Elements to be Implemented in the March 27th Version Update

[Sarick]

Ok girls someone explain me why every endgame content gets ajusted except ADL ? Can we at least nerf ADL's HP ? Even legion got nerf to ridiculness. Not that it matters because noone does legion so even less will do it after the nerf, but still, ADL provides the means to get the best weapons in the game >< so people will need it ad infinitum. In other words marrows are becoming ~ 2x harder to gather.

Wasn't you the one boosting about trioing ADL and how the embrava + smn two hour was over powered? Seriously you dug your own grave don't complain.

[Sarick]

We cannot really comment yet but they seem to know what they are doing, and they said they'll reduce the def penalty so we can only hope it will do something. As such, you can expect at least 400+ defense otherwise in their exemple you will still take double damage.

If we assume that CC will get you the same damage taken as currently with their exemple though, they should give it 500 def... Maybe they have ways to cap ratio at 2 for CC. But if that's the case it would make CC+berserk game breaking.

These DEVS damage changes will probably break counterstance even if they reduced the drop in armor rating. The point of counterstance was to increase offensive output capabilities after being directly targeted from physical damage while decreasing defensive capabilities as an equal trade off. If it's as broken as I think it will be then when you put up counterstance you won't gain the benefit of enhanced offense because you'll be dead or receive to much damage from using it.

What could've been done instead:

It would work fine if they just made counterstance completely drop all evasion capacity. So with it up you can't evade any physical attacks at all unless you successfully counter or guard them. Dropping defense is has always been silly because the armor and protect spells that provide the defense are static defense. They should have nothing to do with a job ability unless you remove actual gear. The reductions from job abilities should be reduced from status bonuses or skill traits not directly armor related.

When you use the job ability both defensive protections you have up suddenly become less then air defense (they become air gel armor). It's like you've taken off all your armor and start fighting nude (defense wise). With evasion loss it benefits monk more on higher level enemies where evasion is worthless anyway. This version harm/help them more vs lower level enemies depending on how hard they hit but still it's a more realistic approach.

How would it work? On lower level enemies you'll either get hit at full normal damage, guard or counter but never evade with it up. It's basically a mental shift to invest more into countering then evading any type of physical attacks. If you can't successfully counter/guard or you'll always get hit.. This is where the high HP's come into play as a buffer.

Guardstance would be a opposite to this by dropping the ability to counter at all while giving those bonuses to physical damage reduction and/or guard success rate with 100% damage reduction when successfully guarding. The 100% physical damage reduction might seem a bit high but, if you figure in the fact that you wouldn't be countering which blocks 100% physical damage and causes respectable reverse damage it's clearly an acceptable trade off.

Alternatively, take all counterstance accuracy + counter bonuses and augment them towards damage reduction and guard skill proc rate. So your native counter ability/traits would instead augment your guarding abilities without making you lose normal basic attacks or evasion in the process. These counter bonuses would instead be used totally defensively and result in a fair offensive/defensive balance mechanism.

These two changes would also differentiate the defensive and offensive capabilities of monk allowing for them to change the offensive and defensive stances only when enemies attack them directly.

What this might also effect are players who solo /dnc and don't upgrade their defense. Basically the effect of your dancer cures might no longer be enough to sustain you without separate backup healing if your fighting any enemy remotely higher level then you. It may push players back into the days when we needed a full party to effectively fight even match or higher level mobs.

So for players comfortable with easy mode soloing or low manning NMs they should expect to get a rude awakening when enemies become progressively stronger and require more skill then we're used to. We'll obviously need full time tanks now not monks. I tried to explain this to people inside my linkshell before this announcement but was brushed off like it'd never happen now it's already in progress.

From an optimistic standpoint at least H2H is receiving the one handed adjustments. Did they increase the output of 1 handed weapons or decrease the caps on 2 handed to equalize them? I hope it's not the latter then H2H might take a hit damage wise vs the 12.5% increase you mentioned. If that happens start seeing duel wielding warriors instead of great axes again.

[Sarick]

Picture a tank and damage dealer; the tank should ideally be capable of using various abilities and spells to immediately garner a large amount of enmity. However, the damage dealer will also gain enmity while attacking and at some point surpass the tank. The monster would then turn to attack the damage dealer and, as a result of being hit, the damage dealer loses enmity and drops below the levels of the tank. Once safely below the tank's enmity the damage dealer can continue to attack and slowly rebuild enmity till the cycle repeats.

You're forgetting that there are always more DD's then tanks. If you have a 5 to one ratio of DD vs tank. The attention of the enemy will be reduced by 1/5th or the number of active DDs. This would influence the tanks actual effectiveness.

The DD's would be cycling through the hate list before the tank had a chance to effectively tank. You see by the time the 5th dd loses hate or dies if, the 1st one was still alive they would've already gained enough hate back to get the enemies attention before the tank can take it back.

As a result the real tank wouldn't be effective and would be better replaced by another DD because the monsters attention would always cycle through everyone almost equally.

I think this sums up way the enmity system would still be broken as there are similar existent broken issues already in the game. The only true way to mitigate damage in these cases is to create an ability or modify existing abilities/spell such as "cover" or in a ninjas case AOE shadows to protect the players they're defending despite the enemies attention.

This update seems to simply delay or reduce the bouncing by at least 30%. I doubt it will be extremely effective in large groups. It might even cause issues with back line jobs taking quick hate or more bouncing hate. Eventually the back line jobs are going to cap out as well and the only effective ways to lose that hate is die, de-zone, take severe damage or do nothing as hate degrades. There are other alternatives like hate shifting/stealing but those take more detail to explain and actual skill to master.

[Sarick]

Originally the plan was as follows:

Regarding Defense

This is a topic that we have received feedback on asking to increase the boons of defense. Due to the attack/defense ratio, the meaning behind adding defense past a certain value starts to become pointless, and we would like to make it have meaning.

As a merit, for example, the more you increase your defense, the lower the damage taken will be and the boons for Defender would become large.
On the other hand, while under the effects of abilities that decrease defense such as Berserk or Last Resort, the damage you take would become higher than what it is currently.

Now the plan is:

This is in regards to the post I made previously about future battle system adjustments.
We will be making adjustments based on the content described under the "Regarding Defense" header. After the adjustment, in the case that a player's defense is significantly lower compared to a monster’s attack power, the amount of damage received will be higher than what it is currently.

Example:

For the below values:
Monster attack damage value = 100
Monster attack power = 1000
Your defense = 250

The damage received will be as follows:
Pre-adjustment amount of damage received = 200
Post-adjustment amount of damage received = 400
*This is just a simple calculation to make it easy to illustrate the change.

To go along with the above, the below two adjustments will also be made:

The maximum value for damage dealt from the attack defense ratio will be adjusted so they are identical for both single-handed weapons and two-handed weapons.
The defense reduction penalty for "Counterstance" will be reduced.

Which means you're doing nothing but PUNISHING US for even daring to use abilities that sacrifice defense for attack while doing NOTHING to allow us to reduce our damage taken by increasing our defense. Furthermore from the looks of things you expect us to be fine and dandy with taking vastly increased damage from anything remotely higher level.

To me at least, Seekers of Adoulin was last big chance for the dev team to actually fix SOME of the myriad problems that have accumulated (and virtually been completely ignored) since the level cap was raised to 99. It seems they continue to intend upon punishing us for winning at any sort of content.

Unless we get some clarification about this insanity, you won't be seeing me shelling out for this abusive game anymore.

Seems like you might have caught some flip flopping here. At first it was a promoted as a double sided edge now it's only one directional at the players disadvantage. Good catch! I see how you're comparing the first explanation with the second one.

The first announcement explained how it would improve the toughness of characters when defense was higher while maintaining an opposite balance if their defense was lower. It gave little to no explanation of what the defense penalties would be just that the effect from using them would be greater.

The second announcement just implies that the NEW defense modifications are one sided. They effect you severely if your defense is low or lowered. This means that players who utilize attack bonus abilities that reduce defense or cause defense down will take a serious beating. Likewise the improvements in defense won't create the same positive effect for them as was originally stated. There is no mention of defense bonuses in the second announcement.

In this second rendition the defense cap continues to remain the same. It allows defensive players to remain defensive with normal damage without equal opposing bonuses, while the defense penalty for offensive players becomes severe.

That was a horrible catch in the wording. I would say more but a faux-pas cease and desist letter implicates things. /sarcasim

[Monchat]

The point of counterstance was to increase offensive output capabilities after being directly targeted from physical damage while decreasing defensive capabilities as an equal trade off.

the point of counterstance is to trade a useless defense option (DEF) by a usefull one (counter). you defensive power is greatly increased and you offense hardly changes, unless say your are solo and completly naked (savage 1F).

[Sarick]

the point of counterstance is to trade a useless defense option (DEF) by a usefull one (counter). you defensive power is greatly increased and you offense hardly changes, unless say your are solo and completly naked (savage 1F).

After the update it won't be useless anymore. Evasion is nice but if your going for full offense it'd be the area to hit to increase the effectiveness. Couterstance doesn't improve defense unless your directly targeted. It does improve offense because the counters also cause damage.

Counterstances effectiveness is moot both offensively and defensively unless your face to face at close range being directly targeted. With the proposed changes the defense might be extreme. Consider the fact that the defense down effect (penalty) exist regardless of the attack being direct or not. So if the enemy is attacking you directly face to face then you can benefit from counterstance under the current setup. On the other hand if it's attacking a tank or another target you only have the defense down penlites without the benefits of counter.

With the changes listed the defense penalty won't be the same. We don't know what the change will be but considering it only gives vit bonuses now I can assume it's at least 3/4 defense reduction and severe enough to make it extremely dangerous to use. Maybe not even worth the risk. This would break it enough to the point of worthlessness in most situations. Simply put the balance of lowering a useless trait changes and this single change could break it's effectiveness.

[Oakrest]

Sam/war "seigan" ing is fail tanking. Not only the job is bad damage, but the shadows are too random. I hope they don't want us to go back to camping the new HnMs with an alliance of BLMs and PLD tank (cos you know, they already explained RUN would suck compared to PLD).

What sam/war's are you hanging around with 'bad damage'. There's also nothing random about a static timer.

[Demon6324236]

What sam/war's are you hanging around with 'bad damage'. There's also nothing random about a static timer.

Its Pchan, MNK is the only good job, everything else is terrible and gimp.

[Guppie]

RUN

I think you've touched on something important here. I believe a key factor in these changes is the introduction of the upcoming expansion, including Rune Fencer and Geomancer; the two news jobs will likely possess major defensive abilities, and the changes are intended to make them more appealing.

I think we should wait and see how the new jobs (and /subjobs) work out. And in addition to the new jobs, SoA will of course also introduce new equipment, and it is possible a major theme of the new gear will be improved defense.

[Okipuit]

The other thread you mentioned raising the monster attack cap from 2.0 to 3.0, the above example is assuming a 4.0 cap.

We have always planned to raise the monster attack cap from 2.0 to 4.0.

I mentioned these because if the level based attack bonus is not removed ... high level monsters will be dealing 1000~2000+ damage per melee hit on anyone who isn't an Paladin with Burtang. I know SE is wanting to make defense more important, yet 4.0 as a cap is extremely excessive if the monster is allowed to keep it's level bonus.

Monsters that are added with Seekers of Adoulin will not have level correction applied so the damage will not be as high as you may be anticipating.

In the cases where level correction will take place in existing areas, you may see damage increases from monsters, but it will not amount to the numbers suggested. Regardless of whether there is level correction or not, we are adjusting enemies' levels and stats, so don't be afraid to attack and see that difference for yourself. Last thing, players will need to adjust their strategy and especially focus on defense. It will be important to consider decisions such as food, magic, songs, rolls, and equipment.

Camate will the developers be doing anything about the rampant use of defense down by every NM they've created? Currently all the harder NM's use some form of aoe defense down move that renders our defense useless. Even someone with Defender + Cocoon + Protect V + Taco will have no defense if something like Aegis Schism, Bilgestorm, Tourbillion, Yaksha: Damnation, Shadow Wreck, Dark Star or Flank Opening hits them. There are too many -defense moves to name and they all make defense pretty useless of a state to use.

Same as the above and I'm sure you guys are aware of the following: More focus will be required to remove applicable status ailments and also temporarily disengage the enemy to reduce the risk of potent attacks.