Elements to be Implemented in the March 27th Version Update

[Demon6324236]

Actually PLD was my first job to 75. I know exactly what it takes to manage hate in a large fight. I'm just saying and are willing to bet that 90% of the people still playing today are not gonna go for it. I can see it now "Yeah guys I know you have Ukons and Rags but just turn so the tank can get hate back, ok?" Riiiiiight, not gonna happen.

Kind of pointless to debate about it though. We will see...

True, and I know the kind of people you mean, they are the same kind who wipe in Legion to the behemoth because they get cursed by spikes then hit by AoE spells that kill them in one shot. Hopefully this will just be a bit more widespread and forced of a learning experience for people.

[Sapphires]

Disengage mob, mob goes yellow, someone else claims. Good plan!

Because DD+tanks unlocking from the enemy and turning away from it while staying engaged + wont turn yellow is hard!
/eyeroll

[Vivik]

Because DD+tanks unlocking from the enemy and turning away from it while staying engaged + wont turn yellow is hard!
/eyeroll

and also temporarily disengage the enemy to reduce the risk of potent attacks.

Reading comprehension is hard yo.

[Karbuncle]

I know nobody likes the idea of going back to having a tank... But, yah, the game was designed with a tank in mind... from like, square one, you all knew what you were getting into >:I. Still, You have 2 choices when it comes to DEF down.

Unsuck your lazy ass mages and teach them the power of Erase.

or use an actual tank and follow Okipuit's Advice.

You dont need a PLD, a WAR Tank can tank just as well, Focus Erase on the main tank, rather it be WAR, MNK, or DRK... then the lesser DD can pull back until its removed. "ZERGRUSH" was a strategy we adapted as a community, and the reason is because its pretty fool-proof and requires the least amount of brainwork from anyone involved... long story short, its a strategy for idiots that happens to be the quickest route when the group is good.

So, this is not to say everyone uses ZERG is dumb, But its a strategy intentionally designed to "Kill it before anyone needs to use their brain" (I.E Cures/Erase/etc)... which is also why Perfect Defense plays a part... even less brain power involved. So, now, We may have to actually begin to readapt the strategies they intended us to use, or at the very least, (POINT ONE) - UnSuck our terrible mages who have grown dumb over the years due to dulled strategies.

If our mages can learn their jobs again, this whole update is a none-issue. Assign a "Main" Tank to be kept alive, PLD, WAR, etc... then teach the mages to focus on certain debuffs. Might actually have to rework party structures a bit, RDM might be thrown back in for assisting in -Na/Haste/Refresh Cycles so the WHM/SCHs can focus on Healing/-Na spells.... instead of one inept WHM trying to do it all and "WIPE AND TRY AGAIN" when Perfect Defense wears off.

Okay, If i sound a little jaded, i might be... Basically, I don't see this update changing anything for good parties, good teams, and smart people... We'll adapt, make a better strategy, and maybe become a little less Zombie-mode. Sure, it won't completely remedy Zerging, but at least it'll make some people rethink the best party set ups for mobs to include contingencies like needing Erase, a designated "oh sh*t" tank, so on, so forth.

Its not the end of the world. We will adapt, and I think it'll serve to make, at the very least, Mage jobs far less mind numbing and involved.

[Dantedmc]

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.

If more focus is required for removing status ailments then nas must be adjusted.

By the time a healer is finished removing a status ailment from the entire party, the ailment is already back up most of the time or the ailment can't be removed at all. Additionally many nms afflict multiple statuses effects at a huge distance to multiple targets. Mages need a better way to handle this.

- Erase needs to be made to remove at a minimum 5 stats a time,possible based on enhancing magic

- AoE NAs and Erase needs to be added to whm.

- Esuna needs to be changed, its often extremely dangerous to head into melee range, when you're likely to be killed / debilitated by some other AoE effect. Allow Esuna to remove more ailments, at least three and make it centered around a party member, not the caster and remove the requirement that the whm must also be debilitated. Allow misery to further increase the amount of ailments and variety such as encumbrance and charm. Current Misery in general, while nice in theory does not work often because it is too dangerous to step into melee range.

- Give a single target version of esuna to sch.

- Add cleanse(ga) that removes muddle, encumbrance and amnesia.

- In order to not upset those who have obtained yagrush, give it grants "divine caress effect" and enhances "divine caress" effect, so that Caress will be active full time with yagrush and it will able to block multiple ailments simultaneously as opposed to one caress overwriting another.

[Calamity]

I'm not in favor of zerging everything, but I tell you, I'm just as much not in favor of things going back to how they were in sky with a pld and a bunch of sam/thf's. I always thought the idea of a tank that can't keep it's own hate was a flawed idea to begin with. This is not to say the mages and DD's should just go all out and hope the tank can keep up. You gotta play smart. But the idea of a tank that needs the help of thinks like SATA, and other such enmity manipulating options is just... silly. I really hope that options have changed enough since those days to have a real genuine self sufficient tank... but I have my doubts.

[Zeargi]

Mind you I'm not a fan of only going to events as a SMN, but PD/Embrava require the 1hr abilities to be active... Even BLM's Meteor spell only requires Elemental Seal to use. And let's be honest, out of the two "God Abilities" - Zantetsuken blows horribly. Perfect Defense is scores better, and one of the highest in usefulness. Earthen Ward still isn't where it needs to be, Earthen Armor's duration is appalling, Hastega needs to be looked, Pavor Nocturnus is really useless unless you have another SMN with you to use Nightmare. So far the most useful have been Soothing Ruby, Shock Squall, and Fleet Wing. And if this whole thing is based on skill to increase the time, how about you give Summoner that A+ to Summoning Magic Skill that it rightfully should have.

[FrankReynolds]

Perhaps have a PLD actually tanking a mob, where everyone could disengage except the tank so the mob stays claimed and everyone but a single member can stay at a safe distance, just a crazy idea.

The real problem is that most of the hard mobs in the game ATM are in timed events. Disengaging so that you can recover is just going to mean that you fail the event in good health.

[Quetzacoatl]

What SE really should be doing to make up for the Embrava nerf is to somehow make Adloquium's Regain effect Tier Up, based on Enhancing Magic, to a maximum of 3 or 4 TP/tic. I wouldn't be bothered by this at all.

1 TP from Adloquium just seems like it's not getting the potential Adloquium deserves, and quite frankly, a buff for that spell would have SCHs dancing with joy, with the thought to be able to have a job again at this point of the game. Hopefully this changes with SoA.

[saevel]

There is a difference between what you said and what I am saying. I am not saying go back to how the game was 5 years ago, I am saying change your strategy to where its not just a never ending zerg against enemies. Right now no one can dispute the fact that 90% of content relates to killing whatever it is you are fighting in the least amount of time, because of this there is little real strategy involved, no tanking, and no coordinated teamwork. If this update changes things as much as it sounds like it might, then this will flip, we will not be mindlessly zerging things, they will stomp us down, we will need more defensive measures, for instance, a PLD tanking the mob, defense on gear not being pointless, more PDT/MDT/Haste Hybrid sets. Right now we are to offensive centric in how we play this game, everything is more damage, thats all people gear for, its all people want to do, this sounds as though it will make defense actually part of the game again, which is in my opinion a good thing. If you cant stand the idea of actually backing off of the mob once in a while, then I don't know what to tell you, Final Fantasy has always involved a level of strategy, which this game had more than any other at a time, and now lacks massively, this sounds as though it may bring some of that back.

Won't work at all, ever.

See we need to actually kill the monster, not just stare at it for two to three hours. These monsters tend to have 100,000+ HP. A PLD turtled up has no where near the damage output to kill it in anything less then an hour, probably two. So you need melee DD's to go in and bring it's HP down. Now as damage is, by an order of magnitude, the #1 best way of building hate those DD's will then become the tanks in short order. Disengaging isn't an option as the NM will just follow the melee's back to the mages and kill them all with the aoe's I mentioned above.

Now does the whole reason for using melee's to tank make sense? We use them because they will be the "tanks" reguardless of what they do. Winning the fight necessitates killing the enemy. Killing the enemy necessitates using DD's. Using DD's always results in them "tanking". Thus winning the fight inevitably results in DD's holding hate. The PLD brick-wall tank is only useful from the moment you pop / claim / engage the NM until the moment you start killing it, typically 30s or less. Now as DD's take more damage then the brick-wall PLD, and in order to win we must use DD's, we're faced with a problem.

Only on DPS spreedsheets and theory crafting does the enemy sit there doing absolutely nothing. In actual game play this NM will be doing it's damnedest to ensure you fail in your mission to kill it. It will deploy a whole host of cheap moves, some VERY cheap. Your DD's now must face those cheap moves in their quest to bring you ultimate victory. Since the chance of the monster succeeding in it's mission to make you fail increase's with the length of time it's alive it becomes in our best interests to reduce the length of it's existence to the shortest possible.

Using reason and logic we can conclude then that it's in our best interests to keep our DD's alive an kill the enemy NM as fast as possible so as to maximize our chance of success. Towards this goal we then deploy and abuse various mechanics to not only enhance our DD's killing capacity (aka buffing) but also to minimize the enemy monsters capacity to employ cheap tactics (stunning / fanatics spam / ect..).

That is the whole reason we "zerg zerg zerg", not because we're lazy or unimaginative but because when faced with insanely overpowered NM's it becomes the only strategy that works. There simply IS NO OTHER WAY TO DO IT. So until SE fix's the enemy NM's overpowered capability's we will continue using zerg tactics. This defense update is a direct buff to the enemy's offensive capacity, thus already overpowered NM's because even more overpowered and thus force us to kill them even faster and stun them even more then we already do. This update will not encourage "more strategic play", it encourages more zerging as you have an even shorter time to kill the enemy before it wipes you with 1000~2000 damage aoe moves.

Now there are a few methods to go about actually fixing this. The biggest & best thing they could do also ends up being the simplest. Monsters are overpowered because their offensive ability has grown much faster then our ability to soak up the damage. Giving an across the board 60~100% HP increase for anyone 90+ will prevent much of the problem. If the average heavy DD had approx 3000 HP at 99 then they could soak up the 1000+ damage aoe attacks and would reduce the requirement to immediately kill it right f*cking now. Stupid crazy aoe status debuff spam is still an issue, and stupid cheap unavoidable weakness / encumbrance / doom / death moves are definitely a problem, those need to be dealt with.