Greetings, everyone.

I’d like to share a comment from Producer Matsui as a follow-up to his recent post.

Quote Originally Posted by Akihiko_Matsui View Post
Matsui here.

I’ve spoken to the lead and checked up on the major feedback and questions we have been receiving, so I’d like to comment on these points.
  • Weapon skills other than Rudra’s Storm
    Dagger weapon skills have a high damage multiplier, and regardless of what TP amount you choose to use it, it will still elicit a high amount of damage.

    The weapon skill adjustments in June and December of 2014 strived to shine light on weapon skills that were not being used as much anymore and also to increase the range of options available. However, as a result, the stats for weapon skills with TP damage modifiers became much more prominent.

    I would like to do everything I can to preserve the special characteristic of these weapon skills that allow you to deal large amounts of damage when you save TP; however, if we continue onward with the current multiplier, I feel it would be difficult to create balance with the other types of weapons. Due to this, I believe it is necessary to slightly reduce the multiplier.

  • Effects towards dagger wielding jobs such as bard and dancer
    Bard, in addition to dealing damage through weapon skills, is a support-type job that aids their party through their songs. Currently, I feel that they possess a sufficient amount of capabilities in parties, and as such there are no plans to make adjustments for their melee damage.

    With the job trait that allows them to increase skillchain damage as well as Climatic Flourish, dancer is currently in position right after thief as a job that can deal solid weapon skill damage. They also have a high amount of utility with their other abilities, and we do not have any plans of making adjustments to dancer based on the current damage output of Rudra’s Storm.

  • Isn’t samurai overpowered because their self-skillchain with Tachi: Fudo is very powerful?
    Even when it comes to the values that were measured while the development team was conducting play testing, the amount of damage dealt by self-skillchaining with Tachi: Fudo exceeded that of other damage dealing jobs in many cases, and it’s a fact that samurai is currently an extremely powerful damage dealer.

    However, while Tachi: Fudo is the great katana weapon skill of choice at the moment, in addition to requiring the entire party’s support to elicit the sought-after high damage, the damage also largely varies due to the attack-defense ratio between you and the monster, and standing in front of the monster to gain the bonus of Overwhelm is a risk. (Tachi: Fudo is still very powerful when fighting enemies that are lower than your own level, but job balance adjustments are made based on fighting high level monsters.)

    Considering these factors as well as samurai’s job design which doesn’t give them much in terms of abilities that affect the entire party, I feel that lowering samurai’s damage dealing capabilities would severely limit the situations they can be useful, and as such we will not be making any adjustments as of the March version update.

    We will continue to monitor the balance between samurai and other damage dealing jobs, and we will continue to look into adjustments based on the feedback we receive.

  • The frequency of recasting Ardor and its effect on two-handed weapon jobs
    As a result of proceeding to make adjustments to the stats of Ardor, we’ve determined that its effects on two-handed weapons other than great katana are not sufficient enough and the damage output has not been equalized enough. Due to these reasons, we are in the midst of revamping the effect of Ardor.

    We are planning to make the revamped Ardor have an effect where a skillchain damage bonus will be given depending on the amount of players that participate in the skillchain and the amount of weapon variety present. This means that it will be possible to achieve higher damage when skillchaining with other players and other weapon types compared to skillchaining by yourself.

    There will be no changes to the jobs that can use this spell or the level it is learned, so we are still planning to make it a red mage spell that can be learned at level 64.

    Furthermore, we’ve been receiving feedback concerned that red mages will have to recast this spell on party members every time the party wants to perform a skillchain, but we are planning to change this spell from an enhancing magic spell cast on party members to an enfeebling spell that is cast on monsters, so please do not worry about this.

    However, due to these aforementioned changes, we will have to push back the implementation of Ardor to the version update that takes place after March, and we will only be making the weapon skills adjustments ahead of time in the March version update.

    This means that we will be performing a so-called “nerf” ahead of time, but please allow me to explain the reasoning in the next section.

  • Weapon skill adjustment timing
    In the March version update, in addition to the job adjustments being discussed, we will also be implementing new high-difficulty battle content known as Vagary.

    In the event that we were to delay the weapon skill adjustments along with Ardor, the weapon skill adjustments would take place after Vagary has already been implemented, and it would result in very different situations for players who challenged this high-difficulty content before the adjustment and those who challenge it after, even though the adjustments are slight.

    Due to this, in order to prevent players who plan on challenging this content right away from gaining an advantage, I feel it’s necessary to implement the weapon skill adjustments at the same time that we implement Vagary.

  • Damage dealing capabilities of warrior, dark knight, and black mage
    Separately from the addition of Ardor, I feel that adjustments are needed for warrior and dark knight, whose primary role is to deal damage with their two-handed weapon similar to samurai, as well as black mage whose elemental magic spells do not receive a bonus from Ardor.

    We’re currently looking into adjusting existing abilities and job traits for warrior, and adding new abilities to dark knight.

    In regards to elemental magic, we’re planning to make adjustments that increase the potency of magic bursts in the March version update. Additionally, we’re looking into adding new black mage abilities and boosting their damage dealing capabilities.

    As we’re still in the discussion stages of adjustments other than the magic burst adjustment, there is a possibility that the details will change, but we’ll be announcing information on topics and the forums in the future.

Thank you so much for all the feedback and thoughts on this matter, and I hope you continue to provide your feedback on it moving forward.