Preliminary patch notes up.

[Nyalia]

I wish we heard something about what they're doing to existing skills in the patch notes <_< I'm impatient and don't want to wait a day to find out! I'm most curious about my two favorite defensive skills, Manawall and Perfect Dodge. As much as I love Manawall, I can totally see it being nerfed again. It's super powerful, and I love it for that. They could change it to have a shorter duration, only block one attack, limit the damage they can block instead of being 100% immunity, or something else. Same with Perfect Dodge, except they wouldn't reduce the duration, but they might increase it? Or maybe they're just changing both skills to cause a physical attack to completely miss instead of doing 0 damage? Whatever the changes are, I bet it's because PLDs are getting essentially the same skill, and they want to balance the existing skills with the new skill.

I'm wondering what WHMs will get instead of Proshell. I would expect every class to continue having the same number of traits. If they remove WHM's proshell, maybe they're giving something in return? Or maybe they're making Stoneskin II into a trait? Oooh, what if they remove Stoneskin II entirely and change Proshell to make Protect cast Stoneskin (or a Stoneskin-like effect that benefits from Enhanced Stoneskin and doesn't stack with Stoneskin) if cast while out of combat? That'd be nifty!

I guess speculation is worthless and we should just wait for the real patch notes in 1-2 days <_<


In other news, I don't see anything in the patch notes about gardens during maintenance. Do we run the risk of all our plants dying if we don't water them at ~4:45am(EST) on Thursday morning and/or ~5:15am(EST) on Friday due to the 24h maintenance? Being awake at even one of those times is really hard when you work 9-6...

[Urielparadox]

Black mage new skills, all of them require a Blm to move less then ever before and give huge penalty for moving, they better be restoring man a wall to its former glory or blm will die.

[Edellis]

Black mage new skills, all of them require a Blm to move less then ever before and give huge penalty for moving, they better be restoring man a wall to its former glory or blm will die.

...that's a bit extreme, dont you think?


Only thing that really bothered me was the removal of EXP from unsynced dungeon play, but since the bosses still give EXP i guess it's not so bad. It would have been a bit silly to let a lv 60 BLM into darkhold as-is.


Most excited however, was the mention of some of the skills changing. Flare was on the list for BLM. I was really wondering how they were going to keep it viable in light of Enochain, since a 100% MP cost would mean nobody would ever use it past lv 50.

[Omegakiyohime]

Black mage new skills, all of them require a Blm to move less then ever before and give huge penalty for moving, they better be restoring man a wall to its former glory or blm will die.

What? How are you blm'ing? Maybe you were moving a bit too much before if standing in place comes as such a lost to you. If you were moving for anything other than dodging a mechanic that couldn't be eaten by wall/ward, then you were doing it wrong. Standing in one spot and casting is literally all the job does.

[Nyalia]

What? How are you blm'ing? Maybe you were moving a bit too much before if standing in place comes as such a lost to you. If you were moving for anything other than dodging a mechanic that couldn't be eaten by wall/ward, then you were doing it wrong. Standing in one spot and casting is literally all the job does.

I strongly disagree with this statement. I raid primarily as a BLM, and I move quite a lot without losing DPS. There are tons of points during a BLM rotation that you can safely move with no penalty: when a proc is up, move 0.5 seconds before your current cast finishes while hitting the proc - you get a total of ~2 seconds to reposition yourself before you have to stand still again, which is plenty of time to get into a better position when needed. When the boss becomes untargettable temporarily for a mechanic, there is no reason to stand still currently. During AoE situations, there is a ~1.5 second period of time each rotation where you are doing nothing and can safely move (between transpose and the first mana tick). Also, at any point, if you know you're about to have to move, don't have a proc, and want to maintain DPS, you can Swiftcast whatever comes next (often Fire) while moving. If you get lucky and proc Firestarter from the Fire, you get even more max-DPS movement time. All of these times, you can even move via Aetherial Manipulation if you have to go far, and you still won't lose one smidgen of DPS.

I mean, imagine doing T9 final phase without moving. I get maybe two casts in before I have to run to the boss after a jump, or run to bait novas then mid for thermiotic, or run to a DB spot, or run out for thunder/fireout. BLMs move plenty in difficult content. Good BLMs lose minimal DPS from moving because they time it right and manage their rotations to compensate.

Now, I'm not complaining about the new changes - I think they're great, and will enjoy trying to find the optimal time to drop Leylines for maximum effectiveness. I'm just objecting to the idea that BLMs need to stand still to max their DPS. Of course, moving hurts their DPS more than any other class already, and this will only increase that effect, but the effect can be quite minimal if you play it right and plan accordingly.

Also, the stationary aspect of Leylines is important for PvP. Can you imagine 72-person Slaughter where the BLMs are casting their quad-flares and followup Cometeors 15% faster without the Haste buff? Now, imagine it WITH the Haste buff from mid. Ouch!

[MilesSaintboroguh]

It's possible that it's 2 dungeons because there's only 2 lines of of question marks. Don't forget too that 2.0 also only had 2 "expert" dungeons (WP and AK) at the time before more dungeons were made since both of those dungeons could only be done at the then level cap of 50.

[Pluvia]

for ninjas in the thread we have some info from people at E3


Aeolian Edge: Now only applies full potency from rear. (320 rear, 280 back)
Smoke Screen: Reduces target's current enmity. Didn't actually use it, but seems straightforward.
Armor Crush: Combos after Gust Slash. Deals full potency from flank, less from rear. Extends Huton duration by 30 sec (max 70).
Shadewalker: Reduces target's enmity gain by 80% for about ten seconds. Does not work on tanks (I tried).
Duality: Your next attack hits twice. Couldn't really tell if it was working or not.
Dream Within a Dream: OGCD attack with a 90s CD.

[Nyalia]

Huh... A few interesting things in the patch notes:

For Company Actions, there is no level 3 version of three of the Company Actions: Back On Your Feet (reduced Weakness duration), Brave New World (increased attributes - though, they're changing the effect of the current ones), and most importantly: The Heat of Battle (increased experience from combat). Also, it says that Reduced Rates III reduces teleport costs by 30%, but that's what Reduced Rates II does so I hope that's a typo (it's my FC's most used action by far).

Has anyone done the math on the new Mini-Cactpot tickets? My initial stab at the math says even the 300 MGP one is worth it. There are very, very few configurations where, if one uses a cactpot solver, the expected payout is less than 300. Average is more like 500. Of course, actual payouts are often below 300, but we're not talking about actual payouts. We're talking about average expected payouts given one piece of randomly selected info and three pieces of specifically selected info. One of the most favorable starts, a 1 in a corner, gives an expected payout of 1,678.5 MGP. That's only 4/81 of the available starting configurations though, and only 1/27th of the brute force data I'd have to parse to get the full expected payout. So, I'm not going to do that. At least, not now, maybe later. <_< Still, some quick extrapolation maths tells me it's always worth it. The absolute lowest expected payout you can get after your initial picks clear is 209 (if you follow a solver), so the total expected value being below 300 is extremely, extremely unlikely.

[myahele]

Best gown ever will be dyable

Hell yeah!! It's, ironically, the best gown ever now that it's dyable.

....what about those with the Paragon's gown?

[Starlord]

The preliminary patch notes seems different than other Pre- patch notes. Normally, there is not that much difference between the 2 pre-patch notes.

I mean no new GC ranks?
For an Expansion, for a prelim notes, there's not much in there. The length doesn't seem any different than any other prelim.

I feel like they are not saying alot of features/content for the full patch notes.