3.3~ Job Feedback & Future Changes

A general fix across "all" classes I'd like to see is to increase TP/MP generation proportional to Skill/Spell speed and reduce animation delay in the same vein.

Frankly, I tend to avoid skill speed simply because of these two factors. I burn out much quicker and activating OGCD abilities becomes harder. This is...not exactly ideal IMO, since, well...it is fun to operate on a sub 2 second GCD! But when you deal with constant TP issues where you usually had none before...yeah.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I wonder what else they could have done though? Have Nocturnal Sect place a healing spell into the future, timing it to go off after a certain duration or when the target would otherwise die? Have Diurnal Sect place roll-over ramp-up heals, increasing their periodic tick strength and duration with successive casts? Get rid of Sects entirely and... ?

---

They shouldn't have even had Sects, IMO. That just screams laziness or inability to balance a new type of healer with the ones we currently have. I think the one unique ability AST has is Synastry...the ability for it to be a toggle that can be placed on a player of their choosing would have been a unique healing mechanic, I think (remove the healing + buff, obviously).

A channeling healer, or a true HoT-based healer would also have been options, I think.

EDIT: I don't want to derail this thread any further, as I'm aware that any major changes to AST gameplay at this point are just a pipe dream. This is why my original suggestions were more in the vein of card QoL buffs, as while I find AST healing to be pretty uninspired in terms of design, in execution it works reasonably well (dat Noct Sect, tho). Cards are the one unique aspect to AST gameplay, so overall I'd like to see more focus on them in the future.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zojha

Frankly, I tend to avoid skill speed simply because of these two factors. I burn out much quicker and activating OGCD abilities becomes harder. This is...not exactly ideal IMO, since, well...it is fun to operate on a sub 2 second GCD! But when you deal with constant TP issues where you usually had none before...yeah.

---

I don't main any TP-using classes, so bear with me, but what about possibly sacking accuracy in favor of a stat that increases max TP pool and the natural rate of TP refresh, like how piety is for healers? Of course, I have no idea what purpose said stat could hold for caster DPS, but it's a thought I've had for a little while now. Acc seems to be a dead stat past cap (and caps are arbitrary and don't serve much purpose), so I think dumping it as a concept in favor of a TP-relevant stat might be nice.

This isn't really a job change, but making macros able to queue actions (as if it was not a macro) would greatly improve the usability of skills like Cover. Cover practically requires a mouseover (or other) macro and it means it fires off slower than all your non-macroed skills. Same thing with stuff like Salted Earth in a macro.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo

I don't main any TP-using classes, so bear with me, but what about possibly sacking accuracy in favor of a stat that increases max TP pool and the natural rate of TP refresh, like how piety is for healers?

---

For the most part, it would probably not be a favored stat. The people I usually need to goad are tanks without some sort of TP refresh, dead people, speedrunning warriors/AoE spamming people or people who have a lot of skill speed on their gear. Everyone else manages on their usual TP pool for the most part. Moreover, it would probably compete with stats that add more damage and as we all know, DPS is our metagame.

It would serve as crutch for skill speed of course, but people would most likely simply prefer to not dump budget into one "bad" stat to compensate for the downside of another "bad" stat and simply stack crit and det as they already do, thus minimizing the reason why one might want a TP stat in the first place.

Well. I like most of the stuff, just need few adjustments.


DARK KNIGHT
- Allow the activation of Blood weapon on Grit. No sense lock it.
- Allow the Soul Eater HP drain also without Grit. It is not OP, at all.
- Increase the amount of MP recover by Syphon Strike, at least in Dark Side mode. It is very low. To make a idea, having 0 MP you need 7-8 Syphon Strike to recover the full MP. If you have Dark Side up draining Mp, the amount increase. Or, alternatively, make Critical Hits affect also the MP recover. If you land a critical, recover double MP.
- For the love of god, fix Parry. If you don't want add Samurai as Parry tank, make then DRK be a Parry tank. Even adding a magic parry >.> <.<
- Make Grit OGC, like Warrior stances.

MONK
- Meditation as OGC, to be able charge chakra in middle of combos.
- Perfect Balance CD is too high. Should be reduced.

PALADIN
- Make Sword Oath and Shield Oath OGC too.
- Make Sword Oath +10% damage or whatever isntead of double autoattack.

BARD
- Change Wandered Minuet, really ,is just shit. A Bard should be able to run over all ground.

NINJA
- THe duration of Shadow Fang DoT should be a bit longer (+3 seconds or so).
- Recast time of Dream Within a Dream and Duality should be a bit shorter.


BLACK MAGE
- Duration of Astral Fire or Umbral Ice should be a bit longer.
- Return Flare to his original potency.

WHITE MAGE
- The duration of Aero II DoT should be higher
- Recast time of Shroud of Saints should be shorter.
- Return Holy to his original potency.
- Return Stoneskin trait to his original form (20% damage absorb isntead of shorter cast time).

That's all.

I don't feel like I can speak about the finer details of most Jobs, but as a DRK main, ignoring a wishlist of changed ability names (seriously, they suck and are trying too hard), DRK really only has a few issues I think should be resolved.

First and foremost, their damage type. Should we get Samurai, we'll be at five sources of strong slashing-type physical damage (AST also is slashing). Blunt wouldn't work since the majority of a Dark Knight's weapons are thin or heavy enough to function as swords, magic would. I've said this way too many times, but Dark Knight really should just deal magic damage, it would set them apart and remove their reliance on Ninjas and Warriors to maximize their damage output, as well as just make a bit more sense thematically. Also, there's only really two strong sources of magical damage currently, Summoner and Black Mage, while yes, we may get more in the future, and yes, healers can do magic damage as well, we shouldn't have to rely on a healer to do magical damage.

The second issue is one that many people bring up, and that is that DRK is just weak as an off-tank. Paladins and Warriors both gain clear benefits by removing themselves from the limelight. For Paladin, it's the biggest increase in damage output of the three tanks and allows them to more easily spot heal. For Warrior, they no longer have to focus on surviving and can simply go all out, using their defensive cooldowns offensively as well as contribute by aiding with mechanics where they can by abusing their high HP, defenses, and health regeneration. Dark Knights meanwhile don't really gain much by not tanking, they can drop Grit until they need it, use Blood Weapon and... well, that's about it.

Additionally, Dark Knights don't have the same constant boosts that other tanks do, they have Delirium, but if they're not tanking, they lose Reprisal. If you (for some reason) end up running a Dark Knight and a Monk together, the Dark Knight loses Delirium's entire purpose as well. Delirium really needs to offer more to the off-tanking Dark Knight, maybe if they got a change in damage type, it could act as a magical Storm's Eye/Dancing Edge? Or simply just give Dark Knights something more influential, like -10% ability and spell damage on Delirium instead of the reduced INT.

Finally, let's talk Parry as a stat. Parry is dumb. The anti-magic tank based on parrying that can not parry magic, but can magically induce insanity with a sword swing is dumber. The anti-magic tank based on parrying that can not parry magic, that has an ability to increase their chance to parry, but can not assure a parry is just the dumbest thing ever. Can we please, for the love of the Dawn Father, have the Dark Arts effect on Dark Dance changed to an MP-consuming, 60 second-long recast version of Shelltron? The lack of a reliable third physical damage reduction ability on Dark Knight was exceptionally painful for Sephirot EX and there will be fights in the future where this lack will hurt again. Let's just nip the problem in the bud.

Lastly, let's just have a TL;DR:

• Change main damage type to magical.
• Make Delirium better through either making it a magical Storm's Eye or changing its effect to something more reliable.
• Parry sucks, fix please.
• Dark Knight should be able to parry magic. Their image is one of taking down corrupt mages after all.
• Dark Dance's Dark Arts effect should be an auto-parry.

Edit:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Xlantaa

PALADIN
- Make Sword Oath +10% damage or whatever instead of double auto-attack.

---

Two things, one, it isn't a double auto-attack, Sword Oath adds a 50 potency attack to every auto-attack. Two, Paladin has one of the fastest auto-attacks in the game at a standardized delay of 2.24 seconds between each attack before skill speed. For reference, Ninja and Monk, the two Jobs based on attacking quickly, have weapons usually with a delay that is 2.4 seconds or higher. Simply increasing a Paladin's damage output by 10% while under the effect of Sword Oath would be a nerf to Paladin's damage output, not a buff.

To give you an idea of how strong Sword Oath is currently, let's say for a moment that skill speed didn't effect auto-attack delays, and that we had a Paladin who had stacked enough skill speed to be at a 2.24 second recast on their weaponskills. The only weaponskill that would get close to dealing 50 extra potency with this change would be Royal Authority (350 potency) with a mere 35 additional potency. A Paladin to make up that lost additional potency on more than every weaponskill would have to be hitting on every recast for a ridiculous amount of potency.

If Sword Oath doesn't seem powerful to you yet, think of it as boosting the Paladin's damage by 15% (as compared to their nigh-default -15% from Shield Oath) and then adding an additional 50 potency to every weaponskill they use.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo

I don't main any TP-using classes, so bear with me, but what about possibly sacking accuracy in favor of a stat that increases max TP pool and the natural rate of TP refresh, like how piety is for healers? Of course, I have no idea what purpose said stat could hold for caster DPS, but it's a thought I've had for a little while now. Acc seems to be a dead stat past cap (and caps are arbitrary and don't serve much purpose), so I think dumping it as a concept in favor of a TP-relevant stat might be nice.

---

This would make class / utility TP sources pointless on one end and the stat itself pointless on the other. It would also do nothing to reduce the penalty from Skill Speed, a weirdly exponential stat that we lack the secondary stat potency on to ever have its weight exceed crit, even while it hugely penalizes one's TP pool.

I'd rather just have TP refresh at 50 TP (+ 80% Goad/Paeon/ProRook bonus TP) per GCD. Revert certain of the TP cost reductions meant to counter unavoidable skill speed on gear. So, same as Zojha said. Speedy classes would run out of TP faster only when using high-cost abilities, such as AoEs, but would also restore their TP faster from bonus sources thereafter.

I do however think that doing the same for MP would be a bit too powerful. Healers do not necessarily use 100% uptime, unlike anyone else until starved, and their MP cost / tick variance is far higher than those of ST physical DPS rotations. At a 2.3 GCD, one would already be gaining 9.2% more MP per minute. I'd like to compare what that is point per point against Piety, but I think it'd be certain enough that Spell Speed would at that point wipe out all other healer stats, apart from Crit on Scholars. And that's to say nothing how it would improve the BLM's escape from their Umbral Ice rotational string, making Spell Speed further king for them. If MP were based on the GCD itself rather than Spell Speed, this would also further improve AST's Diurnal MP restoration, which feels above average already. And then add in effects from Ballad or Promoted Bishop.

Though lackluster, I feel like it'd be fine for Spell Speed to simply increase bonus MP generation, as a percentage, from MP-restoring abilities like Shroud of Saints, Aetherflow, Energy Drain, and Luminiferous Aether.

- Wide Volley (Bard): Change it to a 250 potency AoE ability with a cooldown of 30 seconds. Right now with its absurd TP cost, there's hardly any reason to use it over Quick Nock, of which both skills share the same potency anyway (with Wide Volley costing 20 more TP).
- Stoneskin II (WHM): Changed to a 60 second CD ability, and now usable in combat.
- Shroud of Saints (WHM): Refresh duration increased to 21 seconds.

Those are pretty much the only gripes that immediately come to mind.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SaitoHikari

- Wide Volley (Bard): Change it to a 250 potency AoE ability with a cooldown of 30 seconds. Right now with its absurd TP cost, there's hardly any reason to use it over Quick Nock, of which both skills share the same potency anyway (with Wide Volley costing 20 more TP).
- Stoneskin II (WHM): Changed to a 60 second CD ability, and now usable in combat.
- Shroud of Saints (WHM): Refresh duration increased to 21 seconds.

Those are pretty much the only gripes that immediately come to mind.

---

Would you intend on keeping the SSII cooldown on the GCD outside of combat? It was originally introduced as a QoL function for WHMs in 8-man content, IIRC.