What the hell is wrong with Melee?

[Amele]

Re: What the hell is wrong with Melee?

Holy shit, this is one of those times I am ashamed to have these people level the same jobs as me. They need to learn a bit more about the game before they get called great.
Pld/Nin > Nin/Drk > Nin/war = Pld/war tank wise for people who know endgame

this is silly. first, I'll assume you mean hnm ground and not say, dynamis/limbus/einherjar/salvage/kitchen sink. because your lists break down outside of one-mob fights. (even then..)

there's some really simple rules for endgame tanking:
1) you have enough hp for the job. with few exceptions, that's 1500hp (and both pld and nin, and half a dozen other jobs can get here. this is a player discriminator)
2) you have a way to gain consistent spike and cumulative hate. (flash, stun, cures, damage, enfeebling magic, mazurka(pre-nerf) etc.)
3) you have a way to mitigate or recover sufficient damage.

I'm not going to bother to tier the tank jobs because after you accept that in the right circumstances, pld, nin, redmage, monk, and at least two other jobs can all tank hnm, it becomes a matter of available subs, player skill and available support; and which job sits on top of the tier will vary based on these answers (which makes it wholly different than say: war/nin vs. drg/x pre-patch)

short of obvious stuff like: nin/drk will be able to consistently outtank monk/thief - it's too small a margin and too specialized a player skillset to even be able to say: "if I were to give a pld/war a pld/nin he'd be able to tank better than he does now" and that's one of the smallest playstyle changes available between endgame tanks. (you could say it's nin/war->nin/drk until that nin/drk goes up against a fight where you can't waste stuns; which is common enough today that it's a required part of a nin/drks skillset and makes it play -very- differently than nin/war.)

See, the thing is those people that "know endgame" have a tendancy to place job in tiers, rate them by gear they could have vs. the gear people do have and subjob versatility.

it is probably important to make explicit the little disclaimer most endgame style discussions tend to assume is in place: "assuming all relevant gear and a complete list of subjobs"

it is the issue with tiers though (and many other mnemonic tools) that they can lead from a shortcut of rework effort to short circuiting logic in the first place, which turns it from a useful tool to a dangerous one.

And then there's people who talk about meritting too fucking much. I'm sorry if meritting is all the endgame some of you will ever have, but meritting is not really endgame, not even close.

meritting is not endgame.
endgame *is* merit-like activities. (this was the core issue with why 2handers being weak in merit = broken)

merit like: assaults, salvage, nyzul isle, limbus, sky farming, sea farming, city dynamis farming.
non-merit like: dynamis relic completion, cop dynamis, sky gods, sea gods, 'traditional' hnm.

but meritting is just extended EXP and, worse, its EXP on weak mobs, which pushes things further out of proportion.

I disagree. (primarily about exp on weak mobs) puks and imps may be weak sure. greater colibri are level 82, mamools go to 83. skoffins are 83. qutrub are 82.

there's only 7 mobs that cap higher (4 of them are kindred, level 84) then aura statues, 84; then Tavnazian rams (2 spawn points worldwide) 84; then Elder Treants 86.

so basically, within one level we're already fighting the hardest non-hnm mobs in the game.

Without /WHM though SMN is almost useless in a PT, and can you imagine NIN or PLD without /WAR?
That's just my point. These jobs can still use their main abilities to do their intended roles, but all 3 rely so heavily on their subs it's not funny. That's my point, and that's what I hate.

not the same at all, neither nin nor pld needs war to tank.

summoner's core issue is that their job's primarily role is on a one minute timer (like cor) but their main doesn't provide an alternate thing to do for the other 50 seconds like corsair's does; and due to the nature of how healing magic interacts with magic skill caps, playing healer for their non-main role time is the best use of their large mp pool.

I do believe PLD needs their own voke ability, it would make them able to sub many different things and therefore have a great deal more versatility without always being forced into the same damn subjob just for one freaking job ability.

flash is a paladin's provoke. (and responds to haste!) ^^

[Sevv]

Re: What the hell is wrong with Melee?

this is silly. first, I'll assume you mean hnm ground and not say, dynamis/limbus/einherjar/salvage/kitchen sink. because your lists break down outside of one-mob fights. (even then..)
there's some really simple rules for endgame tanking:
1) you have enough hp for the job. with few exceptions, that's 1500hp (and both pld and nin, and half a dozen other jobs can get here. this is a player discriminator)
2) you have a way to gain consistent spike and cumulative hate. (flash, stun, cures, damage, enfeebling magic, mazurka(pre-nerf) etc.)
3) you have a way to mitigate or recover sufficient damage.

Outside of ground big nms, do you really need a tank (nin or pld)?

Dynamis-> Plds voke mobs as they come in, usually one of us warriors tank the majority of mobs (pre 2h update)
Limbus -> Either a Paladin or war/nin tanks these for us.
Einherjar -> Paladin and a Ninja tank boss, warriors tank most mobs.
Salvage -> We have a Ninja tank, usually a monk tho once we get going lol.

again you were right I was talking more ground big one mob events, thought most people would understand, due to pld/nin and nin/drk being in my post.

tho really anyone can tank if you have the right support for it, but overall effectiveness is how I rank them.

I'm not going to bother to tier the tank jobs because after you accept that in the right circumstances, pld, nin, redmage, monk, and at least two other jobs can all tank hnm, it becomes a matter of available subs, player skill and available support; and which job sits on top of the tier will vary based on these answers (which makes it wholly different than say: war/nin vs. drg/x pre-patch)

Bold for about a simple as tanking gets.

short of obvious stuff like: nin/drk will be able to consistently outtank monk/thief - it's too small a margin and too specialized a player skillset to even be able to say: "if I were to give a pld/war a pld/nin he'd be able to tank better than he does now" and that's one of the smallest playstyle changes available between endgame tanks. (you could say it's nin/war->nin/drk until that nin/drk goes up against a fight where you can't waste stuns; which is common enough today that it's a required part of a nin/drks skillset and makes it play -very- differently than nin/war.)

Aye Nin/Drk and Nin/War are too very different tank styles in certain fights, which leads every fight to have its own plan for the combo. Very fun even tho I never get to use it anymore ; ;.

it is probably important to make explicit the little disclaimer most endgame style discussions tend to assume is in place: "assuming all relevant gear and a complete list of subjobs"

Ya should have said that before thank you for posting it tho.

[/QUOTE]

[Omni]

Re: What the hell is wrong with Melee?

didnt really read thru most of this thread but melee sometimes are funny.

there was a shout for brothers bc60 in feiyin and well obviously they havent done this bc or any of these bcs before (similar to the antican, tonberry, orc, quadav etc ones). they're pt setup they wanted was blm blm rdm nin nin nin.

first off... lol at the 'what if they dont sleep' paranoia.... i told them i had a war/nin that can go and their response was:

'if its not good dont even bother, we need to kill these things fast!'

obviously very nubbish. if they wanted fast... i dont know why they would want 3 60nin... 60nin isnt your dd maniac youre used to in merits. however, a 60war/nin is pretty much still a beast.

anyhow, i let them know that my war is fully merited but i changed my mind and didnt want to go with a bunch of nubs.

seriously, 3 jobs on sleep duty? cmon....

[Amele]

Re: What the hell is wrong with Melee?

Outside of ground big nms, do you really need a tank (nin or pld)?

right, that's kind of the point: all the events listed require tanks (and not pld/nin or nin/drk) which are pretty much the de facto HNM tank, but are not the de facto endgame tank.

now that HNM is easily less than a third of the content (possibly even less than a quarter of the content depending on how you measure) it's really necessary to be specific.

otherwise I think we're pretty much in agreement (I tend to use nin/war mnk/nin pld/nin and nin/drk tanks the most in my non-dynamis events. ) dynamis is pretty much pld/wars nin/wars and rdm tanks (or whitemage tanks when we cure the redmages)

[Sevv]

Re: What the hell is wrong with Melee?

right, that's kind of the point: all the events listed require tanks (and not pld/nin or nin/drk) which are pretty much the de facto HNM tank, but are not the de facto endgame tank.
now that HNM is easily less than a third of the content (possibly even less than a quarter of the content depending on how you measure) it's really necessary to be specific.
otherwise I think we're pretty much in agreement (I tend to use nin/war mnk/nin pld/nin and nin/drk tanks the most in my non-dynamis events. ) dynamis is pretty much pld/wars nin/wars and rdm tanks (or whitemage tanks when we cure the redmages)

To tell you the truth in my ls system if I don't want to do kings I don't have to. Kings are easily under 2% of my in game time, really only go if they are low on people.

I have used alot of pld/nin on Gods as well because they are amazing.

Or we sata the whm >.>

[Malacite]

Re: What the hell is wrong with Melee?

PLD and NIN are fairly reliant on /WAR man >.> maybe not 100% dependant but it's still a big crutch IMO.

I was talking about other subs either. Take subs out of the equation for a moment altogether, and see how PLD and NIN tank. PLD can still do it later on with flash and higher tier cures, but the lack of /WAR does hurt it's ability to establish and maintain hate especially in the early stages of the game.

NIN has options available to it, but the problem is they're all horribly expensive and aren't available until at least level 18. Shuriken are not cheap (or plentiful for that matter) and spamming the Ni Wheel while effective will run you about a million gil per stack of tool bags. Not practical in the least (never mind that katana damage and TP gain really blows for a good while > <)


SMN has it the worst though. Waiting on the blood pact timers wouldn't be bad at all if it was actually worth leaving avatars out. They soak up MP (especially Diabolos > <), do crap damage and just feed the mob 10 TP a hit. Real productive...

SE has got to change summoning skill so that it properly impacts an avatar. More skill = noticably higher performance from avatars rather than the joke of a fix they did a while back (higher skill than your current cap for a marginal boost? How does this help?! It's a gimmick fix at best).

It'd be nice if they were a little more unique too.

For instance, Ifrit is the god of Fire. Fire governs STR. Therefor, it would make sense to give him strongest melee power (at least out of the ones we have now) as well as an automatic enfire.

Shiva by contrast, governs Ice and INT. Therefor, she should have stronger magic than the others (and that's another thing too, their magic attacks are retardedly weak. Tier 2 spells at level 10 that do less than a BLM's basic Blizzard? Come on SE...)

So far Diabolos is the only one with any kind of ranged attack. I'd like to see Garuda's given an option to engage enemies at range since she governs Wind (AGI).


anyway, that's enough about SMN for now.


EDIT: Oh yeah, SE please fix healing skill too @ - @

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: What the hell is wrong with Melee?

So far Diabolos is the only one with any kind of ranged attack.

Megalith Throw? Isn't that a ranged attack, too?

[Malacite]

Re: What the hell is wrong with Melee?

@. @ My bad. I still think Garuda should have some.

[Mouser]

Re: What the hell is wrong with Melee?

Had party on the North end of the Mamool Staging Point camp the other day as DRG/SAM. There was a DRK/SAM using Great Sword as well (he was only level 73) and while we never at any point talked about doing skill chains, we improvised Wheeling Thrust <-> Spinning Slash about about 75% of the time. Once he switched Scythe it was a little trickier (Impulse Drive is not worth it), but we did a few Guilotine -> Pentathrust for some pretty nice Compressions, and pulled off a Blade: Jin -> Pentathrust -> Cross Reaper Darkness chain a few times for some really nice Darkeness chains.

None of were saving TP, the skills chains just sort of naturally flowed from what we were doing and by people using compatible weapon skills.

[WishMaster3K]

Re: What the hell is wrong with Melee?

Thanks for all the positive feedback, people. I "static" with some SAMs, and so help me goodness if they forgot how to SC, I might just curl up into a ball and cry.

[Amele]

Re: What the hell is wrong with Melee?

PLD and NIN are fairly reliant on /WAR man >.> maybe not 100% dependant but it's still a big crutch IMO.

WAR is fairly reliant on /nin. Sure it's 100% mandatory but it's still a big crutch

subjobs are *meant* to emphasize a main job role. end of story. just because the easiest and lowest level way to emphasize tanking (which is not, contrary to popular opinion perhaps, all that either job can do) is /war doesn't make the job dependent. pre 60 just about every melee is "dependent" on /war. (war/x and thief being the obvious exceptions.)

I was talking about other subs either. Take subs out of the equation for a moment altogether, and see how PLD and NIN tank. PLD can still do it later on with flash and higher tier cures, but the lack of /WAR does hurt it's ability to establish and maintain hate especially in the early stages of the game.

this is why advanced jobs require you to be level 30? (which we might add, was halfway through the original level cap, so it forced you to have at least one complete SJ.) of course they don't work as well without subjobs.

even then, not having /war doesn't necessarily hurt your hate gain. ask any pld/nin whether they feel more comfortable with hate on pld/war or pld/nin, hell; ask a nin/drk.

NIN has options available to it, but the problem is they're all horribly expensive and aren't available until at least level 18. Shuriken are not cheap (or plentiful for that matter) and spamming the Ni Wheel while effective will run you about a million gil per stack of tool bags. Not practical in the least (never mind that katana damage and TP gain really blows for a good while > <)

nevermind that SE didn't build ninjas to be tanks or anything, surprise that they can't hold hate well without /war until they get to endgame where SE put all the gear to facilitate ninja tanking (do you know who tanks in my parties on sam? not the ninja I assure you.)

ninja isn't dependent on it unless they plan to tank (although nin/war is still a better DD than nin/thf would be). and even then, only until later in the game when better subs become available.

SMN has it the worst though. Waiting on the blood pact timers wouldn't be bad at all if it was actually worth leaving avatars out. They soak up MP (especially Diabolos > <), do crap damage and just feed the mob 10 TP a hit. Real productive...

summoner compares best to corsair at this point honestly. powerful mainjob ability on 1 minute timer. need something to do in between. (well, 2 1 minute timers for summoner)

summoner gets that something to do from their subjob; corsair happens to have it mainjob allowing more flexibility.

easy fix to summoner? give them Protect I,II, cure I,II,III, curaga I, raise at 50, and a healing magic skill of E.

there, now summoner has their subjob 'back'.

EDIT: Oh yeah, SE please fix healing skill too @ - @

"fixing" healing skill would make it pointless (almost) to do x/whm on a non whitemage or redmage. {thanks for the offer, but I'll have to pass}.

[Arris]

Re: What the hell is wrong with Melee?

I miss the old days (5 years ago) when a war tank was the norm and everyone seemed like a noob lol. When exp had no relation to what uber gear you had on.
When you didn't lvl a job in a month shoot even in a week for that matter. When you seriously learnt how to play your job. I just came back from being deployed and the game has changed so much I don't even want to come back. All the stuff I used to lvl with is considered gimp ahahaha. Best of luck in your adventures.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What the hell is wrong with Melee?

I disagree. (primarily about exp on weak mobs) puks and imps may be weak sure. greater colibri are level 82, mamools go to 83. skoffins are 83. qutrub are 82.

there's only 7 mobs that cap higher (4 of them are kindred, level 84) then aura statues, 84; then Tavnazian rams (2 spawn points worldwide) 84; then Elder Treants 86.

so basically, within one level we're already fighting the hardest non-hnm mobs in the game.

All those mobs you just listed are not percieved as weak because they do things worse than Flash, Firespit and food stealing, they also have higher HP, Defense and a lower spawn rate, which is why people avoid them. Oh and they happen to be surrounded by other nasty things with nasty attacks. People won't fight them when they can fight something that's less threatening.

We can point at levels, mob DEF, use terms like "efficienct" but its all just a fancy rationale to right something less threatening (i.e. "weak").

But as fun as it may be to kill Colibri, Puks and Mamool, Merit level is nothing to form job-defining strategies around, its really just a different style of EXP. Defining jobs around it simply distorts the roles of jobs in the larger scope of the game. And, that's exactly what is happening. The community lets jobs be defined by merits.

I think DRK of all jobs and how its treated is the one that really flabbergasts me. I'm not even DRK, I have no interest in being one. It has lived at two extremes - too slow and unloved for PTs and then loved in HNMs for an ability they had since level 1 if and only if they have a Kraken Club. I've actually seen DRKs apply to HNM and get turned away because of no K Club. And that's just people taking a job from endgame and blowing it out of proportion.

Saw this DRK, returning to the game, looking for an HNM on Titan. Good Ol' Asdrabael makes sure to tell him he's not gonna get into any "good" HNMLS if he doesn't have a K Club. Yeah, I'm sure a returning player from two years ago would just happen to have that laying around. I made sure to refer the DRK to some endgame LSes that would surely take him regardless.

It stinks we basically have to put a disclaimer on any conversation about what we do in regards to level, but even if we do, some moron will skim the post and try to apply the strategy somewhere else at lower level than they should.

[Amele]

Re: What the hell is wrong with Melee?

All those mobs you just listed are not percieved as weak because they do things worse than Flash, Firespit and food stealing, they also have higher HP, Defense and a lower spawn rate, which is why people avoid them. Oh and they happen to be surrounded by other nasty things with nasty attacks. People won't fight them when they can fight something that's less threatening. We can point at levels, mob DEF, use terms like "efficienct" but its all just a fancy rationale to right something less threatening (i.e. "weak").

I guess I don't understand your argument then. we're fighting the strongest thing that's a) easy to get to and b) doesn't risk randomly one-shotting someone or raping you because your job happens to use magic that consumes mp, and somehow that's fighting "weak" things?

KRT is weak mobs. nyzul isle is exactly the level range SE was encouraging us to level on -all along-. (why? because if we were meant to exp on stuff that was 250 exp base and level +12 they'd have put more level 87 mobs in the game for us to exp on.)

Merit level is nothing to form job-defining strategies around, its really just a different style of EXP. Defining jobs around it simply distorts the roles of jobs in the larger scope of the game. And, that's exactly what is happening. The community lets jobs be defined by merits.

because, again. merit-style play is the majority of the play you'll do in non-king endgame these days. (I think I made the list once before already), it sucks in some ways; it's good in others, if everything were another king camp, I'd have left the game already - and you have to admit, mowing down mobs like they're made of paper and you're a tree shredder *is* a lot of fun.

I think DRK of all jobs and how its treated is the one that really flabbergasts me. I'm not even DRK, I have no interest in being one. It has lived at two extremes - too slow and unloved for PTs and then loved in HNMs for an ability they had since level 1 if and only if they have a Kraken Club. I've actually seen DRKs apply to HNM and get turned away because of no K Club. And that's just people taking a job from endgame and blowing it out of proportion.

reason: 2handed weapons that required melee to gain tp were broken until a little over a week ago. (8/27) the damage to delay ratio was bad, the damage to tp ratio was bad. that's not an issue with merit style play, that's an issue with the *weapon class*. drk/nin with 2axes should never have been more useful than dark/war or drk/thf with a sycthe or gs, but 9 times out of 10 it was.

now that that balance has been changed, expect to see more people using drk in a more traditional DD role, rather than sheer DPS.

(for zerg purposes, there's 4 weapons that work now btw. kclub, oclub, bahamut's zaghnal, and apocalypse. I wouldn't exactly expect a fresh hnm dark to have any of these, but that's also why most shells are requiring people to have at least two jobs 75 in the first place.)

It stinks we basically have to put a disclaimer on any conversation about what we do in regards to level, but even if we do, some moron will skim the post and try to apply the strategy somewhere else at lower level than they should.

well, he did mention specifically 'endgame' which has traditionally in previous mmo's meant what you did once you were finished with the level grind. in XI that would be: all relevants subs, all relevant merit abilities unlocked (if not capped), and capped in job critical merit traits.

that's the point most people who discuss endgame are talking about (post sky at least)

[Mhurron]

Re: What the hell is wrong with Melee?

I guess I don't understand your argument then. we're fighting the strongest thing that's a) easy to get to and b) doesn't risk randomly one-shotting someone or raping you because your job happens to use magic that consumes mp, and somehow that's fighting "weak" things?

Well first, they may be on paper some of the strongest things in the game when you look just a level, but can you really say with a straight face that lvl 80+ ToAU non-nm mobs are just as hard or strong as pre-ToAU 80+ mobs?

They are weaker in just about every way, which is why people exp on them, and unfortunately solely on them.

use terms like "efficienct"

I hate to break it to you, but it is the most efficient way to get EXP/Merits. You can pretend that it isn't but that really doesn't mean anything. Of course it's fighting something less threatening, that is the definition of efficient as it applies here. This isn't a ToAU development, it always was that way. EXP Mobs were the least dangerous (relative) that were still worth something.