Revamp Stats

[Kaurie]

Re: having a "haste" stat that affects cooldowns - no, no, a thousand times no! A haste stat that affects everything is automatically the best stat, and in many cases the only stat. I've played enough FFXI to know better. Fortunately, I'm pretty sure Yoshi-P has straight up said they will never do anything like this.

Things can be tuned so that it is not the best stat. For example, a haste stat that requires 1200 Haste in order to reduce all CD's by 1 second and all GCD's by 0.005 seconds would not be better than CRT. While there is potential for haste to be the best, it does not mean that it has to be.

That said, currently SpS seems decent enough for casters. I think improving TP regen with SkS would go a long way to improving its desirability.

Don't like your Determination proposal at all. Not only is it a balancing nightmare, but you'd remove Parry and make Determination basically take its place for PLD? And have WHM reduce enmity generation when they already have a 50% enmity dump? But mostly, terrible for balancing.

For speed, instead of increased TP regeneration, I'd rather it reduce TP/MP costs.

Piety is mostly okay, but I'd like to see a bit of a boost to MP regeneration.

I think if we're going to remove any stats, it should be accuracy.

Thanks for the reply. I suppose we have an agree to disagree stance on this one. Personally, I'd rather a game that has more interesting stats and is imbalanced, than a game that has boring stats and is balanced. If we are to achieve a more interesting stat system, we need to accept that development time would need to go towards balancing.

I am open to alternative ideas for PLD and WHM, if you have them. You make an alright point that I'd remove (change actually) parry and basically replace it with DET for PLD - with the caveat that DET also would increase damage dealt. WHM has an agro dump, but agro can still be a problem. Again, I am open to alternative ideas though.

I feel that increasing TP regeneration would be more interesting than reducing TP costs. You can still bottom out your TP quickly spamming AoE, but it will come back at a more respectable rate. I feel having it regen would open up more resource management than having TP costs reduced. There is potential that having higher TP regen rates would make skills like Spire/Goad exponentially better - depending on how TP refresh actually works. That said, they both effectively end up in the same situation.

I agree about accuracy, I was attempting to make stat change proposals without removing anything. I suppose I said "remove" parry, but I suppose it's more "rename" parry and change its behavior.

[Jandor]

I'd like picking stats to have some choice, like for example:

Strength: Increase physical damage.
Dexterity: Increase critical damage.
Vitality: Increase HP and TP regen.
Intelligence: Increase magic damage.
Mind: Increase heal potency.
Piety: Increase MP and MP regen.

Accuracy: Increase base hit chance, above 100% it starts to increase critical hit chance.
Critical hit rate: Fine I guess.
Determination: OPs idea isn't bad, could use tweaking but I quite like the idea.
Parry: Successfully parrying/blocking deals damage to the attacking enemy (potency based on parry stat, influenced by STR/DEX etc?)

SkS/SpS: Pretty decent as is tbh.

Probably not that exactly, but something like that.

[Brannigan]

I agree wif (most of) da op.

I have no problem with accuracy, but Determination as mastery would go a long way towards making stats more interesting. Some of the specific effects I would change, though.

Specifically for paladin: Reduced cooldown on Sheltron, Shield Swipe, and Circle of Scorn
ninja: hard to say, but Huton duration isn't amazing. Maybe reduced CD on Ninjutsu or, if that's too strong, increased duration on Trick Attack.
dark knight: chance to proc free Dark Arts

Parry could reduce defensive ability cooldowns or just give straight phys/magic defense.

It'd also be nice if our "bonus attributes" were put into secondary stats instead of primary stats. They're kind of stupid right now.

[MomomiMomi]

Thanks for the reply. I suppose we have an agree to disagree stance on this one. Personally, I'd rather a game that has more interesting stats and is imbalanced, than a game that has boring stats and is balanced. If we are to achieve a more interesting stat system, we need to accept that development time would need to go towards balancing.

Actually, I agree with this, and have even said so in the past. I do think that we need more interesting stats even if it means more dev resources have to be devoted to balancing them, ideally through them increasing their resources instead of redirecting them. I just don't think that a single blanket stat should be the method to achieve it. That's practically impossible to balance.

[Zojha]

I'd like picking stats to have some choice[...]

Which really just requires one thing: Stats need to be worth equally much.

That's the prerequisite for choice. Otherwise, it becomes a non-choice, as you'll just want to pick what's mathematically better - provided you can get it. That isn't restricted to stats either - you don't get to choose between healing each target individually or using AoE heals during triple cintamani, you either use AoE heals or people die. It only becomes a choice when both options are equally good.

After that, it's about whether the choice is an interesting one. Skill/Spell speed, in theory, is a very good stat in that regard - investing in it means you'll have to press buttons more often. If that comes out at the same result as pressing buttons less often but having those buttons have more impact, that would be great because it would present a viable, meaningful and interesting choice. That would really the ideal case, gameplay changes by investing in a different stat, but output doesn't. The moment output significantly changes, well...every black mage wants spell speed! That's how you turn a potentially great choice into a non-choice. Generally, though, I think every stat that affects gameplay is an interesting stat, while every stat that doesn't isn't and could well be done away with.

[Shurrikhan]

snip

Accuracy:
If you greatly reduce the amount spent getting to back-cap accuracy, essentially decreasing the base requirement, you can make gearing for Accuracy more of a decision. This is especially the case if you aim to make the value of that added accuracy, from back to flank to frontal "cap", only slightly more rewarding in damage gains to what could be offered by more pure offensive stats, therein giving players the opportunity to skimp on Accuracy and stay behind the enemy as much as possible instead. Should that balance be impossible to keep simultaneously fair and satisfying, then mess with the way hits and miss work, allowing for a percentile damage system, where as accuracy fades, you take on a suffer a wider range of potential damage loss from the original 100%, but combos still progress as long as you maintain above a "glancing" (say, 50% damage) blow. In this way, there's less of a rotation-breaking aspect to skimped Accuracy, while the damage comparison remains intact, and the actual numbers required are more satisfying.

You can certainly go ahead and give consolation-Crit to over-capped Accuracy, but it's still going to fall short of swapping to pure Critical itself at that point, or even the other two secondaries (especially if they were more closely balanced). You could also just extend the way lacking Accuracy causes massive damage fall-off to the other, positive side, where Accuracy increases your maximum damage against the enemy about on par with Crit or Det at first, but quickly tapers off. Or, you could even make enemy evasion (block, parry, etc.) a bigger deal, and have your make your hit chance a sum of the two, such that after achieving hit cap, you're then directly draining any chances the enemy has of defending itself, leaving it more niche, but more in keeping with its purpose / aesthetic / whatever.

Determination:
One thing you could do for Determination that would appear simple while offering something new is to increase potency modifiers. Aetherflow, Luminiferous Aether, Mage's Ballad, Goad, Army's Paeon, etc., all give a 'potency' of MP/TP regen, so by affecting potency modifiers, you'd naturally be affecting them as well. But that's just skimming the surface.

As for the suggested Boon/Jinx duration extension aspect, however, you'd have to keep in mind that these relative outputs would vary wildly, from "sacrifice ilvl for it" to "avoid like a leper". These would also be plateaued in combination with Skill Speed, and others (such as Ninja's extended Huton, which would take until level 45 to see any benefit from) would require immense amounts to have any pay off (lesser frequency of Armor Crush required, which Skill Speed could already provide... if it weren't crap too). In the same vein, others aren't likely to see any use so long as their preferred secondary stat already fills the same function (BLM's AF/UI extension is already covered by Spell Speed). Others suffer from current oversights — an Astrologian can already run into issues with clipping his or her own card buffs short, because so many last the full Draw cooldown; adding potentially wasted time is... potentially wasteful. And then you have affects like Enmity reduction...

In short, these class-unique buffs would be a nightmare to balance, and would likely better stand as a new stat that each class could make the individual decision to take or avoid without having to take or lose their flat damage increasing stat in the process.

I'd start instead by asking yourself, what does "determination" mean to you anyhow? How would it appear in gameplay, if you could revise undermechanics as you please? And how could that function be listed in a single line of description, rather than this + this + this per class?

Additionally, what functions would you like to see that cannot be covered simply by the trinity of Luck-Power-Speed (or, RNG-nonRNG-plateau, Proc-Flat-Rotational, or however else you want to call the same system) secondary stats as ours and so many other MMOs have?

Critical Strike / Severity:
Once you remove the critical strike rate, you remove the entire proccing function from the state, arguably a much more visual component for Bards launching Bloodletter after Bloodletter than any Dragoon would experience even with a buffed to 2x or more Critical modifier on their Life Surge Full Thrusts. You've basically turned it into a derivative of Determination. In ARR, you had rate vs. severity in the form of Crit vs. Determination, which is why auto-critting classes generally preferred Determination (and it probably helped of course that its auto-attack contribution was somehow overtuned, apparently), one of which was essentially deexponential and the other linear (while the last, Speed, was exponential) in their effectiveness. That lent it some form of variety, but it also locked out a fair portion of class choice. The inclusion of Critical "severity" was to do two things (1) reduce Critical Strike's effects on proc-rates, which could otherwise have ended up at ridiculous levels by the expansion's end, and (2) give Critical Strike more linear scaling. However, it's since been overtuned, making the "Crit is King" for all but BLMs (accurate) generalization of stats instead.

With that it mind, consider: how do you like gearing to work? Should it be a mapping of each tier's new gear in order to get as much as you can of only your "class optimal" stat, or should you be able to maximize whatever you want, for whatever gameplay feel you want, within reason as given by plateaus, etc. If the latter, you really just need to add Speed to the list of linear scalars, remove its oversights, and reduce the tuning on Critical Strike slightly in order to balance them all out. If that question seems irrelevant to you, and you just want more gameplay-affecting or explosively visual stats, then by all means, do the above, and then make a Critical Damage stat and a... non-crit stat(? Bootshine builds incoming), but at least leave us a proc stat as well, so we can experience that type of more explosive or accelerated gameplay too.

Skill/Spell Speed:
First, seriously, merge them. Scale animation speeds to them. Reduce TP gains (bonus and natural) by 20% and have all tick per player GCD, and have mana-embonusing effects tick proportionately stronger with Speed.

Piety:
I honestly just can't give a damn one way or the other about this stat.

Parry:
I'll agree that it'd be better off as a flat mitigation stat, but what would that then be? Steadfast - decreases damage taken by x% (both magical and physical)? Or just increased Defense, staying anti-physical only?

Just as food for thought, here's another option: bake defensive opportunities into Crit, Det, and Speed. You could attach this to their RNG mitigation systems themselves, allowing more frequent "critical" blocks, parries, or dodges, stronger baseline RNG mitigation, or -- if, say, these systems were revamped to use a backing spendable and regenerating resource -- speed of recovery? In that case they'd still basically do the same things as their basic descriptions -- improve the rate and effectiveness of critical strikes (and defenses), increases the general efficiency of your attacks (and defenses), and increases the periodic output of your attacks (and defenses).

tl;dr: on the whole, Zojha and D_C have said it all. You need particular, obvious goals for what you desire from your stats, and then, finally, those combinations of choices need to balanced in order for them to be real choices.