Elements to be Implemented in the March 27th Version Update

[ShadedOnyx]

Sorry for ranting. It's been awhile since I fully read for forums. I think that zerging mobs only as a way of winning the game has always been something that SE has tried to avoid. And that's respectable. I erked me the most was changing the twilight scythe. It just seemed kinda strange. Embrava's nerf is to be expected. But personally I don't think making mobs hit low defense players for twice as much damage is a way to make people be smart players. If you want people to use strategy in everything that they do from leveling to end game. You need to make it more feasible then speed. Burning wins out every time. It's why people did SMN burns and FC burns and RNG burns and TP burns. I loved the old exp parties. and SC's were a whole lot of fun. They are a forgotten art form because of setup time. So personally if you want people to use strategy i feel you need to make some adjustments to things like Skillchains. I mean simply put. What would happen if drop rates were increased via number of landed skillchains vs mobs?

Not substantially but like to a maximum of an additional 10%?

[saevel]

/sigh

The defense adjustment wont' change zerging, it'll only make SCH/BLM stunning a requirement at everything.

People really don't understand the reasons we use various strategies. So I'll make it clear.

#1 Rule of MMO boss's
The stronger it's attacks are, the faster you want need it dead.

The entire reason we "zerg zerg zerg" is that since Abyssea SE has created ever more ridiculous boss monsters for us to fight. They've turned the difficulty up to 11 which in turn makes us immediately use the only strategy that works against those monsters.

I'm concerned about moving forward with low man / small group friendly content that doesn't require the DD's to be packing R/M/E and blinged out builds. We don't use PLD's (and soon RNF)s to "tank" because they absolutely refuse to put out damage and get away from their 2007 era mentality. The purpose of a tank is NOT to reduce damage to themselves, it's to keep hate off the back line folks. Front line melee's are expected to be capable of taking a few hits every now and then, tanks were never supposed to keep the NM off the DDs 25/7.

[Byrth]

A few questions:
1) Will the change to Last Resort be implemented this update?

2) When you say "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." are you referring to both hands?

3) Will the new SP2 abilities be implemented this update?

[Teiei]

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.

[Landsoul]

Break out the tavnazian tacos.

[Monchat]

or rabbit pies.

[Oddwaffle]

My question is "Will I die instantly using counterstance on Monk (or pretty much every /Mnk)?" Monk is currently a very effective tank in low man events using counterstance. It's not optimum and you can't really have any other healer but Whm. Still it gives variety to the monotony of Ninja and Paladin Tanks or just DD spamming WS.

Counterstance penalty is HUGE and it ignores several of your defense buffs like Protect. Currently with counterstance, you will take around 400-800 damage per hit from a boss monster, going up to 1-1.5k on TP attacks. The damage taken is moderate on normal monsters (x3 or x4 normal damage) are offset by the countering rate but longer fights or boss fights the only cures that would be effective on Monks are Cure IV/V spamming. Any job with less than 2k HP will have a good chance of getting killed using counterstance with the current Def/Atk vs Bosses. A single critical hit or strong TP attack will most likely put the Monk into red HP. If the Whm is busy casting something else then the Monk will have a chance of getting killed right after. If this adjustment still let counterstance get a defense penalty of anywhere near 50% (and ignores buffs like Protects, food buffs) then it will be a very useless ability that can not be used in any situation because you will either take too much damage to be cured or just get one-shotted.

[Ziyyigo-Tipyigo]

Ever notice the community reps always drop stuff like this on the players on a Friday afternoon? Or is it just me?

[MarkovChain]

My question is "Will I die instantly using counterstance on Monk (or pretty much every /Mnk)?" Monk is currently a very effective tank in low man events using counterstance. It's not optimum and you can't really have any other healer but Whm. Still it gives variety to the monotony of Ninja and Paladin Tanks or just DD spamming WS.

Counterstance penalty is HUGE and it ignores several of your defense buffs like Protect. Currently with counterstance, you will take around 400-800 damage per hit from a boss monster, going up to 1-1.5k on TP attacks. The damage taken is moderate on normal monsters (x3 or x4 normal damage) are offset by the countering rate but longer fights or boss fights the only cures that would be effective on Monks are Cure IV/V spamming. Any job with less than 2k HP will have a good chance of getting killed using counterstance with the current Def/Atk vs Bosses. A single critical hit or strong TP attack will most likely put the Monk into red HP. If the Whm is busy casting something else then the Monk will have a chance of getting killed right after. If this adjustment still let counterstance get a defense penalty of anywhere near 50% (and ignores buffs like Protects, food buffs) then it will be a very useless ability that can not be used in any situation because you will either take too much damage to be cured or just get one-shotted.

I hope they make the ajustement so that you take as much damage as currenty. However it's impossible to do so because you can't have an ability that adapts to the oponent's attack. In the end I suspect that they make it a berserk style defense down, maybe more severe. On the other hand if it gets transformed into a defense penaly it's not too bad because protect/defender/food will help it.

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.

Anyway, this little change to ratio is going to change our way of playing, so instead of dia2 and berserk, players might choose to go for rabbit pies and bio 2. This change could make monk tanking with defender and pdt more efficient than other tank especially with capped counter gear.

[Prophett]

Personally for me I take the "if it's not broke, don't fix it standpoint." Twilight Scythe not broke leave it be, 2hd vs. 1hd Not broke leave it be, Embrava not broke leave it be, PD not broke leave it be. What is the point in changing everything around now after 10 years, SE designed these as they are now, players use these in the way they were originally designed, simply put leave it alone.

I think SE needs to work on COSTS and DROP Rates over stats, abilities, weapons etc.... Make things less time consuming for a BUSY world where there are a lot less extreme player and a whole lot more casual players. Make gear that will last not get phased out every update.

And please fix the damn Inventory issue <---- this should be #1 on the list lol :P