Potency buff armchair design wishlist!

Just for fun armchair design, throw whatever potency you think would make things balanced among all the jobs within their roles.

Melee DPS

Monk
-Dragon Kick potency reduced from 320 to 310
-True Strike potency increased from 300 to 310.

Reduces the power of the memekick rotation and slightly reduces Monk's Perfect balance burst. Loses maybe 90 potency every 2 minutes. Other melee will catch up once people gear out of skillspeed.


Reaper
-Communio potency increased from 1000 to 1100.

Reaper really doesn't need much help despite doomsaying. Gains about 300 potency every 2 minutes


Physical Ranged

Dancer
-Fountain, Cascade, Bladeshower, Windmill, Fan Dance I, Saber Dance potency increased by 10. (includes enhanced versions)
-Standard step potency increased from 720 to 800
-Tillana potency increased from 360 to 400

All around buffs meant to help close the huge gap between ranged and melee. Potency buffs are around 880ish every 2 minutes(including Dancer self buff)

Bard
-Burst shot, Refulgent arrow Ladon's Bite, Shadow Bite potency increased by 10.
-Caustic Bite, Storm Bite, Iron Jaws initial hit potency increased by 50.
-Apex arrow max increased from 500 to 600.
-Blast Arrow potency increased from 600 to 700.

More all around buffs meant to close the gap between ranged and melee. Slightly more impact than Dancer buffs to help equalize them at around 970ish every 2 minutes.

Machinist
-Clean Shot, Slug Shot, Split Shot, Scattergun potency increased by 10.
-Flamethrower potency increased to 90.
-Drill, Air Anchor, Chain Saw potency increased from 580 to 600.
-Wildfire Potency per charge reduced from 220 to 180 and now detonates after 5 attacks. Wildfire is now a guaranteed critical direct hit.
-At level 70, gain Blast Charge, a 1 second cast time 1.5 second recast 360 potency attack that does 75% falloff aoe damage and reduces the cooldown of Ricochet and Gauss round by 15 seconds. Can only be cast during Hypercharge and immediately ends the effect. Can move while casting. Potency increases to 480 at level 84.

A significantly higher buff than the other two that adds more flair to Machinist Hypercharge. This is almost a 1500+ potency buff within the first 2 minutes without taking into account the scaling buff to Wildfire.

[/I]
Caster Ranged

Black Mage
-Fire III and Blizzard III potency increased from 260 to 290.
-Thunder I/III initial hit potency increased from 30/50 to 80/100. Thunder II/IV initial potency increased from 50 to 80.

These are actually pretty significant buffs that help BLM at low levels and closes the gap between the average BLM at high levels and ones that find every way to circumvent casting Fire/Blizzard III. Worth around maybe 500+ potency when factoring in Astral/Umbral modifiers.

Summoner
-Elemental Mastery moved to level 72 from level 86
-Energy Drain cooldown reduced from 60 to 40 seconds at level 86
-Summon Ifrit/Garuda/Titan II potency increased from 700 to 800

Absolutely massive buff that gives Summoner 1400 potency every 2 minutes. Energy Drain at 40 seconds still lines up with the 2nd Bahamut phase at 2 minutes.

Red Mage
-Potency of all spells and Reprise increased by 20.
-Potency of combo increased from 220-290-470-580-680-750 to 250-320-500-630-730-800.
-Reprise no longer costs mana.
-Reprise grants Spellforce stacks at level 80. Scorch and Resolution consume a stack of Spellforce to increase potency by 40 and generate an additional 3 Black and White mana

Another massive buff that gives about 1450 potency every 2 minutes along with a mobility buff with the Reprise change.

Tanks

Warrior
Fell Cleave (NOT inner Chaos) potency increased from 460 to 480.
Upheaval potency increased from 360 to 370.
Primal Rend Potency increased from 700 to 800.

200 potency buff every two minutes on an auto crits and about 260 from non-auto crit.

Paladin
-Fast Blade, Riot Blade, Goring Blade, Rage of Halone, Atonement potency increased by 10.
-Spirits Within/Expiation/Circle of Scorn now deal unaspected damage.
-Expiation potency increased from 340 to 450
-Circle of Scorn potency increased from 100 to 150. DoT potency increased from 30 to 40.

This is around a total of 570 potency buff over 2 minutes.

Most jobs retain their relative positions but the current massive 8-10% dps gap gets squashed to to 4-5%. RDM, SMN and MCH would move in front of DNC and BRD. Tank dps difference would also get squashed to be around 1.5-3% at the high end. The end goal being that dps checks should be negligible if everyone is playing correctly rather than being based on meta.

For once, I'm happy to see such a post.

You don't modify too much classes, and instead, you touch the potency that can be a problem here and there.

It doesn't feel like you made that post without some research and math first, which is great, and add credibility.

You didn't touch GNB and DRK, and you are right, they don't need it.

One thing for paladin I would like to change is the Divine veil :

Divine Veil is quite hard to use if you don't synergize well with your healers. I suggest to make it similar to the shield the war has.

The effect would be :

10% of the PLD as shield for everyone (PALADIN INCLUDED) for 30 sec.
Potency of heal to 400 for everyone.

Thus allow the Paladin to be much more efficient in the defensive way and don't steal the spotlight from the WAR, and he won't need to rely on the healers to proc his shield because this version will have effect immediatly.

Why do you even want to get rid of the memekick rotation? People genuinely like it because it's so dumb. That just gets into "lolnofunallowed" territory. It's not even optimal, just viable.

There are two reasons I think MNK needs this change: Monks scale better with gear than any other job in the game due to how Chakra works, and the auto-crit buff ended up pushing them too far ahead of the curve to the point that they're top dps in the second raid tier, so they need a cherry tap nerf right now before the dps gap gets even worse (I doubt this would knock them from the top spot). Also, right now it's kind of awkward that what's supposed to be the first combo step does more damage than the next ones and this equalizes it so that Dragon Kick, True Strike, and Snap Punch are all 310 potency.

Also, it's just a 3% nerf. Memekick still works compared to any other off-the wall rotation.

It's dangerous to outright buff F3 and B3 potencies on BLM because those spells might start to outweigh what's supposed to be your bread and butter despite their long cast times, but it'd be cool if they ignored the opposite-aspect damage penalty or even explicitly applied their own buff before calculating damage (perhaps in special cases, like only at 0 MP and no hearts for F3 and only at 3 hearts and 90+% MP for B3) in order to make swapping aspects the usual way less of a dps hit.

Letting Thunder duration stack to double its base would be a nice change in lieu of increasing the spell's actual potency.

F3 and B3 only ever have to be below F4 and B4 potencies and they're already currently 50 potency below these two.

There's no DoT that double stacks in the game for a good reason. DoT damage is calculated on application so what would happen is that any job that had it would simply double stack them during raid buffs. RPR's maintenance debuff isn't a DoT so that's why they can get away with it. The T3 initial damage buff is also meant to go along with the F3 buff which makes F3 deal 52 more potency under AF3, keeping the value of Sharpcast roughly where it currently is.

The only things I'd add to the OP would be:

- (MCH) Make Flamethrower generate heat.
- (SMN) Move Elemental Mastery to the level 61-70 range instead

SMN had a potency tax '' pet tax'' arround 20% on the elemental summons instant damage,
so 700-> 800 potency buff is more 80 real potency .

they might just remove the pet tax.

The problem is that the current etherflow system is not good on the actual SMN and dont fit at all, and should be replaced by another system later in 7.0 I hope , that's why I don't think it's wise to reduce the energy drain/siphon cooldown at 40s,
because it would cause some balancing to do on painflare/siphon, and I'm not sure it will make the rotation more fun.

But what I would like them to change above all is that ifrit and garuda have actually less DPS/s than titan for less mobility. personally I would prefer that they make buff on ifrit and garuda DPS 'filler'.


on the other hand yes elemental mastery should be lvl 72 and not 86, the 86 should be an increase in the damage of elemental mastery.

A shame flamethrower potency would be trash 1v1.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Raikai

The only things I'd add to the OP would be:

- (MCH) Make Flamethrower generate heat.
- (SMN) Move Elemental Mastery to the level 61-70 range instead

---

The problem is that the level 70 summoner is extremely strong in old content like ultimates fight, so it's not possible to put the trait below lvl 70 without rebalancing overall lvl 50-70 spells potency.

that would be too much work, and it's better they spend it to change how work the summoner in 7.0 .

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by remiff

The problem is that the level 70 summoner is extremely strong in old content like ultimates fight, so it's not possible to put the trait below lvl 70 without rebalancing overall lvl 50-70 spells potency.

that would be too much work, and it's better they spend it to change how work the summoner in 7.0 .

---

Oh, you're right... I forgot how they're strong at the level 70 tier. Hopefully 7.0 adjustments can make the pre- Elemental Mastery summoner a little less boring.

Some things I'd like to add for DNC to enhance earlier level gameplay:

1. Move Flourish down to level 54 from 72 to help facilitate more activity where the job otherwise feels quite slow at low levels. If Flourish is too strong at 54, it could also be given a 90 second cooldown that can later decrease via trait if need be.

2. Move Fan Dance IV down to level 72 from 86 to restore some of that lost gameplay component to Shadowbringers content from the EW Flourish change.

3. Move Saber Dance down to level 50 from level 76 and potentially decrease the potency at that level, bringing it back to 480 at level 76 via trait.

These changes might require additional potency rebalancing at lower levels, perhaps lowering base rotation potencies and then updating them via trait at an appropriate threshold, but they would make synched content as well as older ultimates more enjoyable as DNC. This doesn't get talked about much cause there's not really much wrong with DNC, but I just feel it's too back loaded in terms of gameplay elements.

What I would like buffed/changed on MCH, in roughly order of priority.


1. Base potency increases: Simple, boring maybe, but necessary. MCH already has a decent burst phase, so I think it should get a potency buff to the core combo skills.
Heated Split Shot: 200 > 220
Heated Slug Shot: 280 > 300
Heated Clean Shot: 360 > 380
This would still be below the potencies of Ninja’s core combo, which is a ‘utility dps’, so as a ‘selfish ranged dps’ I don’t feel this is pushing MCH up too far.


2. Wildfire: This desperately needs something to make it feel more impactful. A decent explosion animation would be a nice touch, but an additional affect
Either a similar potency buff…

220 x 5 = 1100 > 240 x 5 = 1200

OR

Target takes 5% more damage.

Basically, this would be half of the value of Ninja’s Mug debuff and would serve to inject a little raid dps buff into the job. Balancing issues are obviously whether it should stack with Mug’s debuff, giving 10% more damage for 10s? Or if not offsetting the debuffs which would affect the 2 min burst window and potentially make NIN/MCH incompatible.
Alternatively, it could draw from Trick Attack instead, and inflict 10% more damage by just you. This would effectively be similar to the flat potency buff, but applied to Heated Shot/Gauss Round/Ricochet instead of the single Wildfire dump at the end.


3. Bishop Autoturret: Bring this back in its new PVP iteration to provide a small damage increase along with defensive utility.

Ground targeted placement. Range: 10y, Duration 15s, Recast: 90s.
Delivers Autoattacks to targets in range with a potency of 50. (basically, a second Bioblaster that you can use in a single target context as well)
Additional Effect: Creates a barrier that absorbs damage equivalent to a heal of 300 potency, every 3 seconds. Duration: 6s

This barrier is functionally similar to SGE’s Haima/Panhaima, but obviously weaker, with no reimbursement for unused shielding, and only if the party members remain within the area of effect. Effectively MCH’s answer to DNC’s Improvised Finish.


4. Flamethrower: Everyone wants something done to Flamethrower and everyone has different ideas, so I’m not expecting this to be the end all solution, but my idea would be this.

Flamethrower gets a potency buff to 120 for the first 5 ticks then down to 80 for the last 5 ticks, plus it shares a cooldown with Air Anchor, and generates 10 Battery Gauge after 5 ticks have completed.

It sucks that you’re forced to use Air Anchor in a dungeon pull to generate Battery, when you ideally want to be damaging all mobs at once so not to rip aggro off the tank. This makes Flamethrower the AoE alternative to Air Anchor and the potency buff makes it more worth using. It also reduces the time you ‘need’ to channel it to 5s. You can still continue to 10s if literally everything else is on cooldown, but if you get your Bioblaster back or something, then you can drop it after 5s.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Atmaweapon510

Paladin
-Spirits Within/Expiation/Circle of Scorn now deal unaspected damage.

---

Paladin is in less danger of this being a problem because after a high enough level they have a spellcasting phase and would be assigned to the magically vulnerable target option anyway; but generally speaking you have to be careful with changing physical jobs' actions' damage type to magical because it can have the side effect of reflecting or negating the attack entirely on some fights. While I can't think of any current encounters off the top of my head, there do exist past encounters where this matters (Leviathan, Void Ark, Coils) so it is a possible consideration for the future.