dev1069 Phantom Roll Effect Adjustments feedback

[Greatguardian]

Don't insult our intelligence by presuming that the players don't know how Defense works.

[Quetzacoatl]

Sorry Camate, but it's like Nightfyre said...this is stuff we already knew.

[Bayohne]

Hey guys,

Just as a reference, I wanted to point out that while you may know a lot about how defense functions, it doesn't mean that every one reading the forums does. So while something we post may not directly influence you or your understanding of something, we post to reach as many people as possible. Nothing we post is ever meant to "insult your intelligence" when we try and provide context for things.

[Quetzacoatl]

I think we knew that as well :X

[Yugl]

Would you mind sharing the exact formula for pDIF? That would help players better understand the value of defense. It would also help if you told us whether the Cast Time Reduction on staffs stacked with Fast cast is additive (10FC+15CTR = 25% reduction total) or multiplicative ([1-0.1]*[1-00.15]).

[Greatguardian]

A fair point, but it only brings up an equally distressing problem. Those of us here who understand how Defense works have been fairly consistent in our evaluation of the usefulness of this roll and Defense as a stat with the current limitations in place on player characters (namely 1.0 lower bound on monster cRatio). We've brought up very specific problems that arise when using Defense at all, namely:

- Lower bound on cRatio causes players to quickly "tap out" or plateau in terms of damage mitigation from defense

- High attack values on notorious monsters make Defense worthless without extreme stacking as the gains from defense at high monster cRatio are minimal at best.

The Defense vs Damage Mitigation curve for players is an exponential curve, as opposed to the logarithmic curve used by Attack vs Damage dealt. This means that Defense is only ever worthwhile when it is stacked to the extreme. In combination with this, the game specifically prevents us from stacking to the extreme by placing a lower bound on monster cRatio (Essentially cutting off the most potent end of the curve).

Damage mitigation as a function of Defense (For Players) looks something like this:



As it stands, most players can never bring themselves out of the far-left range on powerful monsters without extreme stacking of defensive gear and buffs. Likewise, when they finally do break out of that range, the curve instantly cuts off at 1.0 cRatio before the players are able to gain truly meaningful defensive benefits from Defense.

While explaining the basics of Defense to people who don't understand it is a noble venture, it does nothing to address the inherent flaws of the Defense stat. It's fine to say "Hey, Defense gets better when you have more of it!", which would be true (And is true for monsters!), but so long as monsters are given a "Free pass" on floored cRatio, Defense will never be able to be stacked high enough for it to be worth a buff slot.

[Afania]

There have been some comments from players mentioning that they don’t see the point of defense as a stat, so I’d like to go into some detail on it.

As defense increases over an enemy’s attack power, the amount of damage reduced gradually tapers off. If the enemy you are fighting is lower level and your defense is way higher, it becomes more difficult to gain large benefits even if you increase your defense.

In instances where your defense is reduced via an enemy action, where your character’s defense would normally be higher than an enemy’s attack power, and the gap between the two is narrowed, the amount of damage being reduced will start to vary largely. This shows that you’ll take more damage when your defense is lowered, giving meaning to the value of your defense.

Another easy way of feeling the effects of defense is to face off against an even match enemy and compare the damage received with your armor equipped and off.

Since the effects of defense increase as defense is stacked, the benefits are by no means small, so it would be really helpful if we could receive feedback with this in mind.

For reference, Mocchi provided some test data.

Setup

• Compared physical damage taken between the following situations when fighting warrior-type monsters that were 15 levels higher than the level 99 PLD/WAR (defense 460) used for testing.

Naked/with Defender active/with Defender active + food effects (black curry bun)

Results

• Naked (Defense 460): 245 damage
• Defender (Defense 575): 216 damage
• Defender + food (Defense 663): 197 damage

Depending on the situation, the numbers may not be the same, but this is simply intended to serve as reference.

At this point of game, phalanx roll is more useful than defense roll, and opens up a few new situations where I'd use COR.

I want phalanx back ;(


Unless.....unless new event legion is full of HNMs that hits like a truck even on Ochain/Aegis PLD that survive-ability became an issue......is that the reason why Dev want to make it into defense roll so bad?

Or old cannonball BLU era coming back etc.

I'll just wait until Legion comes out I guess to see if there's any use for it......maybe it'd need it, idk .-.

[Nightfyre]

How does uninformed feedback provide an appropriate environment for good game design? Eyeballing was one of the biggest issues holding FFXI gameplay back in its early years. If you're going to educate the masses, give them the full story instead of a post that is obviously meant to sell people on the benefits without examining the drawbacks. As I said before, the players have expounded on both the benefits and the limitations of defense in this thread as part of our feedback.

For example, let's go back and look at Mocchi's numbers again.

• Naked (Defense 460): 245 damage
• Defender (Defense 575): 216 damage
• Defender + food (Defense 663): 197 damage

Defender reduced damage by nearly 13.5%, but it also reduced attack by 25%. Given the constant decay of so-called "volatile enmity", this actually ends up reducing a tank's ability to generate and maintain hate by more than it will reduce their non-decaying enmity loss because spells and JAs are too infrequent to keep VE constantly near cap. You could have achieved the same defensive result with less than half the offensive cost on any job by instead using 12% PDT gear.

Food reduced damage taken by a further 9.5%. A PLD could gain twice that much in offensive output by eating pizza or red curry buns and instead wearing an additional 8% PDT. Let's also remember that PDT can be macro'd in and out for WS. As such, while your white damage and WS frequency is reduced, your per-WS damage remains intact.

If you're trying to sell us on defense post-PDT, how do you propose the person this buff is targeting should maintain hate? Flash and Cure spam? The only job left with a remotely effective means of non-damage hate generation post-RDM nerf is BLU, with Fantod generating 320 CE and 320 VE on a ~5 second timer with gear/buffs. Even in my best enmity gear, that's not going to maintain hate over any DD just because of how the game works. Also, it's not like we even use disengaged tanks at this point in the game anyway.

So I go back to DDing for hate and you're asking me to trade... Berserk, red curry buns, and Chaos or Fighter's Roll for a mediocre reduction in damage? Unless something is oneshotting me (in which case: hello Stun, Earthen Armor, Scherzo, all more efficient choices), I'm going to take less damage overall by going with the offensive buffs and making the monster dead faster. I'm also going to be able to kill more things in less time; hooray for efficiency gains!

[doctorugh]

There have been some comments from players mentioning that they don’t see the point of defense as a stat, so I’d like to go into some detail on it.

As defense increases over an enemy’s attack power, the amount of damage reduced gradually tapers off. If the enemy you are fighting is lower level and your defense is way higher, it becomes more difficult to gain large benefits even if you increase your defense.

In instances where your defense is reduced via an enemy action, where your character’s defense would normally be higher than an enemy’s attack power, and the gap between the two is narrowed, the amount of damage being reduced will start to vary largely. This shows that you’ll take more damage when your defense is lowered, giving meaning to the value of your defense.

Another easy way of feeling the effects of defense is to face off against an even match enemy and compare the damage received with your armor equipped and off.

Since the effects of defense increase as defense is stacked, the benefits are by no means small, so it would be really helpful if we could receive feedback with this in mind.

For reference, Mocchi provided some test data.

Setup

• Compared physical damage taken between the following situations when fighting warrior-type monsters that were 15 levels higher than the level 99 PLD/WAR (defense 460) used for testing.

Naked/with Defender active/with Defender active + food effects (black curry bun)

Results

• Naked (Defense 460): 245 damage
• Defender (Defense 575): 216 damage
• Defender + food (Defense 663): 197 damage

Depending on the situation, the numbers may not be the same, but this is simply intended to serve as reference.

I would be interested in the numbers beyond 663 defense, perhaps at 850 and 999(to better prove the point that gallants is useless). If the mobs attack is 663, then thats the bottom value that can be achieved (ie no sense in using gallant roll to push higher or /blu and use cocoon for that matter). Makes harden shell (100% def) ... not really worth anything either.

[Insaniac]

Incoming footage of SE HQ!!