Adjustments to Embrava and Perfect Defense

[Mefuki]

I can't stand when this statement is repeated. Embrava and PD are overpowered only in comparison to other, less useful SPs. Embrava and PD are in no way overpowered in comparison to the borked end-game.

But do you really think that the way to fix endgame is for a job to have an ability that grants an undispelable, 90 second buff to an entire party's defences that make all attacks and status effects do nothing? Edit: (Yes, I realize Perfect Defence degrades over time but there's still the issue of it being relied on by the majority of players, which facilitated some of the problems we're facing currently. I.E. ADL being balanced around PD.)

Yes, they are abused. I have been in many a Provenance shout group that relies on Embrava during the Cat fights because the DDs are garbage. But the problem with Embrava and PD is not how powerful it is. The problem with these abilities is how even with these supposedly "overpowered", game-breaking abilities, the end-game scene still relies on a strike of luck against "fack you" monster abilities with no other significant form of mitigation.

Well, why do you think that is? One of the few things Perfect Defence doesn't protect against is Death. And now look at some newer monster that were released. Death Prophet is conal Death. Monsters spam TP attacks in an attempt to catch the player in-between moments of complete invulnerability. If by "no other significant form of mitigation", you mean give all the jobs equally broken SP, that kind of endgame can't sustain itself for long. At that point, picking which jobs to take is just a matter of looking at their SPs. And I for one don't want a game that only cares about one singular job ability of the many we get.

[Behemothx]

In regards to the recent dev post-

I think I'm probably speaking for a lot of people when I say that something of a nerf to Perfect Defense and Embrava is necessary. However, the reason people are complaining is that the adjustments are too heavy-handed and result in these abilities coming close to not being useful at all.

for instance:

I can accept a reduction in Perfect Defense duration to 60 seconds; what I can't accept is the additional requirement of needing an unachieveable amount of summoning magic skill to get that duration.

For Embrava, I'd be fine with weakening the effect a bit ore reducing the duration; but changing an effect that people want and consider useful to an effect that few if any people consider useful basically destroys the spell entirely. Instead of changing the TP recovery to MP recovery, it should simply give a smaller amount of TP recovery.

Agreed. I don't see why anyone would need refresh off Embrava, just reduce TP to 2 ticks, hell even 1 would be better than refresh...

[Smokenttp]

In regards to the recent dev post-

I think I'm probably speaking for a lot of people when I say that something of a nerf to Perfect Defense and Embrava is necessary. However, the reason people are complaining is that the adjustments are too heavy-handed and result in these abilities coming close to not being useful at all.

for instance:

I can accept a reduction in Perfect Defense duration to 60 seconds; what I can't accept is the additional requirement of needing an unachieveable amount of summoning magic skill to get that duration.

For Embrava, I'd be fine with weakening the effect a bit ore reducing the duration; but changing an effect that people want and consider useful to an effect that few if any people consider useful basically destroys the spell entirely. Instead of changing the TP recovery to MP recovery, it should simply give a smaller amount of TP recovery.

Comunity team please translate this

[Sephiran]

Mr. Matsui, please tell me that we'll still be able to do Nyzul Uncharted with a reasonable expectation of success once these adjustments are implemented. My group is out right now and I think I may miss out on this opportunity to get a Phorcys armor set. There will still be more chances, right? And what about everyone else who may miss this opportunity?

[FrankReynolds]

But do you really think that the way to fix endgame is for a job to have an ability that grants an undispelable, 90 second buff to an entire party's defences that make all attacks and status effects do nothing?

Well, why do you think that is? One of the few things Perfect Defence doesn't protect against is Death. And now look at some newer monster that were released. Death Prophet is conal Death. Monsters spam TP attacks in an attempt to catch the player in-between moments of complete invulnerability. If by "no other significant form of mitigation", you mean give all the jobs equally broken SP, that kind of endgame can't sustain itself for long. At that point, picking which jobs to take is just a matter of looking at their SPs. And I for one don't want a game that only cares about one singular job ability of the many we get.

I think the point was that you can't just adjust one thing and not the other. If you nerf the abilities, then all the stuff you made before that becomes incredibly difficult. If you Nerf the content then it becomes too easy for any group that has said abilities at hand.

The problem is that this is SE we are dealing with, so they are just gonna do the abilities since they require less work and call it a day. The end effect is that everything is still imbalanced, only now the customers are pissed off instead of just being mildly depressed.

TLDR; The content and the abilities must be adjusted at the same time or everyone loses.

[Xantavia]

Agreed. I don't see why anyone would need refresh off Embrava, just reduce TP to 2 ticks, hell even 1 would be better than refresh...

Good news. The sch can give you 1/tic regain along with the refresh effect. Just takes a few more charges.

[Alhanelem]

Good news. The sch can give you 1/tic regain along with the refresh effect. Just takes a few more charges.

Those effects stack don't they? So the good news is that having the 1TP regain spell shouldn't preclude embrava from having TP instead of mp recovery.

[Glamdring]

the biggest part I like in the new boss' post is the comments about adjusting strategies because it leads me to believe there is a concerted effort to get those jobs currently on the scrap heap back into the mix of end game content. That being said, the job I'm still worried about is red mage. Almost everything rdm can do another job can do better. Now, despite the fact I pride myself on being an idea man, particularily with unconventional thinking, I just can't conceive of a way to breath life into rdm without taking it from one of the other jobs, and believe me, i've tried. Tier 5 nukes-scholar and blm may get the axe, higher cures/regen/group buffing-whm and sch (possibly even brd) may get the axe, increased melee damage-blu may go and pld has just recently gotten back into the discussion in a limited way, they may be gone, damage resistance/tanking-seems to impact rune as it has been described, and maybe nin or dnc

guess what I'm asking for is some idea of how that might be addressed. it's a problem for everyone, and you have a LARGE player base with at least some understanding of game mechanics. if you can bring what you have so far to the table maybe we can help you guys brainstorm a bit? judging by the activity in the rdm forum there are plenty of us willing as well. Now, I'm not a rdm (despite having a 99, it's really just there to skill magic), but I've been in tons of parties and seen many different niches that need to be filled. The best way to fill those varies dependent upon what jobs are available. The strength of rdm was that it could fill so many of those niches, but with the advent of scholar also being able to multi-role while nuking harder and curing better + AoE buffs, rdm's role as a gap filler just flat out died. so it needs another task that people will conceivably want-but without killing scholar.

So I guess what i'm saying is that if you are committed to 2-way communication, let's give it a shot and see where this goes!

[Karbuncle]

90 second buff to an entire party's defences that make all attacks and status effects do nothing?

Have you even used Perfect Defense...? bgt doesn't make you invulnerable, Just highly resistant. You're still very capable of being killed with PD up... Even a lot of debuffs do get through it, Including the most annoying ones like Terror, Death, Dispel, and Doom.

The first ~15-20 Seconds of Perfect Defense, You do take heavily resisted damage, But after that You can and will die if not cured or provided support.

I admit it needs and Adjustment, But whats happening to it now is flat out unreasonable. The HIghest possible duration is 2/3rd of its current duration and is at this time, unobtainable... They could have just nerfed the Duration to 45~60(Depending on necessary level of Balance) Seconds and kept everything else the same. Using Summoning Magic skill, While Clever, Just hurts more SMNs than it helps. I personally am sitting at 460 Skill after Gear, But I'm still far from capped...

I like the idea they're nerfing these abilities so that they don't have to rely on balancing content around them in the future, But at the same time, removing 10% of a mobs HP Isn't exactly adjusting the content enough to become beatable without use of these methods.

I mean a lot of stuff is still beatable without PD/Embrava, even though its a popular strategy, but some content is so eyerippingly annoying without it that people needing said event would almost never find help for it. Mostly this is in regards to ADL, Which has Terrible drops and is luck reliant and annoying as is.

... Ugh, I've gotten all Rant-y. Long story short, I like the Idea of what they're doing to this, But at the same time, their 'Adjusting current content' needs to be a bit more significant since some of the content (ADL) seems to have been designed entirely around using PD.

Edit: I also hope he seriously considers without these ABilities, Jobs like SMN and SCH are not RDM-Tier in terms of usefulness. I.E No one will remember the job exists.

[Byrth]

Honestly, if they implemented the patch exactly as stated:
1) ADL win rates would drop a little.
2) Nyzul win rates would probably go up because they're overnerfing it.
3) Legion would be slightly more painful (one more bard swap) but not really that different. I can do one more bard swap if you give monsters 10% less HP.
4) Provenance would be slightly more annoying, in that you'd need better DDs to win the zerg because you have to eat 2 Marches.
5) AV would get slightly more annoying
6) Pandemonium Warden's final form would get a little more annoying

Other than those, there are pretty much no cases where PD and Embrava are used strategically at the moment. Embrava is certainly used in a lot of situations because it's convenient (a lot of healing, a lot of haste, and you don't even have to be using a dualbox), but that's exactly what SE is okay with eliminating. Similarly, I bring a SMN character to Tier 3 Einherjar because doing the bosses with PD is just easier. SE is probably fine with me not being able to abuse that anymore.

Long story short, I don't think the nerf/buffs proposed are really that destructive.