Overall Battle System Adjustments for the Future

[FrankReynolds]

Can the NA community team please explain to the NA community what kinds of arguments/discussions are transpiring on the JP boards with regard to Twilight Scythe? I think it's a mystery to us why Twilight Scythe is being considered 'overpowered' for Dark Knights by Japanese players.

I don't know why they originally brought the whole idea up, but I did read the first few responses on the JP forum to this latest post and they basically said that the proposed changes were dumb ideas.

[Babekeke]

Can the NA community team please explain to the NA community what kinds of arguments/discussions are transpiring on the JP boards with regard to Twilight Scythe? I think it's a mystery to us why Twilight Scythe is being considered 'overpowered' for Dark Knights by Japanese players. To North Americans and European players, Twilight Scythe is a useful tool in certain and specific situations(mobs that have high physical resistence or shields i.e Cardamom Custard, Pil) but besides those few examples, Twilight Scythe is a very lackluster weapon compared to Ragnarok, Apocalypse or other weapons with simply higher base damage(even the fire path STR Magian Scythe/Greatsword are better).

Is it because no other job has the advantage of bypassing special defenses and shields like a Dark Knight with Twilight Scythe does? Does that create an advantage that only Dark Knight has the ability to exploit? I suppose, although MNK has Formless Strikes, PLD, BLU, RDM have Requiescat and a few other jobs have something similar. I'd say instead of adjusting Twilight Scythe, give other damage dealing jobs a similar weapon/ability/trait to be able to overcome special defense temporarily or occasionally.

I may be wrong, but this was first mentioned along with the changes to defense. Therefore I think that whereas TS is currently NOT overpowered, the devs anticipate it being overpowered when the change comes in (though the only way I can think of this being the case is to full-time defender and def food to keep your def high and not take as much damage, while not feeling the attack penalty whilst using TS).

Complete BS of course, as the WS would completely suck lol.

[Sasaraixx]

Can the NA community team please explain to the NA community what kinds of arguments/discussions are transpiring on the JP boards with regard to Twilight Scythe? I think it's a mystery to us why Twilight Scythe is being considered 'overpowered' for Dark Knights by Japanese players. To North Americans and European players, Twilight Scythe is a useful tool in certain and specific situations(mobs that have high physical resistence or shields i.e Cardamom Custard, Pil) but besides those few examples, Twilight Scythe is a very lackluster weapon compared to Ragnarok, Apocalypse or other weapons with simply higher base damage(even the fire path STR Magian Scythe/Greatsword are better).

Is it because no other job has the advantage of bypassing special defenses and shields like a Dark Knight with Twilight Scythe does? Does that create an advantage that only Dark Knight has the ability to exploit? I suppose, although MNK has Formless Strikes, PLD, BLU, RDM have Requiescat and a few other jobs have something similar. I'd say instead of adjusting Twilight Scythe, give other damage dealing jobs a similar weapon/ability/trait to be able to overcome special defense temporarily or occasionally.

I have not been playing at all lately but I check the boards frequently. I was curious why all of this attention was being given to the twilight scythe when there are seemingly more important things worthy of the dev teams time. I was baffled further because no one on the NA boards seemed to think there was a need for an adjustment at all . . . so I went over the the JP forum to take a quick peak. From the bits I read in response to Matsui-san's latest post, the response sounds similar to the NA side.

Some of the posters were discussing the pro's and cons of the adjustments that were mentioned in the dev post. Many people seemed to dislike the idea of HP penalties as this would just increase the workload of the healers. Aside from those responses the posts that received the most likes basically summed up what I read here. My favorite post and the one with the highest amount of likes that I saw basically said:
1. the dev team isn't thinking about these changes
2. there is only surprise and disappointment at these 180 adjustments
3. although the dev team is supposed to be thinking about "balance," what in the world are you all doing?
4. looking at these proposed adjustments, the scythe will become a piece of trash that no one will use
5. I thought the policy now was not to nerf but to strengthen elements that were falling behind, but all we've had are nerfs and nerfs.

That doesn't sound too different from what I see on the NA board. That thread is over a 100 pages long, but after taking a quick peek I still don't see why this is being considered. There are a lot of posts discussing how the scythe should be changed (with minimal likes) but I didn't see the why. Along with those are posts like the one I mentioned. People seem frustrated with yet another nerf and the feeling that the dev team isn't listening to the player base.

[Nervosa]

Rather then changing stuff, how about you stop adding dumb gimmicks and "shields" to mobs that require the player base to exploit such items or abilities.

[Hashmalum]

I don't even own a Twilight Scythe or have DRK leveled, but I know that if they go through with this craziness, it will have a very negative effect on my relationship with the game. Why? Because we will be on notice that any item we have can have its stats arbitrarily changed seemingly at random and no arguments that we make to the contrary will have any effect, because we aren't JP and our opinions don't matter. While the dreaded Hand of Baransu previously would viciously thrash our jobs, our game mechanics, and our monsters, it did not stoop so low as to riffle through our Gobbiebags. (The closest it ever came to this was when someone fixed a dropped decimal point on the PUP Abyssea job-specific weapon.) But now, I'm going to second-guess every single major item I'm considering trying to get. Will some future craziness spread through the JP forums, asking for a nerf on this item? How can I possibly know? I don't understand the alien moon logic at work here. Every DRK and their mother is making a relic great sword because Ragnarok became a god, and then some underpowered scythe gets hit with the nerf bat--WTF, SE?

[Hashmalum]

Oh, and if SE wants people to bring BLMs, then maybe they could make magic damage good for something other than procing weaknesses. Oh, wait, there's a coming overhaul to nuking spells that's supposed to improve them. So why not wait and see how well it works before doing anything drastic? And BTW, what exactly is the problem with DRK of all jobs having a non-physical damage dealing mechanism when you gave them three different types of drain, Endark, and elemental nukes?! I guess you'd better nerf those too!

[Zeroe]

I just...can't believe...Were wasting our money for "balance" updates like this. This is one of the dumbest and idiotic ideas to implement, when already we need more serious matters adjusted. I'm honestly at my limit with how much more I can take of these crap shot responses and updates.

[Minikom]

solution is easy and semple: stop creating mobs with shield and PDT def like cerberus and hydras.
Twilight Scythe is ok, just useful sometimes, jp ppl should stop crying for nothing and start enjoying more the game, SE should listen more NA side and less JP side but they care more about how much money they can lost if they dont listen JP ppl.

when something is useful, that will be neft, Ukkos Ws, PD, Embrava, Souleater and now nerfing Twlight scythe, why they cant use that time to fix enlight + add effect on exalibur instead of waste time on LOLTwlight scythe. always more important things than need to attention and they just give shitty answers about that.

we should just go to JP foroms and post there whatever we want using Google traslate and see if we can get it!

[Yenecol]

I do not play dark knight at all and I think this is idiotic. You have better things to do than worry about some weapon they pull out once in a blue moon. Instead of wasting time thinking how to nerf it, just remove it from the game - at least that way people get their inventory space back. Heck, while you are at it, why not nerf every other piece of twilight gear? Have twilight knife give the mob HP, TP, and MP instead since quad attack is powerful. Have twilight belt put the players under the effect of gravity and amnesia. If you equip twilight helm and body, have it kill you instead! Sure, destroy it all - Shinryu didn't take any of our time, right?

Keep this up and we'll take our money elsewhere.

[Lollerblades]

Sqaure - Enix breaking the game 1 nerf at a time under the banner of balance ...

I don't have a problem with TS it's a very situational piece that has quite a limited use. Leave it as it is , if it ain't broke don't fix it. It's basically going to be Nerf > +1 Inventory space.