Elemental Magic Adjustments Continued

[Motenten]

I just want to point out, that is mostly true, but it can be false. You have to remember this body does exist and some people use it, even with lower damage, to keep MP higher.



I honestly have no idea how good it truly is outside of Abyssea where your[sic] already overpowered anyways. If someone could give me an accurate assessment of its use post adjustment that would be great.

For MP efficiency, it's a great piece. A few damage per MP numbers (usual caveats about gear/target/etc):

Thunder V w/rank 15 Bokwus Robe: 14.0
Thunder V w/Seidr: 16.0

Stone V w/rank 15 Bokwus Robe: 26.5
Stone V w/Seidr: 41.6

Stone III w/rank 15 Bokwus Robe: 29.7
Stone III w/Seidr: 51.3

Stonega w/rank 15 Bokwus Robe: 44.4
Stonega w/Seidr: 149.9

Stone (1): 0 MP cost with Seidr

Essentially, for the Thunder end of the scale, it's a small but nice boost. For the Stone end of the scale, it's a massive efficiency boost.

Average cost of Stonega would be 5.5; allow one idle refresh tick per cast, and you can spam it indefinitely, at about 800 damage per with 4 second reuse delays. Add Refresh II from a rdm, and you can cast Stone III forever, at about 1450 per nuke on a 10 second reuse timer. Refresh II would also support using both together, taking about 18 minutes to deplete a 1000 MP mana pool (thus easily maintainable with Convert), and giving a theoretical ~350 DPS.

[Daemon]

Yes, however I'm also accounting for Conserve MP. For blm it starts at 28%, plus whatever was in the gear set I used (which was 8%).



Uratino already pointed out the error here. For T5s, the only spell with any increase in MP cost is Thunder V, which goes up just 12 points.



I would say the main problem is insisting that you be able to manage these fights solo on mobs that you can't sleep/break/bind/gravity. If the mob can kill you in 2-3 hits, that means it's doing 400+ damage per hit. There is no DD of any sort that can survive that and kill the mob solo without Utsusemi (unless you can kill it with a single skillchain as sam using Seigan/Third Eye), and even then the only jobs I would bank on being able to survive it would be rdm/nin or nin/dnc (and possibly dnc/nin).

In the case of rdm/nin, these changes help them since it's all about MP efficiency, and being able to outlast the mob.

Note that I do agree that more adjustments are needed for nuking DDs; I just think the arguments you're making are problematic, and don't really serve to illustrate the real issues.

Gear options are not the same when it comes to comparing with Mages and DD. Raising the cost of Thunder and Ice, Of course people are going to use these spells often as we have raised our merit points into these elements.

Thunder V
Thunder IV Ice IV


Both these spells are being increased in MP, however there are other spells that have been increased in points too.

Ever since Adoulin was released, Soloing is not impossible, but difficult being that MP pool limits us. Also a lot of my points in earlier post are about the difference between DD VS BLM.

You guys already give us limitations with cast/recast/mp pool/mp cost/mp recovery time VS DD who only has 100% TP to focus on and compared to our Refresh VS their Regain. The difference is, we have to wait 100+200 MP for 1 spell, they have to wait 100% for TP.

Mages have a hard time as it is for survival, and waiting for so long to recover MP without depending on other jobs to help us is problematic. As someone said earlier they would like to play the job without having to carry elixers.

My original complaint is about MP issue and playing in higher areas as a level 99 job solo. Could u please tell me what the real issue is then if mine does not serve to illustrate the real issues here?

I do admit that I see difference in MP cost through cycling different tier spells. And you guys are doing a great job by giving us some attention to begin with.

When I first saw the mp cost changed for Ice & Thunder 4 my reaction turned into concern being that I play RDM/NIN. The 2 spells Ice & Thunder I use often being that I did max out all merits into these 2 elements.

It seems what you have raised into these 2 spells are being made up for with the other elements in cost.

[Demon6324236]

For MP efficiency, it's a great piece. A few damage per MP numbers (usual caveats about gear/target/etc):

Thunder V w/rank 15 Bokwus Robe: 14.0
Thunder V w/Seidr: 16.0

Stone V w/rank 15 Bokwus Robe: 26.5
Stone V w/Seidr: 41.6

Stone III w/rank 15 Bokwus Robe: 29.7
Stone III w/Seidr: 51.3

Stonega w/rank 15 Bokwus Robe: 44.4
Stonega w/Seidr: 149.9

Stone (1): 0 MP cost with Seidr

Essentially, for the Thunder end of the scale, it's a small but nice boost. For the Stone end of the scale, it's a massive efficiency boost.

Average cost of Stonega would be 5.5; allow one idle refresh tick per cast, and you can spam it indefinitely, at about 800 damage per with 4 second reuse delays. Add Refresh II from a rdm, and you can cast Stone III forever, at about 1450 per nuke on a 10 second reuse timer. Refresh II would also support using both together, taking about 18 minutes to deplete a 1000 MP mana pool (thus easily maintainable with Convert), and giving a theoretical ~350 DPS.

So its going to be really nice for nuking, good to know, saves me a ton of Plasm on that body!

[Motenten]

DD has higher Defense + HP and optional ability to wear higher -pdt gear compared to blackmage or any mage so to say that no DD of any sort can not survive without utsusemi in such cases is hard to compare the difference between mages and dd being that gear options are not the same.

A rather aggressive run-on sentence, there.

PDT for Blm: Earth Staff, Twilight Torque, Goliard Trews, 2x Dark Rings, Umbra Cape, Plumb Boots: 51% PDT, capped at 50%, same as the best any other DD can get. Plus the advantage that you can use your max PDT set in between casts, while it's impractical for melee to use max PDT sets only in between melee swings.

Raising the cost of Thunder and Ice, Of course people are going to use these spells often as we have raised our merit points into these elements.

Then perhaps you'd consider readjusting your merits to account for the new options. Seidr plus Earth Potency merits would give about 2.5 times the MP efficiency as Thunder spells (3x if it's vs Thunder using Bokwus rank 15), not even counting the extreme examples of first tier Stone or Stonega.

.. without depending on other jobs to help us ..

The only way to get the truly ridiculous potential damage output for melees is with the help of others -- whm, brd, cor, geo, drg, smn, sch, etc. To see what potential any nuking job can reach, it must be considered within the framework of help from others. Solo play for -any- job is a mix of compromises and applying some niche trick the job has. If your niche trick doesn't work (eg: Utsusemi vs Iron Giants), then soloing a difficult target won't be practical.

Very little about this game is balanced around solo play. At best, certain limitations are put in place to keep solo play from becoming too dominant. Your complaints are presented as if they were universal issues, but are only argued from the viewpoint of a soloist. Yes, soloing a lot of the new mobs is difficult. Have you tried soloing any of those mobs as a melee? It's not very easy there, either.

You also seem overly-focused on Thunder-class nukes. I have Thunder V beating Stone V in damage by a mere 4.5%, whereas it costs twice as much MP. You use Thunder spells if you have MP to burn, if you need only the absolute most powerful nuke available, or if you need to nuke a specific weakness. You don't use it for long-term, total damage output.

This is in direct conflict with years of use, where Thunder spells were ~40% more powerful than the Stone line while costing only ~30% more MP, and it's not surprising that many people won't "get it" after the update. You need to completely revamp your approach before you can really assess where the real weaknesses of the new system may be.

[Motenten]

Note: I may have found an error in my spreadsheet calculations. Am finishing a conversion to compare old formulas with new formulas, and will revisit any assertions I've made in this thread if the results change.

[Mirage]

Due to the fact that these adjustments will only be applied to player characters and not to monsters, the elemental magic adjustments will not be applied to spirits because the magic they use is treated as a monster type of magic.

I'm sorry, but so what?

You can still change it for spirits. Change their magic to player-type instead if it's impossible otherwise. You're not seriously worried that SMN would outnuke any real mage job, are you?

[Daemon]

A rather aggressive run-on sentence, there.

PDT for Blm: Earth Staff, Twilight Torque, Goliard Trews, 2x Dark Rings, Umbra Cape, Plumb Boots: 51% PDT, capped at 50%, same as the best any other DD can get. Plus the advantage that you can use your max PDT set in between casts, while it's impractical for melee to use max PDT sets only in between melee swings.

Yes I know all jobs can cap PDT at 50%. Even some gear options such as Lefay Brias, or pants quested from A shantotto can aug 4% -pdt. There is a difference between the amount of DEF Melee and gear provides and the amount of HP a job has.

With the sacrifice of fastcast, MAB gear, only time to use -pdt set is when you are being targeted. So it is also impractical for mages to wear these in between casting.

Then perhaps you'd consider readjusting your merits to account for the new options. Seidr plus Earth Potency merits would give about 2.5 times the MP efficiency as Thunder spells (3x if it's vs Thunder using Bokwus rank 15), not even counting the extreme examples of first tier Stone or Stonega.

So this is the best advice? Re-adjust merits?

The only way to get the truly ridiculous potential damage output for melees is with the help of others -- whm, brd, cor, geo, drg, smn, sch, etc. To see what potential any nuking job can reach, it must be considered within the framework of help from others. Solo play for -any- job is a mix of compromises and applying some niche trick the job has. If your niche trick doesn't work (eg: Utsusemi vs Iron Giants), then soloing a difficult target won't be practical.

Very little about this game is balanced around solo play. At best, certain limitations are put in place to keep solo play from becoming too dominant. Your complaints are presented as if they were universal issues, but are only argued from the viewpoint of a soloist. Yes, soloing a lot of the new mobs is difficult. Have you tried soloing any of those mobs as a melee? It's not very easy there, either.

But why does it have to like this? I can understand preventing us from soloing Bosses, but regular monsters?

I don't know about other Melee jobs because most of the ones I play are mage however I have solod well on beastmaster in adoulin.

You also seem overly-focused on Thunder-class nukes. I have Thunder V beating Stone V in damage by a mere 4.5%, whereas it costs twice as much MP. You use Thunder spells if you have MP to burn, if you need only the absolute most powerful nuke available, or if you need to nuke a specific weakness. You don't use it for long-term, total damage output.

This is in direct conflict with years of use, where Thunder spells were ~40% more powerful than the Stone line while costing only ~30% more MP, and it's not surprising that many people won't "get it" after the update. You need to completely revamp your approach before you can really assess where the real weaknesses of the new system may be.

I agree I need to wait and test out how the new system will work before pointing out any weaknesses. My curiosity is that while its easy to say use Stone spells or any other element. It is very difficult to know how resistance of those elements will play out. Thank you and I don't want to waste anymore of your time.

[Motenten]

Comparative review of the magic systems, now that I have the current magic system implemented in my spreadsheet, and the bugs fixed.


Dmg/MP numbers, identical gear sets. No Blm potency merits; no Seidr body.

Current magic system:

Tier    Stone   Water   Air     Fire    Ice     Thunder
I       15.8    17.3    17.3    15.1    14.2    13.6
II      13.8    12.9    12.2    11.6    11.2    10.9
III     13.2    13.3    13.2    13.3    13.2    13.0
IV      14.2    14.3    14.4    14.4    14.5    14.6
V       13.0    12.8    12.8    12.7    12.7    12.7

New magic system:

Tier    Stone   Water   Air     Fire    Ice     Thunder
I       139.9   56.4    35.7    27.0    21.8    18.4
II      32.9    27.9    23.9    20.5    18.4    16.4
III     29.0    25.2    21.8    19.4    17.3    15.7
IV      25.6    22.6    20.1    17.9    16.2    14.6
V       26.0    22.4    19.6    17.3    15.4    13.8

As we can see, in the existing system, the dmg/mp ratio is pretty flat across the board. There's a few spells that are slightly more or less efficient, but hardly any difference of note. The logical conclusion, then, is to use spells that give you the most damage in the least amount of time, since you'll be spending the same amount of MP either way. Thus: everyone uses the most powerful nuke possible, Thunder V (or Blizzard V on anything that resists Thunder).

In the new system, however, there's a massive shift in MP efficiency as you crawl across damage tiers and elemental tiers. That means that for longevity and overall DPS you'll shift heavily towards the Stone end of the scale, and possibly down to lower damage tiers as well (though the differences there aren't as extreme until you reach T2 or T1).

But are you trading in power for that efficiency? Well, let's look at the base damage numbers.

Current magic system:

Tier    Stone   Water   Air     Fire    Ice     Thunder
I       125.3   199.5   277.7   324.8   380.9   451.0
II      529.2   590.3   643.5   704.6   771.7   841.9
III     1090.5  1169.6  1256.8  1347.0  1423.2  1499.4
IV      1759.9  1847.1  1939.3  2035.6  2138.8  2245.0
V       2589.8  2754.2  2929.5  3070.9  3205.2  3342.5

New magic system:

Tier    Stone   Water   Air     Fire    Ice     Thunder
I       484.1   498.1   513.2   529.2   545.2   558.3
II      1059.4  1074.4  1090.5  1104.5  1119.5  1135.6
III     1665.7  1696.8  1725.9  1757.0  1787.0  1818.1
IV      2574.7  2619.8  2666.9  2711.1  2756.2  2801.3
V       3636.1  3665.2  3697.2  3726.3  3757.4  3786.5

No, you're not trading in power. You're gaining quite a bit of power, actually, across the board. T5s gain 12% to 40%; T4s gain 25% to 45%; and the gains continue to go up for lower tiers.

In addition, there's the increase in how quickly you can cast a given spell, both in cast time reduction and recast reduction for most spells. DPS for repeatedly casting each spell:

Current magic system:

Tier    Stone   Water   Air     Fire    Ice     Thunder
I       27.8    44.3    50.5    50.0    50.8    53.1
II      55.7    56.2    61.3    61.3    61.7    62.4
III     75.2    75.5    76.2    81.6    81.3    81.0
IV      90.3    90.1    90.2    90.5    91.0    95.5
V       105.7   108.0   110.5   111.7   112.5   113.3

New magic system:

Tier    Stone   Water   Air     Fire    Ice     Thunder
I       134.5   138.4   142.5   147.0   151.4   155.1
II      278.8   282.7   287.0   290.6   294.6   298.8
III     175.3   178.6   181.7   184.9   188.1   191.4
IV      132.0   134.3   136.8   139.0   141.3   143.7
V       127.6   128.6   129.7   130.7   131.8   132.9

The gain on T5s is fairly low, and is mostly attributable to the higher raw damage of the spells. The lower tiers, however, and the T2 line in particular (because its recast time matches the forced time you have to wait before you can cast another spell anyway), have vastly improved the rate that you can do damage.

I won't go into the DPS per tier, as that gets complicated with spell choice and interleaving time slots and such. T2s gain the least, there, however, since there's no 'spare' time between spells that's being wasted.


So how much longevity do you have? That depends on your situational tactics. If you were getting good outside refreshes (Refresh II + Ballads), you could spam Stone II almost forever. For a base damage of around 1000 per nuke, that's pretty respectable, generating a nice, steady stream of damage. It's also damage that can be done at range, which still has some advantages. It becomes your "melee hit" nuke -- basic, repeatable damage that you can keep doing forever.

However it does put an upper cap on your long-term DPS of about 300. Respectable, but not amazing. Going above 300 requires compromises. You can cast a number of higher-damage nukes (including boosting them with -ja spells) in rapid succession for very high short-term DPS, but will quickly run out of MP. You can include magic bursts for occasional boosts in damage (close to +50%), which will also be much easier to achieve with higher tier nukes due to the very low cast times. [eg: stone II, stone II, stone II, skillchain? quick stone V, stone II, stone II, etc] Also, Occult Acumen and Vidohunir/Shattersoul might actually come into play if blms move to a single staff for all nukes, such as Soothsayer (yes, unlikely, but the new staves actually make it feasible rather than laughable).

However any other significant improvements will almost certainly have to come from revamping the buffs that can be had (primarily cor rolls, but there are others that can potentially apply).

[Chimerawizard]

However it does put an upper cap on your long-term DPS of about 300. Respectable, but not amazing.

You mentioned

For melee, you generally have 4 tiers of damage output (this is using standard Delve weapons, and in the ideal environment, not counting time between mobs): 250 DPS when unbuffed, 350 DPS when buffed and supported by a mage, 600 DPS when supported by brd+mage, and 900 DPS when supported by multiple brds (or Daur brd), cor and mage.

(I can't imagine even with the mob enfeebled with -INT & -MdB + INT from BRD, INT from WHM & COR rolls a BLM coming close)

If true & knowing you it is: before this is implemented, they need to do another update and round of testing to elemental magic.

Either make buffs more potent to compensate for the difference, or change the formula again so a well geared mage with food and buffs reaches similar results with support.

[Motenten]

Basically, 300 is between the 250 (unbuffed) and 350 (lightly buffed) range for melees, which is appropriate since it only requires light buffing (Refresh II). Melees can only get to ridiculous heights beyond that with significant buffs (Marches, Chaos Roll, Angon/Dia/Geo def down, etc). Each of those buffs individually is pretty substantial, and they compound on each other.

Meanwhile, buffs for mages are like food for mages. Whee, +10 MAB. Yay +10 M.Acc. Nice, food with +6 Int. Essentially, magic damage is static, while melee damage has tons of room for growth.

If you had a cor roll with +50 MAB, it would gain you maybe 22% damage per nuke, which is still less than you'd get from Chaos Roll for melee. Maybe change it to an affinity effect, like magian staves -- +30% Affinity, or similar. Same with magic accuracy. Right now the only way to get past massive magic resistance is with a geo; cor rolls barely do anything. Same for Conserve MP (though we don't have tested values for it, I'm guessing it's just as bad as the others).

Brd songs basically have one purpose for nukers: Ballad. Maybe a March tossed in for good measure. But there's really nothing to enhance on that front; MP recovery is already extremely high. We just need a reasonable means of bringing spell costs down closer to the MP recovery rate (ie: Scholar's Roll -- more Conserve MP).

After that are the niche buffs/debuffs: Vidohunir/Shattersoul each give -10 MDB, the equivalent of a melee's Dia II. Indi-Malaise if -12 MDB. Where's Angon for mages? Reduced magical evasion is likewise pretty minimal: ninjutsu, Death Blossom, tier 2 enspells, threnodies and Indi-Torpor, and I think several of them don't stack.

Essentially, as things stand right now, I don't see any problem with the magic damage formulas. The new version fixes a lot of issues, and sets things at a pretty decent level. The problem now is the horrible lack of support buffs and debuffs that can boost magic damage the way such buffs/debuffs enhance melee damage.