Fix a Problem... in the Simplest Way Possible!

I feel like trying to have a little fun, here. This is slightly inspired by an earlier thread to solve a problem using the worst solution possible. This one, however, I'd like to see if we can present a problem and then provide a solution that would require the least amount of change within the game to achieve. Let's avoid restructuring entire classes, changing party compositions for existing content, and greatly changing the mechanics of a fight(s). Let's instead present solutions that are equivalent to, say, flipping a switch. Hopefully my initial examples do this correctly.

Problem: Parry sucks.
Solution: You can now Parry magic.

Problem: Vitality is the main stat for Tanks but many Tanks are deliberately avoiding it.
Solution: Vitality determines Physical Damage for Tanks instead of Strength.

Problem: Grade IV Materia are too expensive.
Solution: Increase chance of converting all gear into Grade IV materia.

Problem: Monks lose Greased Lightning due to deliberate boss untargetability.
Solution: If no vulnerable targets are on the field, freeze the Greased Lightning timer.

Problem: Skill/Spell Speed increases resource consumption.
Solution: Reduce length of resource restoration tick based on current Skill/Spell Speed.

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Let's avoid restructuring entire classes, changing party compositions for existing content, and greatly changing the mechanics of a fight(s).

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No!

But seriously, on yours, I like the VIT idea... It would at least make ... less informed people... understand the usefulness of tank DPS in situations where high HP wasn't required, through forcing it on them :D. your Spell speed/Skill speed ideas are something I thought were nice and thought of too... Higher Skill/spell Speed can as a bonus grant higher resource regeneration rate, balancing it out. This would be especially nice for SMN :X. Now, IDK if I can make mine... short... or simple.. but I'll try.


Problem: Open world is beautiful, but so very little reason to explore.
Solution: More stuff like the Elixir vase NPC. Reward exploration. (Perhaps similar to GW2 open world chests)

Problem: Achievement points - Useless. (Though certain achievements giving items = Good design)
Solution: Achievement point currency, similar to GW2.

Problem: Hunting logs are an awesome concept but are one and done deals which sucks.
Solution: Re-doable once a day for the Exp rewards.

Problem: Contagion required for any realistic sustained SMN DPS
Solution: Make it a SMN ability, not a pets. Replace Garudas Contagion with a spell speed buff for Garuda.

Problem: Ifrit has Blaze Spikes... Why...
Solution: Replace Blaze spikes with either Enfire or Skill Speed+ ability for himself.

I have plenty of solutions to problems, but really, none of them are simple or easy... or quick... but yah.

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Originally Posted by Donjo

Problem: Parry sucks.
Solution: You can now Parry magic..

Problem: Vitality is the main stat for Tanks but many Tanks are deliberately avoiding it.
Solution: Vitality determines Physical Damage for Tanks instead of Strength.

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I'll deal with these two since they are related. Tanks main stats are physical because most damage done on a tank is physical. There will be some odd attacks that are magic to make a boss 'interesting'. Any big magic attack is meant to be taken full or a cooldown to be used.

The problem I have with parry is that it's identical, from what I see, to block. We can't increase block rate apart from our shield. Parry is basically a weak block from what I can see. What I suggest is making parry an avoidance stat rather than a mitigation stat. Mitigation stats reduce the damage, like (current) parry and block. An avoidance stat means the player takes no damage for the attack, it misses, or if you like avoids it.

No, vitality increases health. Simple. No a big deal really. You gear for as much health so that a boss doesn't one shot you, and your healers have enough time to get you back up to full. Sadly this is the go to stat with tanks, not just in FF14 but lot's of MMOs. Better to survive more hits than make the healers life easy, yeah. IMO wrong.

Well if tanks don't go for vitality they should go for parry, after all taking damage is their thing and taking less is good right... A tanks job is not to deal damage it is to hold hate. With proper gear they can do that just fine so if you make vitality provide attack stats then what does strength so... the same? That's silly.

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Originally Posted by Donjo

Problem: Grade IV Materia are too expensive.
Solution: Increase chance of converting all gear into Grade IV materia.

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It's expensive because it's intended to be rare. SE redid the drop rates for G4 from lower ilevel gear because it was to easy to get. I'm casually doing my Novus scroll and have not done G4 yet while I save up gil and just do my G3 for now.

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Originally Posted by Donjo

Problem: Monks lose Greased Lightning due to deliberate boss untargetability.
Solution: If no vulnerable targets are on the field, freeze the Greased Lightning timer.

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I'll agree with you, the GL idea is broken. Not after launch they increased the duration of GL but still with a game that's basically dodge it's so easy to lose stacks. Yes, the way to counter that is to increase base damage but it's a sticky plaster. Maybe 3.x will redo monks; I hope so. We need a rework not a game mechanics change for one class buff.

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Originally Posted by Donjo

Problem: Skill/Spell Speed increases resource consumption.
Solution: Reduce length of resource restoration tick based on current Skill/Spell Speed.

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I think the speed stat is broken. We have god awfully long global cooldowns at a 2.5 base and it makes combat slow. For most classes it's not too bad but it is noticed when for example you're a tank and you have to do an action but if you've just hit one off it's a agonising 2.5 sec wait and by the time it comes off of global it's too late; it's similar for healing. The global is also a problem for casts. If you're almost finished a cast and you get interrupted just before then it's another 2.5 secs. Five seconds to cast a spell. Crap. Now BLM for example moving often can really hurt. They received a subsequent buff but it makes a class 'unfun' if you spend a quarter of your time casting and the rest moving.

The current conversion rate is just poor considering how little it changes but I believe that's because the global is so large. Even a two second global is much better and would mean a noticeable difference with little spell speed. TP regen would have to be adjusted but it shouldn't change rates relatively.

I believe for TP that doing your normal combo it should be close to TP neutral. Only special attacks or cooldowns should use large amounts of TP and then you would go empty. If you have no TP then you can only do a normal combo. There's a good example of this already. As a gladiator you have a stun on a small cooldown and you can stun when it comes off cooldown 'till your hearts content but... if you do you'll go out of TP very fast

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Originally Posted by Saccharin

Well if tanks don't go for vitality they should go for parry, after all taking damage is their thing and taking less is good right... A tanks job is not to deal damage it is to hold hate. With proper gear they can do that just fine so if you make vitality provide attack stats then what does strength so... the same? That's silly.

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I meant that Vitality augments Tank Damage instead of Strength, so Strength would do nothing for a Tank but provide Block/Parry reduction tiers while still being the primary damage stat of Monks and Dragoons. There is precedent of this being possible in Dexterity providing general Ranged Damage but Ninja Melee damage too. This would place Tanks on equal footing with all other Jobs in the sense that their highest effectiveness can only be obtained by maxing their Main Stat. They would also be dealing as much damage as SE expects them to, but that opinion assumes that the rampant use of Strength Accessories in the highest level content is not something they planned for.

I disagree with freezing monk's stack timer on bosses because even though it is annoying, monks are balanced around losing their stacks a few times a fight. It is also a good thing for monks to lose their stacks at a few points because it makes openers and burst more important overall instead of just sustain in the same way that add phases make AoE more important.

However, I completely agree that skill/spell speed should improve resource regeneration rate as well. All other stats improve your character without penalties with the exception of skill speed. In most cases, skill speed feels more like a punishment than a benefit as you just run yourself out of TP and need more songs, or have slow your attacks down negating the stat.

I don't think Vitality should be made better for tanks, because I think we need more stat and gearing variety. I'd love to see, for example, Dexterity become a viable secondary stat for tanks. One thing I do think is a big problem for tanks is that, other than defense (which increases very slowly), you don't really have stats that make you take less damage than other tanks. Basically, at times it feels like your healer's gear matters way more than yours. Like you said, OP, parry sucks. If you included some flat damage mitigation with the parry stat, so that a fully loaded parry tank is taking something like 5-10% less damage from every attack (but also dealing less damage due to lack of det and crit), I think it'd go a long way toward giving some real gear choices. Of course, parrying magic would help as well.

Problem: Rmt spams flood the chat
Solution: set status to Busy

Problem: Busy status block friend tells
Solution: Blame SE for poor design

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Originally Posted by Saccharin

Well if tanks don't go for vitality they should go for parry, after all taking damage is their thing and taking less is good right... A tanks job is not to deal damage it is to hold hate. With proper gear they can do that just fine so if you make vitality provide attack stats then what does strength so... the same? That's silly.

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I'd agree with you if the scaling on parry wasn't somewhere between crap and utter crap.

Not to mention that whole not being able to parry magic attacks thing.

No duels
-Add duels

:O whoa I just supplied anyone interested in PvP with endless amounts of content from something extremely simple!

Not enough vanity gear
-Remove all glamour restrictions

The only thing I would fix is how much a paladin can cure, I would like to be able at least to hold my own if the healer dies and give me a fighting chance to survive and the ability to raise someone in the middle of the fight.

Paladin's lose the ability to raise when they are in battle which is lame.

Basically you lose your healers you are boned, no fighting chance to get back on your feet.
So in other words just tie my hands behind my back and let the monster beat the crap out of me even though we beat it down to 20%

A tank in FFXI felt like a tank, heal yourself, pop invincible raise healer if needed and protect your party members from tons of monsters here we get a tank who is a pansy alone.

Even if you are a good tank here, if your healers die if by some strange luck you win, you are lucky but 90% of the time you are brown bread.

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Originally Posted by Saccharin

Well if tanks don't go for vitality they should go for parry, after all taking damage is their thing and taking less is good right... A tanks job is not to deal damage it is to hold hate.

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Not really. Any HP that isn't required to survive that fight is a wasted resource. Tanks should ideally be looking to get rid of as much VIT and Parry as possible in order to increase their DPS contribution to the raid. In most cases, using Sword Oath or not using Vengeance is a good choice as well. Any and all damage increase, whether it be from the DPS, the tanks or the healers, is the biggest contribution you can bring to your raid. The higher the raid DPS, the shorter the fight, and the shorter the fight, the less chance of somebody screwing up or my cat showing up to block my screen.

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Originally Posted by Donjo

Problem: Parry sucks.
Solution: You can now Parry magic.

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The main reason for why parry sucks because it's RNG. Adding magic parry doesn't change this.
Other factors weighing against parry include:
-Poor scaling
-Equipment with parry will result in lower DPS output than equipment alternatives that have offensive stats instead of parry
-Block takes precedence over parry

There are no tank killer hits (Ravensbeak, Mountain Buster, Death Sentence...etc.) that require parry to live through.
Parry cannot be predicted, so healers & tanks can and should react to upcoming large hits as though the hit won't be parried. (e.g. Popping suitable cooldowns, adding mitigation like Adlo, strong heal afterwards to top off...etc.)

On Parry, I'd rather see it turned into a Counter type stat... As in, you parry an attack and get a free hit in afterwards, perhaps with a Shield Swipe style offensive skill (if not just an extra autoattack could work). That could potentially make it more worthwhile compared to Det/Crit/etc., top it off by giving Sword Oath an increased Parry rate because, well... You parry with your blade, no? Would still be random, but a random damage increase is more appealing to me at least. Scaling would still be an issue perhaps.

We can talk about the proper way to handle Parry all we want, but my entire idea here was to propose a simple possible solution to something. Setting a toggle on magic attacks to "true" to make them parryable is a simple solution. Changing the scaling of the stat or adding additional effects to a Parry proc aren't quite so simple.

Problem: Want more inventory, new hairstyle, more body customization options, new mounts, new content, more houses, stop DCing, etc.
Solution: Upgrade your freaking servers, SE.

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Originally Posted by Bluevann

Problem: Want more inventory, new hairstyle, more body customization options, new mounts, new content, more houses, stop DCing, etc.
Solution: Upgrade your freaking servers, SE.

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They mentioned they're already doing that. Server upgrades take time, and at this juncture with a truly massive content upgrade on the way in the form of Heavensward, it's easier for them to get the upgrades lined up for that and get them RIGHT than it is to implement them now and have inevitable issues.


That said, my solution:
Blaze Spikes on Ifrit:
It's now a toggled group buff

Mitigation issues.
VIT now contributes to block rates.

And if 3.0 doesn't add a MNK buff that instantly gives 3 stacks of GL as one of their new skills, I'll eat my hat.
Oh, and when it does, people will complain and pine for the old days when they had to work to maintain it. Because players are never happy.

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Originally Posted by kyuven

And if 3.0 doesn't add a MNK buff that instantly gives 3 stacks of GL as one of their new skills, I'll eat my hat.
Oh, and when it does, people will complain and pine for the old days when they had to work to maintain it. Because players are never happy.

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they could just toggle Axe Kick (or Somersault, I forget which one) from PVP-only to PVE. Maybe replace Haymaker with it.