Elemental Magic Adjustments Continued

[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]

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.

[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).

[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.

[Camate]

Greetings!

These adjustments as well as a variety of other battle system related adjustments will take place in the July version update.

I've updated the Upcoming Version Update Announcement by adding a "Battle System" section, which outlines the adjustments that are scheduled to take place.

[Mnejing]

There's an erroneous 7月 on the table.

[Camate]

There's an erroneous 7月 on the table.

Fixed! Thanks

[OniHavoc]

Before that though, in the next version update, we will be addressing the damage values of physical blue magic spells.

Prepare yourselves, Immortals!

I don't see this on the battle adjustments is it still happening?

[Ophannus]

Blue Magic?

[OniHavoc]

Lol sorry replied to the wrong thread.