Protectra needs love

[Seiowan]

The community spoke as a collective whole when Protectra V was first merited all those years back. A paltry 5 extra defence over Protect IV and with defence already taking flak from many players who realised how little effect it has at higher levels, it became a novelty spell that people merited solely to fill their spell lists.

I think this needs to be changed.

The level cap is now approaching 99, with more content on the way and undoubtedly more spells to be included to our repertoire. Redundant spells like Protectra V should be reviewed and fixed to make them useful for the future updates. To this end, I would suggest the following be made applicable to the entire Protect line of spells.

1) Protect V / Protectra V should add a base +15 defence over Protect IV, granting a total of 70 defence instead of 60.

2) Add damage reduction (-PDT) effect to all physical attacks dealt to players and monsters with Protect. This should scale appropriately with tiers, with Protect granting a small damage mitigation, and Protect V granting much more.

3) White Mage Protectra merits should now raise the damage mitigation by a small amount instead of increasing defence.

Protectra V felt more like an afterthought when it was released, even fully merited, and has never truly offered the damage mitigation it should provide. With the cap rising and more content hopefully making use of that extra power, these spells should become more important.

As a side note, it would also make players more wary about monsters with Protect effects, as it would have a more direct impact on the damage they're dealing.

[Annex]

I'm sorry, but LOL. I have 1 merit in protectra V and max shellra V as merits in shellra are percentage based and I am 4/5 in devotion. That's what it should be, lol martyr....unless your a galka with crazy hp.

Granted if they increased proctectra like that I would reconsider adding more merits in pro V but I would lose the 12.5 minute recast on devotion which I use very often as I have been finding myself doing a lot of playing outside of abyssea lately.

It would be great if it did offer more proctection as the name implies but if I remember correctly at Vanafest almost 2 years ago, they said something about higher merits at 99. Hopefully this could your answer.

[Kristal]

Heh.. could be worse.. if SE modeled Protectra V after half the RDM group 2 merit spells, it would be DEF+40 and lasting 15 minutes at rank 1, with additional upgrades giving +6 minutes and +6 DEF.

Instead of PDT- though, I'd add a level modifier to it. For lvl 75-99, it gives DEF60 + (RANK-1+LEVEL-75)*2. That way, it gives 100 DEF at lvl 95, or 108 at 99.

[Rearden]

PDT is actually 9001xbetter though, the difference between 60DEF and 100DEF is no difference at all.