Ninja: Walk in shadow.

[NoctisUmbra]

No it isn't your exact reasoning for balancing stats is too make it fair for accessories working with an even amount of classes. So if one VIT accessory works across 4 classes, against DEX on two classes the same issue would come up that tanking accessories have more use than DEX accessories.

No, because there are always either 1 or 2 tanks in a given party. VIT is the tanking stat. Tanks either get all the tanking gear on an instance where they solo, or they compete against 1 other tank. Regardless of how many tanking classes are added, that doesn't change.

However, there are 2-6 DPS in any given party for content, and among them there is variance in primary stats. This variance has to be balanced to a reasonable degree.

[JakzChurchill]

No, because there are always either 1 or 2 tanks in a given party. VIT is the tanking stat. Tanks either get all the tanking gear on an instance where they solo, or they compete against 1 other tank. Regardless of how many tanking classes are added, that doesn't change.

However, there are 2-6 DPS in any given party for content, and among them there is variance in primary stats. This variance has to be balanced to a reasonable degree.

I cannot honestly agree with your point, having mained Monk, Dragoon, Black Mage and Scholar I have dealt with fighting for gear a lot, the times when i don't worry about the fight? when I play Monk and Dragoon.


why? Because they only share half their gear, and even then it's only in places where accessories drop that even happens. By this point adding an extra STR based class is of benefit to STR classes as it decreases the likelyhood of there being a duplicate of your class in the party. If monk and dragoon shared all their gear I would be more inclined to agree with you, but they don't.


Either way a standard set up that the content is designed for is 2-3 melee, 1 caster and 1 bard. So adding an extra melee doesn't change how many you will fight against in a party, it will just annoy bards who are now fighting against a melee.

[NoctisUmbra]

The direction the discussion has taken lately here may give the impression that stat balance between DPS jobs is the only, or perhaps even the primary reason I expect DEX to be the primary stat for NIN. This is false, and I think it would be best if I made a post in an attempt to succinctly explain my reasoning in general.

First, the matter of why I have been seemingly focusing on the whole stat balance discussion lately. The reason really has been that, to my surprise, some people have had great difficulty understanding what I've tried to explain. I do not enjoy being misunderstood, so I have repeatedly tried to clarify or elaborate to make it clearer... and to a point I will continue to do so.

---

First, there are a number of things I have deduced from the various sources of information we have regarding Rogue>Ninja. From here on, I will just say NIN when referring to the class an it's job as it's pretty much a given they will function identically regarding their primary stat.

We of course had the initial dat mine of traits for NIN. These were fairly early, so of course they are subject to change (particularly the DEX buffs since they are essentially copy paste from other jobs just replacing the primary stat); however there are some interesting traits in there that shed a new light on the job now that we have other sources of info.

The anniversary demo clip is filled with hints that go well beyond the obvious. Everybody notices the combo chains as they light up on the hotbar, what skills are offGCD and what skills apply buffs or debuffs. Also, another thing that captured attention right away is how the mudras work and how ninjutsu is casted. The more astute observers will take note of TP costs and GCD duration.

Taking a look at the TP costs, we can immediately notice that they are on the low side - similar to the costs associated with MNK. We know why MNK has such low costs - because MNK operates at a reasonably faster pace than other jobs. It is for this reason, combined with the % damage buff of their GL3 buff that they have low TP costs and low potency skills.

However, when we take a look at the GCD of NIN, it doesn't seem to be as fast as a GL3 MNK. This immediately suggests that NIN will not be one to have much of a TP issue. That isn't it, though. If we go back to the dat mined traits, there is a trait that increases base TP regeneration.

What does this all mean? NIN will have next to no TP issues in most scenarios. What this further implies is, giving NIN access to Invigorate would be overkill, or at the very least redundant. This is further evidence to support the likelihood, as others have come to expect, that the 2 sub classes for NIN will be ARC and PGL.


Now, if we explore the attributes STR and DEX and their design back in beta versus how they function now, we can arrive at some interesting conclusions there, too.

During FFXIV ARR Beta, STR and DEX functioned differently from how they do now. The tooltips, however, were essentially the same. STR determined how much damage a character would do with melee physical attacks. DEX determined how much damage a character would do with ranged physical attacks. What this meant, in action, was that skills such as Piercing Talon, Shield Lob or Tomahawk were based on DEX, whereas things such as an ARC switching to punches for AA in close range was based on STR.

Come launch, that whole thing changed. Damage formulas were reworked so that there wasn't any dependency on more than a single stat. How? Attack Power. Attack Power is the stat that is used in determining how much damage a character will do with physical attacks, melee or ranged. If you take a look at how the Attack Power scales right now, it should immediately be obvious. For every job except BRD, Attack Power is of identical value to their STR attribute. For BRD, Attack Power is identical to their DEX attribute.

STR and DEX were essentially abstracted from the damage formula, and replaced simply with Attack Power. The job/weapon in question would determine if STR or DEX was used to represent Attack Power, and in turn the same exact damage formula could be used for all physical damage. Similarly, Attack Magic Potency is identical to INT, and Healing Magic Potency to MND.

The ultimate point here is, as far as damage output is concerned, STR and DEX are mutually exclusive stats. If your DPS is based on one, it is entirely unaffected by the other. BRDs can run around with 999 STR or 0 STR and it won't do anything for them. Furthermore, they are identical in how they function in terms of DPS - simply the value that is copied for Attack Power.


This core design immediately shuts out any notions of a physical DPS job being a hybrid STR/DEX job. Similarly, it demonstrates that the game, at it's core algorithmic design, doesn't care if an action is ranged, melee, or whatever. It simply cares what weapon class you have, and whether this weapon class tells it to take it's Attack Power stat from STR or DEX.

So, for the devs to implement a hybrid STR/DEX job or something "innovative" such as that, they would have to redesign damage formulas from the ground up. However, for them to make a class a STR or DEX class means simply coding the weapon class to be STR or DEX based. Done. The game isn't actively checking for melee or range.

This is what I've been trying to say regarding how DEX works now and how the tooltip is misleading. Reading it now, you can argue that it's valid since DEX is being used by a ranged job and STR by melee. That's more likely the reason they haven't bothered to change the tooltip. Not only would it confuse some players, but would hint at jobs that don't yet exist... also they hadn't decided yet. If it still makes sense, no need to change it.

However, by making NIN a DEX job, not only will it have increased synergy with its ARC sub class (receiving the DEX increase damage buff from Hawk's Eye) but also expand the definition of DEX to better match what is actually happening in the background while allowing it to sensibly be used by a wider range of jobs, assisting in long term stat balance.

---

Please let me know what you guys think, but before you do I suggest that you actually read the above text in full and make sure you understand. I may have worded some parts in a manner difficult to this request, but I would be happy to clarify in that case.

[JakzChurchill]

Don't get me wrong I've always understood that whether an attack is ranged or melee is unaffected by the differring stats, I've stated this a few times in this thread. But as you also mentioned it currently works on a weapon basis, your weapon is ranged use dex, if its melee use str. This system is very intuitive in its design, there is no questions as to the stat you should be stacking.

This is the basis of the argument against you, changing this design to allow one melee class to use the ranged stat defeats the purpose of this system, and as much as you try to argue it changing the tooltip to account for specific weapons will complicate everything they have put in place to make things so simple.

But I guess there's just a counter argument to every counter argument so we could go around in circles till 2.4. Probably best to abandon this as every point possible of being made on both sides by this point has been made.

[Jaykos]

Please let me know what you guys think, but before you do I suggest that you actually read the above text in full and make sure you understand. I may have worded some parts in a manner difficult to this request, but I would be happy to clarify in that case.

I think everything you posted was absolute rubbish and that ninja will use strength.

[NoctisUmbra]

I think everything you posted was absolute rubbish and that ninja will use strength.

Fantastic contribution!

This is the basis of the argument against you, changing this design to allow one melee class to use the ranged stat defeats the purpose of this system, and as much as you try to argue it changing the tooltip to account for specific weapons will complicate everything they have put in place to make things so simple.

I elaborated that since the beta change, that's not necessarily the design as far as STR and DEX go. The design is essentially "there are STR weapons and there are DEX weapons under the umbrella of physical weapons".

The fact of the matter is, if they stick with a definition like "STR is melee and DEX is ranged only" they will limit the DEX attribute considerably as something useful only for a handful of classes. The more traditional definition of STR being used for weapons based on force and DEX for weapons based on precision, ranged or not, will expand the attribute and allow for better itemization moving forward.

Furthermore, there are the other sources of info that have hints towards DEX as I suggested. Ultimately, only time will tell.

What we definitely know is they have been considering STR and DEX, so either of them are likely.

[JakzChurchill]

I elaborated that since the beta change, that's not necessarily the design as far as STR and DEX go. The design is essentially "there are STR weapons and there are DEX weapons under the umbrella of physical weapons".

The fact of the matter is, if they stick with a definition like "STR is melee and DEX is ranged only" they will limit the DEX attribute considerably as something useful only for a handful of classes. The more traditional definition of STR being used for weapons based on force and DEX for weapons based on precision, ranged or not, will expand the attribute and allow for better itemization moving forward.
.

I feel your completely misunderstanding the current stat system on the first point, it's not as you have described and you have infact negated the key point of this system, in that how a weapon attacks denotes it's stat. If you start separating by strength and precision your going to run into issues with class perception, is a monk not about precision? using quick low damage attacks and hitting specific areas to get a crit. So how would a newcomer to the game distinguish between monk and ninja, why is one inheritly about strength while the other precision when overall they share the same attack style. The current system stops this from ever being an issue.

I'll go a step further and say from all gameplay we'v seen so far, monk seems a lot more about precision than ninja, the fact that ninja's barely have to move to get attack bonuses shows this point. And you can't retroactively change monks stat to reflect this, it would change too much.

The change you talk about would of been great, if it was set up from the outset, if they had put the effort to have this clearly defined from the start with key ways to really show each classes stat, but making this change a year into the games lifespan changes too much to be feasible.

[Velhart]

snip

I wouldn't bother arguing with him at this point. He believes it will be DEX just because it causes the amount of people lotting to be uneven. He thinks SE will overhaul stats just to cater to this. It is hard to take it seriously now. Best to let them think what they want and let 2.4 do the talking.

[Ejell]

The DEX or STR talk is useless, yoshi said even him did'nt know which one will be inplemented, and no-one could guess.
Please talk on things we can talk about (datamined passives (obviously not the dex ones) and the video).

This video is quite strange, immagine such a vid with the monk or drg, where the player randomly puts his combos, dance around and uses all of his skills...
Good luck to find any teamplay from it

(just to put oil on the fire, the french translation of "foe's requiem" clearly say it lowers the "elemental magic armor" of the targets (such as fire, thunder, water...) when the english one say it lowers magic armor.
Those are only words, which can be changed by SE as they want, to make it fit their needs, don't forget !)

[Warrlordd]

My bets are on archer/drg but thats just a total speculation