Hey remember SC > MB? Make it required.

[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.

[Greatguardian]

=/ Fight Pil. He's legitimately difficult and requires a team effort. Abyssea isn't the whole game, it's just the casual game.

Voidwatch could definitely use some drop system tweaks to be worth the time for more people, though. I only do it because it's fun.

[Chriscoffey]

I've been playing since windows release in October 2003.

People got better.

Want to know the biggest thing people finally got through their heads years after the game was released?

Fighting IT++++++++ monsters as an EXP party is pants on head retarded.

DDs didn't get uberbuffs out of nowhere. They just started targeting VT monsters which gave them tons more EXP/hour and weren't flooring their Accuracy and Ratio.

Tiamat and Fafnir were also always piss easy, even before the 2H buff. Vrtra was only ever really difficult because of his pets, area aggro, and charm - which meant bringing a larger number of people. Most shells with the requisite numbers were capable of killing him, hell most still are, it's just rarely worth it. Besides, nowadays he's always down because BSTs solo him for the Cashmere.

How exactly are you going to sit there and compare this overbuffed shit we get now to back then on those mobs?

EDIT: I never thought they were the GODS of FFXI but to say they were "easy" in the same sentence as "easy" abyssea/VW shit is seems crazy talk.

[Sappho]

Now you're just comparing apples to oranges.

If you knew people that were still fighting IT+++++ monsters in EXP parties when CoP came out, then I guess *those* people got smarter.

Anyone with two brain cells to rub together quickly figured out that if it took 5 minutes to kill one 200 EXP monster, but you could kill ten 100 EXP monsters in the same time...well DUUUHHHH!!!!! No shit Sherlock.

But we were talking about Skill Chains. But if the people that were playing on your server couldn't do the math on IT+ monsters then it is small wonder that they couldn't get it together for SCs.

[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.

[Greatguardian]

Again: No one is incapable of doing SCs unless they are seriously mentally handicapped. They're just worthless.

Back on the point you missed: Skillchains and MBs are comparable to fighting IT monsters. Sure, bonus damage (bonus exp). But in the meantime you could have done 10 other monsters (10 other WS) and gotten way more exp (done way more damage).

SC+MB also loses value on VT monsters because they die so quickly. The old Distortion>Freeze combo to nearly one-shot things was fun for a while, I guess, but it was never an optimal way to kill things.

@Buffs, no I know that players have definitely received better gear and buffs in general since the inception of the game, but a large portion of our progress came from the fact that people like Kaeko, Motenten, and Kirschy sat down and determined how the game worked and what our stats are doing for us. Even in 2004-2005 conditions, if we would have known then what we know now, things would not be nearly so hard as they were perceived to be.

[Chriscoffey]

Again: No one is incapable of doing SCs unless they are seriously mentally handicapped. They're just worthless.

Back on the point you missed: Skillchains and MBs are comparable to fighting IT monsters. Sure, bonus damage (bonus exp). But in the meantime you could have done 10 other monsters (10 other WS) and gotten way more exp (done way more damage).

SC+MB also loses value on VT monsters because they die so quickly. The old Distortion>Freeze combo to nearly one-shot things was fun for a while, I guess, but it was never an optimal way to kill things.

@Buffs, no I know that players have definitely received better gear and buffs in general since the inception of the game, but a large portion of our progress came from the fact that people like Kaeko, Motenten, and Kirschy sat down and determined how the game worked and what our stats are doing for us. Even in 2004-2005 conditions, if we would have known then what we know now, things would not be nearly so hard as they were perceived to be.

See i agree with you on that point , however, there is this looming "We're dead" feeling every time I think about fighting HNM before and it's mainly due to the fact you don't chip away mobs HP anymore. When i can see a mob that suppose to be the cream of the crop HP going down 20% in less than a minute but knowing that didn't happen before it irks me to believe your "easy" mode of today is even close to back then. You chipped away mobs HP and even in doing that it was with teamwork with other people not the zerg fest way because it just wasn't much of an option that I can remember was available. I never was in a party of 15 rangers so i couldn't tell you about that.

[Greatguardian]

That really just comes down to people not knowing how in the world to mine for fish back in the day.

If we level synced to 75, threw on 75-only gear/weapons, and went to kill HNMs, we'd still wreck them faster than we used to because we know how their stats work and how our stats work. We know what's good and what isn't, and how to optimize ourselves.

[Motenten]

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 sc 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.

[Chriscoffey]

That really just comes down to people not knowing how in the world to mine for fish back in the day.

If we level synced to 75, threw on 75-only gear/weapons, and went to kill HNMs, we'd still wreck them faster than we used to because we know how their stats work and how our stats work. We know what's good and what isn't, and how to optimize ourselves.

I really don't think i would do that much better. I was playing mostly mage and remember my melee in party being shit for damage no matter which melee came into party. Dark knight actually was great for damage however they couldn't hit anything due to accuracy problems. There wasn't food or good gear to adjust them properly. This was the typical problem for most things melee related considering that if you had 1 more of any attribute you were a god over someone else. I can remember them not wanting me in a party because i couldn't afford morion earrings back then. I just don't accept its because we are so much smarter,as much as, over boosted compensation.