Hey remember SC > MB? Make it required.

[Chriscoffey]

Dnc gets +33% SC damage with AF3+2 hands. Sam gets 16%. Mnk and nin get 12%.

So, suppose I close light on mnk with a 2k Smite, or close darkness on dnc with a 1.5k Evis. Dnc's evis generates a potential 2k darkness, and the 2k Smite generates a potential 2240 light. How much time is that worth waiting for?

Mnk with Smite is generally around 60/40 melee/ws split, so the Light SC is worth about 45% of a ws cycle. That means that if it took me 20 seconds to get TP for the ws, with that Light SC I could stop meleeing for 9 seconds and keep the same DPS as if I didn't ws at all.

If you figure the dnc is at a 70/30 melee/ws split, the Darkness SC is worth about 40% of a ws cycle. 8 seconds out of 20, if they were at the same pace as the mnk.


Next, how much does your DPS go down if you hold TP?

Mnk (Smite), 0.5 over-TP rounds (default agressive play): 262 DPS, 6 rounds/weaponskill.
Add 3 rounds for holding to ~150 TP, so 3.5 over-TP rounds: 236 DPS

Lost 10% of total DPS by holding TP to skillchain.

Add a Light SC's worth of damage to the 3.5 over-TP config: 329 DPS
Add a Fragmentation SC's worth of damage: 292 DPS

Total DPS went up by 11% (Frag) to 25% (Light) by waiting to skillchain. (Applying this to the one closing the skillchain, since they're the ones that need to wait, rather than splitting between the two jobs.)

Dnc obviously gets the most out of it, while mnk/sam/nin just get a nice little boost. Other jobs don't get that boost, but the difference isn't large enough that they wouldn't see roughly the same results as the above example.


People forget about melee damage when considering SC penalties. You've slowed your weaponskill down by a few rounds, but those few rounds also did damage themselves.

The *primary* problem with skillchains is resists. When SCs only do about 1/10 of their potential damage, they are certainly not worth it. This is compounded by the blink problem, where the SC isn't animated and damage isn't displayed if you gear swap on the weaponskill. Because there's no reliable way to see how much damage is being done, people tend to ignore it altogether, on the assumption that it probably got resisted to near nothing anyway.

We aren't stupid to believe SC NOW are always going to be better than zerg, however, what we are trying to portray is the simple fact that everyone now is on this zerg mentality after it's introduction. This means to hell with teamwork on a higher level and just TP spamming the fuck out of everything. I didn't say SC are harder but they are harder to do than just button pressing one after another without pausing to see what is going on.

I really believe reintroducing SC back at some form on HNM and teamwork is what FFXI was really about not zerging full time. I am just sitting and waiting to see what the 99 stuff will be about. I don't want another procing system but i would like a more detailed type of SC weakness on mobs where like in hydra cutting off its heads takes away huge regen of HP/etc. I am hoping they can do something similar with SC that is fair enough for most of the jobs which makes teamwork at the forefront of a HNM fight.