Casting Sneak / Invisible Outside of Party?

[Byrth]

One BRD per alliance. One COR per alliance. One WHM per alliance. I'd love it. Bring it on!

Obviously they'll never do it, but it's nice to pretend.

[Arcon]

Arcon I am one of those decked-out WHMs, and I can tell you, party-wide spells should not be alliance-wide.

I never said they should. I said that every party spell should be able to be cast on the alliance. I was just bringing an argument for why your argument was invalid. The BRD one does hold more water, but honestly, I don't think it's "overpowered" in an absolute sense. We're just used to thinking that you need 2~3 BRD to be fully efficient as an alliance. And even if this was changed, having 2~3 BRD would still be useful to get different buffs on. Especially in battles where AoE dispels are as common as in pretty much any new content this means even less of an impact on regular playstyle.

Additionally, SE's design for alliances is "groups of parties," not a hodgepodge of players who can superbuff all 18 people with one fell swoop.

Again, that's no argument for anything, as SE's design is precisely what I'm criticizing. Saying it's meant to be like that carries no weight if I'm questioning SE's competence or foresight on this matter. And to be honest, I don't even believe that they intended it to be this way for game mechanic purposes but for ease of implementation.

We don't need 2 BRDs insta-buffing 18 people with 3-4 songs each instantly, while 2 CORs put 4 rolls on each person instantly, 1 SCH Emprava-ra'ing everyone with a single cast, and 1 (or 2) WHMs spamming Infinite Heal Curaga IIIs.

Why not? SCH and WHM can already do what you're saying (and for WHM it's not a very smart thing to do, neither now nor if they changed it). 2 BRD and 2 COR? That's more of a support than any alliance has even now. And don't think it would be an easy job for them, because there's no way they'd get everyone in the cast anyway. Weak people staying back, mages spread out, mages and melee standing too close, etc. And also don't think that it would be twice as good, even if (for whatever reason) you'd have 2 of each. The best songs/rolls would already be applied by 1 BRD or COR, the extras do less efficient ones.

Also, what does your normal setup look like? Do you have 18 melee that can even benefit from a BRD? No, at best you have ~8 active melee (Voidwatch zerg situation), some of which may miss songs/rolls or not profit as much from certain songs as others. The biggest advantage from this would be that one BRD could buff mages and melee seperately, even if in different parties, as long as they stand close by. And again, you'd only consider that overpowered from a relative perspective, because up until now that was impossible. As you said yourself, it's no big deal in other MMOGs and there they do it all the time. We just suffer from a skewed perception of the situation.

[Llana_Virren]

You missed a key detail: I pointed out that by making party-wide AOE spells alliance wide, these spells and effects could be applied with a single cast. And with DDs capping Enmity, a few would have to die before the Infinite Heal WHM drew hate, and if he's capable of spamming Curaga III+ on an alliance and getting 100% MP back, none of them should be dying anyway.

Sorry, but if we're talking party-only spells that are single target, I can understand. But AOE buffs need to remain party-wide only.

The argument of "it is supposed to be that way" is perfectly valid: you're arguing about competency when competency is irrelevent. There's no benefit with the suggestion except to further break game balance for the sake of feeling leet.

[Arcon]

Two things. First of all, there is no "infinite heal WHM". They would run out of MP very fast. The point is that there is not enough to heal. Someone would have to be hurt all the time for the WHM to keep their free cures up, otherwise it's a very efficient MP drain.

Secondly, melees capping enmity means little, because a WHM would cap enmity just as fast. If there actually are a lot of people to heal, WHM would gain enmity equivalent of curing all the people with it. That's Cure IV enmity times 10, or more. That means just one single Curaga III would completely cap their VE and get their CE way halfway to cap. Two Curagas and the WHM's hate is capped as well. Sure, the melee could get it back easily with just one swing, but it would still chase after the WHM for that time. And it puts the WHM in a bad position for future cures. If melee actually do die, it would take them a while to get hate back from the WHM.

These are the reasons why it doesn't work already. WHM could already cure for almost 0 MP, but the conditions to keep it up are almost never met, and they wouldn't be with alliance-wide curing range either.

I couldn't care less for feeling "leet". How would this, in any way, even make me feel that? That seemed like a completely arbitrary statement. And I don't particularly care for this anyway, I just replied to your WHM statement. I'd be perfectly happy with just being able to target alliance members and keep certain spells party-wide. Embrava did it very right in that regard.

[Llana_Virren]

First of all, I guess I need to educate you on what "Infinite Heal" means. The phrase "Infinite Heal" is referring to the MP restored via Empy pants... so there would be no MP loss, which you're ignoring in order to say that a WHM will run out of MP. Since every NM out there now has massive AOE moves, notwithstanding the NMs that use TP moves as their regular attacks, there will -always- be a need to cure. Curaga->Curaga II->Curaga III (get MP back) repeat.

As for enmity, if you're capping out enmity with one or two Curaga's you're doing it wrong. I've double-tapped Curaga III for full effect 2 times without drawing hate, so either you need to take off your +enmity gear and merits (and /war voking, which you'd HAVE to be doing to draw hate with 2 cure spells), or you need to not stand directly behind the melees and misinterpret AOE damage as a hate-drawing attack.

If you think that two Curaga's is enough to have ANY NM chasing the WHM around, I strongly suggest you find a new linkshell.

But, most importantly, you're trying to argue my point while fundamentally agreeing with it ("Embrava did it very right" which is my argument for keeping things the way they are nowy).

But my point is not that "Other MMOs can do it!" My point is that other MMOs are fundamentally designed for that kind of gameplay. FFXI was not and should not head in that direction.

What you're seeing here (and in other threads) is the consequence of time. As FFXI gets older, they make things easier for new players to jump into the thick of things. This makes the parts of the game appear "old" or "hard" or "unnecessary" and suggests things are much worse than they actually are. (Reference the question of "why can't we access doors or ??? while invisible?" comment....

We don't need to allow 1 WHM or 1 BRD or 1 COR to be doing alliance-wide buffs just because other MMOs do it. We don't need to say "well, it'd make things better!" because it wouldn't... We need to see this for what it is.... a suggestion to remove difficulty for players that just don't want to work for the kill.

But let's get back to the actual topic in this thread: Sneak and Invis.

They shouldn't be party-only to begin with, they should be open-target spells.
The issue I have with this is that the suggested "fix" would have consequences beyond the intent of the OPs remarks (reference our back-and forth).

[Arcon]

First of all, I guess I need to educate you on what "Infinite Heal" means.

No, you don't. I am very well aware of what you mean, and I mean the exact same thing. But here's what you're ignoring: you need to actually heal some HP to get the effect. The pants do not restore MP based on HP that you would have cured, but only HP which you have actually cured. So unless you constantly have people in orange that all need curing, you will not be casting free cures.

Also, and I said this three times before, this will be my last: this is already very doable. Even more so with the recent cure formula changes. Curaga III costs 180 MP, 162 MP after Light Arts. That means you need to cure a total amount of 3240 to get all the MP you used up back with Orison Pantaloons +2 (as 5% of 3240 is 162). As Curaga III will cure about 800 HP for each person it hits, you only need to cure 4 people to get a free Curaga III. This was possible even before the changes with Accession + Cure IV on five people and it's a lot easier now.

As for enmity, if you're capping out enmity with one or two Curaga's you're doing it wrong.

Math is wrong? You get enmity for every person that cure lands on. Cure IV cure power hitting 10 targets means ~8k HP cured. The CE modifier for cures is roughly 0.5 at 99, so you'd get 4k CE for it (10k is cap). The VE modifier is roughly 3.0, which means you'd get 24k VE, which instantly caps your VE (also 10k). Even with capped enmity reduction (50%) you'd still hit the VE cap with one cure, and you'd need ~5 cures to hit the CE cap.

But, most importantly, you're trying to argue my point while fundamentally agreeing with it ("Embrava did it very right" which is my argument for keeping things the way they are nowy).

First of all, I never argued your point, I'm arguing your argument. Alliance cures are a bad example because a) they already do what you say would "break the game" and b) they would be just as impossible to maintain as they are now. Secondly, Embrava doesn't do it right by itself, Accession makes it behave that way, which I don't have a problem with, because it's always instantly available when you're casting Embrava (no charges, no recast time during Tabula Rasa).

We both make the same point, only you say that you don't wanna push it further because you think it breaks the game. I humbly disagree.

But my point is not that "Other MMOs can do it!" My point is that other MMOs are fundamentally designed for that kind of gameplay. FFXI was not and should not head in that direction.

How do you know it wasn't? And who are you to say it shouldn't? As I said before, I believe that the only reason why they added party-based alliances is because of ease of implementation, not because of any gameplay mechanics.

[Meyi]

As far as I'm aware, the reason my groups brought so many WHMs (and RDMs) was so that there'd be enough curing power to go around. This would still be needed even if the alliance was considered a party. While curaga might hit more people at once, I would imagine that would be problematic. I haven't examined any spreadsheets on enmity so I won't say for certain, but I would imagine more healers would still be a good idea.

As for "excess bard songs", my linkshell would also do this. We'd have a bard per party, and for big boss events, we'd have the BRDs Soul Voice, put up two songs, and switch out and give the same two songs to a different party. That way they had four songs with half the slots being consumed by unwanted bards.

I'm not saying that every spell needs to hit every member at once in the alliance, but it would be nice if alliance members could be targetted with the spell. For example, the leader of party two could be hit with curaga by the white mage of party one, and all of party two is curaga'd. But, the white mage would need to hit each party separately.

[Llana_Virren]

As far as I'm aware, the reason my groups brought so many WHMs (and RDMs) was so that there'd be enough curing power to go around. This would still be needed even if the alliance was considered a party. While curaga might hit more people at once, I would imagine that would be problematic. I haven't examined any spreadsheets on enmity so I won't say for certain, but I would imagine more healers would still be a good idea.

As for "excess bard songs", my linkshell would also do this. We'd have a bard per party, and for big boss events, we'd have the BRDs Soul Voice, put up two songs, and switch out and give the same two songs to a different party. That way they had four songs with half the slots being consumed by unwanted bards.

I'm not saying that every spell needs to hit every member at once in the alliance, but it would be nice if alliance members could be targetted with the spell. For example, the leader of party two could be hit with curaga by the white mage of party one, and all of party two is curaga'd. But, the white mage would need to hit each party separately.

Absolutely agree... alliance members should be easily targettable for party-only spells, just not the AOE ones.
Of course, alliances have been doing BRD and COR rotations for years... just imagine the chaos with WHM rotations :P

[Llana_Virren]

That means you need to cure a total amount of 3240 to get all the MP you used up back with Orison Pantaloons +2 (as 5% of 3240 is 162). As Curaga III will cure about 800 HP for each person it hits, you only need to cure 4 people to get a free Curaga III. This was possible even before the changes with Accession + Cure IV on five people and it's a lot easier now.

Math is wrong? You get enmity for every person that cure lands on. Cure IV cure power hitting 10 targets means ~8k HP cured. The CE modifier for cures is roughly 0.5 at 99, so you'd get 4k CE for it (10k is cap). The VE modifier is roughly 3.0, which means you'd get 24k VE, which instantly caps your VE (also 10k). Even with capped enmity reduction (50%) you'd still hit the VE cap with one cure, and you'd need ~5 cures to hit the CE cap.

As I was saying... making these spells and abilities affect the -entire alliance- (the part you're missing, still) means that you would easily get 75+% MP back per cure regardless. As for hate cap, again, if none of the DD die thanks to Infinite Heal, there will be no consequence for enmity on the WHM, so the argument of maxing the hate cap is irrelevent.

How do you know it wasn't? And who are you to say it shouldn't? As I said before, I believe that the only reason why they added party-based alliances is because of ease of implementation, not because of any gameplay mechanics.

Because I know how to read, and I know how to read between the lines when it comes to SE's published notes, in-game dialogue, and conference calls.

Protip: There's nothing to say that this won't change; my concern is limited solely to the realm of "Sneak/Invis should be open-target; party buffs can be alliance-target, but leave AOE buffs to party-target only."