[dev1080] Ifrit battle

[Teknoman]

Maybe the flame thrower (best attack?) will be a count down or charge up attack of sorts (long casting animation so people can buff up or move out of the way)? If they dont want the fight to get too hectic, he could probably move around the battle area in certain phases/at certain HP levels.

Hopefully they make use of elemental strength, weaknesses, absorb, and nullify factors during these battles.

[Peregrine]

We already know the strategy to beat a very hard Ifrit.
Thaumaturges, melees you just sit in the corner and don't do anything.

[Arcell]

That's assuming Emulate will work as well on it as it does on other things. That blue fire could have different elemental properties. Also assuming they don't "fix" emulate.

Also Ifrit could likely have a number of physical attacks in addition to anything with a magical affinity.

[Peregrine]

That's assuming Emulate will work as well on it as it does on other things. That blue fire could have different elemental properties. Also assuming they don't "fix" emulate.

Also Ifrit could likely have a number of physical attacks in addition to anything with a magical affinity.

Assuming anything, the solution will be to either stack archers against it or stack thaumaturges. Plus or minus a token glad. The difficulty in adding epic battles is that the game's not balanced enough to handle that maturely.

Pugilists, lancers, and marauders will be told to stay home if that fight is as hard as everyone hopes it will be. The first youtube bragging videos "First Ifrit kill" "fastest Ifrit kill"...will be a pack of archers or thaumaturges, almost guaranteed. Can almost guarantee to you how the fight goes.

Bufff up. They'll immediately take off more HP than most setups even live long enough to take off with multishot and spamming weaponskills from that tp, or chainspellign shadowsear. They'll wail on it for another 5 minutes if they can. If they can't the glad will run it around the room while they DoT and ranged attack it, then they just multishot/chainspell again when it goes into berserk mode at 20% and effectively just disable the berserk mode that kills everyone else.

That's not innovation and effort. That's horribly derivative and expected. It still amuses me that we all pretend we DON'T have these plans all worked out already, and aren't just waiting on an excuse to hold job setups up on a pedestal of accomplishment. You all know as well as I do that difficult content will be sidestepped here by utilizing the same three jobs, and that a party of glad, mrd, lnc, pug, con, con, thm is screwed if hard content comes up. Tell the mrd, lnc, pug and at least one of the cons to take a rain check and make the party glad arc arc arc arc thm thm thm. There. MUCH better. Right?

Don't feel bad for feeling better about the 2nd setup. It's the developers' faults.

We already know the solutions to any challenging content they have up their sleeves unless it's something the industry hasn't seen yet. Any traditional challenge can be easily solved with a combination of gladiators, archers, and thaumaturges.

If the thaumaturge and archer fails the ifrit fight more than twice with a balanced setup, they're going to take each other for the win and leave you behind. That's how imbalance goes. If they have to choose between sticking with the pugilist and losing, and getting another archer and winning, the pugilist is out of luck.

[Teknoman]

They are completely changing all the combat skill efficiency, possibly how the skills function, equipment stats, as well as adding jobs...and i'm sure the ifrit battle will end up taking advantage of that...so the assumptions about archers and thaumaturge ruling are shaky at best.

I really doubt you'll see anyone trying to take on the Ifrit battle with the normal classes, unless they already have them to 50 and just want to test the waters (fires?) with the battle.

Not to mention the boss will probably have elemental weaknesses, so you'd want anything that could cast water/ice spells in the first place. Also just because there is an "easy" or a "widely used" way to do something, doesnt mean everyone will adhere to that.

Lots of people told me as a Blue Mage I wouldn't be able to participate in alot of fights. Guess what, we found a way (Thief included).

[Mack]

I think and I hope it'll be part of a dungeon, the first thing I thought of was FFVIII dungeon leading to Ifrit at the end (although that dungeon is way too short) or temples like FFXII's Ranperre's Tomb leading to Belias. Would be so awesome if they do it in the same vein as those.

[Rydin]

Bufff up. They'll immediately take off more HP than most setups even live long enough to take off with multishot and spamming weaponskills from that tp, or chainspellign shadowsear. They'll wail on it for another 5 minutes if they can. If they can't the glad will run it around the room while they DoT and ranged attack it, then they just multishot/chainspell again when it goes into berserk mode at 20% and effectively just disable the berserk mode that kills everyone else.

Unless you're thrown into an instanced battle where Ifrit starts attacking, so you can't "Buff up and pull" or "Buff up and run in"
Raging Strike and Ferocity gets an archer killed... He's out of the instance... Thaum trying to get close enough to cast emulate.. BAM.. one shotted by a physical attack... Out of the instance...

Do we know that will be the way... no... but we don't know that it wont be like it either....
No matter how balanced or unbalanced a game is, I could build a boss that your "perfect Party" couldn't beat
An NM that counters ranged attacks
An NM with very low elemental resistance but SUPER HIGH mind and Mag.def.
A Boss resistant to DoTs
An NM that is healed by DoTs
A MOB that sustains very little damage until you incap a certain part... So starting off with multishot does nothing
A MOB with an ability called "Short Term Memory Loss" that resets everyone's hate to 0
I really could do this all day

[Oscillate_Wildly]

The last group fight from the storyline was....extremely disappointing. Three of us took down the zombies while chatting about useless things, even when they glitched. I know that the crafters have to have a roll somewhere in all this, but by making the battles so useless and forgettable, just sad.
When parley is more difficult you know you have an issue.

[Elkwood]

This is a chance to add in a story related challenge to the players, and I for one hope that it happens.

I'm talking about walking into it and being obliterated due to not knowing strategies to defeat him. Having to take a step back and go, hmm ok guys maybe we should try this... To feel a sense of accomplishment, there needs to be difficulty, and have us hanging on by the skin of our teeth. Nearly one shot the tank with magic DMG if you must in order to accomplish this, creating a sense of urgency, perhaps forcing us to use those elemental attributes that we have been given.

Most of have witnessed Ifrit already, now show us what he is capable of so that he lives up to the lore that has been given to us.

Feel free to discuss further battle ideas, as I am sure others have their own.

Hells ya add in some environmental challenges with ifrit and I am all for it.

[Magiksmurf]

Is it possible that summoner is one of the unlock-able jobs? And as such we must fight Ifrit in order to summon him?

Saw that Ifrit fight thing + possible rumored summoner job coming made me jizzed all over... now if you will excuse me i gotta go clean up that mess i just did. ><