Dagger Weaponskill Damage Increase

[Nebo]

First, let me say THANK YOU. I'm skeptical, but hopeful, that these weaponskills will see a meaningful increase in damage.

In endgame events, with support enhancements, a large bottleneck for Thief weaponskill damage has always been long recast timers for Sneak Attack, Trick Attack & Bully. Additionally, the lead time and at times difficult/impossible to fulfill positional requirements for these abilities drags average WS damage even lower over the course of a fight.

So having weaponskills to unleash that aren't terribly weak (relative to other DDs) without being combined with cumbersome job abilities that were designed based on 2004 grouping mechanics (that are no longer used or relevant) would be a most welcome change.

The potency of the following weapon skills will be increased.

Dancing Edge / Shark Bite / Evisceration / Mercy Stroke / Mordant Rime /
Pyrrhic Kleos / Rudra's Storm / Vorpal Blade / Savage Blade /
Knights of Round / Death Blossom / Expiacion / Rampage / Calamity /
Mistral Axe / Decimation / Onslaught / Bora Axe / Ruinator / Blade: Jin /
Blade : Ku / Blade: Metsu / Blade: Kamu / Blade : Hi / Blade: Shun /
True Strike / Judgement / Hexastrike / Black Halo / Randgrith /
Realmrazer / Exenterator / Chant du Cygne

The TP Bonuses for the following weapons will be increased.

Mandalic Stab / Rudra’s Storm / Savage Blade / Expiacion / Calamity /
Mistral Axe / Blade: Ten / Judgement / Black Halo / Mystic Boon

Bonuses for the following weapon skills that only applied at initial ranks will now be applied to all ranks.

Dancing Edge / Evisceration / Pyrrhic Kleos / Vorpal Blade / Swift Blade /
Rampage / Decimation / Blade: Jin / Blade: Ku / Hexastrike / Exenterator /
Chant du Cygne

The maximum accuracy of one-handed weapons equipped as the main weapon will be increased from 95% to 99%.

Could we possibly get some clarification as to specifically what this means:

Bonuses for the following weapon skills that only applied at initial ranks will now be applied to all ranks.

Is this referring to FTP across all hits? Acc bonus? Crit Bonus? Something else?

[Ulth]

Provided they do the tp bonuses like I think they will, Sneak Attack and Trick Attack timers should be fine. In optimal conditions I get about 2750 tp in 30 seconds which means with my mooncharm I can drop 3000 tp Rudra's with every SA/TA. All they need to do is make it so the ftp at 3000 is 3x the ftp at 1000. I especially hope they make it the case with Mandalic Stab. Eventually I plan on getting around to making a Vajra and want a good reason to have the 3000 tp aftermath.

Evisceration I'm also looking forward to getting a boost. In a lot of cases you don't really have the time to set up a SA/TA ws, like with fodder mobs in delve. It will be nice to have a ws option for them. Also I'm sure it will be nice for soloing, and will shave a couple minutes off my salvage time.

The position thing can be cumbersome. Even more since so many mobs use knockback and bind. I can't tell you how many times I go for a trick attack only to have the mob push the person I was using behind me. It would be nice if flee would overwrite bind, and could not be overwritten by bind. Also if your flee is used with af feet, it should be a higher tier. As is I've tried to use it to overwrite some gravities only for it to fail. Another position problem is because hate caps out and the mob turns to you every time you hit. I know I'm beating a dead horse at this point, but thief could use better enmity control.

[Nebo]

Provided they do the tp bonuses like I think they will, Sneak Attack and Trick Attack timers should be fine. In optimal conditions I get about 2750 tp in 30 seconds which means with my mooncharm I can drop 3000 tp Rudra's with every SA/TA.

I have to disagree about the timers being fine. With all the various forms of haste that can be combined (even solo), 1 WS every 30 seconds....even saving tp to 3000 is unacceptably slow. You would still be holding tp for timers. Apart from that, I have very serious doubts that SE would ever make a 3000 TP rudras = 3x the damage of a 1000 Tp Rudra's.

Imo, the recast time and positional aspect of these abilities needs another look. I might have less of an issue if it was only one of those two...but both?...and combined with pre December 2014 WS damage values? That is pretty unreasonable in today's FFXI landscape.

Perhaps these WS damage increases will make this less of an issue so that dagger WS that aren't combined with Sneak and Trick attack will actually be viable. I remain skeptical....hopeful, but skeptical

[Ulth]

I don't see anything wrong with using a weapon skill every 30 seconds as long as it does about the same damage as the total number of weapon skills another job is using. For example a monk uses his tp at 1000 every time, the thief uses his tp at 3000. Assuming their tp gain rate is similar every time the thief weapon skills the monk would have weaponskilled three times. Only since the thief is using its weapons skill with SA/TA its weapon skill average damage is three times that of a monk's. To me that is fair, and I'm fine with it. The only down side is it's not that useful on the mobs where it does more damage than they have hp. That is where I'm hoping evisceration comes in.

And you can lower the timers on SA/TA but then you wouldn't have 5 into triple attack. It would be nice if they increased the merit cap for that so we could merit all three, but I doubt that will happen. As for the position thing, It would be nice if bully lasted long enough for a second sneak attack; maybe they could add some gear that does this, or do it with job points, but I was hoping the job points would be something like increasing the killer effect. I also would like it if they increased the range of weaponskills a little more since too many players stand right on the edge of combat range, but maybe this will work itself out when the player base finds out thief damage is pretty on point as long as they get all their SA/TA's.

All in all I like how thief works right now. I like waiting and being opportunist. Not only do I wait for my timer to be up but sometimes I wait a little longer to get a darkness skill chain for double damage. I like having to work as part of a team for my damage. I only wish people would work as a team back. Too often do I get someone who moves out of my trick attack, because they can't stand to have me blocking their view of themselves for 5 seconds. Only people who seem okay with it tends to be paladins, because they need all the hate they can get, and bards, because they don't pay enough attention when they go refresh songs.

[Nebo]

I don't see anything wrong with using a weapon skill every 30 seconds as long as it does about the same damage as the total number of weapon skills another job is using. For example a monk uses his tp at 1000 every time, the thief uses his tp at 3000. Assuming their tp gain rate is similar every time the thief weapon skills the monk would have weaponskilled three times.

IN end game situations, with endgame support enhancements, I think there are often many things wrong (dps wise) with only being able to put out a respectable weaponskill once every ~30 seconds. The TP gain and weaponskill ratio you are talking about would also be higher than 3 (DD WS) to 1 (THF SA/TA WS). At the delay reduction cap, many DD's get 1000 TP before the animation for their previous WS is done. You would also be holding TP even at 3000 (lost damage to opportunity cost) to wait for recast timers. THF average WS damage to another DD would not be even 3 to 1 let alone the ratio it would take to catch up to this playstyle.

All in all I like how thief works right now. I like waiting and being opportunist. Not only do I wait for my timer to be up but sometimes I wait a little longer to get a darkness skill chain for double damage.

Waiting to hit Darkness is not double damage for a few reasons. The main problem I find in this point here is the opportunity cost for damage that you are losing by holding TP like this. Which there is nothing wrong with. It's fune to line up, wait and SATA WS go boom to close darkness. That's cool. But in many cases (not always) you are dealing less damage than you could be to do that.

[Ulth]

Weapon skills have animation lock. During those time you do not auto attack. If a DD does get 1000 tp before the animation is over it's because of some sort of regain or save tp, so by many DD's you mean just SAM. And yeah I know that the example I used was not the actual ratios, it was an example. It would be some coincidence if the actual data had nice whole numbers like that. As for skill chaining I did say sometimes. Sometimes there are a bunch of cor, and I only have to wait like a second or two before a Leaden Salute goes off. I keep my eyes on their tp if one is coming up I'll wait, if not I won't. If there are nothing but mnk, sams, and rngs I will just go. Maybe I will get lucky and it will be a distortion. As for my play style I like to think I do alright, I expect to do even better after the update.

[Nebo]

Weapon skills have animation lock. During those time you do not auto attack. If a DD does get 1000 tp before the animation is over it's because of some sort of regain or save tp, so by many DD's you mean just SAM.

Wepoonskill lock does not last the entirety of most weaponskill animations. You do autoattack during them, espcially at high haste values, but they don't get anmiated. It's not just due to regain and save tp but also due x-hit builds at the delay reduction cap (endgame buffs). It's not just SAM that can do this.

[Roja323]

Its honestly semantics:

1) While you ws there is a period of time were attack turns off
2) During some ws, your animation will continue after #1 is over, at which point you will start swinging again

By and large, though you need a save tp weapon, max haste (or just high haste), and a few other things.

It is not incorrect to say this is mostly a sam thing though. As a monk/war with homestead, on a reive, i have 400 save tp, max haste, and crap tons of da/ta/qa, and by the time i finish my VS animation im usually at 6-700 tp already, but its not physically possible for jobs like mnk or thf to get enough tp in that brief 1-2 second window to be ready to ws again. A sam with tsu? Sure, an x hit build war or drk or drg , maybe (if they use homestead weapons on a reive).

[Ulth]

I have very serious doubts that SE would ever make a 3000 TP rudras = 3x the damage of a 1000 Tp Rudra's.

Looks like you were right. They didn't make the ftp at 3000 x3 the amount at 1000... they made it x3.25.

[Nebo]

Looks like you were right. They didn't make the ftp at 3000 x3 the amount at 1000... they made it x3.25.

I have never been more happy to be wrong.