Allow Weaponskills from off-hand weapons with 50%- damage

[hordecore]

allow us to use ws from our off-hand weapons with reduced damage

[Arcon]

I don't actually think this is a bad idea. Could see some uses in that, offhand sword for Flat Blade or something similar, could also used for WS points. Of course people would use it for Abyssea procs, but I don't see how it is better or worse than what we already have.

[Zyeriis]

I don't actually think this is a bad idea. Could see some uses in that, offhand sword for Flat Blade or something similar, could also used for WS points. Of course people would use it for Abyssea procs, but I don't see how it is better or worse than what we already have.

You lost me when you posted in a hordecore thread. If you're going for abyssea procs just equip it to main hand?

[Tamoa]

I completely fail to see the point in being able to ws with offhand weapon for reduced damage.

Inb4 "to deal less damage while trying to proc blue so you don't kill the nm before proc".

[Xilk]

I completely fail to see the point in being able to ws with offhand weapon for reduced damage.

Inb4 "to deal less damage while trying to proc blue so you don't kill the nm before proc".

bst/dnc offhand twilight knife, then I can use Aeolian Edge for Amberlight/multikill w/out sacrificing Rampage.
OR, you can proc on multiple weapons w/out switching and losing tp.

you build tp on weapon and someone else gets a hint about what ws type it is. You can have that for your off-hand.
Its gives one more dynamic control. I think its a neat little idea.

blue mage, sword and club would be another handy time to have either ws type.

[Arcon]

You lost me when you posted in a hordecore thread. If you're going for abyssea procs just equip it to main hand?

Despite the fact that he's an obvious troll he posted more useful ideas than some other members on here. Also, now you posted too.

Getting TP with offhand often sucks due to low skill rating, and quite possibly being underskilled even for the already low cap. Club is a nice example. So dual wielding a dagger and club would help TP gain a lot, making it easier to proc.

And changing weapons is just tedious if you need different kinds of WS all the time, especially if you only decide to AoE mid fight, and you do it frequently. Sometimes it's just nice to be prepared for either situation. What about Skillchain properties, trying to open a level 3 skillchain with one hand, close it with the other. Every bit of TP counts, you can't just switch weapons to make it work.

Not saying it's a grave issue or anything, just saying I could see uses for it. In fact, I don't see why it shouldn't be possible at all, offhand has no other penalties, so apparently FFXI characters aren't just right-handed. So why not allow it, even at full strength?

Inb4 "to deal less damage while trying to proc blue so you don't kill the nm before proc".

People think putting "Inb4" in front of an argument makes it less valid. I remember a few cases just off the top of my head where this would have been useful. Just last week we held Empousa at 1% for our DRK, 2 WSs, we chose the wrong one, mob dead. It happens, not even that rarely.

[Tamoa]

Just last week we held Empousa at 1% for our DRK, 2 WSs, we chose the wrong one, mob dead. It happens, not even that rarely.

In this case I'm assuming you were going for blue and it was either GS or scythe, and those are 2h weapons last I checked. And if you haven't triggered blue by 1% then it's rather pointless to try in my opinion, since 1 blue ws is likely to 1shot the mob.

[Arcon]

I'd like to first say, Comparing losing ~10TP from switching weapons for procing, and Wasting 20 minutes walking when you could teleport, was probably in the top 10 of "Dumbest comparison I've read online".

It wasn't a quantitive comparison, it was a qualitative analogy. To show a qualitative, not quantitive, similarity in one respect, namely using laziness as an excuse for wanting the game to run smoother. This involves automating certain game elements, transportation is one thing, handling weapon skills another. If either of those can provide the same functionality (reaching a certain location in one case, using a different type of weapon skill in the other case), that enhances the flow of the game, while requiring less time and/or effort (in this case both). Whether or not they're quantitively comparable is a whole different story.

And this is not just about losing TP, this is about having to change weapons in the first place. Especially if you have to change weapons several times and you don't have a macro for it (like me, for example). Admittedly, staggering monsters in Abyssea is the prime example here, if I wanted to do 4 red stagger weapon skills, I would have to switch between Club/Sword and Sword/Club repeatedly (since club is underskilled and I use sword for faster TP gain). Then you wanna try different WS, but you aren't sure if the others were clean, so you change again. And changing is tedious in any way, because you can't change those weapons when both are equipped, so you have to unequip one first. And with the confusing targeting within the equipment menu even that can take a while. And in the time it takes for fully change, especially if you mess up once, it can cost you even more than 20% TP. It's still not comparable to 20 minutes like in the teleport case, but it's still annoying.

Now, While you make a decent argument, I'm still going to say it generally won't help as many people as you make it sound..

My exact words were:

[..] someone may get a remote use out of it [..]

I'm not even saying it's useful or that the world will benefit greatly from it. I'm not even saying it's worth implementing, I'm just saying it's not a retarded idea and there are marginal uses for it. Remember DNC using Joyeuse in offhand? I've even seen COR with that. Nice to have an extra stun available (even for DNC, if Violent Flourish isn't up). Another use, as mentioned before, would be self-skillchaining to create higher tier skillchains with an offhand weapon skill. Or, if we go with the OP's idea of doing less damage with the off-hand, could even be used to delay the death of a monster to get more weapon skills in.

In this case I'm assuming you were going for blue and it was either GS or scythe, and those are 2h weapons last I checked. And if you haven't triggered blue by 1% then it's rather pointless to try in my opinion, since 1 blue ws is likely to 1shot the mob.

It was just an example, it could have as well been a single-handed weapon skill. And there are tons of mobs who wouldn't even raise an eyebrow if they got hit with an underskilled one-handed blue weapon skill, even at 1% (Empousa being one of them). Also, that's precisely why reducing damage for an offhand weapon skill would help in this case.

But as I said, usefulness wasn't even my main arguments for having it. Those would be logic (because it would make sense, no one says player characters are right-handed, since they attack just as accurate and hard with both hands, and even iff, the damage reduction would compensate for that), making weapon skills more readily available, as well as less tedious to use and it being easy to implement.

And besides that, Theres still the issue of Weaponskill Animations. Using Evisceration With a Katana, or Savage Blade with a Club will just look and sound stupid.

Why would you even perform it with the main hand? It's an offhand weapon skill, so flip the animation sideways and do it with the left hand. No extra animating or adjusting required, just mirror the entire thing.

Even if you got past how unusual it would look to use some of the WS with a different main weapon, theres the programming stand-point, I'm sure there was a reason it was not added from the beginning.

There's probably a reason why they didn't, but I doubt it's programming related. Wouldn't be the first time (or second, or third, etc.) that SE didn't include something that would have been easy to add. As I said, there already has to be a function which produces available weapon skills depending on the weapon, all they'd have to do is run it twice. It already is done with CORs and RNGs, as someone pointed out before, so it definitely is possible.

Again, I'm not saying it should be implemented, it would only help me marginally and there's plenty of other things they should be worrying about first, I'm just not a fan of people talking down good ideas for reasons that contribute nothing to the issue at hand.

[Sama]

I completely fail to see the point in being able to ws with offhand weapon for reduced damage.

Inb4 "to deal less damage while trying to proc blue so you don't kill the nm before proc".

100% agree. It's pointless, up to the point that less damage is being performed. We should just get regular damage or no off-hand ws.

[Tamoa]

Ok so, elemental weaponskills used for red procs normally don't deal a hell of a lot of damage. Have one or maybe two DDs with discernment using an elemental ws until one of them gets hint. Hint will narrow it down to only a few weaponskills, sometimes to one specific (Freezebite, Earth Crusher, Red Lotus Blade, Raiden Thrust).

To proc blue, we all know that depends on time of day. So if it's slashing, there would be no reason for a blue mage to offhand club for ws (not that I have any idea which club weaponskills a blue mage has access to). If it's blunt, there would be no reason to offhand dagger/sword/katana for ws. And so on and so forth.

Bst/dnc offhanding Twilight Knife for Aeolian Edge would still be sacrificing Rampage as I would assume offhand ws would still require 100%tp and would use that tp? Then you might as well mainhand it and get full damage, instead of reduced damage as suggested by the OP?