[dev1049] New weapon skills

[noodles355]

Hey everyone, we’ve been looking over your feedback and wanted to give more details in the thought process behind our changes and some of the weapon skills themselves.
　　
Axe Weapon Skill “Ruinator”
We will be lowering the attack modifier value and changing it so it’s half of the current value. The amount of damage dealt to high level enemies (those that have high defense) will be reduced, however, being able to deal damage easier than other axe weapon skills will remain unchanged.

We are making it so that the amount of damage will be around the same as Rampage if you have full accuracy and get 2-3 criticals. (This is when both of them are executed at 100 TP. There is of course more damage that can be dealt depending on gear and food.)

We are making adjustments so that you can pick Ruinator if you want to deal more consistent damage, or Rampage if you want to try and deal large amounts of damage.
　
Club Weapon Skill “Realm Razer”
The idea behind the adjustment is the same as Ruinator.

We are making it so that the amount of damage will be around the same as Hexa Strike if you have full accuracy and get 2-3 criticals. Again, this is for 100 TP and more damage can be dealt depending on gear and food.

We ultimately decided to adjust this weapon skill due to the fact that a non-critical hit modifier weapon skill would easily surpass the maximum damage dealt by Hexa Strike in stable conditions, and the result would cause a rapid increase in damage inflation.
　　
Sword Weapon Skill “Requiescat”
Since Spirits Within’s damage varies based on your amount of HP and TP, we are adjusting Requiescat so that it will be easier to use than Spirits Within once you have 300 TP and also so that jobs that cannot boost their HP as high as paladins will be able to deal damage.

Also, Atonement is an easy to use weapon skill for paladins, which has a special feature, so the idea behind Requiescat was to give jobs other than paladin, specifically red mage and blue mage, a good weapon skill choice.
　
　
Hand-to-Hand Weapon Skill “Shijin Spiral”
There have been requests saying that this is weaker than Stringing Pummel and Victory Smite, so please make it stronger than both of those, but we cannot do this for the same reasons listed for our adjustments to Ruinator and Realm Razer.

We have also received some comments saying that the damage of Shijin Spiral is no different than Asuran Fists, or perhaps lower.

We took a look at the conditions of the players who performed weapon skill tests, but there are differences in attack power when executing each weapon skill, and because of this the result was that Asuran Fists and Victory Smite was higher.

Shijin Spiral is stronger than Asuran Fists and when boosting your stats using the appropriate equipment and food, the differences between Asuran Fists and Shijin Spiral will become more apparent, and the gap between Victory Smite and Shijin Spiral will also become smaller.

Cheers Camate, but could you possibly get a comment out of the dev team regarding the polearm and scythe WS?

Penta Thrust and Drakesbane already have large attack penalties. Geirskogul, Camlann's Torment and Sonic Thrust are essentially the same WS with different modifiers. And now Stardiver has a very low FTP which is carried accross all hits instead of just the first hit. Why is dragoon constantly shafted on weaponskills?

A lot of jobs have good empyrean weaponskills. Dragoon was not one of them. It was given a Geirskogul Mk.2. Geirskogul was already a crap WS. Why did SE feel the need to give it a different animation and a different secondary attribute (Vit instead of Agi) but still keep it as essentially the same WS?

Penta Thrust had an attack penalty. Dragoon already has relatively low attack compared to other two-handed DDs (Drk gets Attack Bonus, War get Berserk, Samurai gets to sub /WAR for berserk without sacrificing it's damage). Then SE decides to throw us a bone with Drakesbane.

4.00 FTP, 50% STR, Can crit.

That sounds like an awesome WS. Finally, Dragoon has a weaponskill that will help it keep up with other two-handed DDs.

Except then they decide to slap a huge -19% Attack penalty on it? Oh yeah but it's fine because we'll give you Wyvern emotes. You're trolling right?

Ok, the last weaponskills. Merit weaponskills. A chance for Dragoon to finally get a good weaponskill to make up for the fact that SE has gimped all of our other ones.

And then you go and make it 0.75FTP accross all four hits. Are you serious? First you give us a pretty Mythic WS that has a huge attack penalty, then you give us our Empyrean WS which is just a copy of our Relic WS (which was already crap). Then you give us another copy of our Relic WS but make it AoE... And then finally you give us a WS which is so weak that even with 5/5 merits it's still worse than all the others we have.

You know what? Screw it. I've got B- skill in Staff. Why bother using a lance at all? I'm going to merit Shattersoul.

[Laxedrane]

Man I just checked out the test server update. Fired up realmrazor. It's doing exactly the damage they wanted it to do compared to hexa. AKa the same exact damage.

I have never been so excited for something in this game for years. Last time I was this stocked was when I finally got mystic boon after spending 6 days of my unemployed existence unlocking it on floor 40. That was at least 4 years ago.

I've never been on such a high and throw into utter demoralization in any video game I've played. This is seriously strike 2 for me, strike 1 was that interview. I'll definitely be one of those people jumping ship before it pulls into the sea of endless shit hoping for the sparkling sunset of bibiki bay on the other side.

It's like if square was a friend who set up on a date with amazingly gorgeous guy with a great personality a sultry voice and a great job. Talked to him, met him, 2 days before the date square calls and says he started going out with him instead but he found someone just as good! So I show up and... It's a woman. FML.

Utter stupidity. They bring the dude that ran the game into the ground before back. That. Makes. No. Sense.

[ThaiChi]

Dear Devs, if there's this much negative reaction in regards to the adjustments planned to the merit weaponskills, why bother? It seems like (in my situation as a Ninja main), in your pursuit of "balance" you would have me favor a weapon skill I learned at level 60 all the way up to 99. Why is it so "unbalanced" to give the players something to be excited about? You gave us relic class weapons with the empyreans and most of the weaponskills were something that made the players clamor about playing again. Then you give us content that is actually challenging in voidwatch, but give this dichotomy of: get an empyrean weaponskill, or stick with your old bread and butter WS. NIN is lucky in this respect, Blade: Hi is a good weaponskill, and is a logical step up from Jin. Which now begs the question, why should I bother with the meritted WS, something many Empyrean owners may consider themselves. Non-empyrean holders, take for example my BLU, does not have an Almace, nor do I plan on making one, I'm stuck with ONLY Vorpal Blade as the only half-way decent weaponskill. The new merit WS actually gave us a prospect of having the potential to do damage outside of our spells but now we get some really neutered version of Atonement. A friend of mine said it best when talking about what it seems like the devs plan out content for us, "Oh look, they're actually enjoying the game... we can't be having that..." I don't even know if I had a point to what I'm saying (I started typing this at 4am in the middle of running Nyzul), I'm just outraged at the devs, and it would seem it's the same on both sides of the pacific. What is the point if having these forums up if they ask us for what we want, and don't bother listening to us at all?

[HimuraKenshyn]

100 merits for a shitty ws I really now believe the DEVS are tired of working on this game and are trying to KILL it off but call it BALANCE balance my a$$. Just like the abyssea thread the hand writings on the wall on how out of touch these guys really are just wow....

[Laxedrane]

This is the basic line of logic I am seeing. Axe and Club do not have a great damage dealing Relic, mythic, or empyreon. Some decent utility weapon skills in there but no great damaging ones. So we are going to balance these skills against their strongest skill Hexa and Rampage.

Lance strongest skill is Drakesbane. We will match that damage.

Sam strongest weaponskill is Tachi: Fudo We will balance against that.

Now square did we forget that weapon skills not only need to be balanced inside their own weapon classes but against other weapon classes as well? As it stands the odds of you adding another ultimate weapon series is low as such this is it for these weapon classes. So, forget white mage it's fun to melee but let's look at this seriously for a moment.

Fuck beast becuase we had the poor planning to give them an elemental weapon skill as both their mythic and empyreon and we made relic weapon skill suck so they can suck on eggs becuase we will never give them a weapon skill they can use to compete with jobs in other weapon classes? Sword is in almost as bad of a boat since while empyreon is good it definitely not lighting the world on fire. Then mages can all collectively jump off a bridge get the *%& back into the kitchen I mean the back line and cast magic only. Is this really your vision square? Does this really seem balanced? Your logic is so flawed it's worrisome.

[Brolic]

100 merits for a shitty ws I really now believe the DEVS are tired of working on this game and are trying to KILL it off but call it BALANCE balance my a$$. Just like the abyssea thread the hand writings on the wall on how out of touch these guys really are just wow....

100 merits is a thing? i've wasted 100 merits last week from doing vw\abyssea just by being capped.

[Frost]

The real problem is that the devs really lack any perspective.

If the game fails, they will just say "It failed because it was an old game", giving no thought into what they did to destroy it. Then they will make a new game with that ego and wonder why it fails...

Oh wait... that is exactly what happened with Final Fantasy XIV!

Open your eyes Square... You're screwing up again and you can't even see it because of your pride and ego. You were doing good for a while, but you're slipping back into your old habits.

[Brolic]

I don't get the big outrage? free\easy to learn weaponskills aren't as good as the ones that come attached to weapons. seems ok to me

[Finuve]

I don't get the big outrage? free\easy to learn weaponskills aren't as good as the ones that come attached to weapons. seems ok to me

please read thread and attempt to comprehend it

NO ONE is saying these weapon skills should be more powerful than Empy WSs, what people are saying is that these weapons skills should be more powerful than Hexa Strike, Vorpal Blade, Raging Rush, Sidewinder, Slug Shot, Guillotine, Blade: Jin, Tachi: Gekko, Penta Thrust, Asuran Fists, as well as (when not using a mythic weapon) Insurgency, Stringing Pummel, Drakesbane ETC ETC ETC

this takes into account outside abyssea and no relic mythic or empyrean weapon

we've been using these same weapon skills for 8 years and for 35 (going to be 39) levels, we NEED a change, there is no balance here, there is progression, our WSs SHOULD be stronger, and if making them stronger means having to buff Empy/Mythic/Relic WSs then so be it, just buff the new challenges that are coming to compensate

[Zemarin]

People literally MOAN about EVERY LITTLE THING.... (My favorite Weapon doesn't do the Weapon Skill that does the most Damage) It's getting Tired. Then there's (OMG I can change jobs but I can't Min Max all of them cuz i cant get ALL the Merited WS's to FULL DAMAGE).... FFXI's NA Player Base is prolly just as bad or maybe worse than WoW's....
Oh ya and like the guy above me QQin about how their WS's aint stronger.. I guess having WS's that do "slug shot dmg" and close/open Darkness and light is just horrible. I mean for a game where WS's are meant to be Skill chained ppl are easy to cry than to understand that

2000+2000~3000 is > 2000+500~1000