FINAL FANTASY XI Job Adjustmentｓ Manifesto [Blue Mage]

[SpankWustler]

Shouldn't this be under a "proc" thread...

Maybe. It is the system that's weird, but Blue Mage suffers more from that weirdness than any other job due to the mechanics of changing spells. I personally think it's worth discussing any time comes up, because currently participating in Voidwatch on Blue Mage is a truly miserable undertaking.

[Nightfyre]

Shouldn't this be under a "proc" thread... Seems a waste of space.

I will once again suggest that you read the discussion so that you might understand why it's particularly relevant to BLU.

That said, I should mention that not everything is a proc, but it's quite a large list. Slycer, who leads the Voidwatch group I run with, has been compiling a list of procs post-update from various sources. At this point it's more or less accurate, a few potential procs that haven't been confirmed in-shell yet. It does give us a bit more room to work with for spell sets (assuming nothing's missing of course), but the issue of the global cooldown is still entirely in SE's hands.

Prothescar doesn't seem to have posted his Heavy Strike findings here yet, hope he won't mind me doing so.

Finally got around to testing Heavy Strike on Hahava, and it's kind of bittersweet. Was able to squeeze in 4-5 casts per pop between Fanatic's and landed Sudden Lunges (more below).

In STR gear with Sole Sushi, I was having an astoundingly hard time landing the spell at all, when it did hit it hit for 300~500. On the 4th or 5th run I decided to try TP gear for the extra ACC, and it made a large difference (obviously); landed far more casts, but the damage obviously suffered. CA+Efflux damage was pretty nice considering the mob, but I didn't get a large sample size on that since I didn't feel like running back 50+ times.

A sample of the damage:
No CA:
383
464
465
333
479

CA:
980
1206



Overall the awful accuracy had given me the overwhelming urge to strangle badgers. Would seem that my previous premonitions were wrong and the ACC is pretty damn bad. :\

For comparison, Sudden Lunge and Vanity Dive had more casts and landed almost constantly in STR gear.

While Hahava is relatively evasive at 90, level correction reduction and 7 skill/level on the way to 95 should make him much less difficult to hit in the test server environment. With sushi added in, a noticeably low hitrate on a 90 cap NM is downright ridiculous. If the current trend of high-evasion NMs continues, Heavy Strike's hitrate will be floored on the NMs that it would be most useful on and it may not even be worth casting for anything besides fodder mobs and older content (meaning Abyssea and earlier at 95 cap).

Yes, we can make trades in gear and it looks like we'll be getting a decent amount of acc gear next update. That severely reduces the benefit of the spell though, because we'll have to drop a significant amount of damage gear for the spell to land.

[Helel]

Well that blows. Looks like it's time to work on acc swords I guess. The news that sudden lunge lasts for 10s on hahava is pretty insane though.

Edit: yo devs, increase the mp cost of dark orb to 999 if you'd like, but please lower the acc penalty of heavy strike.

[saevel]

Considering Heavy Strike is like 36MP it's to be expected. Or were people expecting to become like pre-nerf RNG?

SE already said it was meant to be an all or nothing attack. It already hits harder then spells that are double it's MP cost, just use /THF if you absolutely want it to land for high damage. Otherwise it's a gamble.

[SpankWustler]

just use /THF if you absolutely want it to land for high damage.

You're better off with another spell if you're already subbing Thief, since Heavy Strike is a critical hit right out of the bag.

[Tashan]

Looks like I won't be doing much of VW then.

[Helel]

Considering Heavy Strike is like 36MP it's to be expected. Or were people expecting to become like pre-nerf RNG?

SE already said it was meant to be an all or nothing attack. It already hits harder then spells that are double it's MP cost, just use /THF if you absolutely want it to land for high damage. Otherwise it's a gamble.

This comparison doesn't make sense. Originally RNG did not have to worry about pDIF (level correction). I'm not sure how that applies to Heavy Strike. As Spank points out as well, considering Heavy Strike is already 100% crit, /thf is pretty much a wasted SJ, unless you plan on casting another spell instead.

[Prothscar]

Having one spell that makes us a presence in VW is hardly asking for much. Not a single one of our spells before Heavy Strike had any promise of ever performing even close to admirably on anything worth a shit. Heavy Strike was the answer to this problem, and so SE nerfed it into just as much uselessness as any other spell we have. All we are good for is proccing, and even in that we're slow and inefficient.

Recent tests indicate that Sudden Lunge has 70 +/- more accuracy than Heavy Strike. That is completely unacceptable.

[Tashan]

70 ACC is pretty easy to make up in this day and age though.

[saevel]

Having one spell that makes us a presence in VW is hardly asking for much. Not a single one of our spells before Heavy Strike had any promise of ever performing even close to admirably on anything worth a shit. Heavy Strike was the answer to this problem, and so SE nerfed it into just as much uselessness as any other spell we have. All we are good for is proccing, and even in that we're slow and inefficient.

Recent tests indicate that Sudden Lunge has 70 +/- more accuracy than Heavy Strike. That is completely unacceptable.

Take a look at Sidewinder / Slugshot if you want to see what HS was modeled after. One powerful yet unreliable attack.

My comment about /THF and SA was it you absolutely wanted to guarantee it to land, I know its a 100% crit. Seriously what are you guys wanting? To be the best healer, best damage dealer, best crowd control in the game all at once? Currently @90 BLU is beyond a kick a$$ DD, especially in short burst's like how VWNM's work. White's proced you run in and slam all your heavy spells.

You complain that your hitting weapon the T4 Sandy VWNM, guys Fudo SAMs are hitting for 400, Ukon WAR's are getting 300~500, and so forth. The only DD that was dealing somewhat decent damage was the JR RNG. That four armed bandit just has ridiculous -PDT/MDT, nothing we hit him with was dealing large amounts of damage. The other T4's weren't as annoying but nobody did insane damage on any of them.

It sounds too much like everyone wants to be the hero and suddenly out-damage everyone else. The other melee jobs are complaining that BLU's got too much, and the BLU's are complaining that they don't have enough. Hmm..