Mythic Adjustments - The Balancing Act! Part Deux

[Hashmalum]

Yagrush - This is one of the few mythics that has gotten worse since its level 75 debut. Initially, it was a stick you could offhand and make all your -na spells AoE, which was dead useful in the time of individual AoE Status spam and had interesting applications for tanking. At 99, monsters that use AoE statuses tend to use several AoE statuses and kill you all at the same time.

Status mitigation in general has been crippled in usefulness, yes. It's not just the fact that everything does AoE damage + multiple statuses, though, although that is a large part of the problem. It's also due to those damn aura effects becoming commonplace. The fact that you can't remove aura status for more than a couple seconds at a time is bad enough, but the fact that a status that will just bounce back can chew up your "only removes one effect at a time" spells is even worse. On top of that we are bombarded with more unremovable statuses than ever before--Weakness, Terror, Muddle, Encumbrance, Amnesia, and even run-of-the-mill statuses that have been made arbitrarily incurable like the Paralyze from Wings of Agony or the incurable Plague from one of Bhishani's TP moves.

Now obviously all this is a general problem for all WHMs, not just a few dozen Mythic owners. But with status removal being Yagrush's main augmenting focus, it's really taking it on the chin. Not only that, but a Yagrush WHM is expected to be in the middle of the auras and TP moves dishing out this crap, which a normal WHM isn't. It's completely untenable. Any changes to Yagrush need to take into account that the Yagrush WHM is going to be in the death zone. For a start, I'd suggest an enhancement to Yagrush that lets the wielder have both Afflatus: Solace and Afflatus: Misery (for the stronger Esuna) up at once, and have the Stoneskin effect from Solace apply to Curas. Also, since Esuna is already AoE and won't benefit from Yagrush's main trait, it should receive a further enhancement to number and/or type of statuses removed.

WHM AF3+2 head shares the single largest enhancement of this item (occasionally) with anyone who spends some time in Abyssea - Attohwa. Divine Benison, Tranquil Heart, and several other factors have nerfed WHM's ability to generate hate. WHM AF3+2 pants and the myriad of Refresh sources available to us at 99 have greatly reduced the utility of Mystic Boon. Yagrush did not even receive a trait upgrade at level 99 like the other weapons, because further Divine Benison would exceed the cap.

They could always make the final augment to Divine Benison make status removal full on Quick Magic/Chainspell speed, I guess. Seems excessive? Even Chainspell Erasega won't seem too strong when the mantis you are fighting decides to start spamming Macerating Bile.

So what role is there left for Yagrush? Will it forever be a -na macro stick? That certainly seems to be what SE has in mind for it.

Saying that SE has anything "in mind" for Mythic weapons at this point at all seems a mite too generous. I really don't think that they care.

I would argue that the supporting role of this weapon should be widened and not restricted to -na spells. If Mjollnir is WHM's DD weapon, this should be their support weapon. As such, I'd recommend:
* Add 20% Cure Potency to this weapon that can exceeds the 50% cap.
* Add "Augments Divine Veil II" at level 99, which extends the AoE effects of Divine Veil to Haste and Regen. Erase is Enhancing Magic and works with this trait, so two more enhancing spells should be no problem.

With status removal being near-vestigial these days, you're basically talking about giving Yagrush a completely different role here. Still I'd agree that making Haste AoE is a necessary reduction of pointless busywork for any WHM that is going to try to make any use of the weapon's Aftermath property. That was probably the rationale for the original 100% AoE -na enhancement on Yagrush, actually.

[Louispv]

The problem with Aymur isn't with Aymur. In fact most of these weapons the problem isn't the weapon. We wouldn't need any of your changes if SE was just smart. The problem has always been the WS's.

Primal rend does about 700 damage, unless you massively rework your entire set up, switch subs, get in the mage party, etc. Back at 75 when your alternative was a 900 damage rampage, this wasn't so bad. Now that the alternative is a 3000 damage Ruinator, it's terrible. All the WS's need to be redone to be comparable to the current WS's, and then no one will care if the weapon's stats are lacking, or if they need to maintain aftermath, and SE doesn't need to make massive amounts of massive changes to the weapons.

And SE needs to really be slapped when they propose any new elemental WS. What are you thinking? A WS that doesn't increase in damage as you level? That doesn't increase in damage with a better weapon? That doesn't increase in damage from food or buffs? No job should have an elemental WS if they don't natively get Magic Attack bonus traits, they're worthless otherwise.

Not that SE is going to do so. After Primal Rend, they came out with Cloudsplitter. While 1 CHR adds roughly 1.5 more damage to Primal Rend, each point of STR/MND adds One. Single. Damage. Point. to Cloudsplitter. And then both WS's deal half damage to anything with Magic Defense Bonus, Notorious Monsters, or anything with an elemental resistance. Meanwhile, 1 STR adds 5-10 damage to Ruinator, to each of 4-8 swings. And it increases in damage with a stronger weapon, and from the food, gear, and buffs that actually benefit dealing damage.

Reworking Mythic WS's to compete with whatever WS we're currently using would solve the problem, but god damn if the elemental ones don't need to be reworked into physical WS's at the very least.

[ManaKing]

I like the suggestions on BST and DRG. I would almost say the BST one is too good only because the amount of Pet: Haste has increased a fair amount over the last couple of years.

DRG is spot on, if you have to make a Mythic to be an awesome DRG, it really should be that good. The other way to cheat DRG is make it so that it ignores penalties to Piercing damage, but that would open up a different can of worms. That also doesn't have to be the focus of their Mythic, since they have 2 other weapons that sorely need improvement.

Murgleis - This weapon is worse for MAcc than a fully upgraded MAcc Magian staff until you consider the Sub slot, and even then it barely wins. Using Aftermath to increase MAcc in this case is kind of a Catch-22, because Red Mage has no responsible way to maintain aftermath in a situation where they need MAcc to enfeeble. There are two routes available for this weapon:
1) You could make it the primary MAcc/enfeebling weapon for Red Mage - This role currently doesn't have much of a use, but perhaps the weapon could justify it with a substantial boost. I would recommend adding a trait similar to the one on Estoqueur's Sayon +2 (RDM AF3+2 body) that directly enhances Enfeebling Magic potency and grows from level I~V (10~50%) between 75 and 99. I would also increase the Magic Accuracy to 35 so that it doesn't have to worry about competition from Magian Staves.
2) You could focus on the MP Recovery part of this weapon by giving it "Enhances Refresh Effect" I~V from 75 to 99. I think this is a terrible idea because Refresh is already so easy to come by, but some people would like this I am sure.

Funny how it is hard to find a way to make RDMs attractive by enhancing their non-existent JAs. A lot of what makes RDM is their spells instead of having JAs and JTs, so it's not surprising that their Mythic doesn't really do much for them.

Adding more refresh to RDM would make this attractive to plenty of people. I'm very pro melee and I can easily see how adding between 1-5 MP per tick would change how I play the job. It would definitely be an enjoyable luxury.

You could Augment Spontaneity so that you get 2 Quick Magic spells instead of one. Essentially giving homage to Dual Cast.

Death Blossom's additional affect could be strengthened to give RDM some more utility for possible mage friendly updates that are being discussed.

You could Augment Enspells to be actually good. There are probably 5 different ways this could be done. All to varying degrees of effectiveness.

I have both an Almace and an Excalibur. I am really just looking for a decent excuse to start working on this. It really wouldn't hurt to have a Mage friendly weapon on RDM.....since it's a mage. Adding more M.Acc would be welcomed. You still have the ability to use AM3 so it's not like anyone should be upset owning one even if they are pro melee.

[Mayoyama]

kkk is overpowered

with kkk you wont be wearing af3 body, so it frees up that slot

Just like to point out that one would usually macro this in before using the maneuver to gain the effect if they werent also tping in it (unless using kkk ofc and then it is redundant lol).

And the point is exactly that... the suppreses overloading/burden is no longer as desirable as it once was due to the gear now available.... No one is arguing that the dmg from the wep itself is weak.. just that the additional bonus for overloading should be changed

[Seha]

Re: Kenkonken
I considered doing "Increases maneuver duration" on Kenkonken, but I thought that was a buff that should be applied to the entire job rather than just the weapon.

I understand where you're coming from, but even addressing it on the job itself, I still think maneuver duration would be highly desirable on this weapon.
Or something that greatly increases puppet's output...but dunno how far you can push it before it becomes broken.

[detlef]

I see 3 responses to the JP post, any idea what they are saying? At the very least, the number of likes is encouraging.

[Yinnyth]

Carnwenhan: I pretty much stopped wanting this weapon when I heard a report that there is a +100% cap on song buff duration. Having +40% from instrument, +10% from legs, +10% from body, +10% from neck, and march, madrigal, minuet, and scherzo getting another 10% from AF3 song +1 bonus, we're already looking at 70-80% song duration. Carnwenhan is supposed to give a 50% boost to song duration, but it would only wind up giving me 20-30%. Probably even less in the future when duration boost gear is more common.

Sorta like how burtgang and aegis used to be slapped in the face by the 50% damage reduction caps, but were made to circumvent them, carnwenhan's duration boost should not be subject to any cap.

[detlef]

Carnwenhan: I pretty much stopped wanting this weapon when I heard a report that there is a +100% cap on song buff duration.

That's not true. So it's okay to want one again.

[Byrth]

Yeah, I just went to the test server with G-horn 99, AF3 neck, AF3+2 body, and Carn. That's +5 Minuet and +70% duration for +120% duration total. We'd expect a 4:24 duration Minuet V (120*2.2), which is what I observed. I repeated the test with Troubadour and it was 8:48 duration Minuet V (120*2.2*2). If there's a cap on song duration, we haven't hit it yet.

Another 30% duration (Marduk's Shalwar +1 and the 20% I'm proposing on Carn) would extend the Troubadour'd duration to 10:00, so you could perfectly keep up a Marcato'd song and sing about every 10 minutes. A further 20% duration past that would be useful for players with Daurdable, because it would let you keep 4 songs up without them ever dropping, but that can be on gear in the future.



I do not speak Japanese, so these are guesses:

First post - Something about Ninja and the effect I tied to Mijin Gakure, I think. I think he wants strong Paralyze instead of Blind on Blade: Kamu.

Second post - Generally congratulatory. Google translate makes it sound like they are surprised a foreigner came up with something reasonable. Says they'd kill themselves for Yagrush as it is described.

Third post - Something about afterglow, perhaps that these enhancements should be tied to afterglow?


Thanks for translating the post, Kincard. I find reading these responses endlessly amusing.

[detlef]

It could be that they plan to add more song duration gear in the future. If they do, I hope they utilize the earring, ring, back, and waist slots.