Why not? My PLD fix-it thread

[Zagen]

I know I am a genius but I feel like I am teaching the English alphabet to handicapped immigrants here. Am I really thinking at such a higher level that my meagerest afterthoughts are so profound they need clarification/reiteration at every phase?!

This reminds me of a saying "There's a fine line between genius and insanity." I don't think you're on the side you think you are.

[hiko]

I did specifically mention that hate values for damage dealt need to be revisited.. it was right alongside the raising the hate cap, and the raising the values for cure enmity.... Job abilities and cures need a much higher value and damage needs a much lower value. Thank you for reaffirming what I said twice in this very thread!!!!!!!! You're agreeing with me at the same time that you're taunting me... lame!

let me check....

I've seen innumerable terrible and numberable decent threads about fixing PLD lol.

I'm bored so I'll take a stab at it. I figure, if RFN actually turns out to be any kind of decent tank, that's just more reason to avoid PLDs or use them only for Diaga+Kiting in turtle gear.

Here are my suggestions for fixing PLD, enmity and job balance as they pertain to enmity:

Increase both enmity caps.

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Reason: Larger enmity pool makes it more dangerous for everyone at the cap.

Change the enmity polling from instant to 15 second intervals.

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Reason: Makes it a "big deal" to pull hate off of tank, as the new target will be targetted for a quarter of a minute, forcing additional resources to be used to keep them alive.

Make Fealty/Chivalry normal job abilities at their maximum merited potency.

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Reason: These don't even seem like they should be merits. They should come with the job.

Fill that merit ability slot with an ability that raises PDT/MDT by 2%/1% per merit, for a cap of 10%/5%.

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Reason: Allows PLD to utilize more gear slots for offense.

Increase the CE/VE of all cure spells.

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Reason: Hate tool for PLD. Makes it more dangerous for healers and forces them to stack -enmity once again. Makes throwing normal melee jobs at mobs more dangerous and eliminates a bit of duo/trio boxing.

Addition of more "Flail" type moves. Make changes to mob AI so they are more likely to use "Flail" type moves when shifting targets.

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Reason: Makes it more dangerous to pull hate.

Remove the majority of enmity reset behavior/abilities from enemies.

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Reason: This type of behavior contributed to the erosion of the dev team's vision for battle strategy and job utilization. Plus with the addition of more flail type moves, constantly shifting hate becomes very unbalanced.

While Cover is active, shield block rate is increased.

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Reason: Less enmity loss for mitigating damage to party members.

Increase enmity loss per % of HP loss sustained.

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Reason: More likely for mob to revert attention back to tank when another member pulls hate, and makes the tank need to work harder to maintain the mob's attention. Somewhat negated by the Cover enhancement above.

And of course, for all of this to work: remove lethal AOEs or have their AOE radius greatly reduced, as has been beaten to death.

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Reason: Programmatic laziness =/= difficulty, only simulated difficulty.

There. Completely fixed the game. Sharper penalties for cure bombing and zerking. Increased survivability for PLD. Fixed the flow of battle to something more rhythmic.

And PLD doesn't become OP.

*Dousing myself in kerosene*
Flame me. My body is ready.

I don't see anything related to lower damage dealt enmity here

+

Reducing the enmity generation from damage would allow effective tanking.. but break the game in a way that only zerging would be rewarded.. which is why I suggested increasing enmity generation from cures instead.

we agree that damage enmity need to be lowered and other enmity raised but you lied when you said you " did specifically mention that hate values for damage dealt need to be revisited."

[Chocobits]

let me check....


I don't see anything related to lower damage dealt enmity here

+


we agree that damage enmity need to be lowered and other enmity raised but you lied when you said you " did specifically mention that hate values for damage dealt need to be revisited."

I did, on page 2 when I backpedaled, but it didn't survive an edit I made. My apologies. Looking back now, I can see why, with that missing, it looked like I was arguing with myself.

On page 1 I was against decreasing damage enmity - but only because it would interfere with the unnecessary enmity shift suggestions I was making at the time. On page 2, I scrapped all that, simplified it, and there was supposed to be a 3 1/2 sentence bit about that.

Oh well. I won't ninja edit it now, but it's there - in spirit.

Let me summarize up to this point what the most current form of my "cure" consists of, and drop the snarky attitude while I do it, so that I stop coming off as a cocky mad scientist douchehat:

General Battle Mechanics

-Reduce enmity generation from damage dealt
-Increase enmity generation from cures
-Increase enmity loss from damage received
-Adjust the damage and/or radius of lethal AOE
OR
-Adjust mob AI/behavior regarding the use of lethal AOE so that it has a logical pattern
-With above, increase NM "Readies" delay on their powerful signature moves
-Stop making mobs cause multiple status effects with 1 move or that are immune to most debuffs
-Not yet mentioned in this thread, but I don't think quite so many NMs/bosses need Dispelga spells/TP moves..


PLD Specific

-Addition of Job Abilities/Traits to enhance cover in a meaningful way (something along the lines of meat blocking everyone in alliance behind him while increasing his shield block rate)
-Remove Fealty/Chivalry as merit abilities and make them normal job abilities, with their recast and the recast of Cover reduced
-For the first freed up empty merit slot, use as a trait or ability that increase the effectiveness of Cover, or gives a -damage taken trait
-For the second freed up empty merit slot, allow to increase the damage multiplier of Atonement (in very small increments per upgrade obviously)
-Allow Shield and Cover a chance to block Physical AOE TP moves (was going to get to this but got caught up in gaming 101)
-Give PLD an aura that increases MDB (not -MDT) (was also going to cover this before I let myself get derailed)

That is the most current version of what I am proposing. Again, apologies for my blunder on page 2, which kinda caused the whole thread to move southward.. although Saevel seemed to be chomping at the bit looking for an argument!

[Economizer]

Numbers are everything in this game. You don't get the numbers right and you're trying to chip your enemy to death with a massive amount of TP feed while you have your Bards using useless Minne songs on you instead of Haste or Attack.

You don't get away with misrepresenting how the game works when trying to adjust it. If you're trying to adjust the game you have to know how it works at least on a level of basic competency or you'll just make it worse.

I do acknowledge you could misinterpret my remark about Cure IV.. It goes through phases and in the past it was numerically not an efficient or wise spell to repeatedly cast due to the ridiculously low amount of cure potency we were given. That is no longer the case..

There is no misinterpreting here unless you failed to say something. You said White Mages use Cure III and Cure V. We cannot have a good discussion on changes if we don't accurately portray the way people play, especially optimally.

Before the formula changes, if you were at just at level 70 with your Light Staff and Noble's Tunic, Cure IV was always MP efficient compared to the other cures, with the exception of Cure V's slight benefit, even before nice things like Afflatus Solace and Light Arts.

Even then, overcuring was a bad idea, especially since White Mage got maybe 1MP/tic Refresh unless you had support, and healing without a Red Mage or Bard breathing down your neck wasn't exactly going to be working out for you.

but a simple "You meant post-whatever-suggestions-you-just-mentioned right?" Instead of another small novel that only serves to reaffirm what I am already saying!

There is no reaffirmation or agreement stated. Please don't misrepresent others like you are misrepresenting the things you're trying to adjust.

Also, take into consideration that with the adjustments I suggested.. some cure potency might need to be sacrificed in order to get a decent -enmity value on our gear...

Any cure potency that would be sacrificed would merely drag down Cure V/VI further, due to the way cure potency works.

Any minute amounts of Healing Magic skill that would be removed would have the same effects, although it wouldn't impact main healers with significant skill, but instead mostly harm /WHM and /RDM that are trying to provide healing support without drawing enmity under any changes that increase cure enmity.

That said, no cure potency itself would be needed to be cut, although if you had read the Cure Formula Changes thread you'd have noted this from the suggested item sets given near the end. They themselves are even outdated, so you can actually get even more -enmity gear then listed. Considering that, it isn't that hard to have a decent cure set and -enmity at cap, although you'd have to expressly build for it.

But -enmity from gear and Tranquil Heart only go so far.

So yes, Cure IV would go out of style with cure enmity values adjusted per my suggestions...! And it's not like we don't have refresh up the wazoo.. I didn't have a difficult time using Cure V back at 75 cap.. I don't see it being a problem at 99 cap..?

Healers shouldn't be penalized for healing any more then they already are, and healing more at a single time should be more MP efficient then healing less. Really, directly affecting the enmity output of cures would cause too many problems for healers as is.

SE has already clearly stated that regarding cure enmity that they were looking into a job trait that would be the opposite of Tranquil Heart.

although Saevel seemed to be chomping at the bit looking for an argument!

Stating things as fact which are counter to what actually happens in the game tends to make players contradict you with horrible things known as facts.

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You want to fix Paladin? Keep the changes simple.

• Fix Enmity
  Don't screw over mages by directly increasing Cure enmity generation and don't expect damage dealers to have to hold back damage to let the tank keep being the main target.
• Fix Cover
  Turn Cover into a stanced ability that works on any party members behind the Paladin targeted by single target attacks. Increase duration to at least be half of the cast time, if not more. Adjust the merit category or remove it. If desired, have some buffs to cure spells cast on players behind the Paladin while under this effect, such as increased healing and enmity generation.

There are more ways someone could adjust Paladin but this would be by far the easiest to do. If Cover could be used about half the time or more pending the defense changes, Paladin would be useful enough until the enmity changes come into effect that it would be fairly okay.

With any adjustment you have to be weary of the consequences, wide reworks of how everything works, or every job ability and adding gimmicky abilities take forever to implement and are full of problems down the road, whereas smaller tweaks can make big differences.

[saevel]

I posted those numbers so he could easily do his own math and come to his own conclusions, looks like he just ignored them entirely.

I specifically used a common cure value without any enmity adjustment as a method to show how much more hate cure generates then other "Hate Tools". It's seconded only by damage dealt. A "tank" who is only building hate via "hate tools" aka Voke / Flash spam circa 2005 is going to be building slower then the healer healing them. Also those "tools" only generate large quantities of VE, CE isn't built up. A tank ~needs~ to be doing damage to generate large quantities of CE (VE will come naturally), this is why so many DD's now "tank" with PDT sets. They use initial damage to generate large amounts of CE then switch into turtle gear during TP moves or dangerous phases and back into full DD gear for more hate.

Something I didn't mention though hoped Choco would catch on is the raw enmity from WHM's best heal, Curaga IV. I assumed he was a healer as he lacked any knowledge of the enmity system, obviously he's not a healer from his lack of understanding how WHMs heal.

Curaga IV allows a WHM to heal three to four melee's for large amounts of damage (after dangerous aoe) at nearly no MP cost. Healing for 800~900 is not unheard of and results in a total cure value of 2400~3600. Healing three people for 800 results in a refund of 120MP, healing four people for 900 is a refund of 180MP. Now I know the experienced healers already know this, just stating for Choco's edification. The key issue is the enmity generated, it's based on the cumulative amount of HP cured. So three melees @800 would be 2400 for 1416 CE, 8592 VE. WHM's can already experience hate issues if the fight lasts longer then a few minutes and the NM is forcing the melee to stay in turtle mode a little too long. Raising the hate from healing is a death sentence to any healer in prolonged fights, thus it forces you to zerg the NM dead before your healer inevitably caps CE.

After running numbers I've concluded that hate generated from damage needs to be reduced to 25~30% and hate from healing to 10~15% of it's current value. PLD needs to have a "Enmity Bonus" trait at levels 10/30/50/70/90 at +10/5/5/5/5. Additionally "Flash" needs to have a much higher CE value, something on the order of ~1000. That or introduce another ability / spell that is cheap, fast and has a lowish recast timer that PLD could spam to build CE. Cover needs to be adjusted into a forced hate mechanic with a 20~30s duration that could be enhanced a little further, or could use Econ's idea above of making it a 90 degree backwards arc, though honestly that's dangerous as in front of a monster tends to be the death zone. Sentinel needs to have a 3min recast instead of a 5min one.

Those changes would actually allow tanking to coexist in today's content. Melee's would still get hit and take damage but the PLD would be able to keep the majority of the NM's attention on themselves and mitigate total damage taken. Melee's could then disengage from the fight should it get too dangerous for them, something that's not possible now due to hate mechanics. It also opens up /PLD as a sub for other jobs wanting to "tank", namely NIN. NIN used to /DRK for the plethora of CE hate tools that it offered, until SE nerfed RDM tanking and as a side effect nerfed NIN/DRK tanking.

Bottom line, as long as the current quantities of CE generated from damage exist then absolutely no defensive tanking is possible. It would be like trying to race a Matiz against a Lamborghini.

[Yinnyth]

(Directed at OP): Larger enmity caps does not fix the problem of healers eventually reaching the enmity cap. If you also increase the amount of enmity that a cure pulls and make it so that pulling hate once means pulling hate for at least 15 seconds, the trickiest part of your enmity system will be keeping your healers alive. Add on to that the fact that you wish to increase the enmity loss sustained based on how much damage you take, and you're looking at a system that is even more chaotic than our current system.

[Sarick]

You want to fix Paladin? Keep the changes simple.

I agree with this.

Fix Enmity
Don't screw over mages by directly increasing Cure enmity generation and don't expect damage dealers to have to hold back damage to let the tank keep being the main target.

No one can explain a simple fix to enimity that I've seen. If we need complex math to show how it works then it's not simple.

Fix Cover
Turn Cover into a stanced ability that works on any party members behind the Paladin targeted by single target attacks. Increase duration to at least be half of the cast time, if not more. Adjust the merit category or remove it.

This was my original thought concept. After thought about it I choose a weaker version because it would create an opportunity for more player skill. I think protecting players behind them as in (You have to get past me first if you want to get to them) would work well. A problem is this type of tanking doesn't limit tanking to only enmity. It would be simple and very effective, maybe too effective if everyone behind the tank is automatically covered by the ability.

The reason I changed it slightly was because people think it's an easy button approach. It would allow the tank to protect well without maintaining enmity at all. All they would need to do is use cover and have everyone stand behind them. With this cover anyone who has hate that's behind the tank would be free to generate as much hate as they wanted and the tank would always be the one taking the hits most of the time for them.

In the case of multiple tanks using cover the enemy would need to make checks to get past each tank before running for or attacking a target that has hate behind the tank.