Eight Fixes to Make These Changes Good.

[Viridiana]

SO, now your defense of Auto-Attack is that it makes being an Archer easier? We must be world apart about what makes a game good. I personally do not need the game to do it for me. I like there to be a little Skill involved in my game play. Archer was the last DD in the game that offer real player dependent skill. It required the user to moderate there damage and time there attacks. What you are advocating is watching your TP bar fill up and hitting a weapon skill. You are advocating the removal of skill, class uniqueness, engaging combat, and Potency. You would sacrifice all of that so that your class isn't to hard?

We have different definitions of skill, apparently. Pushing the 1 key every 3.5 seconds or so is no more skillful than saying "bang" out loud every 3.5 seconds or so. There's really no skill to it to speak of. Letting the game handle that for you (and more efficiently, at that) opens up room for you to be doing other things instead.

For example, if I went to Ifrit right now on my PGL, I could do things like popping Raging Strike, Ferocity, and Blindside while I still only have 1500 TP in preparation for a 3k TP Victimize. I know that all of those abilities will stay active until I have enough TP to do the attack, and then I can use them again sooner for a different attack. If I tried to do that on ARC, well, I can either Light Shot and waste the buffs, or Barrage and hope it does significant damage. Yes, I realize ARC doesn't have a native 3k TP skill, but even if it did, you wouldn't be able to do what I'm talking about with the current setup. On the other hand, even on my PGL, I might mess up and hit Light Strike instead of Victimize, thus wasting my buffs, so I have to actually pay attention to what I'm doing.

Of course, that's not even getting into the animation lock discussion. It's well known that LNC is basically the favored class for Ifrit, but your vaunted Light Shot is why ARC is the bottom of the barrel. At least the other classes can continue their auto attacks in the seconds leading up to Ifrit's attacks, whereas ARC has to be careful on its Light Shots. Note that, in this case, "be careful" actually means "stop attacking."

I'm not advocating "watching [my] TP bar fill up and hitting a weapon skill." I'm advocating using some preliminary buffs while the TP fills and damage rolls in, then starting in on the combos while watching my aggro. It takes just as much skill; we're only just now getting class uniqueness; combat will be about the same level of activity; and I expect ARC potency to go up, if anything. The fact is, ARC isn't "hard" now.

[Alerith]

Of course, that's not even getting into the animation lock discussion. It's well known that LNC is basically the favored class for Ifrit, but your vaunted Light Shot is why ARC is the bottom of the barrel. At least the other classes can continue their auto attacks in the seconds leading up to Ifrit's attacks, whereas ARC has to be careful on its Light Shots. Note that, in this case, "be careful" actually means "stop attacking."

To expand upon this, we don't have an answer on whether or not your character will automatically stand in place when firing. Chances are it won't, since none of the auto-attacks from any other class force this. This will increase your survivability and might even make you MORE desirable for the Ifrit fight since you can move at a greater distance and still attack while any other job will end up missing out on a few hits because they have to run out of their AA range.

There. A tactic for Ifrit. Even though you have said the tactics for ARC would go out the window, I have presented one to you. Why invite 5 LNC who have to miss several seconds of attacking when you can invite 5 ARCs who never have to stop attacking and can still move?