Easy way to fix spell & skill speed before Heavensward!

[gamesmart]

The way the game is designed now, a lot of things - HP regen, MP regen, TP regen, DoTs, HoTs, the Eorzean minute, among other things I don't remember right now - are all synced together, to tick every 3 seconds (give or take a fraction of a second due to latency). Because of that, having such ticks modify based on skill/spell speed likely won't happen, as it would require a pretty major overhaul of how the servers process information - which the developers likely don't have time for at the moment given the current development cycle.

[Zeful]

And SMN would burn out of MP even faster. The extra 60 MP every minute would be entirely subsumed by having to cast dots more often. Even if you applied the same effect to Aetherflow, it wouldn't be enough to keep up with the expenditure, I don't think.

I believe he's talking about spell/skill speed increasing the total number of tics that occur, not just having the existing tics go occur sooner (shortening the duration). So you have a breakpoint that turns Bio from 6 tics at 18 seconds (1/3) to 9 tics at 18 seconds (1/2).

[Viridiana]

I believe he's talking about spell/skill speed increasing the total number of tics that occur, not just having the existing tics go occur sooner (shortening the duration). So you have a breakpoint that turns Bio from 6 tics at 18 seconds (1/3) to 9 tics at 18 seconds (1/2).

That. . .would take so much spell speed. Current SMN BIS (and remember, they were loaded with SS this patch) doesn't have enough SS on it to give Bio II an extra tick even with a Contagion'd duration. Which, for reference, is +165 SS. To get a non-contagion Bio up to 7 ticks, it would take +301 SS. Trying to get it to 9 ticks. . .that's +876 SS.

[Chiramu]

"Easy" means a lot of headache later on. There is never an easy fix to balance changes.

[Wilbow]

"Easy" means a lot of headache later on. There is never an easy fix to balance changes.

I'm curious, though, as to what headaches later on such a change would induce. In fact, I would argue that NOT allowing Spell Speed/Skill Speed to be a MP/TP neutral stat essentially dooms it to be a dead stat or, in misguided attempts to correct for that, a broken one.

Endgame fights now can last MUCH longer than DPS can sustain a damage rotation, but also have extremely tight DPS checks. Hence, we see BRDs basically being mandatory for these fights, because healers need mana, melee needs TP, BLM laughs at this restriction, and lol2.4SMN. With MP/TP being such a valuable resource, SpS and SkS actually end up almost doing more damage than they're worth in these fights, which is what the gear should really be designed for. And a BRD's resources can only be stretched so thin...

Essentially, as long as this paradigm exists, I can think of no other solution BUT for spell speed/skill speed to compensate for its own weakness. You can't boost the amount of spell speed and skill speed on gear to compensate for its weakness, as that only makes the problem worse, and making it straight up boost MP/TP regen is a problem because PIE is a primary stat that is treated as a secondary stat on gear.

Especially considering that people actively avoid the stat in most cases, fixing the stat alters balance extremely minorly. It simply ends up making SkS/SpS comparable in value to its counterparts, and in so doing, gives every class more viable gear options (except BLM, which is the black sheep in this case).

So what happens with my idea is to simply live up to the adage "a stitch in time saves nine". And while people balk at the word "easy", it is not hard to argue that it indeed is so compared to the nightmarish alternatives. The degree to how easy it is is a function of how robust the game engine is, and given that SE is so paranoid about divulging in-game information that secondary stats consist of a total value and a tooltip, you can forgive me for not knowing the details concerning the inner workings of the game.

[Viridiana]

I'm curious, though, as to what headaches later on such a change would induce.

Well, let's take a look. . .

Endgame fights now can last MUCH longer than DPS can sustain a damage rotation, but also have extremely tight DPS checks. Hence, we see BRDs basically being mandatory for these fights, because healers need mana, melee needs TP, BLM laughs at this restriction, and lol2.4SMN. With MP/TP being such a valuable resource, SpS and SkS actually end up almost doing more damage than they're worth in these fights, which is what the gear should really be designed for. And a BRD's resources can only be stretched so thin...

All of that is very true. Let's look at how your change would affect it. We can both agree that on any fight less than about 5 minutes (when people start running out of TP and MP) it would have no effect. And any fight like most of the extreme primals, which are longer than 5 minutes only because of disconnects, would be similarly unaffected. But, then, SMN is the most in need of MP help in the current meta, so let's see how they'd be affected in FCOB. T13 has an enrage of about 14 minutes. I'm going to way over estimate and say that the 20% spell speed pet buff will stay up 100% of the time, because I'm being kinda lazy with this estimation.

Current SMN BIS gear has 441 SS. With the buff up 100% of the time, that would become 530. 530 SS would allow an additional 23 MP ticks over 14 minutes, or an additional 1,380 MP. The math done by Odowla (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post2650276) shows over 867 MP deficit per minute, not counting any use of Ruin II. Your change would grant them approximately 1.75 minutes of MP over 14 minutes.

Now, if SS became their best stat behind INT, WD, and Accuracy and was stacked to the exclusion of everything else, they can reach 549 SS baseline at i130+Dreadwyrm Grimoire. That's slightly better than the 1.75 minutes that I just unrealistically estimated, but let's go ahead and estimate unrealistically for this set, too. 100% buff uptime makes this into 659 SS, leading to an additional 40 ticks over no SS. That's 2,400 extra MP, or nearly 3 full minutes of MP. Again, not counting any Ruin II use.

Now, that almost sounds impressive, but it's 3 minutes of MP over a 14 minute fight, not counting any Ruin II usage (which you'd use if you want to do your highest DPS). That's (less than) 21% of the MP you'd use in the fight if you could last without changing your rotation at all. And somewhere around half of it is coming after you've already bottomed out around the 5 minute mark, too. Sure, you aren't being MP starved *as soon* or for *as long*, but you're still getting MP starved. Oh, and those expenditure amounts assumed a 2.5 GCD, not the 2.19 GCD you'd actually have. So. . .yeah, not much improvement there.

So, let's look at MNK. GL3 for MNK multiplies your modified GCD (and auto-attack speed) by .85 to get their final values, after the SS calculation takes place. An important question is whether GL3 would affect TP regen.

Current MNK BIS has 388 SS. That means a 2.45 base GCD or a ~2.94 TP tick. Over a 14 minute T13 fight, that's about 6 extra ticks, or 300 TP. That's. . .less than 20 seconds of additional TP over a 14 minute fight. To say that this is unimpressive is an understatement.

However, if we take that 2.94 tick time and apply GL3. . . You wind up with 56 additional ticks, or 3,360 extra TP. That's more like 200 seconds of TP over the course of an 840 second fight. Also important, though, is how it comes to you. That's an additional 480 TP every two minutes; essentially giving MNK a DRG Invigorate on top of their own Invigorate. Say goodbye to MNK (and NIN) ever having TP problems, if you do it this way.

Now, at this point you have two options. SMN hasn't been helped, either way. MNK and NIN have either not really been helped or been made into the new BLM. BLM hasn't changed appreciably. DRG. . .well, DRG and BRD would fall where GL3-less MNK does. But, how MNK and NIN break down is important. Either they don't change much and the current meta is completely unaffected, or they achieve ungodly self-sufficiency. If it's the latter, BRD no longer needs to Paeon. If BRD no longer needs to Paeon, that changes the current meta substantially.

While I would be all for no longer needing BRD in a raid group, the meta will still pretty much be 2 melee, 2 ranged. BRD is no longer a vital component, unless Foe is better than I give it credit for. Would spending all the BRD's MP on Foe make him better than a second BLM? Remember, SMN is still left out of the ranged slot because this change doesn't help them enough to be worthwhile. So if you go 2x ranged, you have to pick between BLM/BLM and BRD/BLM. MNK is still going to get a slot for its utility, and NIN likely will too. DRG potentially loses the BRD interaction it had, and any group going BLM/BLM isn't going to bring a DRG who will run out of TP without a BRD. Heck, you might even wind up seeing MNK/MNK/NIN/BLM groups, for all I know. . .

Especially considering that people actively avoid the stat in most cases, fixing the stat alters balance extremely minorly. It simply ends up making SkS/SpS comparable in value to its counterparts, and in so doing, gives every class more viable gear options (except BLM, which is the black sheep in this case).

That's the thing. It's either so minor as to be basically pointless, or so powerful as to be gamechanging (MNK). And I say this fully realizing that I used to think this was a valid way to solve the problem. Unfortunately, the math says that it isn't enough. Would I still like this to be part of the solution? Yes, absolutely. I just don't think it's enough on its own (and, again, you'd have to not let GL3 affect it). Something I would kinda like to see as another part of the solution would be to let it affect cooldowns, but that's math for another time. . .

[Skeith-Adeline]

snip

On my none coil class, I have 608 Spell Speed on my BLM. Give me that proposed MP tick buff and all of the sudden, my DPS soars lol.