New 2-hour Abilities

[FrankReynolds]

Players need to stop regurgitating this falsehood. RDM was never an enfeebling specialist, nor has S-E ever advertised it as such; if there was ever a point that the dev team implied it was or should become a better enfeebler(over other jobs with the same potential), I'd welcome a source to that reference.

Until merits, RDM didn't even have tier 2 Paralyze/Slow/Blind effects, NIN got tiers one and two natively, as well as a tier 2 poison effect parallel to RDM. BRD has always had more unique enfeebles in it's songs, as well as a more powerful slow. BLM had native control of the elemental DoTs, where RDM didn't. DRK had Stun and Absorbs, PLD had Flash. Until merits, the only unique enfeeble in RDM's powers was Gravity. Not to mention that, prior to WoTG, WHM, BLM, and SMN had superior native INT and MND stats to improve potency of said spells, to include a slightly more exclusive equipment inclusion (and example here would be Seer's from the Promathia era). Even DRK has superior Dark magic skill for superior Bio damage.

More importantly, with the exception of three or four spells, most of these enfeebles were underwhelmingly inefficent against most boss-level monsters. It was the unique combination of Bio, Poison, Gravity and Bind that made RDM any sort of threat. In the time after Aht Urgan, even this was made irrelevant.

It's the players alone under the delusion that RDM is some kind of enfeebling specialist; everyone was desperate to easily label the class and simply latched on to it's A ranked Enfeebling skill, the usefulness of which is debatable.

Red mage was labeled an enfeebling class, because it was the best bet for landing enfeebles on a high level mob. All the other jobs you named had better things to do during a big fight than worry about landing enfeebling magic. Not to mention the fact that most of them weren't as good at landing them with the exception of one or two spells. I don't know what you thought red mage was, or what you thought it should be, or what the devs thought it was. But, it was there to enfeeble and cast haste / refresh %99 of the time and do whatever else you thought it was supposed to do the other %1. Devs can call it a flying pig if they want, but if it walks like a duck...



On Topic: The adjustments to dancers 2 hour seem pretty blah. I'm not even sure where that you would use this outside of just trying to make some cool numbers on your screen. Perhaps we could get some details as to how the devs plan on having this used, because it looks to me like it should just be a short recast offensive ability. Maybe to get just one more kill before getting timed out of dynamis? I dunno.

[Xilk]

The bst community would still like to hear a practical application for killing our pet for stoneskin. Enlighten us please?

Come on, that's easy. When you are fighting a BIG NM and a BIG AoE is about to wipe you out, and your pet is going to die, you can pop it and survive that BIG hit while everyone else andyour pet dies...

You know for zerg situati.. ohyeah... right....

[Sunrider]

Red mage was labeled an enfeebling class, because it was the best bet for landing enfeebles on a high level mob. All the other jobs you named had better things to do during a big fight than worry about landing enfeebling magic. Not to mention the fact that most of them weren't as good at landing them with the exception of one or two spells. I don't know what you thought red mage was, or what you thought it should be, or what the devs thought it was. But, it was there to enfeeble and cast haste / refresh %99 of the time and do whatever else you thought it was supposed to do the other %1. Devs can call it a flying pig if they want, but if it walks like a duck...

What you're talking about is the roles players forced the class into, not what it is actually tailored to do. SMN could land Silence on Suzaku as reliably as a RDM, would you call it an enfeebling specialist then? RDM was the most popular choice for healer in after Aht Urgan, did that make it a more specialized healer than WHM?

The players might have popularly chosen the RDM to enfeeble, but that didn't make it specialized nor properly equipped for the task, much less in the face of superior enfeebling powers on other classes, such as the examples I previously mentioned. Nothing you said invalidates my statements.

[Hashmalum]

It greatly concerns me that Beastmaster's new 2-hour is not on the list.

They must actually, legitimately think it's okay.

I share your concern. I'm also concerned that Red Mage's new 2-hour is not on the list, because unlike Beastmaster's fundamentally misconceived ability, RDM's is actually fixable, and most of the fixes are trivially easy to do. It needs to last long enough for us to cast all the spells it can boost, the potency enhancement needs to be higher, and the enhanced spells need to be undispellable like Embrava is. Of those three things, the first two are just numbers. And nobody should say the third is impossible or too hard; after all, there are even certain monsters that use the same TP moves to put up undispellable buffs. (For example, look at the crabs in Walk of Echoes conflux #1--they use the same TP moves as normal crabs, but the Defense Boost status from their Scissor Guard is undispellable, whereas for normal crabs anywhere else, it can be dispelled easily.)

[FrankReynolds]

What you're talking about is the roles players forced the class into, not what it is actually tailored to do. SMN could land Silence on Suzaku as reliably as a RDM, would you call it an enfeebling specialist then? RDM was the most popular choice for healer in after Aht Urgan, did that make it a more specialized healer than WHM?

The players might have popularly chosen the RDM to enfeeble, but that didn't make it specialized nor properly equipped for the task, much less in the face of superior enfeebling powers on other classes, such as the examples I previously mentioned. Nothing you said invalidates my statements.

It is what it is guy. You can tell everyone your a ballerina if you want, but that doesn't mean your gonna be in the next presentation of the nut cracker.

It doesn't matter what the devs say a job is supposed to be. It only matters what the job can do well. You can say red mage shouldn't be an enfeebler, but that's not gonna make them a DD or an enhancer, or whatever else you wish it was.

[Kari]

DNC: I'm not really sure what you're saying here. We can use 3 Flourishes back to back? Okay, that's nice I guess. It's pretty much a gimp Meikyo Shisui then? Definitely better than what we had. I would recommend extending the duration back to 60 seconds and reducing all flourish recasts, but you've already clearly decided not to do that.

Yeeeeah. At least this is BETTER than the piece of crap we were going to get.
However, I'd definitely like to see some improvements. I'm glad to see we'll be able to do more with this, but there is NO REASON to not use this 2 hour for 3 Reverse Flourishes. I mean, if it's supposed to give us full use of Flourishes, I'd love to be able to do a few Building + Climactic WSs while Reversing for more TP, but with only 3, I'm going to Climactic before 2 houring, then use 3 Reverses. Building would be a waste at that point.

[Glamdring]

The development team needs to make sure that players will use these abilities. There would be nothing more insulting to players than adding new 2 hours that we'll never use.

you mean like the beast one? If I want stoneskin I'll /whm or /rdm and keep my pet tyvm.

[Demon6324236]

Hey everyone,

The new 2-hours were developed based on the idea that they would share the existing 2-hour ability's recast timer and players would be selecting which ability to use based on the situation. Instead of these being a higher-tier or universal abilities that can be used for any situation, they are abilities that are designed to be used for specialized conditions.

I wish I could say thats what these are, or that there were alot of different situations in this game right now, sadly to say that would be a lie.

Below are the envisioned applications of some abilities as well as planned adjustments.

Please tell me how some of these should work, like RDM, or BST. Please tell me how they are being adjusted to make them worth using over our current ones, or over other jobs abilities.

While Mighty Strikes offers a lot of physical damage through critical hits for a period of time, the idea was to add a way to attack enemies that have strong resistances to physical damage.

As many have said, Mighty Strikes will do more damage in almost any case than this especially because this does not work on Weapon Skills. The only situation in which this is worth while is when you have a constant permanent Amnesia effect on you!

Based on testing and feedback, we are planning to make adjustments to extend the effect duration to 60 seconds. (Planning to make this change during this week’s Test Server update.)

On top of this, add the effect to Weapon Skills. Its really sad that the best 2-hour you could come up with for WAR is just a copy of a Merit Job Ability for another job!

The new 2-hour ability can be used for cases where just turtling up with Invincible and letting an enemy wail on you will not turn the tides of the fight, since you can enhance your defenses while reducing an enemy’s HP with the reflected damage.

The problem is the defense needs to be enough to keep you alive, while damage has to be enough to actually matter, any case you would even think of 2-houring as a PLD for a defensive maneuver, you would be taking to much for you to just block alone. Not to mention, that in any case this game has got to the point with tanking where if you want damage done, the DDs hit it, if the PLD is tanking it, damage is not being done, or needed.

As mentioned previously in the post about adding an enmity boost effect to this ability, we understand the problems with the enmity cap. We plan on considering this for paladin in general and not limiting it only to the new 2-hour ability effect.

As mentioned previously in the post following your last. Adding enmity to this effect means nothing as of now, and means nothing if you add these abilities before fixing that problem. If my power is out, and I plug in a toaster I just bought from Wal-Mart its not doing any more for me at my house than it was when it was sitting on the shelf at the store. I am happy the problems are understood, or you think they are, but just understanding them means nothing, because until something is actually done about it anything relevant to it will have to be changed again later anyways.

In addition to INT and MND, we will also be adding CHR to the stats that are lowered.

Still not a ton of uses for this that I see when compared to the overwhelming power of Soul Voice buffs, but however, I will leave you to it, not every ability is meant for zerging or melee power, and its nice to see a mage that helps other mages.

Meikyo Shisui excels in instantaneous power. On the other hand, the new 2-hour ability is for cases where an enemy's AoE damage is too strong and getting close is dangerous. It will allow you to evade special attacks while dealing damage.

So basically this is Perfect Dodge, it lets you evade all attacks, all, attacks, and gives you more power on your Weapon Skills on top of it for each you dodge. Do you see how much of a slap in the face that is to THFs? THFs get to dodge, but they get no stronger and they do not dodge everything thrown at them.

Magical attacks will not be evaded, but will be made so that the damage received is 0. This will not have any effect on breath attacks, though.

What the hell is this? You already made this 2-hour better than both Invincible, and Perfect Dodge, but now, you allow a SAM to not even be effected by magic!? I thought it was bad that you stole the Merit Job Ability of MNK, and made it a 2-hour for WAR, but now you have made a 2-hour that is effectively Perfect Dodge, Invincible, Perfect Defense, and Impetus, all in a single ability! For people who preach balance, you sure have a shitty sense of it.

With this ability we are aiming to make it possible to have a stable way of fighting by increasing defensive capabilities and diverting your time in battle towards enhancing offense capabilities.

With this ability you threw balance out the window for 5 minutes and thought you would create the single most powerful 2-hour ability in the game for any non-supportive job!

Trance is an ability that allows the player to take advantage of Waltzes and Steps, while the new 2-hour ability makes it possible to utilize Flourishes to the maximum. The advantage of this ability is that it makes it possible to always use the maximum effect for Building Flourish, Reverse Flourish, Climatic Flourish, etc., as you are granted 5 finishing moves.

How about you grant unlimited Finishing Moves for the duration. Maybe then it will be a little better off, instead of an instant 5 alone.

There have been requests asking for the recast times for Flourishes to be reduced or removed. The reason we did not do this is as you can expect, due to consideration for Reverse Flourish.
While it's not our intention to allow for weapon skills to be used continuously without limitations, it would be nice to be able to utilize Flourish II and Flourish III continuously, so we will be changing the effects as outlined below to allow for instantaneous damage.

I understand your not wanting us to be able to WS back to back, that would be terrible for something that lasts 1 minute, and may only be used every 120 minutes, which means at most 1 time in any event in the entire game that I have ever been made aware of. Not only that, but you could limit it, maybe give us 5 times we can use Flourish abilities at no cost during its duration, with no cool-down on them either, that should be fair for its duration/recast of the entire ability.

Reduce effect duration from 60 seconds to 30 seconds

Why is it that any time you start to enhance an ability that sucks, you make the duration go to shit in return for its effect. Again, we get at most 1 use in any event in the game unless you are counting on the luck of a Corsair to give you another use of it.

In addition to the Flourish recast timer being reset, it will be possible to use Flourish continuously up to a total of 3 times.

3 times... not worth a 2-hour recast yet again. Really, please look at the limitation you put on these effects. Look at the power that Perfect Defense gives, or Embrava, these make sense, they are amazing powers and give you a real enourmous boost, not to 1 person, but an entire party or Alliance! This is lack luster yet again.

The effect will wear off when either 30 seconds elapses or Flourish is used 3 times.

I don't even feel like replying to this, for lack of words. All I can say is make it last the full duration no matter what, it shouldn't make a giant difference.

During this week's Test Server update, we will be adding white mage's 2-hour ability as well the warrior adjustment listed above and fixing related bugs.

We are planning to address the bard and dancer adjustments in the following Test Server update.

You have alot more adjusting to do for them to be balanced or worth-while. As for WHM's, when under the effect of it, every party member better be immune to every status effect in the game. If not, this will be stupid, it should become the ultimate shield against ailments, end of story.

Amongst the feedback we have been receiving, there have been a lot of comments about changing the effects, reducing the 2-hour recast time, removing the shared recast timer aspect, and other ideas for largely changing the concept. It may take a bit of time to discuss and look into all of these, but we are planning to spend time on this without rushing implementation so that these are abilities that everyone is satisfied with.

I am happy you want to make everyone happy. I am sorry to tell you that you have a very, very, very, long way to go before that happens, because alot of your abilities are terrible right now, or need worked on so much they could become worth while. The worse part in all of this, is that alot of them could easily be fixed such as RDM's, yet we still have no word on them, and so far as it seems they will be made even worse before better. I look forward to the next post on these abilities, as I want to tell you yet again my opinion on them. From how things seem to be changing around here, I feel as though my opinion is finally worth voicing. So please expect a long, thought out, reply from me each time I see a post of interest.

[Tanama]

I would love to hear the dev's input on the DRG 2-hour. As it stands now it is very insignificant to be called a two-hour. It's more along the lines a beefed up Spirit Link.

[Luvbunny]

All these new 2 hours are rather bad, some even downright atrocious. All EXCEPT Samurai.... which pretty much got a brand new 2 hours that is as potent as 4 other jobs old 2 hours..... Could you please go back to the drawing board and come up with a better idea, one that does not suck this bad. And please fix the new 2 hours for Red Mage and Beastmaster for crying out loud. The whole communities already said what they have to say and how to fix these, but it seems that you do not even want to consider any of the suggestion at all....