Enmity imbalance?

[Jaall]

PLD has never ever been a DD and should never be considered a DD. It never did very good dmg and is nowhere near as bad as WHM even now. PLD is exclusively a tank job and always has been. I do agree that adjusting anything by 100% can be very bad though, and I do think SE should have spent more time working out a more complicated formula for hate rather than just adjusting it by a certain degree and "seeing how it goes". I don't think it's as bad as it could have been, it's mainly just people crying cause the games back to hard mode, which I personally find much more rewarding and entertaining.

[Damane]

At the moment, I'm taking 600-800 damage per hit from the hydra boss in salvage on Monk with Whm taking 300-400 damage per hit and pull hate very often. This doesn't count the fact that the boss can hit multiple times that can instantly kill pretty much anyone not a tank now. The damage taken is too much for 1 Whm to cure without getting massive amount of enmity. We often do salvage with only 3-4 people to keep it easier to get unlocks. I think with a low-man content, 3-4 people is about right.

We normally do it with 2 DD 1 healer or 1 extra thf. We could do it with 1 pld 1 thf 1 healer and 1 DD but that will slow us down a lot. The update seems to restrict people from doing things without a certain kind of party config as well as make content harder than it was.

stop useing counterstance and berserk in conjunction, they lower your def tremendously if used together. The defense/attack and enmity update are fine (just some fix to cure V and VI needed). People just need to learn how to properly use their JAs and Abilitys. You see Vokeing at the beginning of a Fight actually is usefull if you dont want your mage to get hate right away with slow/para/dia. Thats what those JAs were designed for. Everything is fine in my eyes, people just need to adjust to it for gods sake, instead of just SMASH SMASH SMASH SMASH while being afk.

and for the record removeing those def. down debuffs a mob gives to you ACTUALLY helps you now and is needed.

[Infidi]

Maybe they'll give avatars a voke.

[saevel]

You guys really don't understand how attack / defense work do you.

I'll give an example.

Level 99 Monster vs Level 99 Player

Player Defense: 500 (Protect V makes his easily possible)
With Berserk, Defense: 375

Monsters rarely have over ~600 attack, they don't eat meat, they don't get bard buffs and their not using leet end game gear. NM's rarely have over 700~750 attack, Ig-Alima is a LV120 ultra NM and is very rare to encounter that.

Regular Monster ratio = 600/500 = 1.2 (2.0 is cap)
Big NM ratio = 700/500 = 1.4, 750/500 = 1.5

*Poof* "ZOMG DEFENSE ADJUSTMENTS!!!!0101" ratio cap is now 4.0 and is has absolutely ZERO effect on the above damage numbers. None of them go over 2.0.

Now lets use Berserk for -25% defense.

Regular Monster ratio 600/375 = 1.6 <no change>
Big Nm ratio 700/375 = 1.86 <no change> 750/375 = 2.0 <no change>

After the update there still is no change to our zerked DD going hog wild with Protect V on. I mean he's just spamming that WS there and building all sorts of enmity and not taking a dime of extra damage.

Now for what WILL cause you to take more damage. Lets introduce Mr Troll, he's ugly and smells bad. While fighting Mr. Troll he use's Enervation for an aoe -50% defense effect. Lets see what that does to us.

Melee without Zerg = 500 * 0.5 = 250 Defense
Melee with Zerg = 375 * 0.5 = 187 Defense or even 125 (off top of my head can't remember if their additive or multiplicative so gonna do both)

Regular Monster = 600/250 = 2.4 which is now a 20% increase over the 2.0 cap.
Regular Monster vs DD zerked = 600/187 = 3.2 for a 60% increase in damage, or 600/125 = 4.8 (capped 4.0) for a full 100% increase in damage.

Big NM = 700/250 = 2.8 for a 40% increase in damage.
Big NM vs DD zerked = 700/187 = 3.74 for an 87% increase and I don't think I need to go any further for people to see how badly our melee is getting the sh!t smacked out of him.

BTW those -defense moves completely ignore your job class, PLD gets hit just as hard as WAR, MNK, THF, DRK and the rest. The only thing that would save a PLD's a$$ isn't his defense, he can completely ignore that, it's his shield blocks that negate a percentage damage.

In fact -DT sets just because the most important thing in the game, they were required to be a good DD but now their mandatory. Defense is nearly useless, always has and always will be, primarily due to the monsters ability to just take it from you. Flat percentage reductions always are in effect and outside of encumbrance the monsters can't take them away.

I warned SE that this would happen if they went with a 4.0 multiplier. And now we see the results, good luck if your not a WAR / DRK / SAM / BLU / PLD.

[saevel]

Ok just logged in the check my defense on WAR/SAM.

Full DD set puts me at 400 base defense for 575 with Protect(r) V, 431 with Protect V and Berserk up.

That means on anything with less then 862 attack I will receive absolutely no additional from the update.

*Caveat*
This is all non-SOA stuff. I have no idea what stats the monsters inside there have. SE stated their not following normal monster templates so all bets are off.

[Zhronne]

YPlayer Defense: 500 (Protect V makes his easily possible)

Keep in mind that you don't always get Protect V when you're lowmanning or soloing content, especially old lv75 content.
This change wanted to address mainly the end-game part of the game and I'm allright with that, but it ended up playing a difference bigger than intended even in older content, and I'm not really sure this las part is a good thing.

It's pretty ridiculous to get hit by such high damage spikes (especially during TP moves or during certain crits) by lv75 or lower mobs.
Not really sure they really wanted this to happen, I still feel like they just slightly underestimated the consequences of such a huge change, while being focused a bit too much on end-game content.


Anyway, if something is not working as they intended, I'm sure within a couple of months we'll see some tweaks.
Overall I keep my stance of feeling satisfied with this new direction, if anything they showed to be knowing mechanics of this game much better than I gave them credit to, in spite of some silly mistakes/underestimations that they clearly did here and there during this last patch.

[saevel]

Keep in mind that you don't always get Protect V when you're lowmanning or soloing content, especially old lv75 content.
This change wanted to address mainly the end-game part of the game and I'm allright with that, but it ended up playing a difference bigger than intended even in older content, and I'm not really sure this las part is a good thing.

It's pretty ridiculous to get hit by such high damage spikes (especially during TP moves or during certain crits) by lv75 or lower mobs.
Not really sure they really wanted this to happen, I still feel like they just slightly underestimated the consequences of such a huge change, while being focused a bit too much on end-game content.


Anyway, if something is not working as they intended, I'm sure within a couple of months we'll see some tweaks.
Overall I keep my stance of feeling satisfied with this new direction, if anything they showed to be knowing mechanics of this game much better than I gave them credit to, in spite of some silly mistakes/underestimations that they clearly did here and there during this last patch.

This change was directed at DRK/WAR using LR and Berserk together to get enough attack to overcome their pet neo-AV's defense. They didn't take into account the sheer level of -defense moves they equipped all their failed AV attempts with.

Also on "75 content" you should have absolutely zero worried. Level 80-82 mobs rarely have more then 350 attack, 400 tops. And NM's back then didn't have stats much larger then regular mobs, they just wielded bigger swords (base D value). Old content should pose absolutely no problems to anyone.

The damage spikes your seeing are from TP moves with +attack bonus's. As BLU's can tell, many moves have innate attack bonus's and the mobs always get bigger / better versions then we do.

The defense adjustment is overkill pure and simple. They need to reduce the cap to 3.0 or dramatically reduce the effects of -defense ailments. Any formor now has the ability to hit the 4.0 cap on any player due to Aegis Schism's -90% reduction. And they weren't the only ones to get that.

As for Protect V, there are four jobs that have it (WHM, SCH, RDM, PLD), those jobs also happen to be good at keeping you alive. The only time you wouldn't have that is if your out soloing something and honestly I couldn't care less about that.

[Zhronne]

Also on "75 content" you should have absolutely zero worried. Level 80-82 mobs rarely have more then 350 attack, 400 tops. And NM's back then didn't have stats much larger then regular mobs, they just wielded bigger swords (base D value). Old content should pose absolutely no problems to anyone.

Dunno, those 900+ Fluid Toss and 450+ Crits on floor 1 of Apollyon SE kinda made me go WTF.
But I still haven't experienced enough content to point my finger clearly in some direction.

I'm a bit worried about Dynamis on BST, that my pet will take way more damage than it did before, forcing me to get more Pet PDT gear (tbh I hardly had a lot to begin with) or use way more food for Reward.
Still haven't dared to try Dynamis yet, but heard silly things about Statues and DC mobs hitting for ridiculous amounts.

I couldn't care less about that.

I respect that and I would go kinda mad at SE if they dared to put their main focus on solo content, would be a waste of resources.
But at the same time I think the "I couldn't care less" approach is not positive either.
Why not care for both? Not like it would cost them god knows how much time/money to "fix" that.
I guess the next months (and subsequent patches/fixes) will show us where things go.
But personally I do care about this small part of the game and it would make me a bit sad to see it "ruined" for the righteous (not being sarcastic here) greater good of fixing the rest of the game.

Not saying they shouldn't have fixed it at all, it clearly needed a fix. Just saying that *MAYBE* they could have found a way to fix that without ruining that small part of the game that you seem not to care at all about (which is a respectable stance) but at the same time I'm sure other users like me do care for instead.

[Himrik]

*Poof* "ZOMG DEFENSE ADJUSTMENTS!!!!0101" ratio cap is now 4.0 and is has absolutely ZERO effect on the above damage numbers. None of them go over 2.0.

I'm sorry but I don't see any proof for the adjustment you describe. They only said that "attack-to-defense ratio has undergone adjustment".

Nothing on increasing the cap, or simply using (atk/def)², etc..., only that the level of the monster is much more important now.

[Oddwaffle]

stop useing counterstance and berserk in conjunction, they lower your def tremendously if used together. The defense/attack and enmity update are fine (just some fix to cure V and VI needed). People just need to learn how to properly use their JAs and Abilitys. You see Vokeing at the beginning of a Fight actually is usefull if you dont want your mage to get hate right away with slow/para/dia. Thats what those JAs were designed for. Everything is fine in my eyes, people just need to adjust to it for gods sake, instead of just SMASH SMASH SMASH SMASH while being afk.

and for the record removeing those def. down debuffs a mob gives to you ACTUALLY helps you now and is needed.

Err.. no that is wrong. I still take similar damage without berserk by using counterstance. Unless you really really want SE to remove counterstance and put it with Footwork (rarely used and completely useless).

Also, Provoke wasn't use to grab hate at start of battle for paralyze/slow...etc. I have been playing since 2003 (before xbox) and it was used to keep hate from cures. Also, if you sub /Sam you can't use provoke. Forcing provoke as a requirement reduces flexibility and choices from players, encourages cookie cutters parties and increase alienation of jobs that aren't in the cookie cutter setup (bst, pup and smn was very marginal back then).

A lot of people seems to want to go back to the good-old-days. I remember those days! 6 hours waiting for a 1 Pld to seek so people could make a party. It was horrible. The harder the content becomes the more cookie cutter settings will be used. At the rate it's going. You will need a specific setup for most events. You'll need a Pld and a Whm for core and supports/DD. Without that setup, you'll have to wait or beg or just go fishing. Just like the horrible old days.

The direction will also make 3-man events difficult. There is a reason SE made certain events 3-man. It takes too much time looking for 5 other people. People wanted to log on, spend 15min of preparations and do what they want. If you make it so people have to get enough people for events (Voidwatch, Meebles, NNI) then you're looking at 15m-2hours of doing nothing but waiting for members to join. People with little time to play (less than 3hours a day) are forced into static PT.