High Tier Elemental Magic [dev1229]

[Glamdring]

hateless is a new development. magic and rng damage used to be the kings in the game, the trade-off being that it took at most 2 shots from the mob to have a blm or rng pushing up daisies, that was the balance, coupled with MP cost and resulting downtime or the cost of ammo for rangers. and believe me, the same screaming DDs who will not allow tanks to hold hate get now, mages and rangers were hearing it then. Now, ranger was nerfed for most of a decade when they added the "sweet spot" but mages were never nerfed. What happened is that melees were buffed, then buffed, then buffed until they surpassed both. SE recently addressed rnagers and put them back essentially where they originally were, they didn't scale the damage back up but they dramatically reduced the cost of ammo via recycle and gave them enmity tools so they can go all out. They did some of that with the equalization update for mages but it hasn't been anywhere near as effective because top damage hasn't moved, just MP cost. I mean, AM is supposed to be awesome, instead it is universally regarded as a waste of time due to casting time vs. yield, as you can do more damage by casting 3 times in the same time for less MP, and less hate spikes. I'd say OP has a reasonable point. I would also say that if SE made nukers the damage kings again the whining melee rants would drive us to the brink of suicide.

[Snprphnx]

I think BLM and nukers in general were balanced to be able to deal high damage "on demand" meaning without having to swing a weapon and gain TP whereas a nuker could theoretically spam nukes back to back until their MP runs dry. Additionally, I think the damage of BLM was set to be lower than a hasted melee because a melee faces risks that BLMs do not such as being killed by AoEs, amnesia, doom, DoT, petrify etc. Melee DPS on any given relevant mob is stymied by TP moves with stun or knockback etc, whereas a BLM can sit back at a safe distance, eat some cookies and drop damage.

It's similar with Rangers too. Everyone thinks Rangers are top tier dd in terms of damage, but RNG DPS isn't that high compared to MNK or SAM, it's just that unlike MNK or SAM, RNG can deal comparable damage(less so actually) but be hateless and safe, away from Arrogance Incarnate or other crappy TP moves. Yet their damage will never beat out a fully hasted melee job because melee face more risks. There's probably an algorithim for calculating proposed DPS changes for jobclasses at SE, whereby there's some function of DPS vs Risk. High risk jobs like melee are higher tier'd DPS jobs than RNG or BLM which deal damage from far away(and are not too handicapped when weakened; unlike melee which are virtually worthless when weakened).

You should maybe reevaluate your assumption about RNG. Historically, you are correct. However depending on buffs, with Flurry 2 (30% ranged delay reduction, Coursers Roll (unknown/untested value), and Snapshot gear, Rangers are close to the delay cap. Add on top of that the ability to maintain a 4-hit build, and with the right buffs, a 3-hit build, Ranger has gotten a huge boost in the DPS department.

The one thing that holds it back is, unless you are making a party setup for Rangers, it doesn't do well in a mixed setting, like being able to toss war, drk, mnk, and sam all in the same pt. Buffs will vary and will influence dps.

[Sasaraixx]

I checked on this, but currently there are no plans.

What happened to this?

We’d like to make adjustments to the stats of elemental magic, and in particular, the higher tier spells. While this is still in the planning phase and I can’t make any promises at the moment, we are looking into making adjustments to the ratio of damage to MP of tier-V elemental magic spells so that they can be used better in battle.

At the very least you can make the tier V spells more MP efficient. Putting aside the fact that I personally don't believe weapon skill damage and elemental damage are properly balanced, there are adjustments that can be made within the magical tiers.

[Tptn937]

Seriously a 4-5 step weaponskill from a Samurai deals 99k (capped) light damage. The argument that BLM should deal less damage since it doesn't have to be in range is crap, because all damage dealers other than RNG hit the hate cap and have to survive. The fact that they stated they were going to fix something, and suddenly they have no plans means I will likely take a break until it is implemented.

[Glamdring]

The fact that they stated they were going to fix something, and suddenly they have no plans means I will likely take a break until it is implemented.

do not EVER take such a promise as true. I direct your attention to the beast gear to accommodate reduction of a beast's level 99 thf pet's Treasure Hunter from TH3 (the TH of a naked 99 thf, like our pets) to TH1, the TH of a naked level 15 thf. we were promised the gear-despite SE's protestations to the contrary some forum posters saved the quote so we can prove it-and they announced later they said no such thing, all was well and just deal with things as they are. I mean it doesn't matter now since we no longer have thf pets that can be used in end-game so even if they had kept their promise it would be useless now, but that's not the point. The point is even a promise cannot be trusted. So your break until it is implemented (assuming you were serious and this isn't a phoney rage-quit like most) may very well be a permanent break.