Overall Battle System Adjustments For The Future

No idea, don't think I've seen Cover used since 2003. Would be nice if they revised that too.

What's the point of really good gear if you are supposed to hold back? I understand that mindlessly wailing on something from 100% to 0 (tank and spank) is not a good game mechanic, but neither is forcing DD to get off of something just because of enmity. The reason to pull DD off of the main boss should be something that is necessary for success in the fight.

Examples:
- AoE that does more damage the closer you are to it. Not enough to kill a tank up close, but enough to kill DD up close, forcing them to back away (also the opportunity to /point and /laugh at retards).
- Additional targets that buff the main target (similar to the adds that can spawn from Provenance Watcher)
- Additional targets that can do debuffs like a virus aura that causes casters to be unable to regen mana.
- Additional targets that deal damage - these could be lower level targets that would be ideal for 1h melee jobs to kill
- Gimicks to bosses where they heal from physical damage or magic damage at certain times

There are other ways to make fights interesting and still important to maximize your damage output. I just don't like the idea of "ok we have to get off the boss and let our enmity decay for a while because our gear is too good." That's just sucky.

I still don't get this.
I mean, I would get it if we were talking about REMOVING the cap in the Merit Weapon Skill category. If that was the case then I would be able to understand your point.
But INCREASING it? Making so you can get, say, 20 points max?
It would still allow choices, personalization and specialization, but to a much more affordable degree.

15 would have been perfect for the standards the game was going at say 4 years ago.
Nowadays the majority of people have a lot of jobs levelled at 99, because of how fast/easy it is to level in Abyssea.
3 fully upgraded weapon skill is just not enough, and the proposed change doesn't satify me a single bit, even taking WS to 4/5, where you'd get a negligible difference compared to the current 5/5, I still wouldn't feel "perfect", I wouldn't be satisfied, I'd feel something missing.

I really don't see how allowing us to get at least another WS would take away anything from this "specialization" some of you are talking about.

Sylph.Peldin said: »

What's the point of really good gear if you are supposed to hold back? I understand that mindlessly wailing on something from 100% to 0 (tank and spank) is not a good game mechanic, but neither is forcing DD to get off of something just because of enmity. The reason to pull DD off of the main boss should be something that is necessary for success in the fight.

Examples:
- AoE that does more damage the closer you are to it. Not enough to kill a tank up close, but enough to kill DD up close, forcing them to back away (also the opportunity to /point and /laugh at retards).
- Additional targets that buff the main target (similar to the adds that can spawn from Provenance Watcher)
- Additional targets that can do debuffs like a virus aura that causes casters to be unable to regen mana.
- Additional targets that deal damage - these could be lower level targets that would be ideal for 1h melee jobs to kill
- Gimicks to bosses where they heal from physical damage or magic damage at certain times

There are other ways to make fights interesting and still important to maximize your damage output. I just don't like the idea of "ok we have to get off the boss and let our enmity decay for a while because our gear is too good." That's just sucky.

I'm not entirely sure what part of "DDs shouldn't be able to run wild for the entire fight" or "they should implement unique mechanics to boss fights" gave you the idea of me saying "we should make DDs stop attacking entirely so they don't pull hate".

Well tbh FFXI it's always been like this, or should I say used to be?

To me what matters most is "variety".
Having fights where you zerg is fun and makes you feel like you can finally go all out. You especially apreciate these situations when they're not in majority.
But I'd love to have a variety of situations where different circumstances require you to act in a different way.

Fights where you want ranged dd, fights where you want melee dd, fights where you zerg, fights where you need to carefully watch your damage output etc etc.


Zerging everything or balance everything around the fact you need Perfect Defense, Embrava or Fanatic's Drink is just not fun, especially when you have to resort to such strategies on >90% of the content.

Sorry, Proth, that wasn't a response to you. I edited my post and quoted the correct person.

oh okay, fair enough

While increasing it to give us access to more fullpwoered WSs would be the ideal solution, I still honestly fail to see a significant issue with the proposed solution. Whether it's perfect or not is fairly irrelevant, it won't be difficult to pick and choose which weaponskills will be worth 5/5ing and which you can live with 1/5~4/5 on. Who even has the inventory space to play more than 3 or 4 jobs regularly? Porter moogles are nice but using one every time I want to change jobs would be cumbersome as hell.

I completely agree. I wouldn't want to do away with zerg fights altogether, but I would like there to be more variety in fight mechanics as well. I just think that capping enmity does nothing but place an unnecessary limit on DD. Instead of forcing DD to stop DDing because of enmity, give them something else to bang on or something nasty to avoid. This way, there is still a reason to gear properly besides epeen value.

SE's already got some decent mechanics implemented into the game, too. Odin 2's valkyries, Ultima's Citadel Buster at 75, those sorts of things.

Still an issue that SE can't/won't fix. =/

PS2 limitations yo!

The thing is, enmity cap was there at 75. It's been there all along. Hate cap is fine to be there, as a thing to be aware of.

I tanked in WoW, and a lot of times, my hate would be 1.3-2x the DDs. No matter how long the fight went, those numbers would just keep climbing.

But I agree that idling isn't fun.

I feel like all of these mechanics worked better at 75.

A good start would be giving a melee sub decreased enmity generation (sam?), and give another a real hate dump (hide's just sitting there). Make thief attractive as a sub (not necessary, but attractive).

The only problem I have with the WS update is that I didn't get what I wanted, most full WSs. BUT. I do really like this. 4/5 Ruinator, plenty of str don't need the full 85 on it, exen 5/5 probably, 4/5 reso, again plenty of str, and 1/5 upheaval for MS. That's my plan at least.

I knew that would crop up in this thread eventually =D

Yeah but *usually* the reason your hate was that high was because the DD couldn't do full damage to the boss while you could. There are hardly any pure tank n spank fights in WoW. The DD are constantly having to adjust their positions to avoid situations that would get them killed or take damage. A lot of times, coupled with that, they have to damage a different target. There are a few fights where enmity was an issue, but it was a mechanic of those particular fights rather than a part of every fight.

The Tanaka train was headed full speed toward shitsville. You can't just make a 180 at that speed. Team Matsui has shown some real promise both in scope of idea and responsiveness. I have provisional faith that they'll figure things out.

Then if it's the ideal solution let's whine and *** 'til they change their mind and do what we want, up to a reasonable degree.
Shutting up and saying it's an acceptable compromise will just make them do that instead of doing their best to do what we think it's best.

It's just the way I "feel", it's not necessarily rational or logical, yet I'm sure there are at least a bunch of other people who feel the same way.
Getting a WS to 4/5, even if it's like 15 damage less, would still make me feel that I could have done 15 damage more. I'd be unsatisfied, I'd be whining about how better that WS could have been if I went 5/5, I'd be frustrated and unsatisfied.

It doesn't seem to affect the issue I have with the system and I don't understand why they're being so adamant about not changing it, creating these overly complicated solutions like changing the % thing.
Just increase the cap damnit. Give people more reason to gather limit points and make them feel like they have a wider and better choice, while STILL being forced to make choices.
Everybody's happy.
I really don't understand why they don't want to go this way, it seems they're just complicating things without need to do it


It is difficult.
I'm already doing without Shijin Spiral and it's not a big sacrifice because I have Victory Smite at least.
I had to delete Blade Shun to get Ruinator 5/5 for my BST, I still need Exenterator for my DNC/BRD and Shoha for my SAM.
I'd love to get more stuff to mess around with, yet I'm unable to.
You don't want to make me able to get all of them? (altough I don't really see where the problem would be, there are lots of other fields already to allow "specialization"), fine, but then at least give me the means to have a wider range of choices! :(

I was talking with my brother today and he said more or less the same thing, minus the college educated sounding words. Not the brightest bulb. I'm looking foreword to not just this update but all future ones (at this point) as well.

A lot of the fights in WoW start out normally, or did when I played, and one of the keys to beating tight enrages was to do as much damage before the fight's mechanics started.

The DD did, in many fights, do full damage.

Not to mention, tanks had concerns DD didn't have. DD struck from the sides/behind where the boss couldn't parry so their Expertise stat didn't need to be as high. A fair portion of that tanks did had a decent chance of missing. (No combat gearswapping either. Fulltime gear!)

Anub'arak in ToC, for instance. The Tankspot video said, and was right, that if you couldn't get the boss under x% by phase 2, he goes underground), just wipe it and go again. Before Phase 2, you had one tank on adds, 1-2 caster/ranged (depending on raid size) on the ice shits to drop them, and tank+everyone else zerging like they've never zerged before.

As others have pointed out, wow's counter to Provoke did just set your enmity at the highest enmity target's enmity level, and direct the target to you, and sure you used it if the boss changed target, but if the boss changed target, something was probably wrong, and often times, the new target was dead before anything could be done. Taunt's best use was pulling hate from another tank.

Yep, it's fairly common in WoW to have a boss that puts a debuff or something on a tank, and you need to swap tanks to let that debuff wear off after a certain a mount of stacks have been gathered, or you'll die.
A lot of bosses have mechanics like these.
What you say about taunt abilities is true, but that's after WotLK.
In Vanilla and TBC it was much easier for DDs to steal hate, especially with a Paladin or Bear tank at start. You had to let them build up hate, and then you could go all out.
During the fight if your gear was much too better than the tank's, especially during certain abilities or cooldowns, you had to carefully watch your hate.
Threat meters like Omen and others were FUNDAMENTAL back in Vanilla and TBC.
People whined so much that they kinda changed it.
It was difficult for them (developers) to balance a game with so many different aspects, roles etc.
So over the years they tried to simplify things a lot. You don't have hybrid roles anymore (sorta...), hate hardly matters etc.

This doesn't mean that WoW doesn't have a big level of depth, because it does, it's just more accessible and... uhm... deep in aspects very different from FFXI's.
Blizzard's main theme is "easy to learn, hard to master", while it of course doesn't work in every single aspect of the game, I'd say that overall the game is pretty close to that sentence.

I'd rather not continue to derail this thread with more WoW talk, but I will say that hard mode fights were a totally different animal than normal mode fights.

The only reason I brought up WoW was to mention that their enmity system works completely fine. SE's enmity system is horrible in comparison and the concept of "PD -> zerg" is stupid.


Agreed. I'm actually excited about future updates. MNK has been my favorite job in this game and I would absolutely love to see the right fix to level correction for 1h jobs.

However, IF their change to this is disappointing, I will quickly lose hope for any future adjustments.

I agree, it's like saying "Apples and oranges can be made into juice, and apples sauce well so lets make orange sauce, should be good."

SE's enmity system mechanics are amazing, the numbers just need tuning. My sole hope is that the system stays intact. For instance, it takes alertness for a tank to hold 2-3 mobs off healers. If you're meleing one, voking another, and flashing a third, the VE fades pretty fast these days.

I went to a terrible Bismarck once. I popped on PLD and first thing this idiot blm did was thundaga. I don't know an instant cast proc'd but the adds popped and went to him. There was no saving him, but I did manage to Circle Blade the adds. I ran them away from the group, started popping every ability I had to lock on a little more hate than the 125 damage~ each fish not hit for. Once I felt safe that I had the fish for a second, I popped fanatic's. Didn't need to do this earlier because of prior phalanx and sentinel on the run.

After that, I melee'd on the fish, making no effort to kill them, of course, and busting out my curekit. macro. I had to do something more for hate than flashing/voking random fish after all.

The tragic thing is how few people noticed. They knew the blm *** up, but they didn't understand/pay attention to the idea that I wasn't just standing in ideal-blocking position as PLD usually does.

Supertanking doesn't exist in any other game that I have played, but it's an amazing concept. The enmity system as a whole in this game is just amazing. It's just the numbers that are terrible. My (To be fair, Kaeko's, lol) understanding of enmity saved that attempt. It was a righteous moment on PLD.

go google the definition D;

there are a few things i don't understand about this. first off. . . why. . .some things seem viable sure, and there are others that i don't know much about because i only focus on a few jobs, but the blm stuff . . . i just don't understand why they want to change the spell system to the one they initially had is 14 that everyone hated.

part of playing blm was getting the next spell because it was more powerful then your last, but a a higher spell cost. . . now, they want to change this so that your next earth spell will be more powerful AND cost less . . .

part of the reason I've always loved the magic system for blm is because there is a spell progression. each spell cost more mp, took longer to cast and took longer to recast. hence encouraging people to use all spells rather just just using a single element.

making all spells of a given tier have the same cast and recast only makes for a situation like with the am2's where people will only cast the ones they want. mp isn't really a factor end game.

their whole magic theory is predicated on the fact that people don't use earth based magic because it's not as powerful as ice and thunder. while that is to a degree true, there is another very important underlying factor. there are the least amount of monsters in game that have a weakness to earth magic. in fact, i think earth magic is the most often resisted because of the nature of monsters. the only ones i know off the top of my head that take more damage from earth are coerls.

its only natural that a spell learned at a higher level will be more powerful. if it wasn't that way, people would never bother to get the higher spells.

good black mages know when you make use of all their spells. there are very few spells in my arsenal that i don't regularly use, and i dont participate in voidwatch. meaning that i don't run through my list just to get procs. tier 1 spells are good to learn clues in abyssea, the ele dots are still useful for weakening a tough monster. poison 2 also useful. poison 1 i prob don't use anymore, but i think thats normal since it is less potent and accurate then 2. all of the other enfeebling magic i regularly use, blind, bind, stun. i cant say i often use the tier 1 and 2 aga spells, but they are dangerous and do not cause enough damage to warrent their use. but that's spell progression.

it's just frustrating to see these kind of changes when i really don't think there is a problem with the current magic system in game. and i realize they are just ideas, but usually ideas become changes.

basically i just wanted to point out that the lack of people using earth magic is for other reason then simply damage output. if the spells were to be in the reverse order, with thunder being the level 1 spell and stone the highest in the tier, there wouldn't be this problem. there are so many monsters that are weak to ice and thunder that those spells would still probably be the dominant spells used.

Go google ffxi taunt and see what pops up... inb4 WoW there's nothing, you'll get that reference i'm sure.

I <3 rocking Behemoth with Earth Spells!

just as an additive to my post-
http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Elemental_Weakness:_A_Hunter%27s_Guide

this is a list of mob classes that are weak to types of magic.

for those who don't want to actually look at the page

magic weaknesses
earth-6
water-11
wind-13
fire-25
ice-37
thunder-22
light-24
dark-12

and magical strengths being mobs that are strong to said element
earth-17
water-31
wind-16
fire-12
ice-20
thunder-14
light-24
dark-36

ok, so just looking at these numbers it becomes pretty clear why one element would be preferred over another. fire, ice and thunder clearly pull ahead in just sheer numbers for mobs they are strong to totaling 84 mob families where earth, water and wind total 30 families

also note that those same 2 element groupings have a similar pattern for mob families that resist them with fire,ice,thunder having 36 families that resist them where earth,water,wind have 64 families.

also on a sidenote the 3 popular elements are strong to mobs that are highly common in the game. the pure number of aquatic based monsters and undead based monsters make it clear why those 3 elements are favored.

and 3 of the 6 families that earth is actually strong to, are families that are seldom seen. khimairas, chariots and cardians.

now, that's not to say that other elements are strong to elusive monsters, but it just shows that the occurrence of earth susceptible monsters is significantly lower then other elements

Seems it's going the other way.


Sooooo yeaaaah....

Could you link the post that's translated from?

Sure

Well, that's the translation. Hopefully that's what you wanted.