Overall Battle System Adjustments for the Future

[Raucent]

giving enemies increased resistance to physical damage alone is a lazy way when they could do something to try to make magic/SC more appealing, such as idk maybe lock an enemies 2hr for 30 secs or something by magic bursting off a lvl 3 or something. That gives an incentive to bring Mages and bring SC back into the game

[Yinnyth]

Drk can magic burst. Your healer can magic burst. Any job can magic burst with the right SJ. If all it takes is a magic burst to weaken the enemy to the point where you can melee zerg them again, that's what players will do. Magic burst, then zerg. It's the same thing that happened with Twilight Scythe in the first place. They tried to decrease the appeal of melee zerging by giving PDT to enemies, so players just equipped weapons which ignore PDT and melee zerged anyways.

[Kincard]

I always thought it was kinda funny that historically, when you ran into monsters like flans in other FF games, normal hits would do plain ridiculously awful damage (like 1-10), basically requiring you to fire off a magic spell or spend like half an hour in the same regular battle (Or run away I guess). The fact that they chose to go against that sort of design philosophy in an MMO of all things strikes me as odd since MMOs typically like to accentuate these things further in order to make all classes desirable.

[ManaKing]

SO there hasn't been any mention of new SP abilities for quite some time now. I was wondering if they were almost done or if they are getting delayed?

ALSO RDM SP2 for enfeebling is still undesired while an SP that we will basically use to get improved Haste and Phallanx 2 for partys would be appreciated. Please go back to your original design.

[saevel]

SO there hasn't been any mention of new SP abilities for quite some time now. I was wondering if they were almost done or if they are getting delayed?

ALSO RDM SP2 for enfeebling is still undesired while an SP that we will basically use to get improved Haste and Phallanx 2 for partys would be appreciated. Please go back to your original design.

Their hoping we forget about it so they can add it in a later adjustment, probably part of SOA or right after. They won't mention anything about RDM's 60m Elemental Seal -1 and put it in anyway.

To the rest, Magic will never ~EVER~ be anywhere close to melee damage until SE makes nukes cast much faster. The single biggest issue with magic damage is it simply takes too long to do. And while there are those using a certain third party application to cast in one sec then switch to another right before the damage is done, you can't base the battle system around that. Get nukes down to the point where a mage can be slapping them down non-stop and then we can talk about magic damage being remotely comparable to melee damage.

[Yinnyth]

To the rest, Magic will never ~EVER~ be anywhere close to melee damage until SE makes nukes cast much faster. The single biggest issue with magic damage is it simply takes too long to do.

I disagree. There are several ways to make magic damage worthwhile without touching casting times. If, for example, they boosted the damage nukes do by 300%, everyone would start using blms regardless of the cast times. That's taking things a little too far, but you get the point.

I don't think the casting times should be adjusted downwards too much. Doing so would decrease the usefulness of fast cast, quick magic, and chainspell. It is also my belief that long cast times are a fundamental game mechanic. Having all nukes cast instantly would feel as wrong as having all melees capable of meleeing from halfway across the zone.

[saevel]

I disagree. There are several ways to make magic damage worthwhile without touching casting times. If, for example, they boosted the damage nukes do by 300%, everyone would start using blms regardless of the cast times. That's taking things a little too far, but you get the point.

I don't think the casting times should be adjusted downwards too much. Doing so would decrease the usefulness of fast cast, quick magic, and chainspell. It is also my belief that long cast times are a fundamental game mechanic. Having all nukes cast instantly would feel as wrong as having all melees capable of meleeing from halfway across the zone.

Increasing their damage by 300% won't matter, it's still not enough by a long shot. Someone above already pointed out that a BLM's (SCH & RDM) damage shuts down when they get the monsters attention. This forces them to stay under the 10,000 CE threshold (they would have LONG since capped VE). Do you want to know how long it takes me to hit 10,000 CE? About 20s if not superbuffed, much much less if I'm getting march's. Once I'm at that 10,000 CE I have zero problems with the monster smacking me, I have a DT set if things get serious but otherwise I just keep hitting it, and hitting it, and hitting it harder until it stops twitching. A BLM doesn't have that luxury.

That is why nukes need to be made much faster and SE has already noticed this. Why do you think their considering making the cast times on T2's and T3's that much lower? So that nukers can spam them nonstop as a form of magic DPS. Higher tiers are reserved for initial strikes or when you have time to concentrate it, otherwise you'll be spamming your nuke macro just like RNG's spam their RA macro.

Also cutting casting times does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to the usefulness of FC. Reading that made my head hurt, it's like trying to say lowering a weapons delay reduces the usefulness of haste, you can't possibly be that clueless on damage mechanics. Reducing the cast times of a 4s spell by 50% has the exact same effect as reducing the cast times of a 60s spell by 50%. Both result in a 100% increase in spell casting speed. Which leads into the other part of SE's proposed changes, making it so that thunder and ice aren't the only powerful nukes so that when their recast is down you can still cycle to the others instead of waiting. BLM's will be cycling three different elements while depleting their MP supply like rangers deplete their ammo. In this way refresh / MP effects will act as DPS buffs by enhancing the speed of their damage recovery. They still won't be as powerful as melee but it's better then "proc only" like we are now.

I've said it before, I've played many different MMOs and amongst those have played magic DPS class's. None of them cast FFXI slow. The slowest attacks are a few seconds with long cooldowns.

[Yinnyth]

Increasing their damage by 300% won't matter, it's still not enough by a long shot. Someone above already pointed out that a BLM's (SCH & RDM) damage shuts down when they get the monsters attention. This forces them to stay under the 10,000 CE threshold (they would have LONG since capped VE).

That is a problem with the enmity system, which also needs fixing and also will be a problem with your proposed change of vastly reduced casting times. BLMs will still pull hate with faster magic, then suddenly they're tanking or kiting. If they're kiting, they briefly stop everyone's damage. If they're tanking, they're also in range of those annoying AoEs which can silence, paralyze, plague, stun, terror, etc. In some battle situations, I suppose it might be ok to put your blm up there on the front line and spam nukes, but in most they'd do better from far away.

That is why nukes need to be made much faster and SE has already noticed this. Why do you think their considering making the cast times on T2's and T3's that much lower?

So DRKs might consider spending the time casting one every now and then. Also, at low levels, people frequently have to solo or duo now, and it'd help BLMs through the grind a bit. Also, as you later mentioned, it will likely become the bread and butter for mages to do low damage frequently instead of large damage spikes. This is different from ALL magic casting very quickly, however.

Also cutting casting times does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to the usefulness of FC. Reading that made my head hurt, it's like trying to say lowering a weapons delay reduces the usefulness of haste, you can't possibly be that clueless on damage mechanics.

Only if every time you successfully swing your weapon, it animation locks your character for 2 seconds before you can swing again. Fast cast doesn't even touch the animation lock. The faster a spell is, the less useful fast cast becomes for it.

I've said it before, I've played many different MMOs and amongst those have played magic DPS class's. None of them cast FFXI slow. The slowest attacks are a few seconds with long cooldowns.

I've played some too. I didn't like them. That was one reason why: mages didn't feel magey. Also, just because other MMOs do it doesn't mean it's right for FFXI.

I'm not saying faster spells couldn't make magic more useful, I'm just saying:
1. It's not the only way they could fix magic
2. It's not the way I want them to fix magic

[Miiyo]

Magic will never ~EVER~ be anywhere close to melee damage until SE makes nukes cast much faster.

You forgot to add "if the mob is resistant to magic ." Otherwise, the words of a crazy one are pretty tragic. O~hohohoho

[saevel]

The stupid is strong here. Now I remember why I had him on ignore, back you go.