[dev1049] New weapon skills

[Camate]

Hey everyone, we’ve been looking over your feedback and wanted to give more details in the thought process behind our changes and some of the weapon skills themselves.
　　
Axe Weapon Skill “Ruinator”
We will be lowering the attack modifier value and changing it so it’s half of the current value. The amount of damage dealt to high level enemies (those that have high defense) will be reduced, however, being able to deal damage easier than other axe weapon skills will remain unchanged.

We are making it so that the amount of damage will be around the same as Rampage if you have full accuracy and get 2-3 criticals. (This is when both of them are executed at 100 TP. There is of course more damage that can be dealt depending on gear and food.)

We are making adjustments so that you can pick Ruinator if you want to deal more consistent damage, or Rampage if you want to try and deal large amounts of damage.
　
Club Weapon Skill “Realm Razer”
The idea behind the adjustment is the same as Ruinator.

We are making it so that the amount of damage will be around the same as Hexa Strike if you have full accuracy and get 2-3 criticals. Again, this is for 100 TP and more damage can be dealt depending on gear and food.

We ultimately decided to adjust this weapon skill due to the fact that a non-critical hit modifier weapon skill would easily surpass the maximum damage dealt by Hexa Strike in stable conditions, and the result would cause a rapid increase in damage inflation.
　　
Sword Weapon Skill “Requiescat”
Since Spirits Within’s damage varies based on your amount of HP and TP, we are adjusting Requiescat so that it will be easier to use than Spirits Within once you have 300 TP and also so that jobs that cannot boost their HP as high as paladins will be able to deal damage.

Also, Atonement is an easy to use weapon skill for paladins, which has a special feature, so the idea behind Requiescat was to give jobs other than paladin, specifically red mage and blue mage, a good weapon skill choice.
　
　
Hand-to-Hand Weapon Skill “Shijin Spiral”
There have been requests saying that this is weaker than Stringing Pummel and Victory Smite, so please make it stronger than both of those, but we cannot do this for the same reasons listed for our adjustments to Ruinator and Realm Razer.

We have also received some comments saying that the damage of Shijin Spiral is no different than Asuran Fists, or perhaps lower.

We took a look at the conditions of the players who performed weapon skill tests, but there are differences in attack power when executing each weapon skill, and because of this the result was that Asuran Fists and Victory Smite was higher.

Shijin Spiral is stronger than Asuran Fists and when boosting your stats using the appropriate equipment and food, the differences between Asuran Fists and Shijin Spiral will become more apparent, and the gap between Victory Smite and Shijin Spiral will also become smaller.

[Kalilla]

Camate, please send a message to them:

[SIZE="7"]8 YEARS[/SIZE]

Hexa Strike, to my knowledge, was added May 27th, 2003 along with Holy Breastplate/Divine Breastplate.

Black Halo was introduced Dec 16, 2003, but was never as powerful as Hexa Strike was. In 4 days it will have been 8 years since Black Halo was introduced.

Randgrith was introduced Feb. 26, 2004, and only limited to Mjollnir/Gullintani until the Sep. 9, 2010 update where SE introduced weapons that could use these weapon skills. This was again never as good as Hexa Strike.

Mystic Boon was introduced Sep. 9, 2008. This was the first new weapon skill in 5 years that was worth using. Even though it is very useful for replenishing MP, it is not a damage dealing weapon skill per se. So with that this doesn't count.

Flash Nova was introduced Jun. 22, 2010, and wasn't ever used...

Dagan was introduced Sep. 9, 2010, exactly two years after the previous mythic release. This weapon skill does NO damage, and is weaker than Mystic Boon until you start fighting more difficult monsters where you'll benefit from using Dagan instead to bypass the enemies defense. This is very, very situational and I almost never use it (and I have Gambanteinn).

Realmrazer will be introduced Dec. 14, 2011? From what you have said this will again be a weapon skill that isn't as strong as hexa, but unlike previous weapon skills in the past that provided additional benefits to the White Mage (aside from Black Halo) this does not give anything to the user. It is a damage dealing weapon skill that isn't as powerful as Hexa Strike, and was only created to give other jobs who always wanted Hexa Strike in the past a chance to use it. You're giving away the only thing we had and on top of that you made it weaker than Hexa Strike so we don't even benefit from using it.

[Byrth]

I'm riding the "I want to believe.jpg" pretty hard right now. I want to believe that it's possible this is all part of a larger plan. Like:
* Realmrazer : We don't know how they're changing it, but I'd bet they're dropping it to about a .6 fTP that's propagated through the hits. That way you end up with 4.8 fTP without gorget/belt or 6.4 fTP with gorget and belt instead of the current 8 base (including offhand in all cases). If you tossed another +.25 fTP on there from Group II, it'd be up to 7.6~8.4 fTP, aka back to current power. Tossing on another 25% Attack would make it a Hexa Strike replacement in pretty much every situation.
* Requiescat and Blade Shun : These would be able to use +25% Attack and +100 TP Bonus to neutralize their Attack penalty. It would make Blade: Shun a pretty respectable WS in some situations.
* Stardiver with fTP+.25 and Attack+25% would take all kinds of dumps over Drakesbane in many situations.
* Shoha would become a destroyer of worlds, and the SAM fanboy apocalypse that would ensue may shatter Vanadiel. I can't decide if that makes it more or less likely.
* Other already solid WSs like Upheaval and Exenterator would get stronger, but they wouldn't benefit from it as much as the WSs that are currently weaker because they don't replicate fTP or have an attack penalty.

The fact that it pushes the WSs towards balance with each other (apart from Shoha) is what encourages me. SE has always been pretty horrible at hiding their love of SAM, so I'm willing to write that one off.

[Prothscar]

Sword Weapon Skill “Requiescat”
Since Spirits Within’s damage varies based on your amount of HP and TP, we are adjusting Requiescat so that it will be easier to use than Spirits Within once you have 300 TP and also so that jobs that cannot boost their HP as high as paladins will be able to deal damage.

Also, Atonement is an easy to use weapon skill for paladins, which has a special feature, so the idea behind Requiescat was to give jobs other than paladin, specifically red mage and blue mage, a good weapon skill choice.

Here's the problem with this reasoning, sword already has a weaponskill that is superior to Spirits Within and Atonement: Sanguine Blade. It deals magical damage, bypassing the same physical defenses that Requiescat bypasses and does not face the Spirit Damage penalty that Spirits Within and Atonement have on any NM added in the last 3 years. It, however, does not have a massive attack reduction, making it functionally useless on anything that is high enough of a level that Requiescat would be superior to Sanguine Blade on.

On most any target, especially the ones that I feel the Dev team is trying to target with Requiescat, Chant du Cygne and even Vorpal Blade will be superior options to use. Just remove the attack penalty, it doesn't even have to get an attack bonus in return, just remove the attack penalty. An fTP increase based on TP (BOOST), an Accuracy boost based on TP (BOOST), anything except an attack penalty.

[Greatguardian]

I want to know who's supplying the negative Shijin Spiral feedback and why they suck so much. All of the testing on the English forums pretty much point it to being comparable to VSmite if you don't have a Vereth and better than VSmite if you have a Spharai, and otherwise being an Asuran replacement for non-Smite users.

It's good, I guess, that they're not nerfing it. Bringing it up at all had me worried, since it was doing so well. I'm just sorta flabbergasted. I suppose I should praise the incompetence of the JPMNK forums for not realizing what a gem they had? Or perhaps I should praise their ingenuity. Reverse psychology, dawg.

Quickly! We need a bilingual to go post some phony Tachi: Shoha numbers in JP that have it losing to Tachi: Gekko so that they will simply respond to us by refusing to buff it instead of nerfing it.

[Creelo]

Axe Weapon Skill “Ruinator”
We will be lowering the attack modifier value and changing it so it’s half of the current value. The amount of damage dealt to high level enemies (those that have high defense) will be reduced, however, being able to deal damage easier than other axe weapon skills will remain unchanged.

We are making it so that the amount of damage will be around the same as Rampage if you have full accuracy and get 2-3 criticals. (This is when both of them are executed at 100 TP. There is of course more damage that can be dealt depending on gear and food.)

We are making adjustments so that you can pick Ruinator if you want to deal more consistent damage, or Rampage if you want to try and deal large amounts of damage.

They couldn't just fucking leave the solid Axe WS alone...

[Zannon]

...Just pass on to "Enix..." delete the forums/test server because clearly they suck at listening to feedback, the game is clearly going downhill...the bottom is called Game over!

I'm done with this forum, only here till my friends quit later.

PS i miss when squaresoft made good games and Enix has done nothing but taint their name by pumping out 100s of trash games a year.

[Keinn]

You guys think its a good idea to make people spend 100 merits to have a level 96 weapon skill that is less good or equal to what is already available to players since level 55-70. Really?

I am disappoint.

[Aldersyde]

Hey everyone, we’ve been looking over your feedback and wanted to give more details in the thought process behind our changes and some of the weapon skills themselves.
　　
Axe Weapon Skill “Ruinator”
We will be lowering the attack modifier value and changing it so it’s half of the current value. The amount of damage dealt to high level enemies (those that have high defense) will be reduced, however, being able to deal damage easier than other axe weapon skills will remain unchanged.

We are making it so that the amount of damage will be around the same as Rampage if you have full accuracy and get 2-3 criticals. (This is when both of them are executed at 100 TP. There is of course more damage that can be dealt depending on gear and food.)

We are making adjustments so that you can pick Ruinator if you want to deal more consistent damage, or Rampage if you want to try and deal large amounts of damage.

Let me get this straight. You want players to invest 1,000,000 xp for a weapon skill so they can deal mediocre, yet consistent, damage but if they want to deal "large amounts" of damage, they should continue to use a weapon skill that is eight years old and is available by natural skill at level 55? On what plane of reality does this make any sense whatsoever? You've given the thought process that went into nerfing these weapon skills but I want to hear the how the dev team justifies such a heavy cost in time for a weapon skill that is less effective at damage dealing than ones we already have.

If these weapon skills were based off natural skill, I would be cool with consistent damage and situational uses. When the cost is 10>15>20>25>30 merit progression, I'm not so forgiving. This is bullshit and quite frankly should be acquired with natural skill or scrapped altogether.

The utter contempt exhibited by these devs in their refusal to actually provide a suitable reward for time invested by players makes me feel stupid for giving SE money every month. Their fear of actually offering meaningful progression baffles me.

I need booze.

[Zannon]

Lololololololol