facepalm the biggest slap was the weapons that came with Reisenjima like base mab don’t ever wanna go up I remember at some point we got like 3-4 staffs all with same +28 Mab pre augments, dd weapons got all the way to 360 in some cases from example 189-200 ish base dmg then Aeonics came just to have dd stats for mages……… I was like for Christ sake lmao.

They should rework Magic Crit Hit and boost the elemental damage!

holy necrobump batman

In this case it's kinda justified, though usually you should make a more significant contribution to a thread if you're going to bump it like that.

All jobs with elemental magic should have a non-zero magic crit chance (as physical attacks do), have a trait that increases it, and the value of it should be increased significantly. Back when it was added there was so little of it avialable and the effect of a magic crit was and is miniscule.