Adjustments to Embrava and Perfect Defense

[saevel]

If my group can kill both clones with 90 second PD right now, I have to imagine that we could kill both clones with twice as many people (an alliance) in the future even with only 55 second PD/30 seconds of shock squall. Alliances really should be unaffected by this change and should have a 100% win rate either way. It's lowman groups that will suffer, and mostly because they'll finally have to skill up their summoner mules and maybe even *gasp* play summoner when they're up for Alex.

I think you guys are overreacting.

Doesn't work that way, you don't have 90s you have 45s with a tapering 45s. Now you will have 30s with a tapering 20~25s.

You damage output doesn't matter and is something I've been trying to hammer into peoples heads. Alliances kill the same way low man groups do using the same strategy and same methods. The only difference is "LS groups" bring more pop sets, more SMN's and more COP mules to reset those SMN's 2hr. You damage done not double going from a low man group to an alliance, and honestly it doesn't change at all as any DD's in the "off party" won't have COR rolls / BRD songs and so forth.

There is a time delay when it summons where you can be doing 99,999 per hit and it won't matter. After that everyone (except main assist) gets disengaged and has to spam their assist macro and wait to draw their weapon again. Those combined knocks a good chunk off of that 30s of protection.

Win rates will plummet as the ability to kill the second clone goes down. It'll require a much tighter timing of PD and squall and hoping your SMN's don't get obliterated by a stray TP move.

[Camate]

Greetings!

There seemed to be some confusion over on the Japanese forum about whether or not the Perfect Defense and Embrava adjustments will be implemented in the future. Sorry if there were mixed messages, but while they have been postponed from the December version update, we will be implementing them eventually. However, this doesn’t mean that once we implement them that we will not touch them again. This goes for content as well, but we will continue to look at conditions after implementation.

[Mefuki]

Is that the only reason that there could be? You don't see the devs having issues with trying to create new and interesting content we'd like to do in a PD/Embrava world? Don't you think they'd have a difficult time making the game revolve around it? If all SE really wanted us to do was stop winning, they certainly wouldn't be adjusting content in the update while NOT applying the PD/Embrava adjustments.

[FrankReynolds]

Is that the only reason that there could be? You don't see the devs having issues with trying to create new and interesting content we'd like to do in a PD/Embrava world? Don't you think they'd have a difficult time making the game revolve around it? If all SE really wanted us to do was stop winning, they certainly wouldn't be adjusting content in the update while NOT applying the PD/Embrava adjustments.

It's pretty much the reason's they stated. They are adjusting the older/current content because that's what they do after the l337 people have beat their heads against the wall for long enough. Not because it was too hard. This is their overall plan and it has never changed: Release stupid hard (read as mostly luck based nowadays) content ==> leave it hard until a large number of players have completed it despite the difficulty ==> lower the difficulty until even the Joe pinks have all finished it ==> release next ball breaker event with even more RNG Bullshit.

[Raucent]

the idea of their "adjustment" ~10% less hp to compensate no Embrava /PD is hardly a fair balance when the intended targets still keep their board wiping abilities.

[Rustic]

I'd think of it more along the other way of things.

When what you have is hammers (Embrava/PD), everything gets treated the same way- like a nail.

Maybe it's in part from being a ToAU/WoTG era player, but when you can roll through endgame content with a few specific jobs and their SPs, something is awry with the SP in question. Now, I can imagine that considering the relative candy-coated ride that we got in the previous expansion, now that someone who isn't just throwing things up in the air to concentrate on FFXIV is in charge (and hey, FFXI is still the success king for S-E), we're seeing the game being bent back towards more difficult big bad guy fights. Things are being tweaked now that a new expansion is on the horizion and that means whatever is seen as overpowering content gets turned down a notch.

My only sadness is that we've gone all the way from 75-99 and we'll see L99 Geomancers and Rune Fencers in no time as they get powerleveled through the usual methods. Leveling as part of the methods to get people to experience content is dead at this point.

[FrankReynolds]

I'd think of it more along the other way of things.

When what you have is hammers (Embrava/PD), everything gets treated the same way- like a nail.

Maybe it's in part from being a ToAU/WoTG era player, but when you can roll through endgame content with a few specific jobs and their SPs, something is awry with the SP in question. Now, I can imagine that considering the relative candy-coated ride that we got in the previous expansion, now that someone who isn't just throwing things up in the air to concentrate on FFXIV is in charge (and hey, FFXI is still the success king for S-E), we're seeing the game being bent back towards more difficult big bad guy fights. Things are being tweaked now that a new expansion is on the horizion and that means whatever is seen as overpowering content gets turned down a notch.

The problem is that when everything is in fact a nail and you take away the hammers...

My only sadness is that we've gone all the way from 75-99 and we'll see L99 Geomancers and Rune Fencers in no time as they get powerleveled through the usual methods. Leveling as part of the methods to get people to experience content is dead at this point.

Hmm... that all depends. I had a ton of fun leveling Dancer in parties right when it was released. There were lot's of groups exping. I tanked and healed a lot and it was very action packed. When I leveled Scholar 6 months later, no one was looking for a crappy healer / who knows what a scholar was supposed to do in the mid levels. It was painfully slow and felt a lot like playing a gimpy red mage.

So, I say maybe it's a good thing that people will be PLing their way to 99 on the new jobs. More time to experiment with the fully leveled capabilities.

[Crimson_Slasher]

I said it on a sch thread just a few minutes ago but self-quote go!

I been thinking about this and...well if they really want to "adjust" perfect defense and embrava, why not do what they have already done? Apply a tag to select content where they dont want it used. Look at neo-salvage, it has the adjustment state reflected there, why not apply that mentality to other events. The events able to be done so easily (Abyssea/dynamis/sky/sea) can be left as is, while content where theyre worried about it becoming the norm (Dyna bosses, NNI, NSalvage, N-odin, etc) can be tagged with the adjustment where they will have the weaker state. It lets say...abyssea exp parties, empyrean items(weapon/armor) and select nms in the TOAU COP and ROZ eras be smashed down fast and safely, and lets players have that really fun thing, meanwhile not requiring everything coming down the pipe to have 17 DD and a sch thrown at it.

I see this as some sorta compromise personally. Might make some of those magian trials more fun to keep old embrava too. Course if it isnt 1 thing, its another, bring in the bards! I jest. But i share the sentiments of having these mobs needing adjusting or the events needing adjusting. Running NNI just yesterday the floor 40 boss took 5 minutes of embrava-fueled 4 DD pummeling to kill. A drop in some of these mobs damage resistence, and apply some hp reduction closer to 25%-40%. I personally look at difficulty in ffxi as one of two ways, mass HP but relitively harmless (the wall with 1,000,000+HP) that stresses the event clock, or the paper tiger (80,000HP, hitting 500DMG+ a strike). Instead with the new caps we are looking at Walltigers, that also call in their cubs (200,000P+ 400DMG+ a strike).

This not only stresses the clock, and forces people to struggle very hard, sometimes pulling out acts of desperation, but each death also lowers event completion speed, thus stressing the clock more! (Like having 1 DD sitting at the back, unable to even fight.)

This has also made me think about that "Fostering aspects of skillful play" thread. To me this seems like certain events should reward use of good behavior and mechanics. For example, stunning a dangerous move in Neo-nyzul or salvage resulting in a 30 second bonus, skillchains performed between two different players resulting in a 1 minute time extention bonus, and magicbursts giving 2 minutes! Imagine that, get your sch to throw a fire after your war and sam skillchain, and you can pack on 3 minutes! This might encourage people to start letting the mages throw ws for example again! Aaand with this my thoughts have run wild... Still, i think theyre fun ideas and are something that rewards that teamwork they want to encourage, yet doesnt directly punish the lone wolves either.