New 2-hour Abilities

[Unaisis]

This is not justifiable. As has been referenced repeatedly in this thread, Formless Strikes is a three minute duration ability of the same effect with a recast of ten minutes. To make this ability justifiable for Warriors to expend their two-hour timer on, the ability must be significantly more powerful in the hands of a Warrior, which it is only slightly (and even that is debatable). The point with regard to weapon skills making the ability more powerful than Mighty Strikes is true, I'm sure, but was suggested as an offset to make this ability more powerful than Formless Strikes. Do not forget that Mighty Strikes is compatible with weaponskills, and drastically increases their damage output too.

Great! ; ; now that you pointed out that Mighty Strikes works with Weaponskills they gunna fix it now T__T. Bet they had no idea it did...

[Cljader1]

I'm saying there are worse and you ignore the good your ability has. One of the most complained about parts of events right now is that everything has attacks that do way to much damage, this gives you the power to limit those massively by removing the TP from them as they get it, then fire it back at them for more damage than you had before. BST gets to gain defense by losing their best defense, RDM gets to have slightly stronger buffs that are barley better and the duration is to short to even buff properly, let alone others like Embrava does. Your not getting the short end of the stick, DRK is a nice 2-hour, there are much worse around right now.

You just don't get it my friend, this is not a good 2hr especially for drk. If this was made to control ADL the implementation is bad. Once this go live, drk will be barred from doing any weapon skills to ADL for fear of replenishing his TP. Linkshells will say drk 2hr "melee only please." This is not a zerg, and it doesnt help drk zerg at ALL. Drk would be turned into a pseudo tp-tank, I as a drk do not want that, I want to zerg, and we need a 2hr that helps us zerg. If SE allows ws's to also tp-drain than this would be a great 2hr.

[Raucent]

Not to mention this is another DRK 2hr that will more then likely have us using alternate weapons for multi hits again. Instead of using scythe or great sword for dmg it will become the new KC 2hr, with mobs being resistant/immune to Souleater, All this 2hr did was change the rules " ok the mob is immune to Souleater, guess i'll use the new 2hr and KC lock it down".... how about a 2hr that doesnt "require" us to use a different weapon type.

The 2hr does sound nice but due to the low duration it is impractical to use with great sword or scythe. IMO when ppl start doing lock down zergs with this new 2hr i can bet it will be nerfed to hell just like the SEBW zergs.

[Demon6324236]

I'm done arguing with you. I play DRK to, I see this as an ok ability, yes it could be better but I'm ok with how it is, all I have to say on the subject anymore.

[Cljader1]

if the duration is 30 seconds, is it not to much to ask for it to effect weaponskills also?

[Chamaan]

What about Formless Axes will make it more powerful for a warrior than for a monk? Fists or axes, it's all just damage and damage evens out a lot between two equally geared jobs.

And what would make this two hour more powerful than MS for WS? The accuracy bonus? Are you going to give us a 16-hit WS with an Acc penalty you haven't unveiled yet? Because I assure you Mighty Strikes with a little more accuracy gear (we've got literal scads of it) would be better in this situation too. Does the Accuracy bonus bypass Perfect Dodge?

And for Dancer, please just give up that fight too. Change the two hour to something that boosts the potency of sambas. Then the party could benefit from the support job's two hour. Need fast attack? 25% JA Haste Samba please. Some stupid monster with 100/tick Bio aura? 120/hit Drain Samba III.

[Theytak]

Hey everyone,

We would like to respond to some of the comments made regarding the new 2-hour ability adjustments.

WAR:
The effect is the same as Formless Strikes, but since the job is different and the special traits are different as well, it’s not like you will receive the same exact effect. We’d be happy to hear feedback on the results of WARs using this ability. In regards to wanting the ability’s effect to apply to weapon skills as well, this would make it so that it is far stronger than Mighty Strikes. As an alternative, we are extending the effect duration to open up more attack opportunities.

Again, like everyone else is saying, Tomahawk completely negates your reasoning, because it lasts longer (up to 1:30) and applies to the entire party/alliance, rather than the war alone.

DNC:
While this can be used similar to Meikyo Shisui, there are of course other ways to use it as well. Since there is an advantage point of being able to use it in combination with other abilities, there are a lot of different uses, so we would like to hear feedback after trying it and considering that aspect as well.

I'm very curious as to what constitutes "a lot of different uses" when you take the 9 flourishes into account...

Flourish I:
- Animated Flourish: Provoke
- Desperate Flourish: Gravity
- Violent Flourish: Stun
Flourish II:
- Reverse Flourish: TP restore
- Building Flourish: WS buff
- Wild Flourish: Very weak skill chain opener (Read: very weak skill chains, not very weak opener, though it's that as well)
Flourish III: Note: all three effects are mutually exclusive
- Climactic Flourish: 1-5 Consecutively Nonconsecutive forced critical hits (1 per attack round/ws, on consecutive attack rounds/ws, not consecutive attacks in a single round/ws)
- Striking Flourish: a single, forced double attack
- Ternary Flourish: a single, forced triple attack

So, you have 2 enfeebling abilities, 1 enmity ability, none of which are worth using in a 2 hour scenario, because you can only apply gravity once, once it sticks, and it's not a very potent gravity, and if something needs to be stunned, you'd be better off just stunning it regularly, or at worst, popping no foot rise, than popping your 2hour. If you want enmity, you'd get a significantly larger amount through trance. As it stands right now, and even more so before the current changes, there is not one single scenario in which any flourish from Flourish I would ever be worth using with this 2hour. Absolutely none. You could argue that being able to use 3 violent flourishes in quick succession is a powerful ability, but that argument is totally invalidated by the very existence of blue mage. Blue can use quick stuns ad infinitum, with enough refresh. Why would dnc waste ther 2hour to do something that a level 12 blue mage can do better?

So Flourish I is written out of use for this new 2hour. That leaves II and III, 5 of which focus purely on dealing damage, and 1 (reverse) heavily on it. Given the cost and recast time of Striking and Ternary flourishes, there's absolutely no point using them on regular attacks normally, and as neither consumes 5 FM, but this 2hour is now limited to 3 flourish uses total, both lose out in terms of worth. Which leaves climactic flourish as the only worthwhile flourish from III, for now.

Now, again due to the nature of not using all 5 FMs, and due to how functionally weak it is anyway, wild flourish is simply dropped. Building Flourish does not use all 5 FMs either, but it does give a moderate WS buff, though more so to critical hit ws than other ws. However, it would be a waste compared to the other options.

Thus, 7 of the 9 flourishes are not worth using during this 2 hour that focuses on flourishes. That leaves us only with climactic flourish and reverse flourish, as they're the only two flourishes able to fully take advantage of this 2hour's effect. Additionally, of the two, climactic is purely damage focused, and results in significantly less damage than reverse flourish on an individual level, and is hindered further by only being able to, realistically, make 1 practical use of it for the 2 hour itself.

That means reverse flourish is, undeniably, the only flourish worth using with this 2hour. There are no scenarios in which any of the other flourishes would be a better choice. Striking and Ternary could be argued to use for TP gain, but neither would net more TP than simply using Reverse flourish. The "lot of different uses" that the devs seem to think exist, well, do not exist. Not in the Final Fantasy XI we play, anyway. 3x reverse flourish constitutes the largest amount of damage output, and the support output it could, potentially, deliver, while larger than any other option, is still significantly smaller than anything trance could sneeze at, so the only reason to use this ability is for damage. Thus, no matter the situation, 3 extra ws would be the best and only real choice.

BST:
We understand that sacrificing your pet for Stoneskin results in a reduction in attack power. This Stoneskin effect is not used like the magic spell Stoneskin that you would use before entering a fight. It is something that is used in a crisis situation in order to recover and avoid emergencies (For example, if your pet is on the verge of dying and when that happens you will be put in a dangerous spot, etc.)

The problem has absolutely nothing to do with offensive power. The problem is that SACRIFICING YOUR PET IS A MONUMENTAL REDUCTION IN DEFENSIVE POWER (when you translate our complaints, please, please, please emphasize that we're not talking about offense at all), that stoneskin simply cannot overcome. You want to give bst a defensive, crisis-recovery 2hour? Well, then you should have given them what you gave drg; a massive pet recovery ability, complete with stat buffs or, hey, maybe give the PET the stoneskin. Bst's pets are viewed, and used, as primarily defensive tools. Bsts rarely ever use their pets with the pet's offensive ability as their primary reason for their pet choice.

PLD:
Once we are able to talk concretely about the enmity adjustments we will be making a comment, so please wait a bit on this.

That's fine, just bring math when you do. Don't give us "a large amount" or "very quickly" give us the exact amounts and how quickly in exact seconds. There's no point talking about enmity without that.

And still nothing about DRK and the 30 seconds duration on this crappy 2hr? Can we just fix BW before we get any new 2hr? BW needs to be 60 seconds in duration and should reset the recast timers of all dark magic upon its use. Drks only have about 5 good spells its about time there is something to boost our magic side.

Stop bitching about something that isn't broken, my god. Drk got one of the few actually useful 2hours. Drk doesn't need another offense boosting zerg ability. It doesn't. Desperate blows, coupled with drk's use of very powerful weapons, and very powerful weaponskills (read: greatswords, lolscythe) and combined with bloodweapon makes for a very strong, very hard to kill damage spewing monster at high haste. It's also the only 2h job that can easily cap haste, and that can do so without a dnc for haste samba.

Consider this: This 2hour only needs a single person to use it at a time, because the monster only has 1 TP pool. Nearly every high end NM currently possesses potent regain and very, very dangerous TP abilities. In a zerg, the amount of TP the NM will be getting is going to be immense.

Now, consider greatswords and scythes at haste cap: The average floored delay (80% reduction) for greatswords is around 91, while scythes are around 103. That means great swords will swing at a rate of around 1 attack round every 1.55 seconds, while scythes will be around 1.75 seconds. This means over 40 seconds (since the relic+2 2hour buff applies, currently) greatsword will have 25 attack rounds, while scythe will have 22. That's only rounds. That doesn't account for double/triple/quadruple attack, or misses. I'm not going to pretend to have any idea how much DA/TA/QA is on a typical drk zerg set, and just use a rough average of 25% DA since that seems to be fairly close for most jobs that aren't war or thf.

That would give greatsword 31 attacks and scythe 27, both before accuracy. Thus, even with scythe, you're still draining at rate between once every 1-2 seconds. With how potent the TP drain has been shown to be, and how mob AI works, there would need to be a significant amount of melees and/or regain present to negate that TP drain, and thus, essentially, this ability would give drk one of the strongest NM controlling abilities in the game. Why the hell are you complaining about it? You're going to get invited to zergs whether you have it or not. You're a fucking drk.

[Demon6324236]

if the duration is 30 seconds, is it not to much to ask for it to effect weaponskills also?

That I'm ok with, same with a duration increase, but either way you look at it this is not bad it just doesn't live up to what it could be if they increase or allow it to effect certain aspects.

[Xilk]

Do I need to keep responding about the bst 2 hour? If SE is really married to the idea, you can roll it out, but no one will use it or love SE for it. It will not enhance the gameplay.

for defense, beastmaster already has options superior to this new ability which do NOT cost us our pet.
Reward > Pet Food Theta
Snarl
Dawn Mulsum

These are all awesome, very cool abilities.

There are generally only a few kinds of sticky situations bst can get into for defense on the master:
AoE attacks
Hate loss on pet.
strong paralyze and pet is dead.

If our pet is nearly dead a theta biscuit or a dawn mulsum will often cure 2.5k hp. That is as much as the stoneskin effect ever would be and it costs MUCH less. Currently we do not often have trouble w/ reward timers.

IF a mob is hitting us w/ large AoE attacks, the bst moves out of attack range while the pet is taking the hits, cure up a bit, and go back in when safer, or there might actually be someone in the party curing us....

Snarl is a FANTASTIC ability which saves from pet hate loss PERFECTLY on a 30 second recast. This is much cheaper than a 2 hour ability.

Other situations would be when there are multiple targets and you are having trouble establishing hate on all of them TO THE PET. the new 2 hour might buy some more time in such a situation, but it would take a very specific set of circumstances and previous screw ups by the player to get here, if they haven't already used familiar.

Paralyze and pet is dead > if pet is dead the new ability is useless.

Sacrificing a pet is completely Undesirable for anyone playing beastmaster. It feels like the cost of the new Warrior 2 hour would be an encumbrance effect as well.

The only game situation in which sacrificing the pet MIGHT be acceptable woudl be a zerg-typ situation (which bst is almost never included in anyway). In a zerg situation it is likely the AoE's from a HUGE NM like ADL would wipe out the pet too quickly for pet to be much help. In this situation a massive spike in Offense, not defense would be preferred.

I think the suggestion of a MASSIVE Killer Instinct effect (75%+) would be best IF developers insist on sacrificing the pet (which is silly to begin with),

There have been alot of other good suggestions 2 hour ability ideas for bst:

Pet call additional helpers of same type (not controllable) for short duration to attack pets

Meikyou shisui for pet ready moves + skillchains

apply the current plan for the pup's new 2 hour to bst.. ie apply mighty strikes for war type pets, invincible for pld type pets, perfect dodge for thf type pets, and 100 fists for mnk type pets, etc..

Unlock a super-powerful Ready move for our pet's family type taken from NM, such as petalback spin for mandies.

Inverse spirit-link where pet is buffed up (I guess familiar is a watered down version of this already.... I would like clarification if familiar is supposed to do anything beyond extending charm duration, raising pets max hp, and the newly added pet haste effect from monster trousers +2).

A 2hour HNM pet with limited duration.

there have been many other suggestions from players which would be great as well... even the exploding pet like a ninja would be preferable to the current sacrifice for stoneskin option available.

[Cljader1]

That would give greatsword 31 attacks and scythe 27, both before accuracy. Thus, even with scythe, you're still draining at rate between once every 1-2 seconds. With how potent the TP drain has been shown to be, and how mob AI works, there would need to be a significant amount of melees and/or regain present to negate that TP drain, and thus, essentially, this ability would give drk one of the strongest NM controlling abilities in the game. Why the hell are you complaining about it? You're going to get invited to zergs whether you have it or not. You're a fucking drk.

Just because your a drk dont mean you can participate in a zerg. Through the whole abyssea series and the climb to 99, drk have been embarrassed. I have been told by ukon wars "drk melee no thanks, stun only," I even been moved from the zerg group to the backlines to stun with the blms. Drks want too zerg and not babysit a mob for tp control, the last thing i dont want to see is drk being outlawed from doing there ws's. Allow the 2hr to drain-tp on ws and no matter what you can not stop drks from zerging. This would make everyone happy