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Originally Posted by
Kitru
It's basically identical to the MNK/PGL system.
This was intended. The devs used the concept of martial arts kata that can flow into different attacks with PGL/MNK, and I think a similar idea would fit Merc/SAM/Yojinbo.
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The only difference would be if abilities that aren't labelled as such break the combo, which would need to be clarified. Even with your Yojinbo changes, it wouldn't be all that different because all it would be doing is adding the equivalent of "third form and second form bonus" to the second form attacks.
I looked at this more in context of Merc compared to GLA and MRD rather than Merc vs PGL. The former is a tank, the latter is DPS through and through. That said, I'm not prone to attacks of unique snowflake-ism, and instead look for things that work and try to give them a slightly different spin.
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Few problems with this. First off, Focus shouldn't reduce GCD by a flat amount. All effects like that should be a percent reduction in attack speed.
If you make it a percentage all that makes it is subject to getting messed with via Skill Speed. I just feel a flat amount with reduced potency per attack would keep it close enough to WAR and PLD that it doesn't take over the tanking game. The again, the fact that tank gear doesn't have a ton of skill speed gear and light DPS gear like PGL's does may be able to come into play and keep things balanced, with SAM using the former and Yojinbo using the latter.
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Second, it's pretty arbitrary given that you're having Iron Flash provide 2 stacks and Strike provide 5 stacks (I'm assuming that Enhanced Strike was meant to refer to Strike instead of Cut) so that you're basically going to have it up at all times (5 stacks means that you have the full combo plus 2 non-combo attacks).
This is intended as well.
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I'm not entirely sure what was intended here because your wording is vague and roundabout.
Fancy way of increasing parry chance. I couldn't decide on a number, and looking ahead I was thinking LNC should be one of SAM's subclases. I could make it 100% parry chance for the duration (would work similarly to Rampart).
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Tank CDs wouldn't work out well like this because 2 attacks happen almost instantly. You'd have to activate it less than a second before a lot of big attacks or else waste it, for all intents and purposes.
Brace is more for things like Mountain Buster, admitedly. I can recognize that it wouldn't be useful if you're getting beat on by multiple enemies, though.
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These are the only AoEs that Mercenary gets, and they're both combo based. It's bad explicitly bad design since you're forcing the player to use the combo as opposed to allowing them to choose between AoE spamming and using a more efficient methodology (which is what happens in every other case of AoEs being tied to combos).
I disagree here. The idea was opening with Strike or Iron Flash, and with the reduced GCD quickly go into Dragon Fang => Tornado if you need AoE. Merc would have access to Flash from GLA, so at low levels you could suplement with that.
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For Dragon Fang, the effect of Focus has it doing the equivalent of 125 potency damage and you're having it apply in 360*. You started it off as Overpower and then buffed the living hell out of it, especially since you're giving it nearly 3 times the area of effect compared to Flash and roughly 9 times that of Overpower.
I guess I wasn't paying attention to Flash's tooltip. I'll have to look at that and adjust it.
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You just copied Maim. It's something of a recurring theme that you didn't really do anything new, but just copied what another class did with a minor deviation.
This is intended. Granted, Cut resolves my pet peeve with Maim because Maim doesn't flow into aggro generation at all (which sucks horribly when DPS don't realize that to maximize threat you HAVE to get Maim up), whereas Merc's combo system's version of it would flow because if I wanted to I could bridge with Cut and close with Turning Swallow and still get some added enmity out of the deal.
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I would be very surprised if the devs implemented this given that they didn't have Provoke do this when they could quite easily have done so.
The undertone of this part of my suggestion is "change Provoke to match this ability". The way it is currently designed makes tank swaps needlessly difficult.
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As with Brace, mitigation for a limited number of attacks is a horrible idea for a tank. Even worse, a single attack at 50% every 3 minutes is even worse than Brace. Even at 75%, it means next to nothing because it's a single attack.
Again, I'm thinking of it being used for stuff like Mountain Buster or very high damage attacks. I guess it could be turned into a regular mitigation CD (45% damage reduction for 8 seconds or something).
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Tempered Will on a lower CD.
Tempered Will prevents knockbacks, whereas this doesn't.
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Combo attacks with CDs are bad ideas. At 2 minutes, the damage is a joke and the effect is mediocre at best, especially given that all you did was copy Virus.
The bread and butter of Merc and SAM is supposed to be Strike => Bridge => Turning Swallow. Read my notes on Nine Dragons, by the way.
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It's just Perfect Balance.
I didn't realize this until after I finished typing up Merc. Much like with PGL, a system with restrictions like Merc's could use a CD that temporarily lifts the restrictions.
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You don't have Iron Flash labelled as an Opener
Read the traits, please.
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The problem is that it's not a lose structure. Your only Opener is Strike and 2 of the 3 Closers are on CDs. Even if you removed the CDs, all you'd be doing is mimicking WAR: Strike>Cut>Nine Dragons is SP and Strike>Demon Cut>Turning Swallow is BB. Since Cut lasts 20 seconds (which is just over 3 combo cycles), it even copies the WAR rotation pretty much explicitly.
I guess I could have called it free-flow instead.
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They're not trump cards because they're CDs so weak that they're almost laughable.
I was admitedly conservative with the numbers.
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Broken as hell. You copied Shield Oath (since, as a tank stance, it's supposed to have an enmity increase on it that you forgot) and then, on top of that, provided a parry buff that's nigh upon ludicrous. I can understand the desire to have it scale with Strength, but doing so just makes Strength provide more parry chance than parry rating, which is just saying "ignore everything but Strength", which is a bad idea for a tank class.
Lack of +enmity was a typo, which I'll fix. The parry buff is taking into account the fact that you don't have shield blocks at all to help mitigate incoming damage. Parry rating in its current incarnation is pretty terrible because of the fact that it tiers rather than gradually increasing parry chance defined by the different between player level and mob level. The alternatives would be fixing parry in a discernable way (which given the comment by the devs about not wanting to have ratings translate to percentages, is not likely to happen) or having Seigan increase the amount of benefit SAM gets from parry rating. PLD has a parry+shield, WAR has active mitigation and self heals, SAM should have better/stronger parries.
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Reducing damage from area attacks means next to nothing
You've never been in a situation where stray AoE can get you killed. You can chalk it up to bad healers, but again, it's there to make up for SAM having no invincibility.
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"Counter attack" has never meant "take no damage" in the annals of the FF series so I'm not sure where you're getting that from.
Final Fantasy XI.
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Another point, all melee DoW have access to a stun and some other form of CC or utility as well. You have provided neither. The closest you get is Heavy and KB on the same attack, neither of which are especially useful to melee.
This is more due to me not wanting utility shared by both SAM and Yojinbo. Nine Dragons kind of falls into that category, but as I said that's in an iffy spot.
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I have *always* seen the term translated as "Yojimbo" and that's also how the FF series has translated the term historically.
I write it exactly as it is written. Kind of like how senpai/先輩 is sometimes romanized as sempai. I stick to the former.
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Assuming it's supposed to be off-GCD like all of the other stuns, Brutal Swing is 5 seconds, Steel Peak is 4 seconds, an Leg Sweep is 3 seconds. Tanks are supposed to have better stunning capabilities, based upon what we've seen currently, and you're providing the strongest stun in the game to a DPS class.
You wanted stuns and utility. There you go. >.>
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So they get a second Mercy Stroke?
MRD shouldn't have a monopoly on Execute-type attacks. I also never said anything about Yojinbo getting access to MRD abilities.
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I find it rather strange that you provided the weapon set that favors parry and counter-attacking to the DPS and the one that emphasizes strong direct attacks to the tank. It makes *way* more sense for it to be the other way around. You don't really provide a reason for the two weapon types to be there either. They would be mechanically identical but require twice as many animations to be made, which is a really bad idea, given that the problem with adding classes is the additional workload. It's entirely arbitrary, from a design standpoint, and adds nothing to the actual play. It's not as if the same type of weapon can't have different stat allocations: just look at the ACN/SMN/SCH books.
This isn't so much about stats as it is about aesthetics. I was also thinking of this when I decided Yojinbo should use daisho.
I'll admit that I have to use the gear equipped by SMN and SCH to differentiate them because if you were to look at the book you still wouldn't know which is which. I also kept in mind the crooks vs wands and cudgels vs staves thing CNJ and THM have going, and wish that was a little more widespread. It's also why I've pushed for GLA loosing daggers and getting great swords as a secondary weapon.