New 2-hour Abilities

[Helel]

If you're the one who designed the game, how is it possible to not be able to implement something based on your design? I could care less about the 2-hour; it just makes me wonder what other job abilities/spells/etc. suffer because the dev team is unable to program certain features.

[Darkvalkyr]

I honestly have been feeling that a lot of things were tossed in for the heck of it/vague reasoning instead of any consideration of actual gameplay with these 2 hours. Especially with these additional/bonus effects.

[Babekeke]

100% counter rate is not a bad 2 hour anyway and doesn't need scrapping... well, it's situationally good anyway, like when fighting a mob that's going to hundred fists you^^

I'm just waiting for when this 2 hour doesn't work vs machines since their melee attacks count as TP moves >.>

[SpankWustler]

A 100% Counter-rate isn't that great, either, considering it is not hard to approach or hit the 80% cap on Counter-rate already.

Any additional effects the Development Bros can add to this ability would be welcome, just to make it a more potent improvement.

Also, I'm hoping against hope that the stuff the Development Bros learn from messing with this will help them adjust things so AoE "auto-attacks" can be treated more like normal auto-attacks rather than the abilities they technically are.

[Okipuit]

Hey everyone,

The new 2-hours were developed based on the idea that they would share the existing 2-hour ability's recast timer and players would be selecting which ability to use based on the situation. Instead of these being a higher-tier or universal abilities that can be used for any situation, they are abilities that are designed to be used for specialized conditions.

Below are the envisioned applications of some abilities as well as planned adjustments.

• Warrior
  While Mighty Strikes offers a lot of physical damage through critical hits for a period of time, the idea was to add a way to attack enemies that have strong resistances to physical damage.
  
  Based on testing and feedback, we are planning to make adjustments to extend the effect duration to 60 seconds. (Planning to make this change during this week’s Test Server update.)
  
  
• Paladin
  The new 2-hour ability can be used for cases where just turtling up with Invincible and letting an enemy wail on you will not turn the tides of the fight, since you can enhance your defenses while reducing an enemy’s HP with the reflected damage.
  
  *As mentioned previously in the post about adding an enmity boost effect to this ability, we understand the problems with the enmity cap. We plan on considering this for paladin in general and not limiting it only to the new 2-hour ability effect.
  
  
• Bard
  In addition to INT and MND, we will also be adding CHR to the stats that are lowered.
  
  
• Samurai
  Meikyo Shisui excels in instantaneous power. On the other hand, the new 2-hour ability is for cases where an enemy's AoE damage is too strong and getting close is dangerous. It will allow you to evade special attacks while dealing damage.
  
  *Magical attacks will not be evaded, but will be made so that the damage received is 0. This will not have any effect on breath attacks, though.
  
  With this ability we are aiming to make it possible to have a stable way of fighting by increasing defensive capabilities and diverting your time in battle towards enhancing offense capabilities.
  
  
• Dancer
  Trance is an ability that allows the player to take advantage of Waltzes and Steps, while the new 2-hour ability makes it possible to utilize Flourishes to the maximum. The advantage of this ability is that it makes it possible to always use the maximum effect for Building Flourish, Reverse Flourish, Climatic Flourish, etc., as you are granted 5 finishing moves.
  
  There have been requests asking for the recast times for Flourishes to be reduced or removed. The reason we did not do this is as you can expect, due to consideration for Reverse Flourish.
  While it's not our intention to allow for weapon skills to be used continuously without limitations, it would be nice to be able to utilize Flourish II and Flourish III continuously, so we will be changing the effects as outlined below to allow for instantaneous damage.
  
  • Reduce effect duration from 60 seconds to 30 seconds
  • In addition to the Flourish recast timer being reset, it will be possible to use Flourish continuously up to a total of 3 times.
  • The effect will wear off when either 30 seconds elapses or Flourish is used 3 times.

During this week's Test Server update, we will be adding white mage's 2-hour ability as well the warrior adjustment listed above and fixing related bugs.

We are planning to address the bard and dancer adjustments in the following Test Server update.

Amongst the feedback we have been receiving, there have been a lot of comments about changing the effects, reducing the 2-hour recast time, removing the shared recast timer aspect, and other ideas for largely changing the concept. It may take a bit of time to discuss and look into all of these, but we are planning to spend time on this without rushing implementation so that these are abilities that everyone is satisfied with.

[ThaiChi]

[*]Bard
In addition to INT and MND, we will also be adding CHR to the stats that are lowered.

What's the effect of lowering CHR anyway? I would have thought lowering AGI or VIT would be a more practical stat to affect.

[Hashmalum]

What's the effect of lowering CHR anyway? I would have thought lowering AGI or VIT would be a more practical stat to affect.

Lowering the target's resistance to BRD spells. It would seem really odd if after using BRD's big 2 hour weakening ability on a target, it became more susceptible to every type of magic except BRD songs.

[Kalilla]

The development team needs to make sure that players will use these abilities. There would be nothing more insulting to players than adding new 2 hours that we'll never use.

[Hashmalum]

The development team needs to make sure that players will use these abilities. There would be nothing more insulting to players than adding new 2 hours that we'll never use.

Not just insulting, but every ability slot, every byte of memory used on an ability no one wants will prevent countless possible future improvements from being made for years to come. And of course developer time is all too scarce these days, so that must not be wasted either. I honestly believe that no new ability at all is better than one that is bad.

[Nala]

Not just insulting, but every ability slot, every byte of memory used on an ability no one wants will prevent countless possible future improvements from being made for years to come. And of course developer time is all too scarce these days, so that must not be wasted either. I honestly believe that no new ability at all is better than one that is bad.

QFT and forwarded to the "To the director" thread, made a few general points about useless abilities while at it x.x hopefully I'm not speaking crazy /sigh.