Adjustments to Embrava and Perfect Defense

[Mirage]

What Perfect Defence really should have been adjusted to is something like:

Duration:
Same as before nerf

Effect:
50% damage resistance that stacks multiplicatively with other damage resistance, meaning PD and -50% DT gear would lead to 75% damage reduction.
A phalanx effect of something like 50-75 damage that stacks with the already existing phalanx spell.
Resistance to status ailments (including death) set to 95%

With this, someone with a pdt set would still take 0 damage from a 400 damage physical attack as long as you had a rdm or sch to phalanx you. A 2000 damage attack would be reduced to less than 400 damage, which would make it pretty easy to survive. It might not be a "perfect" defence anymore, but it is at least an "Extreme Defence".


As for Embrava

Duration:
3 minutes, perpetuable to 6 minutes, 7 with gloves.

Effect:
Up to 25% haste at 500 skill
Up to 5 tp regain at 500 skill
up to 50 hp regen at 500 skill
Up to 5 mp refresh at 500 skill

[Smokesalot]

What Perfect Defence really should have been adjusted to is something like:

It's not 'A Defence which is going to need a lot of other buffs to be truly worthwhile' Defence, it's Perfect Defense. Your idea is ridiculous, anything worth employing PD for will still tear DDs apart, albeit in 10 seconds rather than 2, with 50% reduction. The duration nerf was needed, although as has been pointed out, the skill level it is proposed to scale at is unrealistic. I'd address this to make the current PD time an attainable cap with maxed out skills and gear. Ultimately, the burnt SMNs usefullness will suffer but the same is true for any job which was burnt to 99 and isn't appropriately skilled up.

The Embrava one...I just can't get my head around the thinking. What are they expecting SCH to do now? 2hr a party of WHMs so they can cure bomb DDs a-la Abyssea?

Players will find ways around these things as they always have. Guy in the thread back in the first couple of pages made a very succinct list of nerfs players have worked through in the past, this is no different.

@Concerned4FFxi; you really REALLY need to calm down. If something is making you this mad, walk away. No one is keeping you here, you do realise this? You aren't paying your subs at gunpoint.

[Concerned4FFxi]

I think a more reasonable solution to embrava is to have at 500 enhacing magic skill, 3/tic refresh and regain, having zero regain is totally bullshit, especially with the major time nerf. I would expect 3refresh 3 regain with the old time limit but, nerfing time and regain to such a degree is bat-shit crazy and wasnt even thought out. I have learned since these boards have opened to discussion that SE makes extremely poor decisions, they seem to never ever test anything, nor consider what releasing stuff or info too early can cause to a community. This must point to one logic, they just don't give a shit about us. STFU and pay bitches. The forums are just an easy way for them to test customer concern, if a million people cry out they may consider a change, unless of course: BALANCE OR WORKING AS INTENDED.

[Mirage]

Maybe you need to calm down a bit too.

First, it would easily be more than 50% damage reduction, you just need some gear for it. 80% haste isn't attainable without haste gear either. Secondly, what exactly is wrong with combining several buffs at once to get a better effect out of a 2h? Do do you not have haste, food, brd songs or anything like that on you while using mighty strikes, meikyo shisui or hundred fists? For magical resistance, you'll already have shellra 5 on you, so that's a total magical resistance of 65% already.

[Smokesalot]

Doesn't make it a Perfect Defence then does it? What else do you propose, Perfect Dodge effectiveness dependant on EVA gear? Invincible scaling with -DT equipment? Mighty Strikes crit hit rate adjusted with Crit% stats on?

[Zerofx]

Remember when mobs use to take about 30-1hr to kill like Fafnir, King Behemoth, Tiamat etc..... You had to have good strats and people actually had to be skilled at their jobs. The fights were fun and were actual challenges. Mobs had hard hitting moves but didn't instantly KO the entire alliance every 5 seconds. Then they did the lvl cap to 99 and basically everything you fight kills you instantly unless you kill it in 1:30 seconds.

Why not take the instant KO moves out of all these new nms like legion, adl, provanance watcher... reduce their damage, keep their defense high like back in the day and draw the fight out instead of taking an hour to gather for it and 2 mins to kill it... That is not what i call fun... This game WAS fun now its just a ZERG fest for pretty much every single event these days.

Apparently you dont want us zerging anything in this game whatsoever, yet everything you release since 75 cap has been broken takes a zerg strat to defeat. For years people tried to develop ways to kill AV than it got to be so pointless even with learning how to disable its abilities the fight was just impossible hard and after a time people pretty much gave up on it completely. Even at 99 AV is ridiculous without a Zerg strat. You said you wanted us to spend less time fighting mobs that took days on end to kill so you take it to everything must be zerged than bitch cause thats the only way we can kill it! Quit with the shit already and give us our Fafnirs Tiamats Behe's back!

If your going to nerf embrava and PD to oblivion why not do something to better balance the latest content instead of removing every strat completely.

You had the right formula a few years ago... Why not learn from your past when it was good instead of tearing it to shit of what it is now.

My idea on how adjustments should be for some events.

Legion:
1hr event. Take away all the stupid instal kill 2000 dmg moves. Buff up mobs defense weaken their attacks to managable over time. Should take about 20 mins to do each wave over the hour time period.

ADL;
Give his insta kill moves a longer casting time to somewhat a stunnable time. Reduce its attack and increase defence. Remember the good ol days when we had ot have a stun order to stop the bad moves on Khim, Cerb, Tia etc?

Nyzul:
Bigger floor jumps, less lamps especially order lamps... Remove the damn No Job Abilities, Weapon Skills, Speed down buffs. Like it isnt hard enough in the first place... Increase NM drop rates from bosses 80-100 since they are insanely hard to reach in the first place....


PS2:
Really? People still play this on PS2? Its 2012.... Kill that support already. Upgrade your systems to be able to handle the demands of TODAY's technology. This game could of been increased so dramatically with a proper graphics engine that could render better effects. Hold more room for macros, etc.. We cant even use auto-translate on 1/2 of the new terms anymore cause of the PS2 limitations.........

Why overhaul XIV? Why not fix XI first before you go on to that garbage of a game.

/end rant

[Mirage]

Perfect dodge isn't perfect anyway, it doesn't stop ranged attacks! But no, mighty strikes isn't affected by crit rate gear, but it most certainly is affected by crit damage gear, and the total damage output during the 2hour is also dependent on attack buffs, attack speed buffs, and accuracy buffs. Invincible is also a poor comparation, because it is a self-only ability, while PD is for the entire party, or more, if you rotate the SMN with mp recovery items/abilities.

Furthermore, Invincible is scaling with -DT equipment, because it only stops physical damage, not magical damage. Therefore, -MDT and -DT does actually help you die slower whenever the boss is using magical attacks.

As you can see, Invincible does not make you invincible. Perfect Dodge is not perfect.

That being said, summoner should definitely get some solid buffs all around. The job's single purpose in a high-level fight should not be for one single ability alone. For example, their perfect defence could be combined with new and powerful BP Wards from other avatars.

What if titan also got a new super-stoneskin(1000-1500 hp, depending on skill) with phalanx attached, and garuda got a special evasion boost ward that was not affected by current evasion floors/caps. Avatars could also be given sphere effects that made players resistant to the avatar's element and the element they were strong to. There are lots of things that could be done with summoner, just too bad SE doesn't like the job.

[Smokesalot]

Point taken in the names respect, though I wasn't arguing semantics of the abilities description over its function, more so the effect that the abilities have.

Your suggestion is still silly. Gearing for crit dmg+ during Mighty Strikes is enhancing the effect of the 2 hour. What you suggest is putting a lot of outside influence into an ability to even make it feasible.

[Mirage]

Point taken in the names respect, though I wasn't arguing semantics of the abilities description over its function, more so the effect that the abilities have.

Your suggestion is still silly. Gearing for crit dmg+ during Mighty Strikes is enhancing the effect of the 2 hour. What you suggest is putting a lot of outside influence into an ability to even make it feasible.

Enhancing the effect is a relative term. PLD's effect of "being hard to kill" during invincible is enhanced by -MDT and MDB gear, as well as Shell. Thief's effect of "being hard to hit" is enhanced by evasion and shadows in the case of ranged attacks. Warrior's ability to deal a huge amount of damage is enhanced by every DD gear piece and buff he's got on him. Likewise, Perfect defence would make the entire party harder to kill, and make it even harder to kill those who enhance this effect through gear and certain buffs.

Maybe my suggestion was a bit modest, but I still think that a huge amount of damage reduction is enough to make it worthwhile, even if it isn't 100%. If we change my suggestion to additive instead of multiplicative, granting 75% reduction by wearing as little as -25% DT in gear, and up to 100% if you wear -50% DT, would that be easier to accept?

I can't think of one single buff with a greater defensive boost than this, after all. And do keep in mind that you still resist all status effects such as death and charm at a 95% rate, if you go with the suggestion I gave.

[Chimerawizard]

Enhancing the effect is a relative term. PLD's effect of "being hard to kill" during invincible is enhanced by -MDT and MDB gear, as well as Shell. Thief's effect of "being hard to hit" is enhanced by evasion and shadows in the case of ranged attacks. Warrior's ability to deal a huge amount of damage is enhanced by every DD gear piece and buff he's got on him. Likewise, Perfect defence would make the entire party harder to kill, and make it even harder to kill those who enhance this effect through gear and certain buffs.

Maybe my suggestion was a bit modest, but I still think that a huge amount of damage reduction is enough to make it worthwhile, even if it isn't 100%. If we change my suggestion to additive instead of multiplicative, granting 75% reduction by wearing as little as -25% DT in gear, and up to 100% if you wear -50% DT, would that be easier to accept?

I can't think of one single buff with a greater defensive boost than this, after all. And do keep in mind that you still resist all status effects such as death and charm at a 95% rate, if you go with the suggestion I gave.

Ya know I basically said that earlier in this thread. post#10. Perfect Defense honestly shouldn't be more powerful than PLD's Invincible (-100%PDT, 0%MDT). (-50%DT) is really about the same as pld 2hr. There's no need for it to grow weaker as time goes on, just leave it at that and make it additive to gear -dt. the effect, if someone wants to screw over their own haste, they can still get the almost -100% dt, no one will sacrifice that much haste though so it'll be much more easy to see people mixing in a little of both. equip twilight torque, d.ring(rare but fully possible nowadays), and Mollusca Mantle and you won't be hurting your haste and still kick up a sweet -20%dt (-70% total). The thing that really hurts is how duration is getting over 30seconds knocked off of it. I say to make duration set and make how "Perfect" it is, based on summoning magic skill. unskilled smn lv0 skill, -5%DT, 550 skill (only need +8 more in gear than possible) 50%.
formula: -DT=(summoning magic skill-100)/10+5

about another post...
People who abused (in SE's opinion) the PD and embrava are ALWAYS going to figure a way around the orginal intent SE has for their whathaveyous.

Rember, the people who are finding ways around the originally intended method of beating said NM are actually trying to FIND the method intended to beat the NM. They obviously just happened to find a method the DEVs hadn't thought of instead. /shock. It's not like SE staff tell us the method of how to beat any of these NMs, so we're on our own to figure it out. When it's the way they had also thought up, nothing happens, when it's not the way they planned to be used. SUPER NERF! (how many years after they nerf'd drk zerg AV and Modus Veritas AV did it take for them to make that crappy video giving hints?)