Creating "Job Abilities" for Throwing, Shield, Parrying, and Blocking

[AyinDygra]

I like the idea of expanding on these basic abilities, since they have really gotten very little attention from SE aside from shields. Currently, the innate skills jobs are given for damage mitigation are only really ever useful on weak monsters where it really doesn't matter that you have those abilities anyway (in most cases).

Having generic defensive commands based on defensive skills is an interesting thought. However, tailoring defensive options to each job is probably a better way to keep balance and cater to their individual needs and play styles. For those who think more shield skills will overpower "Ochain Paladins"... Balancing a job should not be dictated by the best possible gear they can use. That's a gear issue that does not impact every single member of a job.

Shield Skill
Jobs with Shield Skill: Paladin, Warrior, Beastmaster, Thief, Red Mage, White Mage
It would make sense that each of these jobs would have their own unique take on how they make use of shields.

Paladin:
Main source of defense. Constantly using the shield for multiple actions. They already have Shield Mastery, Shield Defense Bonus, and Shield Bash. Your suggestion for a shield-based blind is a good one. Shield Retaliation sounds interesting. Shield Trust could use some tweaking.

Job Ability: Brace
Level 50
Recast: 2min
Duration: 1min or until the next special attack of the enemy.
Knowing a powerful attack is imminent, the Paladin braces for impact. This would ensure blocking a special attack (TP moves of monsters) with the shield, and a higher amount of damage is reduced. In addition, all hits taken while "Cover"ing a specific party member would be "braced" since the Paladin knows exactly what they're getting themselves into.

Job Trait: Deflection
Occasionally, when attacks are blocked by a Paladin's shield, they are completely deflected.
(Damage = 0, like before the Shield changes)
Tiers, level, (percent chance of Deflection)
Deflection I: 25: 3%
Deflection II: 50: 6%
Deflection III: 75: 9%
Deflection IV: 99: 12%
(too high? numbers can always be tweaked)

Warrior:
Really, most warriors use two-handed weapons, but if they really want to take the defensive road, we'd probably have to look to the Vikings as they swung one-handed axes and used shields. Spiked shields would likely be preferred, so they still have offense on their shield arm.

Job Ability: Aggressive Defense
When "Defender" is active, all Shield-blocked hits trigger a retaliatory shield attack. All hits that make it past "Shield block" can trigger a retaliatory shield attack. (this ability can be used at the same time as Retaliation)

Job Ability: Shield Ram
Warriors use their shield to ram into their opponent causing damage and a knock back effect with a short stun. The further away this is used, the stronger the damage and the longer the stun duration. (animation: like a ground-level Dragoon jump or flee.)

Beastmaster:
Shields would likely be most useful to Beastmasters as they try to tame a beast that suddenly turned on them. I'm made to think of a lion tamer with a chair and whip, or police dog trainer in full padded gear, trying to deal with attack dogs. In addition, they might use them like the capes of Matadors to mislead a beast into wasting their attacks by striking the air.

Job Ability: Trainer's Rebuke
For the duration, when the Beastmaster blocks an attack, the enemy temporarily stops auto-attacking. Has a chance to wipe out the enemy's current TP. Combat may be ended by the "tame" ability more easily.

Job Ability: Matador
Draw a monster's attention to your shield and massively increase your evasion rate until the enemy hits. This hit will be blocked by your shield. Increases enmity.

Thief:
The shield is not commonly associated with thieves. However, giving it some thought, it could be useful.

Job Ability: Covert Attack
For the duration, they use their shield to hide the vector of their intended attacks from view of their enemy. This makes it nearly impossible to counterattack, dodge, guard or block these attacks with a shield. Each Covert Attack has a chance to do damage equal to "Sneak Attack." This does not increase accuracy, it reduces the opponent's chance to activate their defensive abilities.

Red Mage:
This job should make good use of the Shield. Having taken on the mantle of the "Mystic Knight" of past games, they are still stuck being primarily mages. They clearly have the potential to be great magical tanks, as opposed to Paladins being the physical tanks.

Job Ability: Magic Shield
Duration: 1min or until the next single target spell hits them.
When a single target spell is cast at the player, their shield will occasionally reflect the spell back at the caster.
* Requires a shield. (not the same as the Reflect spell)
* Will reflect healing spells as well as damaging.

Job Ability: Active Spikes
When a Red Mage has elemental spikes active, they will occasionally strike out on their own, without requiring the Red Mage to take a hit.

White Mage:
Well suited to the front lines, the White Mage has many reasons to make use of their shields.

Job Ability: Shield of Light
For the duration, all hits blocked by the shield trigger a reactive healing effect on the entire party.

Guard Skill
Jobs with Guard Skill: Monk, Puppetmaster
While the skill itself is great in concept, its infrequent activation gives it little relevance to any serious discussion about its utility. Compounding the problem is how hard it is to increase the skill level. Also annoying is that we have to judge its activation based on how much damage we took, or if we evaded an enemy's TP attack, rather than a clear message that Guard is what just helped us.

* Guard needs to activate much more often against enemies where guarding would matter.
* Please change the combat log to indicate "Guarded" and other special combat rounds (like kicks).
* When you guard an enemy TP attack, instead of showing a miss, let us know Guard activated.

Monk:
I suggested this in the Monk forum, but it's fully applicable here. Notice the enhancement to Guard:

Job Ability: Iron Shirt (stance)
Level 50
Duration: 5min
Recast: 5min
This is a tanking stance that entirely switches Monk's focus from attacks to defense. While it reduces a Monk's damage capabilities, it makes up for it with reduced enmity loss and higher enmity gains, so it does not have to rely on damage to keep the enemy's attention.
* Unable to cast spells at all.
* Cannot use "Footwork"
* Guard rate increased.
* Kickattacks disabled, kick attack rate added to guard rate.
* Reduce Damage Taken by 20%
* Reduce enmity loss from taking damage.
* Chance to stun enemy when their attack is guarded.
* During Iron Shirt, the "Boost" ability changes effect to "Raise Defense" until the Monk takes unguarded damage.
When Iron Shirt is activated or wears off, Boost's effect wears off.
* Increase enmity gain (especially from "boost")
* Reduce Chakra's recast when used during Iron Shirt.

Puppetmaster:
Having higher agility than Monks, Puppetmasters can potentially see a higher activation rate of this defensive skill. An additional twist that I'd put on Puppetmaster's version would be new automaton heads.

Thread about new Automaton Heads. These heads are what would give the Puppetmaster their unique ways to defend themselves, specifically, the "Clockwork Sentinel" head.

An ability besides that head:
Job Ability: Loyal Automaton
For the duration, if the Automaton is in melee range of the master, the Automaton will intercept incoming enemy attacks and take "guarded" damage.

Parrying Skill
16/20 jobs have parry skill.
This one would take a bit more work to improve. However, jobs that spring to mind as being capable with melee blades are Red Mage (E skill is so wrong for a magical fencing job) only matched by Samurai and Corsair (swashbuckling pirates), then Ninja, Thief, Dancer, Paladin (pretty high up there in parry potential, I'd say) and Warrior (they'll manage to block a few attacks as they swing away wildly.

Evasion Skill
All 20 jobs have evasion skill.
Hardest job to keep unique, but most of the work has been done already, giving Ninjas shadows, the ultimate form of evasion, Thieves with very high evasion skill and gear and Dancers with very high evasion as well. Monk gets Dodge, and Samurai gets Third Eye. I don't see much room for improvement. This is one of the most useful Combat Skills in the game. An additional benefit of this skill is that it completely evades damage, rather than just reducing damage done.

Throwing Skill
My thought process on Throwing Weapon abilities is a bit different from yours. I go into this topic in a different thread here. To summarize, I think there is a great opportunity to add a unique aspect to each job with Throwing weapon skill, so I put forth a rather in-depth list of the additions I'd make to each job in this respect.

I may update this post with additional ideas in the future.

[kingfury]

@AyinDygra:
A reply of that magnitude with this much feedback deserves an /applaud ^^

Very cool feedback and some great concepts.

[kingfury]

**EDIT TO OP**

-Toe Shot: Causes your next throwing attack to be an attack that may bind or weigh a target down. (Instant Single use) *Toe Shot Example*
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-Shield retaliation: Allows you to reflect damage taken from a successful shield block. (Timed duration of effect) *Shield Retaliation Example*
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-Blinding Shield: Uses the sunlight to reflect a blinding light. Effective with shields that contain metal. (Instant single use) *Blinding Shield Example*

[wish12oz]

Throwing is stupid, not useful, and can't be fixed.
SE also said already they cannot add throwing WS's

Here's the problem with throwing:

Shuriken have a 192 delay.
Kannagi+Kamome have a combined (210+180) 390 delay.
When you hit the delay reduction cap of 80%, this becomes a new delay of 78.
78+78=156, you get slightly more then 2 melee attacks rounds per throw.(throwing delay is 192)
with apoc, /war, brutal, eponas you have triple attack+18%, double attack+18%, which means 54% of the time, you get an extra attack per melee round.
So at +54% melee attacks per round, every time you attack, you get 1 extra attack, because you attack twice every round.
you get slightly more then 2 attack rounds per throw, you get 3 attacks per round.
Your throwing damage needs to be slightly better then 6 melee attacks and give as much tp as 6 melee attacks to be on par with just meleeing.
Throwing comes no where near either of these 2 things, and never will, it's impossible unless they make haste affect ranged attacks.

Even sange is garbage, because it makes you miss 3-8 attacks rounds to use it, and doesn't give as much tp or do as much damage as 3 attack rounds, your ideas for throwing JAs are in the same boat. Except they stun/bind/gravity/whatever, problem there is that those things are entirely not useful. A stun would be useful, but only if it's 100% proc, which yours is not.

EDIT: shield retaliation is the same as that spell I can't remember he name of, except it doesn't increase block rate.

EDIT2:: Maybe I should be more specific, I think I should.

It[INDENT]-Doubled Mark: Causes each of your throwing attacks to hit a target twice. (Timed duration of effect) *Doubled Mark Example*

Even with 100% DA, throwing would not do as much damage as simply meleeing, (see above math for how much a throwing attack needs to do, 6 melee swings worth of damage and tp gain) and it would also take qirmiz tathlum away. Any JA that is designed to increase your damage output, needs to do more damage then simply meleeing, or it's not useful. This JA, is not useful, throwing, is not useful. Even with this JA, you would do more damage and gain more tp simply meleeing, maybe if it made you throw 6 shurikens at once, it would stand a chance, but 2? no way.

This brings us into another point, of just how broken you need to make throwing in order to keep up with meleeing, I just did a glavoid, 75% crit rate, 70 damage melee/hit average, 200 melee/crit average. thats 4.5 crits and 1.5 normal hits to throw 1 shuriken, or 1005 melee damage, and I also would miss out on the TP from those hits, which is 1/3rd of a blade: hi, which was 3.5k average, or another 1100 damage. So basically, by throwing that 1 shuriken, I lost 1000 melee damage and 1100 ws damage, if that shuriken didn't do 2100 damage, it wasn't worth using.

The damage numbers for glavoid were serverly unbuffed btw, give me stalwarts/good food/berserk/minuet/dia/chaos roll/anything etc type of buffs, and they'd be easily be doubled or tripled. The only buff I had was I used a mithkabob, didn't even use berserk.

[Habiki]

Throwing is stupid, not useful, and can't be fixed.
SE also said already they cannot add throwing WS's

Here's the problem with throwing:

Shuriken have a 192 delay.
Kannagi+Kamome have a combined (210+180) 390 delay.
When you hit the delay reduction cap of 80%, this becomes a new delay of 78.
78+78=156, you get slightly more then 2 melee attacks rounds per throw.(throwing delay is 192)
with apoc, /war, brutal, eponas you have triple attack+18%, double attack+18%, which means 54% of the time, you get an extra attack per melee round.
So at +54% melee attacks per round, every time you attack, you get 1 extra attack, because you attack twice every round.
you get slightly more then 2 attack rounds per throw, you get 3 attacks per round.
Your throwing damage needs to be slightly better then 6 melee attacks and give as much tp as 6 melee attacks to be on par with just meleeing.
Throwing comes no where near either of these 2 things, and never will, it's impossible unless they make haste affect ranged attacks.

Even sange is garbage, because it makes you miss 3-8 attacks rounds to use it, and doesn't give as much tp or do as much damage as 3 attack rounds, your ideas for throwing JAs are in the same boat. Except they stun/bind/gravity/whatever, problem there is that those things are entirely not useful. A stun would be useful, but only if it's 100% proc, which yours is not.

EDIT: shield retaliation is the same as that spell I can't remember he name of, except it doesn't increase block rate.

EDIT2:: Maybe I should be more specific, I think I should.


Even with 100% DA, throwing would not do as much damage as simply meleeing, (see above math for how much a throwing attack needs to do, 6 melee swings worth of damage and tp gain) and it would also take qirmiz tathlum away. Any JA that is designed to increase your damage output, needs to do more damage then simply meleeing, or it's not useful. This JA, is not useful, throwing, is not useful. Even with this JA, you would do more damage and gain more tp simply meleeing, maybe if it made you throw 6 shurikens at once, it would stand a chance, but 2? no way.

This brings us into another point, of just how broken you need to make throwing in order to keep up with meleeing, I just did a glavoid, 75% crit rate, 70 damage melee/hit average, 200 melee/crit average. thats 4.5 crits and 1.5 normal hits to throw 1 shuriken, or 1005 melee damage, and I also would miss out on the TP from those hits, which is 1/3rd of a blade: hi, which was 3.5k average, or another 1100 damage. So basically, by throwing that 1 shuriken, I lost 1000 melee damage and 1100 ws damage, if that shuriken didn't do 2100 damage, it wasn't worth using.

Why does it even have to keep up with melee damage if your just using it to pull a mob with some extra damage compared to a boomerrang or chakram. If Utsusemi: San ever gets added i can also see Sange getting more use, why should nin just be limited to melee. Also you should stop casting shadows wish12oz cause it takes away from your dmg potential .

[wish12oz]

Why does it even have to keep up with melee damage if your just using it to pull a mob with some extra damage compared to a boomerrang or chakram. If Utsusemi: San ever gets added i can also see Sange getting more use, why should nin just be limited to melee. Also you should stop casting shadows wish12oz cause it takes away from your dmg potential .

I pretty much don't cast shadows, thanks for pointing out why. In just normal meleeing gear, most mobs acc on you is below 30% anyway, I can easily cure how much damage they do to me with a single WHM without anything beyond atmas.

And why would you pull with a throwing weapon? That's just silly. Provoke would be faster, and kurayami or hojo would be the same speed, but actually do something useful.

Sange makes you miss 3-8 attacks rounds by using it, until it does more damage then 3 attack rounds, it's not worth using. Why would you use a JA designed just to do damage, when it does less then meleeing? Please explain how that makes any sense at all.


EDIT::: At no point did I say ninja needed to be all about melee damage onry. I just pointed out how broken you need to make throwing to make it useful, and why realistically SE will never do it. But hey, if you wanna go RP your favorite Naruto character in FFXI, go right ahead, nothing is stopping you, there's even an NPC or two that will sell you shurikens if you can't find a crafter and some materials.
だってばよ！

[kingfury]

@ wish12oz:
Well luckily there's no argument here since I believe there's just been a misunderstanding about what I'm asking for. That, and you're thinking about throwing's potential in the wrong way as a whole.

The OP is suggesting "Enhancing Abilities" that would bolster the skills in question, not weapon skills.

"It has been suggested before over the years to add weapon skills to things like throwing, and I'm not really sure of the reasons given as to why they can't be, but rather than a ws, perhaps adding Job/Enhancing Abilities that enhance the Throwing experience would be a more logical (easy to implement) approach to such a request."

On the topic of Throwing being useless, it just sounds like you haven't discovered it's proper use and potential. Throwing is in no way designed to match your damage output from melee attacks or TP gain, so that's the first misconception that needs to be address.

*Throwing is 1st, a means to "Agro" monsters for the Provokeless and Non-spell casting job types. For those jobs that have no means of grabbing the attention of monsters other than running up to them and engaging, Throwing allows them the functionality pull from afar, as well as provides some TP for the puller that successfully nails the target.

*Secondly, don't dismiss the TP you gain from a successful throwing attack. Rather than starting from a possible 0 TP at the start of a fight, depending on the weapon, you could start with some TP before even engaging the target and build on from there getting you to 100 faster. In another case, you could be sitting at 90'ish TP before you pull, and potentially reach 100 TP before you engage the monster allowing for an instant WS as you actually begin the fight.

On the topic of making these skills "useful", that's the point of the Thread. The Devs could include new throwing weapons with specific stats that push these possible enhancing abilities even further. Imagine a throwing weapon that had drain stats pegged onto it and had a decent drain amount. The double attack on "Doubled Mark" would pull in some nice HP/MP/TP potential at that point. Especially if it was "Drains TP" ^^. You just have to think outside the box, and pop in some creativity with the mix of ideas.

[Zyeriis]

With the rise of "instant cast" on the horizon (see: apocalypse atma, ironic), I see little reason to not adjust consumable throwing items to be instantly thrown with delay between throwing (and allowing multiple shurikens to be thrown simultaneously). Provoke also doesn't have the same range as other things, even if it is instant, provoke isnt as effective as some people seem to think for pulling (since you have to be closer to do it). Telling a ninja they shouldn't use shurikens should be like telling a samurai they shouldn't have a zanshin build. It should still be possible.

Also, kingfury changes signatures too much. /stops poking the bear.

[kingfury]

@ Zyerlis:
lol I didn't know there was a hidden rule on how long it should stay the same ^^ I have a lot of FFXI art I've made over the years! >< Until they make galleries for us to use, /shrugs lol

[Zyeriis]

@ Zyerlis:
lol I didn't know there was a hidden rule on how long it should stay the same ^^ I have a lot of FFXI art I've made over the years! >< Until they make galleries for us to use, /shrugs lol

It was a joke about how people complained about your sig before, and now you change it constantly...(conformist! :Q)