Overall Battle System Adjustments for the Future

[Soidisant]

Reading over these posts regarding Twilight Scythe from the players, I feel a bit confused. Pretty much everyone seems against the idea of it being nerfed. The most common argument why it should not be nerfed seems to be that it's either useless or only useful in rare situations. If it's so close to worthless though, I have a hard time believing so many people would rise to its defense. How many people would complain if they nerfed something like Dokumori: Ichi or Goblin Gavotte? I get the feeling that the scythe is more useful than everyone is letting it seem.

This is the natural human reaction, so it's understandable that this would be the most common argument made. I think Spank sums up the entire argument better than anyone else: (paraphrasing)"The Twilight Scythe is only useful in situations where the devs try to force us to use non-physical damage. If the magic system were not so cumbersome, the Twilight Scythe would not be half as popular as it currently is."

The devs point of view on this appears to be: (paraphrasing)"DRK's utility is disproportionately high currently. In addition to being one of the top-tier physical damage dealers, they have access to stun, buff stealing, self-healing, and thanks to twilight scythe, they are actually better at circumventing battle mechanics like PDT and physical shield than any other job. Future battles we wish to add would be rendered far-too-easy by a group of 4 drks with a brd and healer, so we have no choice but to nerf the scythe."

Both are legitimate points of view, I must admit. Ultimately though, I feel I must side with the devs on this topic. Even formless strikes is affected by MDT and magic shield, plus it can only be used 3 minutes out of 10. Twilight Scythe can be kept on 100% of the time and ignores all forms of all resist. I can see how this would disrupt their ability to add challenging fights in the future.

Twilight Scythe is obviously useful otherwise people wouldn't care one jot like you said. However, is it that useful and overpowered that it needs nerfing? No. The solution isn't to nerf Twilight Scythe, it's to make magic actually worth a damn so it's viable to use.

I mean lets not beat about the bush. What the Twilight Scythe nerf boils down to is this.

SE has made content that heavily encourages players to take the absolute minimum amount of people along due to reward progress and the way gear/stats unlock. Then at the end of this content they have added 2 bosses that encourage/require magic damage which is far less efficient than melee damage for the rest of the run. So players have to choose between A. Taking melees who can circumvent the mechanic or B. Taking a magic DD who is basically surplus to requirements for everything except the boss. It's essentially a choice between taking 3 people or 4.

Like I currently go SCH DRK THF. If there was an efficient magic DD who could do as well as a melee for the rest of the run then they could replace either the DRK or THF. BLU could possibly fill that hole for Hydra/Cerb but none of us have it geared whereas all 3 of us have RDM/BLM/SCH geared and 2 of us SMN geared, they just aren't viable.

Nerfing Twilight Scythe will change nothing. It will not suddenly make people take some form of magic damage. MNK + SAM are better for circumventing PDT than Twilight so nothing changes there. Brute forcing Cerberus will still be more convenient than taking a mage. And people will just opt to do a different zone for Hydra drops if they make it too much of a pain to kill. It doesn't really help that the 1 zone where magic damage is the most useful drops plans that have no mage jobs on them.

As long as there is a way around taking magic DD, people will continue to do so unless magic damage is brought up to par with melee damage in terms of DPS and efficiency.



And possibly the reason why people are getting emotional and bitter about the nerf is simple. Nobody was complaining about Twilight Scythe pre-salvage V2. This pure and simply comes down to people going 'It's not fair, X job/set-up can do this but I can't!'. If it was about Twilight Scythe being overpowered, where were all the complaints when DRK's were used for Pil's shields and the such. Heck, that was even back when switching to Twilight Scythe was only really a DPS loss for a handful of DRKs.

[FrankReynolds]

Twilight Scythe is obviously useful otherwise people wouldn't care one jot like you said.

It's not quite that the scythe is overly useful or even often used. It's the context.

It's like having your oncologist tell you that instead of scheduling chemotherapy for your daughter and working on a cure, he decided to flatten all the tires on your ford festiva because you are 5 pounds over weight and you could use the exercise from walking. I mean you may in fact benefit from the walking, but does it really make sense for a highly educated and extremely well paid professional to be spending yours and theirs time that way?

They should post a list of all the things they are working on and let all the players rank them based on what we think is most important. Because they obviously have no idea what it is that matters to people and / or they just don't think our opinions matter at all.

Most people who don't want it nerfed don't care about the weapon itself. It's really not an important aspect of the game. It's all about all the other things that are not being done... the ones that actually matter.

[SNK]

All this crap over a scythe that has marginal uses at best?

[Nervosa]

All this crap over a scythe that has marginal uses at best?

Because while asking for advice, SE doesn't seem listen to half the user base and constantly "adjusts" things because we use it to make things easier.

[Caketime]

Can we please crossdress in FFXI now?

Hahaha, oh wow. Wear a corset while you play. Everybody wins!

[Yinnyth]

Most people who don't want it nerfed don't care about the weapon itself. It's really not an important aspect of the game. It's all about all the other things that are not being done... the ones that actually matter.

Ask 100 people what matters in the game, and you'll get 100 different answers. Case in point:

Can we please crossdress in FFXI now?

He's probably not being serious, but there are most likely people out there who do want that. #cheesesammich

It appears that most people here measure "overpowered" by how quickly it can kill an average enemy. Sure, you wouldn't use twilight scythe against a qutrub under normal circumstances. But FFXI is a lot of running, talking to NPCs, and killing trash mobs. This is all punctuated by epic, memorable, and sometimes challenging boss fights. Let's assume magic damage does get balanced fairly. Why would you even bother with that mess when DRK can do it all? What do the BLMs do when you're faced with an enemy who's strong to magic damage? They don't get a weapon they can equip which allows them to surpass what the melees are capable of. Why should DRK have a weapon which (when properly buffed) overshadows what nuke jobs are capable of?

I agree with Soidisant because without any other changes, nerfing this weapon would do nothing for the state of the game. But even if they buff magic to the point where it's useful to have a blu or blm or geo or nukie sch, etc along... why would you even bother with that mess when you could just use the same damned jobs you already have leveled, the same damned strategy you're already familiar with, and just equip a different weapon. The Twilight Scythe makes DRK the single most versatile DD in the game. SE's choices are to either buff other jobs up to the same level of versatility as DRK(probably just by giving them their own version of the scythe) and make harder content, or just nerf the scythe. I'd estimate that it takes less time to nerf the scythe than it takes to balance all future content taking the scythe into account.

[Toadie-Odie]

I agree with Soidisant because without any other changes, nerfing this weapon would do nothing for the state of the game. But even if they buff magic to the point where it's useful to have a blu or blm or geo or nukie sch, etc along... why would you even bother with that mess when you could just use the same damned jobs you already have leveled, the same damned strategy you're already familiar with, and just equip a different weapon. The Twilight Scythe makes DRK the single most versatile DD in the game. SE's choices are to either buff other jobs up to the same level of versatility as DRK(probably just by giving them their own version of the scythe) and make harder content, or just nerf the scythe. I'd estimate that it takes less time to nerf the scythe than it takes to balance all future content taking the scythe into account.

You make a really good point here and after reading everything posted in this thread about this scythe, it makes a lot of sense. It makes sense to me to nip a potential balance blunder in the bud than to either:

1. allow it to go through and fix it later after the damage to the game has been done
2. attempt to change everything they have so far in the works to adjust for the potential effects of the scythe

I'm not sure if how they went about it was the right thing to do, but it is better than ninja nerfing it.

[Kincard]

Twilight Scythe isn't even that useful for Cerb, because if you have an extra person (probably a THF) along you can just have him spam Aeolian Edge to keep the physical resistance on him down. It's useful for Hydra if he decides to spam Pyric Bulwark but I think that monster in general should be looked at because it's retarded that the fight can drag on for 25 minutes longer than it should because he won't stop using it on top of the fact he can triple crit you for 1k+ damage.

It kills Armed Gears pretty well though, I must say! Hurray for beating up level 75 content.

Twilight Scythe isn't exactly a hard weapon to get (blue/brew shinryu and you'll have it in like 5 or 6 runs most likely), which is one thing people need to keep in mind. Comparing it to a REM weapon makes no sense since those take literally over a hundredfold in the amount of time it would take to get a Twilight Scythe. It's not even as hard to get as a Fire Magian if that's your thing. Considering the amount of effort to get it, it would still be a pretty good weapon even if they nerfed it within reason.

It does create a bit of a problem that whenever they create content that's telling us "bring a mage to deal magic damage" we compensate by bringing a form of melee-magic damage (Formless Strikes, Twilight Scythe etc), but as others have said this has more to do with how useles magic damage is rather than special melee abilities being overpowered. I'm more for leaving the Twilight Scythe as is because if the magic damage issue is fixed the Twilight Scythe will lose its worth significantly anyway.

[Metaking]

twilight scythe isnt doing magical dmg monsters that take extra magical dmg do not take extra from it monsters with mdef do not take less. After str vrs vit att vr def there is a check against a weapons dmg type [blunt 1 blunt 2 slashing piercing] as well as a general dt check(barrier tusk might prove general dt check is before dmg type tho), twilight is just ignoring the check for both.

[Kincard]

It's not magic damage no, but anytime it's used it's used because that's what would otherwise be wanted (flans, slimes, Cerb, bulwark etc etc). The problem was never that Twilight Scythe was overpowered though. Taking for example salvage, the problem is that bringing a BLM/SCH/whatever nuker would help on Cerb/Hydra significantly, but the problem is that I don't need them the rest of the run and they just end up being dead weight. It wouldn't be such a problem if salvage gave you points and then you bought plans with the points, but instead they're drops that need to be shared amongst the amount of people you take in.

I think that proposed Elemental magic change they're talking about will help it a lot if it gets to a point where tier 2s and such can basically be used as "normal attacks" for BLMs and RDMs. Add in some more stuff like Seidr Cotehardie, too.