New 2-hour Abilities

[Demon6324236]

I'm sorry Oki but you need to tell the devs this is a bad idea. They can not move forward with any enmity based abilities without first establishing that enmity in itself is worth paying attention to. As of right now as you said you have feedback about the enmity cap, I would suggest that be focused on rather than making abilities based around enmity itself because so long as more things are made for enmity its just more things that will need to be changed and tweaked again in the future if enmity itself is fixed.

If this ability is released before changes to enmity I fear the ability will be pointless until such a change is made, at which point the ability may function under a new law of order and not work properly or in a balanced nature. So while I am happy to hear you have heard the feedback players have given on the subject of enmity, I regret to say the 2-hour should probably be held back a bit until this issue is resolved, or it could have problems following the update that fixes enmity.

I forgot to say, I am not saying that adding Enmity to the new 2-hour is bad. I am saying treating them as separate problems is bad. I would like to see the enmity added to it still, but please treat them as the same problem at the same time, otherwise even if the Enmity is added it will not matter much if at all.

[FrankReynolds]

This saying comes to mind:

If you don't have time to do it right the first time, how are you going to find the time to do it twice?

Basically they can either:

fix enmity > add new abilities
or
add new abilities > fix enmity > fix abilities

I think some prioritizing is desperately needed. Changing the abilities once people have gotten used to them can piss a lot of people off, if done wrong. Not only that, but doing the 2hrs before the larger enmity fix creates more work on the back end. To be honest, most of the enmity based 2hrs suck and should be changed to 5 - 15 minute recast J/A to make room for an ability deserving of a 2hr recast.

[Cljader1]

Wrong. This 2hr hasn't shown to get resisted. Also it drains all the mob's TP with a cap of 55ish so in a few hits the mob is TPless. Absorb TP only takes 50% of the mob's current TP and subject to magic resistances so thats why mobs can TP at low HP, it'll never take more than 50% of its current TP.

Also if you're using Last Resort, have embrava and using a greatsword like you should(LOLSCYTHE) you're hitting a great deal in 30 seconds.

This 2hr is not that good especially when you compare it to sam's 2hr, you only get 30-50 tp per hit and with that being said it takes 2-3 attack round to get a ws. Moreover if the mob have no tp the 2hr is basically a glorified subtle blow. I heard alot of people talking about how this is a great Zerg 2hr, which is not true if the mob has no more tp there is no more zerg. Sam old 2hr greatly out zerg drk's 2hr, and I dont even want to talk about the hate spike. Blood Weapon is better adleast you can rock SE for free, and it adds more HP absorption which allows you to recover more quickly from those SE Ws's. Moreover, why should drks have to rely on another job's 2hr (embrava) to make our 2hr any good? Increase the duration please! Sam old 2hr > Drk new 2hr

[Theytak]

I realize I'm a few dayslate to the party, but;

[*]Beastmaster
We will be keeping the HP recovery and status ailment recovery as is, but we will be changing the reraise effect to a stoneskin effect. The strength of the stoneskin effect will vary depending on the pet. The idea is that Familiar will increase the pet’s offensive capabilities, while the new 2-hour ability will enhance the master’s defensive capability.

For a bst, who's pet is their primary line of defense, I don't really understand how "killing your pet" is a logical defensive ability, no matter how much damage that stoneskin absorbs.

[*]Puppetmaster
The same enmity properties for the player version of Invincible and Benediction will be added.
(In cases where the head’s respective 2-hour ability will not work due to the combination of head and frame, such as a sharpshot head with a frame other than a sharpshot frame or a stormwaker head with a valoredge frame, we will be making it so Mighty Strikes is used.)

That doesn't fix the issue with mighty strikes not being worthwhile, it just spreads it around. I don't have any issue with the enmity if you insist on keeping those two, but honestly, well, see my next response.

Finally, I have one request when submitting feedback. We have been seeing comments stating that “we don’t want this” and “totally remake it.” Your feedback is something we wish to utilize in our efforts to make the game better, so instead please try to be as specific as you can with how you’d like it aspects to change.

I can only speak for the jobs I regularly play, so I'm not going to suggest new ideas for every job, but the ones I play, I can. Also, please keep in mind that at this point in time, 2hours are really only worth using against NMs. Giving us an awesome 2hour that only works against regular mobs defeats the purpose of the ability, because by level 99, we no longer have any need for 2hours against regular EXP fodder.

WAR: Consider what war already has, and what this ability has to compete with. War is a heavy DD with very little in terms of innate defensive ability (defender is laughable). Mighty Strikes is a very powerful offensive buff. It's understandable that creating an equal offensive buff is not really easy. I admit, I can't really think of another ability to replace war's current new 2hour with; at least not one that another job doesn't already have (seriously, rehashing job abilities doesn't give us "new" abilities). The only effect that could compete with mighty strikes would be "Greatly increases the rate of double attacks" but given the weapons warrior uses, that could very easily be overpowered.

Perhaps, rather than a directly offensive, or directly defensive ability, you could give use something like a super-sized Break WS (ie: greataxe's shield/armor/weapon/full break); but rather than low damage and simple stat debuffs, it would basically be like enhanced Eagle Eye Shot for warrior. By this I mean, it would be one, big hit (about the same damage as a decent ws, like raging rush if using a gaxe), instant use JA (and no missing, please, a 2hour that can miss is functionally stupid) that would inflict a short duration, potent, by which I mean that it can land on anything, no matter how brokenly powerful the NM is otherwise, amnesia effect. Essentially, a real weapon breaking ability; hit the enemy so hard that it jars them and prevents them from using TP moves for 15~30 seconds. Of course, to be properly balanced, it could be set so that it only works once per fight, after which the enemy would resist the amnesia effect, so that it can't be used to lock monsters and take the challenge out of the fight. This would essentially force the war to choose between their own damage, or everyone's survival.

Of course, you could always give this ability to one of the less desired jobs, instead, to at least give them something to be more desired for.

MNK: The problem here lies mostly in how counters work. This ability, while nice on paper, only really defends from melee attacks. Lately, anything this would be worth using against only poses a threat through it's constant spam of TP attacks and Ga/Ja spells. The only NMs where this ability would really be worthwhile are those that use hundred fists, any other time, the monk using hundred fists themselves is going to be more useful. Honestly, I like this ability on paper, but I know that it won't be worth using in practice, because it won't have any relation to TP moves. Perhaps simply adjusting it, so that while the ability is active, each successful counter reduces the enemy's TP rather than increasing it, or giving it some way to at least partially negate enemy TP moves, such as reducing their damage by some amount and having counter proc when hit by a damaging TP move. Not really sure.

PUP (And a little love for bst): This is the big one for me. If you translate nothing else from my post, because I realize I have a tendency to write novels, translate this portion. Puppetmaster, though a pet job, is a job that favors the PLAYER, not the PET. BST is the reverse of pup, favoring the pet over the player. Giving BST an ability that favors the master, and pup a second ability that favors the pet, is completely backwards. BSTs want a new 2hour that does something for their pet. PUPs want a new 2hour that does something for the player.

Pup already has to deal with having an absolutely terrible 2hour (I could go in to great detail with just how many things are wrong with overdrive, but this is not the thread for it). It's cute that the devs want to give us this little copycat 2hour gimmick, but after testing them to find that, point for point, 4 of them were functionally weakened versions of the 2hour they were supposed to be.
Manafont gives us nothing because we never run out of mp anyway.
Chainspell is heavily hindered by the 4 second global recast, and also costs our puppet's ability to not cast the same failed spell over and over.
Eagle Eye Shot's damage formula was flat out reduced (changing it is understandable, to account for the difference in pet and player ranged attacks, but the amount it was reduced is just silly).
Mighty Strikes cannot be used by the only puppet with any real ability to melee, without noticeably hindering that puppet's ability to function and the damage it deals.
Invincible was entirely unnecessary for valoredge, because of all the puppet's, it's the only one that doesn't have significant problems staying alive against most things, and it's really not even that good of a tank.
Benediction, while nice, is also limited by how rare it is we actually have need to use soulsoother in a party situation.

Instead of 6 cloned 2hours given to a pet at reduced effect, pup's new 2hour should openly benefit the player. I've already lined out one idea, I think in this thread, though it may be elsewhere, that would essentially be similar to a spiritsurge effect; sacrificing the pet to buff the master based on the maneuvers they had active or the puppet they were using. Using that as a basis, I came up with this idea:

An ability that augments maneuver effects, and either allows the pup to temporarily use maneuvers without their pet (and consumes the puppet inthe process) or temporarily grants the puppet immunity to damage while also revoking their ability to be deployed (and thus, do anything at all, other than stand there). The augmented maneuvers would give the pup either an Aura effect, a Sphere effect, or both, depending on how that all works, but basically, each maneuver would buff the party members near by in some way, with the potency depending on the number of maneuvers active
- Fire Maneuvers: Regain and/or a Sizeable chunk of attack bonus that stacks with others
- Thunder Maneuvers: Crit Hit Rate and/or Damage, or Double/Triple attack rate
- Wind Maneuvers: Job Ability Haste (It would -have- to be JA haste. Gear haste and Magic haste would completely defeat the benefit, because they're already easily gained from multiple other sources)
- Earth Maneuvers: Physical Damage Taken -
- Water Maneuvers: Magical Damage Taken -
- Ice Maneuvers: Either MAB, Fast Cast, or some other magically inclined effect
- Light Maneuvers: Regen
- Dark Maneuvers: Refresh or outright MP cost reduction (NOT conserve MP)

Ideally, these effects would impact the master as well, but even if they didn't, they (primarily the fire/thunder/wind effects, earth/water/light to a lesser extent) allow pup to negate the rather significant amount it trails in terms of damage output relative to other heavy DD jobs in endgame events simply by the nature of increasing everyone's damage. The buffs would have to be strong enough to negate the loss in damage of using an effectively pet-less pup in place of a different melee job, but that's really not too difficult to do.

[Prothscar]

I would offer a suggestion: Enhance the new BLU 2hr.

It's literally worthless. None of the Unbridled Learning spells are powerful enough to warrant multiple casts, nor are they worth chaining together. Several reasons:

1) They aren't powerful enough to call for it. This ability does not alleviate the issue at all as it does not enhance or augment Unbridled Learning spells in any way whatsoever.

2) The new 2hr does not cut the MP cost of the spells, thus you'd run out of MP incredibly quickly

3) The new 2hr does not cut the recast times of the spells, thus you wouldn't be able to cast the same spell more than twice.


So effectively, we've gotten a 60 second duration ability that we can use every 2 hours to cast 1 or 2 spells that leave minimal impact on myself, my party, and the monster instead of using Azure Lore to enhance the power of my other spells that don't suck. Great, thanks.

[SpankWustler]

To precede my complaining with some positivity, the adjusted Paladin ability is going to be solid in the few places it will ever be used. All signs point to it doing a ton of damage...as far as Paladin job abilities go.

The new Bard two-hour is actually stronger than I expected. I can't imagine when it will ever be used rather than Soul Voice, but if it ever is, no one will be disappointed!

I feel like I just gave a bottle-cap medal to the tallest midget at the state fair.

Now, moving onto some real pessimism and bitterness!

I would offer a suggestion: Enhance the new BLU 2hr.

It's literally worthless. None of the Unbridled Learning spells are powerful enough to warrant multiple casts, nor are they worth chaining together. Several reasons:

1) They aren't powerful enough to call for it. This ability does not alleviate the issue at all as it does not enhance or augment Unbridled Learning spells in any way whatsoever.

2) The new 2hr does not cut the MP cost of the spells, thus you'd run out of MP incredibly quickly

3) The new 2hr does not cut the recast times of the spells, thus you wouldn't be able to cast the same spell more than twice.


So effectively, we've gotten a 60 second duration ability that we can use every 2 hours to cast 1 or 2 spells that leave minimal impact on myself, my party, and the monster instead of using Azure Lore to enhance the power of my other spells that don't suck. Great, thanks.

This. I want to reiterate all of this.

Also, the stuff under Unbridled Learning is just too niche to want to use it all at once.

I don't want to raise my own defense using Harden Shell while I lower a monster's INT with Gates of Hades. I don't need the Defense Down from Bilgestorm if I can cast a working Tourbillion directly after. I don't want or need to use Absolute Terror if I just used Thunderbolt, because Absolute Terror is single target and doesn't work on Notorious Monsters!

The real life analogue of this magical ability would be a magic ability that let a me simultaneously park my car in a tree, learn what Lady Gaga's favorite date ever would be, refill my cat's food dish, trigger a gas leak somewhere in New Jersey, perfectly cook an order of French Fries, learn what Anthony Bourdain's favorite date ever would be, dump four gallons of boiling oil on a random person somewhere in Arkansas, and change into my cleanest and most visually appealing pair of underpants.

In case it isn't clear, I'm saying that the effects of various Unbridled Learning spells are situational at best and even the good ones very rarely work together.

It would help the new Two-Hour and Unbridled Learning in general to add a few spells simply meant to deal damage to Unbridled Learning. Having something unique to fill the dead air between two, at most, niche spells that work well together in a given situation would go a long way towards making me ever use this new Two-Hour.

If changes should be specific to the Two-Hour itself, anything and everything that makes the Unbridled Learning spells better in a general sense while the Two-Hour is active would help. The spells are all over the board, so damage boosts or recast reductions or MP cost reductions or duration boosts or even accuracy/magic accuracy boosts would help.

Honestly, the real challenge at this point would be making it worse.

[SpankWustler]

Some brief feed-back on a few other new two-hour abilities, separated from the other post because it was long and meant to be about one thing in detail:

The new Red Mage two-hour is good on a conceptual level, but it falls short in execution. It functions similar to Soul Voice, and it seems meant to accomplish something similar to Soul Voice or Embrava, so it should be similar to those abilities in terms of power and duration.

The new Dragoon two-hour would be a lot more impressive if it could bypass the innate Breath Damage Taken -% that every Notorious Monster added recently seems to have. I don't know if this would make the ability good, but I know it would become a lot better.

[Keinn]

A 2 hour ability that consumes your pet on a job that relies on having a pet is silly.

Why couldn't new BST 2hour be something like: Your pet will use a 2 hour ability based on pet's job (WAR uses Mighty Strikes, THF uses Perfect Dodge, MNK uses Hundred Fists, PLD uses Invincible)

[Demon6324236]

A 2 hour ability that consumes your pet on a job that relies on having a pet is silly.

Why couldn't new BST 2hour be something like: Your pet will use a 2 hour ability based on pet's job (WAR uses Mighty Strikes, THF uses Perfect Dodge, MNK uses Hundred Fists, PLD uses Invincible)

"Why didn't BST get PUP's 2-hour!?" Not that I disagree, just what it sounded like.

[Keinn]

The "!?" aside, pretty much. :3