Bully: it's really bad.

[Insaniac]

Played with Bully 3.0 on the test server. It works as promised. No hidden "does not stack with WS" or "dex bonus is halved" clauses. The effect is still a mob debuff so I'm gonna assume for now that anyone will be able to SA from anywhere as long as the effect is up. The only downside is that in at least 10 uses of the JA solo I did not get a single intimidate on EP mobs. I'm not gonna complain though. The intimidate is now the sideshow and SA from anywhere is the main attraction.

[Laphine]

The intimidate is now the sideshow and SA from anywhere is the main attraction.

Yeah...this doesn't make sense for me. A JA should be used for its main benefit, something described on its description. I think this intimidation stuff should be trashed. We won't use the ja for that reason. Then they could change the description to "allows sneak attack from any side" or something. Maybe we could get a longer duration with that, since there is no other silly bonus on its path.

[Fuidama]

I've been wondering, has anyone tested the intimidate aspect of Bully paired with a job that has a killer trait? I was hoping to try it before the update but unfortunately I was too late. I was wondering if bully would stack with a natural killer effect and cause intimidate to proc more often for that person. Maybe the chance of bully intimidate would add with the chance of natural intimidate.
EX; (all fake numbers) bird killer 25% + bully 20% (full alliance! lol) = 45% chance for that person to proc, 20% chance for everyone else.

[...] The only downside is that in at least 10 uses of the JA solo I did not get a single intimidate on EP mobs. [...]

Or maybe now that the effect has been weakened, it could multiply the two.
EX; (more fake numbers) bird killer 25% x bully 2% (full alliance! lol) = 50% chance for that person to proc, 2% chance for everyone else.

If it does stack, it could be quite powerful, albeit in very limited situations. Now that the main point of the ability is for SA (I squealed in joy), and intimidate has inevitably been nerfed to oblivion (this is not a complaint), the entire intimidate portion of the skill may only be noticeable (and even then may still be hardly noticeable) while in a situation where someone has a killer trait and is fighting a monster it relates to.

Of course, the system is more than likely tooled so that the ability/trait with the higher killer effect is the only one that takes effect, "to prevent it from being overpowered".
EX; (more fake numbers) bird killer 25% / bully 5% = 25% for the person with bird killer, 5% for anyone else.

All in all, I do love the new direction for bully, but something in me tells me this was the original direction all along. Even the roadmap and hints before the release of the ability were pointing towards "something to compliment SA and TA" and "causes intimidate" doesn't really fit in there. Something tells me this is what we would have received anyways, and the bully in it's original form was meant to cause outrage and make it seem like we're actually being listened to. But that's just the conspiracy theorist in me. Camate is still awesome either way.

Anyways, one ability fixed (victory!). Now all they have to do is fix/delete mug, steal/aurasteal, despoil, and hide and extend accomp/collab's effective distance (again). [sarcasm]See you all in another 10 years.[/sarcasm]

Edit: I somehow started calling Bully, bird killer.

[Camate]

The changes made to Bully allowing you to Sneak Attack when not behind a monster have been implemented on the Test Server. Head on over there and try it out

[Babekeke]

The changes made to Bully allowing you to Sneak Attack when not behind a monster have been implemented on the Test Server. Head on over there and try it out

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[Nynja]

Has anyone tried a SA from /thf with a bully debuff on the mob, or a secondary thf's SA, if it works from any direction?

[Fuidama]

I did a quick baseline test of the new bully on flamingos in sky. First off, Yokodama lives again! So much fun... Secondly, as EP monsters, I used bully 10 times. Here are the intimidation results.
2,2,2,3,0,2,1,1,2,2
In all, that averages to about 1.7 times the target is intimidated for every 30 seconds that bully is active while solo on an EP mob. In all honesty, I think this is still very close to the numbers I was getting with the original bully; I was intimidating the monster 2-3 times each bully before. So, if the intimidate aspect of bully was nerfed so little, there may be little we can expect out of it to begin with. IE if the rate wasn't changed much, then what we can do with it probably has.
You do the math for the % of the 30 seconds and the % for the 3 minutes for the ability. Again, this is a small sample, and may be closer to 1.5 or 2 in reality.

As Insaniac said he did not even see one proc for his 10 uses on an EP monster, the proc may be based on the type/family of monster. If there is not a killer trait for a job that relates to a certain monster, maybe the monster can't be intimidated at all? This may be very likely with NMs if so. Maybe it is determined by zone?
Insaniac, what did you fight for your test?

Has anyone tried a SA from /thf with a bully debuff on the mob, or a secondary thf's SA, if it works from any direction?

Thanks to a helpful JP THF this evening, I switched over to WAR/THF and tried it out. It does not appear that /THF's SA will work with Bully. This is quite unfortunate as it could have opened quite a few options for party tactics and created a greater reward for any /THF that coordinated with a main THF.

And unfortunately, at the time I did not think to try "sharing" SA and bully with us both as main THF.

Anyways, I still have not had a proper chance to test intimidate with a job with killer effects (I only killed two birds with BST and THF before my JP friend had to go for dinner, but proc rate didn't seem to change) but I plan to some time in the morning. Until then, could anyone recommend a method on establishing a baseline for Bird Killer? I've figured two would be to 1) Since bully was used to claim, and therefore used for the 1st 30 seconds of each fight, use a stopwatch and time the first 30 seconds of 10 fights with BST and see how many times the monster is intimidated. The end result would be under the same time frame and easily comparable once used together 2) perform 10 fights with only melee hits and obtain the average amount of times each target was intimidated for the entire fight. Using the same process when combined with bully, if bully makes a difference it will show in the average.

[Zirael]

[..Bully could be better, etc, etc]

Anyways, I still have not had a proper chance to test intimidate with a job with killer effects (I only killed two birds with BST and THF before my JP friend had to go for dinner, but proc rate didn't seem to change) but I plan to some time in the morning. Until then, could anyone recommend a method on establishing a baseline for Bird Killer? I've figured two would be to 1) Since bully was used to claim, and therefore used for the 1st 30 seconds of each fight, use a stopwatch and time the first 30 seconds of 10 fights with BST and see how many times the monster is intimidated. The end result would be under the same time frame and easily comparable once used together 2) perform 10 fights with only melee hits and obtain the average amount of times each target was intimidated for the entire fight. Using the same process when combined with bully, if bully makes a difference it will show in the average.

There's a whole dedicated forum for FFXI math, have a read here:
http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/103...=1#post4641701
According to Byrthnoth, lv1 Killer traits are 8% base intimidation rate, lv2 traits are 10%.

[Insaniac]

Insaniac, what did you fight for your test?

Thanks to a helpful JP THF this evening, I switched over to WAR/THF and tried it out. It does not appear that /THF's SA will work with Bully. This is quite unfortunate as it could have opened quite a few options for party tactics and created a greater reward for any /THF that coordinated with a main THF.

I was fighting various junk around the volbow OP so raptors lizards bunnys goblins and crabs.

That's really unfortunate about it not affecting /THF.

[noodles355]

Can we change the name of the topic to "Bully: it's really good"?