Encumbrence = Lose 20 levels.

[Mirage]

I don't know why everyone is trying to fix this by saying, "Well, at least let it just decrease our stats", or, "Only take some things from us". Here is a better idea...

REMOVE IT FROM THE GAME

Because it's unrealistic to expect SE to go along with that. If you ask for things that are never gonna happen, all you're gonna get is complete disappointment.

[Kurotenshi]

Whichever dev came up w/ the idea to allow monsters to strip players naked is just creepy....

Also:

If you encounter monsters that can use these type of abilities, we'll be sure to provide methods to avoid them or prevent them from using it.

Having to rely on a gimmick to win a fight is NOT fun... sure.. it's cute every once in a while... (odin requiring /kneel to avoid Zantetsuken), but doing this all the time is just stupid. Soloing the ironclad in altepa today as RUN, I got him down to 20% while keeping HP at 100% using the new curative ability. All of a sudden, he uses Ballistic Kick which strips my gear and drops me to ~75 HP. I immediately use the curative ability once more, but despite a ~500 HP cure, I get hit for 400 (and stunned) then hit for 350 and dead... This is on content released prior to Seakers of Adoulin. This HAS NOT been balanced properly for a job that is supposed to be equivalent to level 117. Sure.. If you're naked, you should take more damage than if you're properly geared. BUT you should take damage equivalent to what someone ~20 levels below the level you're supposed to represent should take...

[Ziyyigo-Tipyigo]

Soloing the ironclad in altepa today as RUN, I got him down to 20% while keeping HP at 100% using the new curative ability. All of a sudden, he uses Ballistic Kick which strips my gear and drops me to ~75 HP.

Ballistic Kick comes with a hate reset as well. As I mentioned in response to Okipuit's response of "It's balanced!!1!!111" it was balanced for an alliance. But since nobody likes getting hit with Encumbrance to begin with, you're pretty much guaranteed to be stuck soloing.

[Kurotenshi]

Hate resets are another thing in this game that I have an issue with, personally. It's a stupid mechanic that does nothing but screw over tanks even more than they already are being screwed.

*edit* and no, anything in abyssea has been easily duo-able since pre-SoA. The problem is that being stripped of gear should NOT drop your level.... It's a HUGE problem caused by trying to prevent a very small one.

[Zarchery]

Whelp, new Skirmish has Maroliths and Iron Giants, which strip clothes and start aoe-wrecking everyone, GG Okipuit, GG.

Not to mention the latest Seekers of Adoulin mission battle.

This is a fight against a marolith who summons gargouille helpers. The gargouilles are weak and the marolith isn't too bad either. It's actually a pretty easy fight....

...until it gets down to 1%. Then it uses some awful move that does Draw-In, AoE damage, and Encumbrence. My six man group went from having an easy fight to nearly wiping. We made it out by the skin of our teeth because the THF somehow evaded the encumbrance move, popped Perfect Dodge, and finished it off. To add insult to injury, as soon as the fight ended and we left the arena, Reraise wore off on everyone so we all had to homepoint. I don't care about the resulting XP loss, but after you finish this fight you have to get a cutscene that's like a 2 minute walk away from where you fought it. The forced homepointing added a good 10 minutes to everyone's travels.

So you have a fight, released just last month, that has an all party encumbrance as literally the only challenge to it. This appears to be the exact opposite of what Okipuit was saying.

[Demonjustin]

Ballistic Kick comes with a hate reset as well.

Just want to point out, a hate reset on normal mobs would sort of balance this a bit, after all, since the monster wouldn't be hitting those who were hit with it, they could have a chance to run away and live while the party continues to fight. What makes Ballistic Kick an even larger pain than the norm is the fact that Ironclads aren't just normal monsters, they are monsters with AoE attacks for normal attacks. I have seen multiple instances in Skirmish now where a party member gets hit with Ballistic Kick, then the Ironclad simply performs a normal attack on another party member that would stun or knockback normally and instantly 1-shots the hateless DD since it's AoE by default. If it were simply a normal monster or a NM who fights like a normal monster like for instance Pixies it would be a different story, but in this case it's just even more broken.