Your normal attacks aren't as useless as they seem.

[Zhinse]

Day 3 with these new mechanics. Trying new things everyday. Bear with me, going to be a long post.

Was just thinking to myself lately, "Why would they make our secondary normal attacks like heavy thrust and pierce have a 60 second recast?" In other words, what is the purpose for this nerf?

With the update it seems like overall damage we inflict has gone up to combat our less frequent strikes. The Secondary normals (which i will now refer to SNs) used to take up more stamina than a regular attack, but now they have no delay and will launch of command, doing about the same amount of damage a normal attack does. If our SNs where on a 5 sec timer then you'd be able to attack even faster than you did with the stamina bar for more damage. Even at 15 sec timer it would be the case. Does that justify a 60 second cool down? That is debatable and I don't really have a say in it.

The Utility of our SNs outside of their native effects such as AoE, binding, or enfeebling is that they grant an instant melee attack that can be used for

• Gaining extra TP outside of geting hit and hitting the enemy with your AA
• Finishing a Monster off before your next AA.

The big utility is TP buildup. I'm playing a lancer, if i successfully hit my AA, pierce, and heavy thrust, I should be set to launch any 1k weapon skill i want to. Leading to more damage/debuff/battle regimen opportunities.

Open to the debate of the 60 second cool down, discussion of strategy, or whatever, i just thought this was interesting.

[Raim]

Doesn't the cooldown being this long put a huge damper on the Battle Regimens that require basic attacks? It feels like something they completely forgot to take into account until the 'future' patch that makes changes to BR.

[Zhinse]

I don't think they Even thought about Battle regimens or made anything that is dependent on battle regimens in this patch. The battle regimens that I often use is Ws>Ws, which multiplies the second WS by 1.5x-2x damage. I now have the ability to instantly set this up when i need it every minute.

normal>normal, Normal>Magic attack are very useful, even if the effect isn't that strong, every little bit counts. They have to be very careful to balance those debuffs, since they're relatively easy to do (no TP cost). I wish they were a bit more powerful, but oh well.

Extra Tp is great for lnc to set up comrade in arms for everyone in the party, which leads to more tp generation!

[origamikitsune]

On the contrary, this works (mostly) well in BRs. MRD is the one that gets really screwed, but LNC, ARC, the timing is perfect. If you do a DEF down effect with "normal" BR, it lasts 30 seconds. There is time to (in a well oiled machine with lots of TP built up) get two WS BRs in. MRD gets screwed from what I understand with a 1min timer on the basic attack they have? LNC has three, so it works fine. Thats been the experience for me. Not much change to our overall BR tactics.

[Physic]

yes we can figure a way for the skills to serve some purpose sometimes, but they are no longer adding much uniqueness to our classes, or much comparitive utility.

having to save these skills for the BR that used to be the easy, no hassle quick BR debuff is backwards and lowers their utility if it was actually a useful skill, This whole solution, or nerf or whatever they thought they were doing with basic attacks on long timers is a bad idea.

if it would cause problems they should change it to a stance, i cant see this mechanic adding anything to the classes, maybe their intent is to just make them skills you press every once in awhile for extra dmg, but that is a very stupid execution, and ruins the utility of most of those skills.

[Zhinse]

yes we can figure a way for the skills to serve some purpose sometimes, but they are no longer adding much uniqueness to our classes, or much comparitive utility.

having to save these skills for the BR that used to be the easy, no hassle quick BR debuff is backwards and lowers their utility if it was actually a useful skill, This whole solution, or nerf or whatever they thought they were doing with basic attacks on long timers is a bad idea.

if it would cause problems they should change it to a stance, i cant see this mechanic adding anything to the classes, maybe their intent is to just make them skills you press every once in awhile for extra dmg, but that is a very stupid execution, and ruins the utility of most of those skills.

I agree with everything you said. However i would have to say i use some of these normal attacks way more now than i used to. Of course the extra ones that you buy with guild marks were fantastic and really added to the class identity and I am sad to see that utility go away. I see that Pugilist got hit the hardest since Pummel is probably one of the best normals in the game.

But like i said, i use the other normals now way more now than before because i don't have to sacrifice my faster main attack anymore to use it. Do i think the timer should be 60 seconds? No, i think it should be closer to 30, but it shouldn't be below 20.

A stance system would be an interesting solution to this whole ordeal. But i'm not going to start playing armchair developer.

[SuzakuCMX]

They're redoing battle regimens anyways, why would they make something for a current system if it's going to be removed/remade anyways?

Also I crit a mob for 200 damage with my CON wand. Very wtf.

[MariyaShidou]

Doesn't the cooldown being this long put a huge damper on the Battle Regimens that require basic attacks? It feels like something they completely forgot to take into account until the 'future' patch that makes changes to BR.

Well to be honest you only need BR with normal attack every 30 secs, which is exactly the CD of these secondary attack. You only need those specific BR to lower Def/Mdef and stop TP generation, which can all be done within one single BR.