Hey remember SC > MB? Make it required.

[Xihp]

Here's the problem: WS spam alone would create multiple Light SCs (with far fewer difficulties than lowering WS damage o accommodate a SC), and since the Tier 3 SCs are supposed to be more powerful, this would still keep "mandatory SCs" out of relevance.

However, you could make it so that Lv1 SCs lower/temporarily remove magic immunity to an element, Lv2 SCs increase Macc and MATK to an element, and Lv3 SCs lower stats.

Sounds like every lazy FFXI player. If they increased the damage and gave us some incentive to switch up our weaponskills, then people wouldn't be so focused on "The easiest way to do decent damage is spam my 1 favorite weaponskill that does big damage". No player wants to use a lesser weaponskill to skillchain with their team just for a magic burst that does mediocre damage. They should just increase the SC damage.

The reason we used to do SC->MB was because that extra 65% damage on a skillchain was AWESOME. Setting up that magic burst with a Tachi: Enpi -> SATA Viper Bite -> Distortion Damage -> Magic Burst.

Back then we NEEDED the extra damage, but most players now kill everything so fast, we forget the option is there until a boss fight. And even then, most players don't bother. Most of the time because we focus on procs first, then by the time we finish our procs, the mob is almost dead and we zerg it down. No point in spending that 15 seconds on a SC if that 15 seconds is all it takes to kill the mob.

What if.... Skillchains add a TH effect?! :O Teamwork points or something. Like a hidden counter on the mob, increasing drop rates or exp or something.

[Mirage]

Hello everyone! Since last time I posted in this thread, I have actually thought of another idea for skillchains.

What if performing skillchains with multiple people caused the participants in the skillchain to receive buffs based on the properties of the WS?

Skillchain properties consisting of multiple elements would grant buffs for all elements involved, but the way I imagined it, while you would get more buffs, each individual buff would decrease in potency. For example:

Creating a single element skillchain such as Detonation (wind) would significantly greatly increase the evasion and resistance to the wind element when two or more players took part in creating the skillchain. Creating Scission, however, would greatly increase the players' resistance to physical damage, and increase their resistance to the earth element.

If you created fragmentation (lightning+wind) however, you would only receive a moderate increase in evasion and wind resistance, but in addition also receive a boost to accuracy (or maybe critical hit rate instead, i dunno) and lightning resistance.

Creating a Light skillchain would then grant a buff based on fire (attack power, perhaps), light (perhaps cure potency?), wind and lightning, but the boosts to these would only be slight compared to if you did a SC with fewer elements. Of course, all this would be in addition to the ability to magic burst for extra magic accuracy and damage, if you for some reason would want to do this.

In my opinion, this is balanced. The lowest damage SCs have specific but potent buffs, while the strong SCs have several but unfocused buffs in addition to their damage output. Additionally, this buff would only function when there are several participants in the SC, so it would not further increase the power of jobs that can currently easily solo skillchains. Obviously, people would go for light/darkness skillchains for maximum damage output, and there is no doubt that in many situations, this would be the best choice. However, this new system would allow people to sacrifice damage output for other buffs if it would benefit the situation.

I could see this being really useful in lowman situations, where it would enable for example a sam/dnc and sch/whatever to perform Gekko->Immanence Ice to create a magic attack bonus for the sch, after a mob changed from being vulnerable to physical damage to being very strong to physical damage, making it ideal for the smn to nuke it down. It could also allow someone with not-so-great evasion to sacrifice damage output to increase their evasion while they backup tank after "something" went wrong. Even if you were on nin, tanking something that was incredibly evasive and had extreme accuracy, repeatedly performing fragmentation SCs with the ninja to keep the SC buff up fulltime could make the fight much safer.

I imagine that there would be very many situations where you could benefit from these. Please keep in mind that I do not intend for my element-buff suggestions to be set in stone. If you have other/better suggestions for buffs these SCs could grant, feel free to mention them.

I have not yet thought of what would be a balanced potency and duration for these buffs, but it should be enough for it to be noticable. I also think that if you perform several SCs with multiple people in quick succession, the most recent buff should overwire the earlier buffs. For example if a SAM used sekkanoki to perform SCs with two different players, the two other players would receive the buffs as normal, but the samurai would have the buff from his first SC be overwritten by the buff from the second SC.

Outside of the buffs, which would always be beneficial, there would be no change in how anything would work. In a zerg, you'd still not care about any of this and just spam whatever as fast as possible. No penalties would be put on this sort of fight, or any fight of any kind. However, those that take a few extra seconds to organize/synchronize their WSes in a situation where there isn't three WSes going off every 2 seconds, would be able to create new strategies for fighting various monsters that they perhaps think are pretty hard with their setup.

[Emitremmus]

This is actually a pretty cool idea I could get behind. I could see the ginormous bees in Adoulin only taking SC damage. It would be cool to have an enemy that only took SC damage from the element of the game day, but at the same time you would have people sitting there looking at charts for half an hour only to find out they don't have the right setup to make that SC, lol. Seeing people having to use timing and actual teamwork to kill something would be very nostalgic.

On a side note, it would be cool to bring SCs back into the spotlight by making them have bonuses similar to the flourish system. Each SC you close would give you a charge for a new job specific ability or something like that...hell perhaps new WS that require you to have X number of charges available to perform it. There's a lot of possibilities for something like this. Me gusta.

[Rustic]

In part, requiring skillchains would actually be one of the best checks to sheer zerg damage in the game.

Imagine if bigger NM's (or HNM's) took vastly reduced physical/magical damage off the bat. Skillchains would "crack" the defense temporarily, allowing for normal physical damage. Likewise magic bursts for magical damage. FAILING to close and/or MB would restore the defenses in question as the mob "turtled up". Broad-spectrum (Darkness/Light) SC's would create the shortest windows of vulnerability, while specific element ones would produce longer openings for normal damage, namely whichever matched the mob's elemental weakness. For MB's, it'd be based on how much MP went into the spell producing the MB- SC'ing Dia for a Light SC would only produce a few seconds of magical vulnerability, while Holy II would leave the target open for a much longer period of time.

Say it's a giant Orc NM. Orcs have Water weakness. Say, a Darkness SC would produce a 10 second window where normal damage was full. A Distortion SC would be 20. A Reverberation would be 30. MBing a Water-type spell on the target would cause magical vulnerability beyond the period of the magic burst for an amount of time between 2-30 seconds depending on the strength of the MB'd spell. Firing off a WS that isn't SC'd would reset the defense immediately after the window to close it failed, failing to MB a SC would reset magic defense.

Even if a mob doesn't have a specific weakness to an element, it can be simply given a generic "break" from SC/MB, possibly reduced vs. mobs that have a specific weakness- and the time breaks are effective for can be varied, to make that mob more or less challenging. Normal mobs could have a similar system- only instead of being a defense break, it leaves the mob vulnerable to additional damage. Closing a SC would increase regular damage rather than remove an exceptional defense for a period of time, and MBing would leave the mob with a magical vulnerability beyond the normal length of an MB- and failing to close an SC/MB would only remove the vulnerability while leaving the mob at normal levels of damage/defense for it's type, rather than giving it superior defenses.

Gotta be something to give combat more sense and reason than "spam your highest DPS at the mob", or else it's all zerg, all the time. It's not like enmity is much of an issue now either...

[Mirage]

In part, requiring skillchains would actually be one of the best checks to sheer zerg damage in the game.

Imagine if bigger NM's (or HNM's) took vastly reduced physical/magical damage off the bat. Skillchains would "crack" the defense temporarily, allowing for normal physical damage. Likewise magic bursts for magical damage. FAILING to close and/or MB would restore the defenses in question as the mob "turtled up". Broad-spectrum (Darkness/Light) SC's would create the shortest windows of vulnerability, while specific element ones would produce longer openings for normal damage, namely whichever matched the mob's elemental weakness. For MB's, it'd be based on how much MP went into the spell producing the MB- SC'ing Dia for a Light SC would only produce a few seconds of magical vulnerability, while Holy II would leave the target open for a much longer period of time.

Say it's a giant Orc NM. Orcs have Water weakness. Say, a Darkness SC would produce a 10 second window where normal damage was full. A Distortion SC would be 20. A Reverberation would be 30. MBing a Water-type spell on the target would cause magical vulnerability beyond the period of the magic burst for an amount of time between 2-30 seconds depending on the strength of the MB'd spell. Firing off a WS that isn't SC'd would reset the defense immediately after the window to close it failed, failing to MB a SC would reset magic defense.

Even if a mob doesn't have a specific weakness to an element, it can be simply given a generic "break" from SC/MB, possibly reduced vs. mobs that have a specific weakness- and the time breaks are effective for can be varied, to make that mob more or less challenging. Normal mobs could have a similar system- only instead of being a defense break, it leaves the mob vulnerable to additional damage. Closing a SC would increase regular damage rather than remove an exceptional defense for a period of time, and MBing would leave the mob with a magical vulnerability beyond the normal length of an MB- and failing to close an SC/MB would only remove the vulnerability while leaving the mob at normal levels of damage/defense for it's type, rather than giving it superior defenses.

Gotta be something to give combat more sense and reason than "spam your highest DPS at the mob", or else it's all zerg, all the time. It's not like enmity is much of an issue now either...

Sounds like staggering in FF13/-2. I'm not opposed to the idea.

[Trumpy]

Im not saying hold off til you can perform a SC but if you have tp on 2 people and can do them it only speeds things up. I dont think i really ever say "hey dude you do tachi retsu and i will follow with shadowstich!" but i will try to time a WS i do to make a SC if possible. sometimes it can really speed up things. Also we dont usually change the WS we do just to make a SC just if they happen to make them.

[Annalise]

Make skillchains increase drop rates. Problem solved, people use them now.

Enjoy your Blade: Rin > Wasp Sting > Distortion skillchains for maximum skillchains on a target.

Honestly though for me... it comes down to this.

Know your skillchain properties. Don't make plans to set them up, but if something comes along that could be useful, utilize it. That's more complicated than setting up skillchains, or just spamming TP.

Example:
BST and PUP.
BST uses ruinator and I am closing in on 100 TP. I know that ruinator is distortion.
I am using Victory Smite mainly, which is fragmentation. I also have Stringing Pummel, which is gravitation. Victory Smite and Stringing Pummel are pretty comparable.

If I use Victory Smite, no skill chain happens and I just go on punching things (while Koumei keeps curing me, or casting silence over and over and over and over if the mob has MP [Hi Qilin!]). If I use Stringing Pummel, I make darkness and potentially do a chunk more damage.

TP spam rather than skillchain planning has been shown mathematically to be more effective, and skillchains are usually accidental and a nice bonus. However, if you know your skillchain properties when random opportunities arise, you can take it slightly further. It's all within reason, though. If you are on PUP and have Shijin Spiral (fusion) and no Pummel/smite, if someone uses a fusion weaponskill, DO NOT use dragon kick to make light because combined the damage will probably be less even if light isn't resisted.

In an alliance setting this usually doesn't matter because by the time you use a weaponskill you can skillchain with, someone else probably already weaponskilled. With less people though, this becomes more viable.

tl;dr: skillchain < tp burn @ 100 < tp burn @ 100 with random bonus skillchain damage < tp burn @ 100 with knowledge of skillchain properties to use at an advantage rather than random luck

[Pebe]

How I think current magic Burst System could be made more useful:

Currently Magic Bursts increase magic accuracy and magic damage.

So if there were NMs in the game that took very little physical damage, like turtles, but had very high magic resists rates but took good magic damage, like aspid way back in the day. People would have to use the skillchain system to kill it efficiently, either that use non-physical/magical damage sources like spirits within/requiescat, or i guess tomahawk rotations, but even then magic bursts would be the most efficient of the 3.

How I think magic Bursts could be changed:
I believe Magic Bursts should redirect the enmity of all damage done to the person who opened or closed(probably closed would be better) the skillchain. You could even make this exceed the hate cap then decay over time back down to hate cap. Wouldn't this be an interesting way to bring PLD back into the mix for holding hate even when other DDs are beating on the mob?

[Laraul]

You people really think that SCs and MBs we're "necessary"? Sure people tried using them in exp parties. But they quickly learned that because SCs are so tricky to pull of without something going wrong they gave up completely. To make matters worse the game never let's you know when you may perform a skill chain, or what weapon or skills qualify for a skill chain. Even if people once did do SCs and MBs, they now know that they aren't worth the effort.

You want to bring this back, then maybe it's time the game made SCs and MBs practical. The game needs to tell you when a weaponskill should be performed to create an SC so you don't go at the wrong time. I mean c'mon. This is OBVIOUS right? Because that's all people do when they attempt to skillchain in a group. Perform it at the WRONG time.

[Kari]

The only content that this could possibly be "required" or even "good", would be 6-man or lower content.
With anything higher, it would just be an annoying system like proccing.

However, if they made it so SC/MB did a good amount of damage, it would be lovely to see it welcomed back into lowman content.