Battle Balance Adjustment: Resistance to Enfeebling Magic

[Mindi]

Enfeebling will never make red mage good. People need to change their focus to enhancing magic and cures like rdm has always been. I can't Imagine an Enfeebling spell that changes the job, but I can with enhancing.

At 75 it was Enfeebling+Refresh that made ppl bring RDM to stronger fights (Sure there was allways the colibri Merit PT where RDM was good at healing/hasting..) It was required for a RDM to have a good enfeebling build to even hit some targets with enfeebling where WHM and BLM had a really bad chance to get it land. When resists weren't a problem, RDM could go full potency (like MND on SlowII/ParalyzeII) sets where WHM or BLM still would need skill-equip.

In smallman groups or endgame at 75 RDM was a tank, enfeebler, decent healer and support. They destroyed RDM tanking with Enmity change to our mainspells, they destroyed enfeebling with ignoring RDM and making other jobs as usefull to enfeeble like rdm, and well anyone with cure IV is a decent healer now. Every Mage can run around with lets say 3-6tic autorefresh. Haveing 2 over 1 tic autorefresh at 75 was a differenc, having 7 max over 6 is no real difference, atleast not much. RDM was solo-boss at 75, but even if they change gravity resist on all those newer mobs, i cant think of any target i would try to solo as RDM now. I allways was more a fan of Duo NIN+RDM at 75 hehe. RDM was my mainjob at 75 for many years and i got it to almost perfect equip in all usefull Sets (-Morrigan grrrrrrrr Salvage hated me) but since hmm lets say lv cap raised to 85 i never played it much.

Almost all fights we face now in FFXI Mobs have Uber-TP moves which hurt. Its hardly anymore about having a good potency Slow II or Paralyze II on them.

RDM need unique enfeebling that lowers target TP gain, blocks them from using TP moves (Rdm Amnesia spell go) or anything else that makes the Monsters use TP moves less often. RDM could for sure use unique buffs, like Temper would have been a nice Buff for others instat of just giving them a enspell on SCH/RDM.. but noo they have the opinion that RDM is a ego-job. Sure RDM allways had self buffs and i dont mind that, but RDM could also Aga them with Accession, Temper cant.

This enfeebling change benefits RDM, but in the same way it benefits WHM, SCH, BLM. Anyone can enfeeble now, its not needed to bring the slightly more powerful enfeebles RDM brings to the table. When all newer NM's wont resist paralyze anymore this can be nice again, but i dont think it make groups bring a RDM. Once we have fights again which take some time and where RDM can land enfeeblings and WHM can not, it could give RDM a chance, but with Embrava+PD zerging it doesnt happen.

[Babekeke]

Silly question, perhaps, but will these apply to enfeebling ninjutsu and blue magic as well as white/black?

[*]Resist hacks will only be applied towards enfeebling magic (spells that fall into the enfeebling magic skill category)

Just to clear that up for you.

[saevel]

RDM's most potent defensive enfeebles are for auto-attack damage only, which is the absolute lowest source of damage for most NMs. Technically paralyze / addle reduce magic damage, though I've never seen a NM have their spell paralyzed and addle's effect isn't even noticeable. RDM's real enfeebles are it's offensive ones, Dia III and Gravity II (-40 evasion). Gravity is broken, badly broken as EVERYTHING you'd want to stick -40 evasion on is completely immune to it. Those few things that aren't immune will only have it last 30s or less, and then they become immune after two castings. SE really didn't want people slowing down NM movement speed, which screws over the entire gravity line.

After all that ... your left with .... Dia III as your only real enfeeble. It's potency is fixed and it's magic accuracy is fixed, the only thing you have any control over is it's duration. So yeah this update will do exactly nothing for RDM's until SE released new enfeebles that are offensive in nature or actually useful defensive ones.

[Dragoy]

• Immunity
  In the case where a monster has immunity to a certain enfeebling spell, it will be possible to recognize this via the chat log when it is resisted.

If nothing else, this is something I quite like, hah!

It is of course good to see the system being reworked, so I'm not hating, even if the Red Mage in me might hold a grudge, still.

[ManaKing]

Yeah this is a pretty bad 'fix'. Unless the threshold for enfeebling magic is going to be lower than we all expect and RDM is going land enfeebles easily by virtue of their higher skill, this is just a waste of time. It favors spamming spells over worrying about potency and accuracy linked with JAs. This is an update that doesn't favor specialization in enfeebling, but rather those that have the ability to do it at all. You wouldn't make an adjustment to 'buff' Shields that would make them just as viable on WAR than they are on PLDs. RDM has an A+ in enfeebling. WE ARE SUPPOSED TO BE THE BEST AT IT.

It's already been expressed how this is not helpful to RDM's ability to inflict more potent enfeebles via saboteur if our enfeebles are still going to be able to be resisted. You have to give RDMs some method to reliably implement Saboteur on mobs so they don't waste a 5 minute job ability on the possibility that may or may not work.

The only thing that I can quickly come up with that would benefit RDMs from this system is if a tier 1 enfeeble has already landed that it can be overwritten by a tier 2 of the same magic without worrying about resists. That way if you really want Slow II to land with Saboteur on it, you keep casting Slow I until you land it and then overwrite it with Slow II with Saboteur on it. This seems like a rather convoluted and ass-backwards approach to something that should be as easy as, Saboteur makes any enfeeble irresistible, but it's not hard for many RDMs to see this issue completely swept under the rug and ignored.

If you want to make RDMs feel like they aren't being overlooked again, address the issue with Saboteur and implement favorable rules to at least give us the illusion that we are the best at enfeebling.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't RDM still have the strongest enfeebles in the game? If so, how is this not a boost to RDM?

This is a boost more favourable to those lacking skill, allowing it more easily to land. The only way this would be a boost for RDM was if skill itself effected potency. As it stands, WHM, BLM and SCH can just aim for potency builds and spam the spell increasing their role in a party, but not adding a RDM as a role still.

Basically, the same mindset will still exist. Why add a RDM for a small boost for the tier II spells when WHM, BLM or SCH can do it well enough and you can add another DD.

[Kuvo]

I would like to have more info and detail about these changes before I make any drastic conclusions. When aby first came out a lot of ppl flamed the system trying to get a 6 person lvl 75 party and trying to lvl the old way. Pull to camp and kill. That didn't work and people were really hating on that system. A few months later and everyone started to love it, once it was more figured out. All i'm saying is that the new area, cities, battle content, and so on my be the difference to RDM and other jobs and may be a complete change to how we do endgame content now. New systems, new mobs, new areas, perhaps it would change for RDM but like i said, i'm not going to say this update is not going to fix my favorite job in the FF series until more detailed info is released. At the same time i'm not going to get my hopes up.

[Guppie]

It would be interesting if the different tiers of enfeebles had their own hack/resist counters.

For an example of how that might work, consider something like Gravity. Other mage jobs would oscillate between high/low resistance states for Gravity, with each successful landing leading to a period where the spell would fail to land (having multiple mages spam enfeebling would merely reduce the period of the oscillations).

A RDM could theoretically be able to alternate Gravity I and II, to always keep at least one enfeeble in the low-resistance state (thus perhaps making Gravity useful again). This scenario works best if you can hack a lower-tier enfeeble while a higher tier being already on the mob (ie, hack Gravity I while Gravity II is already on).

If the different tiers of enfeebles share a single hack/resist counter, then at least RDM will be able to hack faster by rotating the multiple tiers (although a SCH burning Celerity charges would probably be able to do it fairly quickly, too).

[tyrantsyn]

If stronger MND/INT/SKILL apply to this new hack method, a well gear RDM should be able to land enfeeble's faster than any other job. Even if another job class can land a Paralyze it may come down to getting it done with 3 cycle's or 10. If that the case RDM will have the advantage.

What RDM need's is unique spell's not native to other job classes that help's bring them into the content. Which has been discuss plenty. Hopefully those are in the works as well.

[Return1]

People are still focused on the mobs we have today instead of the mobs we'll have tomorrow. While that's fine, people are still bringing GEO into the discussion. You can't do that. Also, the enfeebling change is about prepping the game for future content, so it's not wise to debate it atm.

People talking about "White damage" from mobs, I don't think they're considering the possibility the new mobs can easily be designed to do ridiculous amounts of white damage, making Enfeebles needed for any modicum of comfort needed while fighting them.

It's possible to keep Saboteur Slow II up almost full time. That's ~56% more slow than any other Mage's slow spell. Paralyze II was also said to proc at something like 40-45% with 5/5 merits. Does anyone have any numbers on that? The point is, RDM could decrease white damage greatly against new mobs if they are made incredibly powerful.

That's why I'm holding back my judgement. I don't think a decently well planned expansion would add a new stackable enfeeble set, have a large enfeeble overhaul, and focus on new powerful HNMs, wouldn't make said new strongest HNMs in the game strong enough to need said stacking enfeebles and overhaul.