Could you consider buffing astral flow before you go gimping it?

[Badieh]

If they are nerfing Perfect Defense, they need to change the name to what, Mediocre Defense now?

Lol. Or Not So Perfect Defense.

[Babekeke]

I think there's some mistranslation with the word 'perfect' anyway. Perfect Dodge doesn't dodge arrows, bullets, bolts or throwing weapons....

[Luvbunny]

Well they could add Regen effect to PD and regain effect and stack with embrava, so if you have SMN and SCH, nothing really get nerfed in combination LOL. The retarded point of views of the developers when it comes to SMN still has not changed much. What is more atrocious is, instead of revising other 2 hours to be on par with Embrava and Perfect Defense, they go the other way around and ruin the good "2 hours" ability.

[Mirage]

If perfect defence still offers something like -50% damage taken (that can break the regular -50% cap for players and go to perhaps 85% total) and add a strong phalanx effect that stacks with rdm phalanx, as well as very strong resistance against status effects, I could still see it being useful.

[Mokeil]

I think there's some mistranslation with the word 'perfect' anyway. Perfect Dodge doesn't dodge arrows, bullets, bolts or throwing weapons....

They keep using that word... I do not think it means what they think it means.


Honestly, I can see why SE might think that Perfect Defense could use a little nerfing. It is easily one of the most potent of all 2 Hour abilities, dwarfing pretty much anything except Embrava. But here's the thing most non-Summoners forget about it: We pay through the nose in MP to use that ability.

To get the most out of Perfect Defense - to actually make it that bastion of awesomeness that people know and love (and, yes, abuse) - we have to put all of our MP into it. No other ability or spell in the game has that kind of price tag on it. Not even Embrava does. Perfect Defense is a lot less perfect when you only have half your MP left. And as for all of the old Rage Astral Flow commands we used to be able to use to finish the fight? Let's face it, they stopped scaling up in damage a long time ago. They're not worth using anymore.

Yes, we have ways to get MP back quickly - Siphon, Convert, Sublimation - but using those abilities right off the bat can leave us hurting for MP later on in the fight.

So, SE, if you want to talk change, then so do I. You want Perfect Defense to be less awesome? Fine, fine. In return, I want it to cost less MP. Less awesome = less MP. Only fair right? Scholar gets to use a flat percentage for its coolest toys. I can see that being a fairly easy route to go down for setting us up to have an expensive ability that doesn't flat out cripple us for the rest of the fight.

Expand this to our other Astral Flow commands (maybe at a lesser percentage?) and suddenly we have synergy with that shiny, new, unnamed (I think) spam-your-BP-Commands ability that will probably/maybe/eventually be added in.

[Babekeke]

Agreed, if it's not as potent, it's not worth 1050+MP.

As for struggling for MP later in the fight though. When you use PD you're expecting the fight to be over in 90 secs. That's 2 BP rage and 2 BP ward at most, so you don't need much MP back at all. Sublimation and ES tends to be plenty.

[Caketime]

If perfect defence still offers something like -50% damage taken (that can break the regular -50% cap for players and go to perhaps 85% total) and add a strong phalanx effect that stacks with rdm phalanx, as well as very strong resistance against status effects, I could still see it being useful.

You'd think they'd take a look at the content they've designed which requires us to use PD so frequently and maybe shape future content with our abilities in mind instead of releasing an awesome new BP or spell and then nerfing it months later under the guise of "balance". I've been playing since NA release and still can't fathom their eagerness to paint themselves into a corner and then nerfing their way out. It almost seems like they draw ideas from a hat to add to the game and just patch away the shenanigans months later without any explanation. When they were considering PD and Embrava did they also plan to make literally every NM spam AoE death moves in each new piece of content making the two spells almost required for success? This nerf seems much more like an "Oh shit, we've been designing garbage for years!" move than one made in the interest of balance. When you make every event revolve around fanny tonics and 90 second strategies it's no wonder the players have been using the two spells so much.

In b4 new content features the same mob behavior and TP moves designed to flatten anything within 5 city blocks after our capability to resist damage is diminished. Artificial difficulty for President of Space, '12. I'm just being bitter at the moment, had a crappy morning in Walk of Echoes. It's almost like digging through mountains of poo for diamonds and there are no gloves left.

[Babekeke]

I'm certain that when they announced that they would be nerfing PD and embrava that they did say that they will be adjusting the content so that they are not required to complete it. I think the whole idea is that PD or Embrava will end up being 1 of the possible ways of beating content, not the only way.

[Caketime]

They say a lot of things, Batman.

[Babekeke]

They say a lot of things, Batman.

They can hardly leave content in a state where it's completely impossible to deteat though, can they. They did with AV and PW, but that was 2 mobs, not all end-game content. It would be the nail in the coffin for many players.