Hey remember SC > MB? Make it required.

[Sappho]

FFXI evolved and changed for better or worse.

Anyone that says that SC+MB *always* sucked is an absolute moron.

They definitely had a very important place in the past.

If the math gurus have gone out and done serious hard number crunching with actual experiments (not anecdotes) and have determined that everyone spamming WS as soon as TP hits 100% is a far better Damage Over Time then setting up SCs then so be it. The game evolved away from SCs.

Anybody want to post those hard numbers? Or is everyone just pissing in the wind about what is really better?

[cidbahamut]

FFXI evolved and changed for better or worse.

Anyone that says that SC+MB *always* sucked is an absolute moron.

They definitely had a very important place in the past.

If the math gurus have gone out and done serious hard number crunching with actual experiments (not anecdotes) and have determined that everyone spamming WS as soon as TP hits 100% is a far better Damage Over Time then setting up SCs then so be it. The game evolved away from SCs.

Anybody want to post those hard numbers? Or is everyone just pissing in the wind about what is really better?

It's a pretty simple concept to follow on paper. I've not seen skillchain damage in forever so if the numbers are for it I'll be all for it. That said, consider the following scenario.

2 DDs, one has a 6-hit build while the other has a 5-hit build.

By the time the DD with the 6-hit build reaches 100 TP, the other DD will be sitting on 120 TP. Let us further assume for the sake of argument that each DD's weaponskill inflicts 2,000 damage. That 20 TP overflow could have been put towards a second weaponskill, so in order to keep pace the skillchain will need to inflict at least 20% of the weaponskill's damage.
2,000 damage * (0.20) = 400 damage
That's just for a basic skillchain with two DDs, and that's just to break even. To be superior it would need to exceed 400 damage.

Now throw in more DDs, single-handed weapons, and human error. Every component increases the damage the skillchain needs to achieve in order to be the superior battle tactic.

With anecdotes of skillchains dealing less than 100 damage, it seems unlikely that the math will favor it, but I'm willing to change my tune if there's some hard data to the contrary.

[Greatguardian]

If people actually don't know how to Skillchain, are they having trouble figuring out that pants no go on head too?

@Sappho, I'm honestly too lazy to redo math that was done years ago to appease this discussion. I'll admit it. I'm lazy, and I have no vested interest in it. However, if you want a synopsis, skillchains suffer from lowest common denominator syndrome.

Skillchains decrease or nullify the value of x-hits and additional attacks (DA, TA) on WS damage because, no matter how fast Player A gets TP, they will always have to wait for Player B to get TP before they can weaponskill. If Player A gets two triple attacks in a row on WAR, while Player B misses twice in a row, Player A will be sitting at 300 TP before Player B is ready to skillchain with him.

Beyond that, Skillchains require the entire party/alliance to stop and hold their TP for the assigned pair to skillchain, a matter which can take 4-5 seconds on its own, or longer if there is a magic burst involved. People are sitting on their hands over nothing.

As for the past, no. Skillchains were never, ever good. People did them. That didn't mean they were good. People did Skillchains because people did not understand how the game worked. People also hunted IT+++++++++ monsters for EXP, and thought 5k/hr was epic JP button godmode exp.

Skillchains phased out because people got better at the game, not worse. Reminisce about the good old days all you want. That doesn't mean that running Kirin around with an Earth Staff Paladin for 6 hours was ever a bloody good idea.

[Chriscoffey]

If people actually don't know how to Skillchain, are they having trouble figuring out that pants no go on head too?

@Sappho, I'm honestly too lazy to redo math that was done years ago to appease this discussion. I'll admit it. I'm lazy, and I have no vested interest in it. However, if you want a synopsis, skillchains suffer from lowest common denominator syndrome.

Skillchains decrease or nullify the value of x-hits and additional attacks (DA, TA) on WS damage because, no matter how fast Player A gets TP, they will always have to wait for Player B to get TP before they can weaponskill. If Player A gets two triple attacks in a row on WAR, while Player B misses twice in a row, Player A will be sitting at 300 TP before Player B is ready to skillchain with him.

Beyond that, Skillchains require the entire party/alliance to stop and hold their TP for the assigned pair to skillchain, a matter which can take 4-5 seconds on its own, or longer if there is a magic burst involved. People are sitting on their hands over nothing.

As for the past, no. Skillchains were never, ever good. People did them. That didn't mean they were good. People did Skillchains because people did not understand how the game worked. People also hunted IT+++++++++ monsters for EXP, and thought 5k/hr was epic JP button godmode exp.

Skillchains phased out because people got better at the game, not worse. Reminisce about the good old days all you want. That doesn't mean that running Kirin around with an Earth Staff Paladin for 6 hours was ever a bloody good idea.

I killed several mobs with skillchains faster than any damn party you could have put together other than a ranger burn. I am not sure exactly what game you were playing back in 03-04 but it wasn't the same one I was. People didn't get BETTER they got over buffed to compensate for the jobs being weak(mostly just people saying they got tired of chipping away HP on mobs).

I have read so many of your post and i agree on some but on this topic you are completely off base. When exactly did you start playing this game to have such an opinion about this? I was plane hacking 16,000 exp/hour on smn with a bst on pets, on my first character, when this 5k/hr was epic but that didn't mean the majority of the time on regular mobs it was shit. I also never had a party with any job kill as fast as a distortion/freeze(while leveling) death either.

There were gimmick ways to do things but the majority of the time it wasn't easy because of all this upgraded crap SE has thrown our way. I would challenge most of you to fight Fafnir/Tiamat/Vrtra/etc back at 75 before any of the good updates to jobs were introduced ( This means no guilo/penta 60TP type things/etc). It would be epic just how GOOD people think they are now to see how much has changed.

I want to get back to cooperation and team play. SC should be brought back into play like mentioned above. This zerg fest full time needs taken out and team work put back into the playing style. I saw this style coming to fruitation as K club came into existence then even more when they started huge buffing after 2 handed update. The game IMO has went to hell since then.

[Sappho]

As for the past, no. Skillchains were never, ever good. People did them. That didn't mean they were good. People did Skillchains because people did not understand how the game worked.

You were around during the NA release in October 2003? I'm not saying the past is better than the present and I frankly don't give a fig leaf about going back.

**But** back in the days where you had a fixed party of the same six players leveling together (because everyone had to be the same level) the party format was typically: PLD, WHM, BLM, BRD/RDM, DD, DD.

The only people that had to worry about the Skill Chain rotation were the two DD. If one of the two DD couldn't get his shit together so that both were building TP at the same rate then you kicked his ass to the curb and found someone that didn't suck.

Once WoW came along and every game company in the world wanted to dumb down their shit to the zerg mentality so that they could have an MMO with ten million subscribers, then everything changed.

I never had to sit in Jeuno for six hours with my party flag up waiting for a group. Because I was awesome.

But I quit right before COP launched to go play WoW and farm purplez six nights a week in the same lame ass raid zone. Wheeeee!!!!!

Would I like FFXI to return to the much more difficult days of the past?
Let me try Abyssea for six months and I'll get back to you. I still haven't seen those areas.

[Chriscoffey]

You were around during the NA release in October 2003? I'm not saying the past is better than the present and I frankly don't give a fig leaf about going back.

**But** back in the days where you had a fixed party of the same six players leveling together (because everyone had to be the same level) the party format was typically: PLD, WHM, BLM, BRD/RDM, DD, DD.

The only people that had to worry about the Skill Chain rotation were the two DD. If one of the two DD couldn't get his shit together so that both were building TP at the same rate then you kicked his ass to the curb and found someone that didn't suck.

Once WoW came along and every game company in the world wanted to dumb down their shit to the zerg mentality so that they could have an MMO with ten million subscribers, then everything changed.

I never had to sit in Jeuno for six hours with my party flag up waiting for a group. Because I was awesome.

But I quit right before COP launched to go play WoW and farm purplez six nights a week in the same lame ass raid zone. Wheeeee!!!!!

Would I like FFXI to return to the much more difficult days of the past?
Let me try Abyssea for six months and I'll get back to you. I still haven't seen those areas.

You are going to be so disappointed if you are expecting something hard or team fights like before. It is fun for low groups and while i agree on some aspects of the game now is better than the past. I don't like things SE have done to take team work out and let it be a TP/zerg game.

[Sappho]

You are going to be so disappointed if you are expecting something hard or team fights like before. It is fun for low groups and while i agree on some aspects of the game now is better than the past. I don't like things SE have done to take team work out and let it be a TP/zerg game.

Honestly, after reading these forums for the month that I have been back, I debated even buying the Abyssea expansions.

[scaevola]

As for the past, no. Skillchains were never, ever good. People did them. That didn't mean they were good. People did Skillchains because people did not understand how the game worked. People also hunted IT+++++++++ monsters for EXP, and thought 5k/hr was epic JP button godmode exp.

TO

BE

FAIR

back in the day enough people played the game and were leveling concurrently to severely overcrowd most level-appropriate camps that were not

1) peppered with shit like undead or overleveled goblins or other assorted nonsense that could wipe you and set you back like 20 minutes provided you could even recover at all, or

2) out in the middle of goddamn nowhere (looking directly at you, Altepa), so any benefit of more level-appropriate, nonthreatening mobs was immediately counterbalanced by the fact that the only tank in your level range doesn't have the telepoint and rrrrggjhhwdrvgilophvipr

so, wailing away at IT+azillion sort of made sense in that there weren't enough mobs to really support the kind of low-VT-mulching the game had always been designed for in the places where you could reasonably expect to get to with random mouthbreathers; this, more than "skill", was why static XP parties with friends were useful.

Otherwise, U RAPPIN: GOOD

[Chriscoffey]

TO

BE

FAIR

back in the day enough people played the game and were leveling concurrently to severely overcrowd most level-appropriate camps that were not

1) peppered with shit like undead or overleveled goblins or other assorted nonsense that could wipe you and set you back like 20 minutes provided you could even recover at all, or

2) out in the middle of goddamn nowhere (looking directly at you, Altepa), so any benefit of more level-appropriate, nonthreatening mobs was immediately counterbalanced by the fact that the only tank in your level range doesn't have the telepoint and rrrrggjhhwdrvgilophvipr

so, wailing away at IT+azillion sort of made sense in that there weren't enough mobs to really support the kind of low-VT-mulching the game had always been designed for in the places where you could reasonably expect to get to with random mouthbreathers; this, more than "skill", was why static XP parties with friends were useful.

Otherwise, U RAPPIN: GOOD

I remember a goblin in yhoater epic wiping like 30 people that zoned in. I miss some of those old days. I never laughed so hard in my life.

[scaevola]

I remember a goblin in yhoater epic wiping like 30 people that zoned in. I miss some of those old days. I never laughed so hard in my life.

The Yuhtunga Bouncer Squad was goddamn hilarious and sort of gave this feeling like the goblins were actually telling us to get the hell off their island thank you very much but I hesitate to call it "fun"