SE, Temper Activation Rate

[Swords]

To spice things up, you can have some monsters in the fodder run be immune to magical damage, or physical damage, or have specific (and random) objectives to each run. (Think Nyzul Isle with a bit more depth.)

I could get behind the idea of a random immunity like this, it makes me think of how the enemies are in Diablo II on Hell or Nightmare mode would just randomly have some immunity and could seriously screw you over if you weren't versatile.

[Hyrist]

NeoDynamis is going to be full of weak monsters, with a few really hard ones here and there.

The new tiers of VoidWatch are going to be nothing but really hard monsters.

Before this, there was Abyssea and the initial tiers of Voidwatch. A similar dichotomy.

This seems like a fair indication that SE wants to maintain the status quo. Some stuff with fodder mixed in and some stuff with only huge monsters that hate all life and want to snuff it out with unpleasant status effects and area of effect attacks.

Works for me, as long as I never have to spend four hours a day cleaning my house due to boredom that is due to waiting on a dragon again. Although, that spot at the back of my over has never been so free of gunk before or since.

These kind of systems are find to a degree, but the problem is any value in gear is reserved for those who go all the way up in the difficulty tiers which can get rather annoying for those who have to measure the time invested verses the rewards.

That and it doesn't address the desires for a more battlefield approach, as I described earlier.

@Swords. Yeah, there doesn't seem to be enough battlefields that spice it up in a way that can't be predicted and turned into a grind. That sort of random flair always made things active and worthwhile.


*enters into battlefield*

-Destroy Flans!
- Don't Destroy the Bombs!

(bombs are suddenly immune to dark based sleep and have Regain.)

[Crimson_Slasher]

I will say, nyzul island is my favorite event, that said, we can hope dungeon crawl is lined up like that, with some sort of..."DUNGEON MASTER" whom randomly assigns rules and then places adventurers into battle against semi-randomly generated mobs.

[Ameglemorine]

It probably took like 30 seconds to "develop" this spell.

Lolz, I totally agreed!

[saevel]

Gain-STR is a negligble melee boost at best, it's just happenstance that it helps melee but we were bound to get it anyway in line with the other Gain-Stat spells. Gain-STR is about +18 STR with good enhancing skill and will probably end up being around 20-25 at 99. That's nice and all but STR isn't very useful in melee damage calculations if your pDIF isn't capped. Considering RDM's sword skill is low and we lack any native +Attack boosting abilities, the +STR really doesn't increase the damage much of our pitiful little sword swings. If it was Gain-Attack and gave us +50-100 attack then we'd be talking melee boost. But +base stats hardly help DD since our accuracy and attack ratings are atrocious in addition to us having much of melee gear aside from Nashira/Expansion augmented gear and a few pre75 pieces. I wouldn't mind SE producing a new set for mages that enhances melee abilities, make it a synergy recipe. Pieces could have tons of +Haste/Acc/Att/ and maybe even an 'enhance sword enhancment spell+X"

Wtf are you smoking. The purpose of STR is to boost fSTR not boost attack, more attack is a side effect not the primary cause. For low DMG / low delay weapons (dagger / sword) fSTR immensely effects damage potential. The lower your delay and the more attacks you get per unit of measurement, the more important fSTR becomes (until its capped). I'll illustrate.

LV 90 Almace
DMG 61 Delay 224
fSTR cap +14 (rank 6 weapon)

LV 90 Khanda +2 (DA 10)
DMG 55 Delay 252
fSTR cap +14 (rank 6 weapon)

To get +14 fSTR you would need 56 (14 * 4) more STR then the target has VIT, unless your fighting TW's this isn't going to happen on RDM outside abyssea. And thus more STR will ALWAYS be good for RDM. Now how much does capped fSTR improve those weapons ?

61+14 = 75, 75/61 = 1.229, 22.9% improved Damage over Time (DoT).
55+14 = 69, 69/55 = 1.254, 25.4% improved Damage over Time (DoT).
476 combined delay * .70 (30% DW) = 333.2 [334] * .90 (10% DA from sword) = 300.6 delay per attack round. 300.6/2 = 150.3 delay per swing.

75+69 = 144 DMG with capped fSTR, 144/2 = 72 DMG averaged per swing.
61+55 = 116 DMG with no fSTR, 116/2 = 58 DMG averaged per swing.
72/58 = 1.241, 24.1% increase in damage averaged per swing from capped fSTR.

Now lets use Ukon,
LV 90 Ukon
DMG 131 Delay 482
fSTR cap of +22, rank 16 weapon. Requires 88 more STR then the target has VIT, no WAR will have this on anything not TW outside abyssea in TP gear (73 required after the weapon's STR is counted). Thus more STR will always help WAR outside abyssea.

131 + 22 = 153/131 = 1.167, 16.7% increase in Damage over Time from capped fSTR.
Now since this is a 2H weapon I don't need to factor in DW or other non-haste based delay reduction.

That huge GAXE gets a 16.7% damage bonus from having 22 fTR (88 extra STR) while the swords above get a 24.1% damage bonus from only having 14 fSTR (56 extra STR), or 17 STR less then the WAR. Now lets go a bit deeper, the swords are getting that 24.1% bonus every 150.3 delay (once each swing) while the GAXE is getting its 16.7% damage bonus once every 482 delay.

482/150.3 = 3.206, basically the sword is swinging %320 faster then the GAXE for 2.1 times less damage (153/72). Everything else being equal the sword would win DPS (WS is a different situation). Now WAR's obviously have more attack / accuracy, haste (Hasso) and DA/TA for reducing average delay further.

Now I'm not comparing WAR to RDM, merely using their weapons to demonstrate that STR favors lower damage / faster weapons more then it does higher damage / slower weapons. STR is like enspells, it's calculated per hit with no respect to how fast your hitting and is a static value that doesn't scale well with higher DMG.

In short, I have +17 Gain-STAT now at 426 enhancing magic, the update between 90 and 95 is +7 skill per level for 461 skill (assuming no other gear), that equals a +21 STR bonus. 21/4 = 5.25 fSTR, we get +5 DMG for free with a 25% chance of +6. Assuming the skill scaling remains the same, then 99 will be 28 more skill or 489 skill for +23.9 STR. That is +5 with a 75% chance of +6, or if you can get 1 more enhancing magic for 490 skill you end up wtih +24 STR and +6 fSTR all the time.

So yeah Gain-STR is immense, it's fricking huge. I would take Gain-STR over Gain-DEX anyway, unless your fighting something weak enough to put you over 20 dDEX. Now if we got +crit damage gear and a ton more +DEX on +Haste gear, then Gain-DEX might be looked at for bumping our crit rate up (dDEX 40 to 50 is +10% crit rate).

[saevel]

Ok what the heck are people referring to as "end game" anyway? I keep hearing it mentioned and that somehow RDM's melee is worthless because we can't melee on "end game" mobs.

Considering I've meleeing on just about every "mega boss" other then PW (I'm too busy taking care of people to have time for meleeing, and I need to stay alive at all costs to keep the mages alive), I really don't understand the whole "RDM can't melee on end game" angle. Now this being said, on anything dangerous I'm usually /DRK now for denying the NM's super mega move of doom (if it's possible to do), so I'm not DWing. I stand in the back WITH EVERY OTHER MELEE and support the mages, tanks and our THF's as TH is built to 9~10 (we've seen 11 once). Once this is done, the fight proceeds in one of two ways.

First the leaders give a "kill it now" order, in which case all the melee's (including me) rush to the NM and proceed to rip it a new defecation orifice. I'm already prebuffed prior to this happening, the leaders communicate to me right before they do this and I use Saboteur Dia III (20~25% defense down due to NM stupid resistance) for a 29% bonus to everyone's attack. We all rush in, I use LR SE and proceed to CDC and ride SE until its dead. Everyone goes nuts and the NM dies 30~60s later.

The second method is if a NM has some sort of super mega death move that can kill all the DD's super fast. What the leaders do then is call in groups of melees 2~3 at a time and let them whack away for a bit, then swap in others (including myself). The idea is not to have all your DD's in range in case the NM use's "mega death move" and kill's any non-tank near it. This ensures the healer's aren't suddenly overburdened with 6~10 people in critical HP. As a RDM I tend to survive just about everything they throw at me and can keep myself alive near indefinitly. I've actually short term tanked things by cycling (Stoneskin -> Blink -> Cure IV -> Cure IV -> Stoneskin (aquaveil if it was used up previously), I can't do it forever but It'll prevent NM's from killing me if I pull hate due to a hate-reset move.

So I've yet to see the whole "RDM's can't melee HNM's" angle. We don't die easily, seriously we don't.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

The thing I don't get is, if this won't allow RDM's to melee "end-game" and will only buff the solo play then why are people throwing their dummies out of their pram so much.

SquareEnix already said that new spells were coming for RDM, along with the Enfeebling fix but they wouldn't be able to do it this update due to the time it takes...

So just let people be happy-ish about Temper, it would have taken them a small period of time to make it as it literally was a spell that just granted the Double attack trait while active to add to an update where they'd have had little to add for RDM.

[saevel]

The thing I don't get is, if this won't allow RDM's to melee "end-game" and will only buff the solo play then why are people throwing their dummies out of their pram so much.

That's the thing, RDM doesn't need anything to be able to "melee in end game", they already can. It's simply looking at the problem from a different point of view. There is currently nothing keeping a RDM from meleeing other then community pressure and cognitive dissonance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

It's a really good term / theory to describe the current state of RDM in FFXI. There are many people who absolutely believe a RDM should never pick up a sword and lolMeleeRDM. No amount of explanation, demonstration or evidence to the contrary will change their beliefs. It's because if they did stop and actually see where we're coming from their preconceived notions would go way and they'd be faced with the very real truth that they were wrong. This is an extremely uncomfortable feeling and attacks the ego, thus subconsciously their mind rejects the idea out of hand in order to protect the ego.

I've demonstrated how to do it years ago, practically wrote books on the subject. Everything from gear setups to potential sub combos for different situations, and even situations where you should not melee at all. The situations are not "end game" but rather in any situation where your available time is taxed to the limit and thus there simply isn't enough time to melee. When your cure bombing people and spamming -na magic / erase (/SCH) / dispel / with the occasional Haste / Refresh, AND running around to take care of business, then it would most likely not be wise to melee. Basically if your stuck playing a mini WHM, then it would be prudent to keep the staff on and do mage work, your keeping people alive. But if your not playing mini WHM, there is very little reason to NOT melee, they make echo's for a reason.

[Rayik]

The anti-melee crowd doesn't seem to realize, the game is going to get continual updates. Even after we hit 99, there will be more changes and more updates for as long as the game is alive. Everyone is panicking like this is the "big one"...

Let us have our Temper and Gain-STR, WS adjustments and gear. You'll get your mage-only toys soon enough.

[Rayik]

That's the thing, RDM doesn't need anything to be able to "melee in end game", they already can. It's simply looking at the problem from a different point of view. There is currently nothing keeping a RDM from meleeing other then community pressure and cognitive dissonance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

It's a really good term / theory to describe the current state of RDM in FFXI. There are many people who absolutely believe a RDM should never pick up a sword and lolMeleeRDM. No amount of explanation, demonstration or evidence to the contrary will change their beliefs. It's because if they did stop and actually see where we're coming from their preconceived notions would go way and they'd be faced with the very real truth that they were wrong. This is an extremely uncomfortable feeling and attacks the ego, thus subconsciously their mind rejects the idea out of hand in order to protect the ego.

I've demonstrated how to do it years ago, practically wrote books on the subject. Everything from gear setups to potential sub combos for different situations, and even situations where you should not melee at all. The situations are not "end game" but rather in any situation where your available time is taxed to the limit and thus there simply isn't enough time to melee. When your cure bombing people and spamming -na magic / erase (/SCH) / dispel / with the occasional Haste / Refresh, AND running around to take care of business, then it would most likely not be wise to melee. Basically if your stuck playing a mini WHM, then it would be prudent to keep the staff on and do mage work, your keeping people alive. But if your not playing mini WHM, there is very little reason to NOT melee, they make echo's for a reason.

Sounds like a lot of people rode the merit-pt gravy train and never got off. Rode that train straight to Abyssea-ville. The game is a lot bigger than a couple HNM's.