May 2019 FINAL FANTASY XI Digest

[Rwolf]

Regarding the changes to White Mage spells Esuna & Sacrifice.

I feel the changes should be reverted. There are a lot of veteran White Mages who used the strategies afforded by the old mechanics.

Sacrifice allowed us to quickly yank a target, usually the tank, out of danger or severe inundation by sacrificing ourselves. The new sacrifice is not a sacrifice. It randomly removes only 1 from a smaller pool and only benefits the white mage which already has massive amounts of magic evasion available to resist ailments.

Old Esuna helped bridge the gap for players without Yagrush. Getting directly hit with ailments or sacrificing myself first to then quickly aoe wipe off status down effects was invaluable.

The counter arguments:

WHM shouldn't ever take damage or ailments.
* Devotion/Martyr sacrifices HP.
* Almost all WHM buffs are aoe around the caster.
*Current Misery is about taking damage.
It's about strategy of when to use spells and abilities.

We got amnesia removal
I feel it's a nice addition, but with it's high recast/mp cost doesn't feel like a justification to change things.

I propose a compromise. Allow Sacrifice and Esuna to have both the new and old changes, toggled with Solace and Misery.

Solace: Sacrifice multiple debuffs, halves duration. Esuna removes aoe only debuffs on caster.
Misery: Sacrifice 1 debuff for resistance to caster. Esuna single target high recast/mp and remove amnesia.

I feel Misery should be switched from WHM taking damage to WHM doing damage.

If unable to add spells/abilities.
Change Martyr. Change Full Cure. Remove Cura spells and just have misery lower Curaga mp cost based on stored Misery.

[Yoji_Fujito]

We successfully launched the new installer on Thursday, May 16, and hope that it met your expectations. If you ever find yourself needing to reinstall the game, you can get back into playing with minimal fuss!

[Yoji_Fujito]

As the servers are located in Japan and Dynamis – Divergence is popular content intended for a large number of players, our Western users are unfortunately more likely to experience lag than our Japanese users. We are continuing to monitor the situation.

[Yoji_Fujito]

We discovered an error in the game data and will fix it so that equals the maximum value from before the change. We apologize for any inconvenience that this issue has caused.

[Yoji_Fujito]

With regards to turning other spells obtainable for merit points into scroll form, we are considering doing this for other jobs when it’s their turn to receive updates.

[Jerbob]

With regards to turning other spells obtainable for merit points into scroll form, we are considering doing this for other jobs when it’s their turn to receive updates.

Big fan of this - please don't forget RDM, which has already received an update but also still has merit spells!

[Akihiko_Matsui]

We have no plans to do this at the moment.

Each alter ego has its own strengths and weaknesses, and we have not designed any to be a one-size-fits-all for each and every situation. That is one of the reason we chose to have Pieuje permanently in Afflatus Misery. Part of the fun of the Trust system is in finding the right alter egos for the right situations, and we hope you will have fun exploring this system to its fullest.

[Akihiko_Matsui]

We have no plans to adjust the cooldown times at the moment.

Our thought process behind this is that we want you to choose from among the two merit categories, and if you were able to easily switch on the fly, there would be no reason for us to have these two separate stances, and it would be difficult for each one to properly display its strengths.

[Jerbob]

We have no plans to adjust the cooldown times at the moment.

Our thought process behind this is that we want you to choose from among the two merit categories, and if you were able to easily switch on the fly, there would be no reason for us to have these two separate stances, and it would be difficult for each one to properly display its strengths.

Honestly, there is already no reason for there to be separate stances for WHM. It was a bad idea when it was introduced, and remains so. I say get rid of them entirely.

I know that's not the point that you're trying to get across with this statement, but it's true.

The stances also don't really have strengths and weaknesses. The strength of Misery is that you've moved my old ailment removal tool Sacrifice, which I could previously use at will in Solace, and locked it behind a 1 minute timer. That's a punishment, not a strength, and I hate it. It also comes with the bitter aftertaste that you've removed our key ailment removal tool Esuna as part of the deal, so I'm not inclined to look upon the "strengths and weaknesses" of the stances favourably.

Stances make sense in the following situations:

• Force a player to choose a correct stance for an encounter and ride that stance for 90% of the time.
• Encourage frequent stance swapping to access abilities locked by the stance timer (ostensibly SCH philosophy, but that's a whole different can of worms.)

Neither of these really make sense for WHM. We need all our tools on the table for most fights, so lockouts are pointless. We need to react quickly, so flapping around with slow stance swaps is dangerous, awkward, frustrating, and unwieldy. I hate it.

The only situation where these stances sort of made sense was the front line/back line divide (which these recent chances are moving away from!), but even then, there's no need for an explicit stance job ability. Cura and Esuna already only work when up close. Auspice accuracy/enlight effects obviously only work when not engaged. Was there really any reason for the stance in the first place? If, for mechanical/code reasons, there needs to be some "visible" aspect, make them job traits that are always active, in parallel.

I still maintain that some of these tools (particularly Esuna) needed updating anyway (my previous suggestions covering that), but that's phase 2 of the WHM plan. Phase 1 is still reverting this unwanted change.

I think it's really important to emphasise that faffing about with stances isn't the way to solve player dissatisfaction here. The changes to the spells are the key issue - the stances are just the lockouts that exacerbate the problem. If the stances are too restrictive for these tools to work properly in a decent form, we shouldn't be talking about their timers - they just need to be removed.

Ultimately, I don't really care about the Misery cooldown time because I'm just not going to use it 99.9% of the time. So this hasn't made Misery more accessible to me, as was the intent. It's made it less accessible, and taken away some of my key tools. I hate it.

Please revert these changes and come up with something different, preferably taking into account everyone's feedback here on the forums. Honestly, I'm a little disappointed that the only response to our feedback has been about stance cooldowns so far, because that's really not what 99% of the feedback has been about. I was really hopeful when you guys asked for feedback, but now I'm starting to dread that we're stuck with this accidental nerf.

[Banhammer]

The decision to remove spells from merit categories and to move them to scrolls is a good one.