Will Al Zahbi be Thrown to the Wolves?

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Will Al Zahbi be Thrown to the Wolves?

Except for a few support players who miss the "fun" of traditional pts and some Plds who just can't adapt for Exp.

Man, what an ego on you. I can play that game.

So we should just submit to whatever the melees demand, eh? You should keep in mind that no PTs need your DD specifically, no HNMLS or endgame LS needs your DD specifically and in every mission in the game your DD class is a dime a dozen. Go look at any endgame shell recruitment wishlist and see if DDs are at the top of thier needs. Its usually never.

Most people who like to act like a merit party princess are just another melee grunt battling it out for the small pool of gear at endgame. Whether an even it done or not is not always determined by how many melees you have on-hand. Its usually determined by how many mages/tanks you have on hand.

And if a mage/support/tank does not find a use, much less a proper use of thier job, in an endgame LS, they'll gladly keep shopping around for a better shell because they can. Can your THF do that?

BRD joins and endgame LS and melees start drooling right away. Never fails and those BRDs get treated like tools and don't think the majority of them like you for it. Having been both BRD and COR, its usually the PLD, RNGs and BLMs that come looking for me on COR. In general, they've been far more polite and don't hound me for merits. Additionally, my job just happens to be superior for manaburns and pretty damn sweet for TP burn as well, so if some melee does think I'm thier merit tool, heh, they can think again, I can party on whatever I'm in the mood for.

And, not surprisingly, my SCH can say the same. I love the freedom. Oh and my RDM and BST can go solo stuff while your melee is forced to choose between hoping for a BRD to appear or doing campaign. My RNG? Yeah, its pretty much cemented as needed for some endgame functions. Unless your melee can Wide Scan, Shadowbind or do Sidewinder.

So yeah, don't think you're doing support players any favors by inviting them to a TP burn, we can get what we want if we really try - can you say the same?

[Sevv]

Re: Will Al Zahbi be Thrown to the Wolves?

We should not submit to what Omgwtfbbqkitten says, or on that note a good portion of this board. Everyone here talks balance but how many of you work or have worked on games. You complain and bitch about this or that and how it would be better the way you would like it, which very much tosses the balance in the opposite direction.

On the melee burn dies horribly to IT mobs, I laughed really hard as well. I have melee burned thru IT's a few times for great exp (ofc top of the line melees), the only thing about melee burns is with enough brds or just 1 great melee can carry a group of well gimps thru meripo. That is the issue, that gimp melees can melee burn as well.

Want to fix normal parties, instead of the rare game and other pathetic half thought up ideas, simply raise the exp cap on IT. Go from 200 to 250 or slightly higher for a no chain, wouldn't put it exactly on melee burns (the good ones) but it would put you over the edge of gimp burns, which is really where it should be.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Will Al Zahbi be Thrown to the Wolves?

We should not submit to what Omgwtfbbqkitten says, or on that note a good portion of this board.

Sevv, if everything was going hunky-dory for your PLD, NIN and melee jobs' invite rate at 75 - why did you level BRD?

Humor me.

Everyone here talks balance but how many of you work or have worked on games. You complain and bitch about this or that and how it would be better the way you would like it, which very much tosses the balance in the opposite direction

Is BG any different? Is Alla any different? Is KI any different? All those forums come up with some wacky ideas that would throw off game balance.

Usually, the complaints here at least take balance into consideration. Usually, not always.

[Saren]

Re: Will Al Zahbi be Thrown to the Wolves?

But the fact that TP burns have become so dominant and common shows just how popular they are.

Couldn't get the quote to work properly but you get the idea.

I just wanted to back up Karinya on this point, TP burns are popular yes but that doesn't mean they are enjoyed. Almost every person I know with rdm or whm leveled hates going to TP burn parties on it. A friend of mine was restarting the game, got rdm to 75 first and couldn't get war 75 fast enough so he could switch to getting his merits (for rdm as well as war) on warrior.

Good TP burns (the ones where the melees can bounce hate well and the puller is fast) are boring, the bad TP burns (the ones where the DDs can't bounce hate because of unequal damage or being stupid) are stressful and tiring or impossible depending on how bad it is. TP burns for most rdms and whms are seen as a chore and the only reason we take it is because 4 hours of TP burn beats 8 hours of something else or a lot more than that if you are talking campaign.

with enough brds or just 1 great melee can carry a group of well gimps thru meripo

One great DD isn't an asset to a merit party, you need 2 minimum but ideally 3 or 4. TP burn style curing only works well and safely when a good percentage of the curing (~80%+ I would say) is done through regens and curagas. From a curing point of view I would rather have 4 average DDs than 3 average DDs and one great one.

If one DD is doing enough damage to be tanking a lot more than their fair share (or is doing a lot of stupid things to pull hate for no real damage or reason) the healers mp goes to hell. More damage is occurring and you can’t cure it very efficiently because you are forced to rely more heavily on cures because the damage is happening too fast for regen to heal the DD to safety/full before they are damaged again and curaga is only really efficientwhen you are hitting for maximum on 3+ people (especially with curaga 2 which is generally the most useful scale of curaga for exp at least in the merit parties I've been in) and you can't use it as much if most of the damage is going on one person.

I hate to admit it but it's probably more important for the damage to be fairly evenly spread with a whm healer than with a rdm healer but even so, if you have one DD effectively tanking a burn party your rdm is going to be struggling for mp.

Edit: Actually I like the Bounty idea, it would make some of those real pain in the ass mobs worth trying and anything that encourages a variety of setups is going to be a good thing especially if it means that most people levelling fight more than colibri and imps with a TP burn setup 54-75.

Edit2: My 4am attempt at phrasing failed

[Sevv]

Re: Will Al Zahbi be Thrown to the Wolves?

Sevv, if everything was going hunky-dory for your PLD, NIN and melee jobs' invite rate at 75 - why did you level BRD?

Humor me.

You think I leveled brd to merit? Seriously, I don't merit on brd unless I need a buffer on my brd lol. I leveled bard to help my linkshell in endgame fights. I merit on my ridill warrior, when I actually decide to merit.

Is BG any different? Is Alla any different? Is KI any different? All those forums come up with some wacky ideas that would throw off game balance.

Usually, the complaints here at least take balance into consideration. Usually, not always.

No here is much different then Alla or KI threads really, the difference on the BG threads is they actually do the events that they want to change. Believe me there is just as many idiots there as well. No one takes the real balance into understanding they want their way to be #1 period.

Couldn't get the quote to work properly but you get the idea.

I just wanted to back up Karinya on this point, TP burns are popular yes but that doesn't mean they are enjoyed. Almost every person I know with rdm or whm leveled hates going to TP burn parties on it. A friend of mine was restarting the game, got rdm to 75 first and couldn't get war 75 fast enough so he could switch to getting his merits (for rdm as well as war) on warrior.

Good TP burns (the ones where the melees can bounce hate well and the puller is fast) are boring, the bad TP burns (the ones where the DDs can't bounce hate because of unequal damage or being stupid) are stressful and tiring or impossible depending on how bad it is. TP burns for most rdms and whms are seen as a chore and the only reason we take it is because 4 hours of TP burn beats 8 hours of something else or a lot more than that if you are talking campaign.

I don't really enjoy tp burns, but they are effective. I didn't really enjoy the "old" style either, exp is not the fun part for me I enjoy the events and bringing a new job into endgame. Exp is just the work we have to put in to cap out our jobs, people don't enjoy farming but they do it for gil. Thief is far better then say warrior for farming, but we shouldn't nerf thief because warrior isn't as effective right?

One great DD isn't an asset to a merit party, you need 2 minimum but ideally 3 or 4. TP burn style curing only works well and safely when a good percentage of the curing (~80%+ I would say) is done through regens and curagas. From a curing point of view I would rather have 4 average DDs than 3 average DDs and one great one.

If one DD is doing enough damage to be tanking a lot more than their fair share (or is doing a lot of stupid things to pull hate for no real damage or reason) the healers mp goes to hell. More damage is occurring and you can’t cure it very efficiently because you are forced to rely more heavily on cures because the damage is happening too fast for regen to heal the DD to safety/full before they are damaged again and curaga is only really efficientwhen you are hitting for maximum on 3+ people (especially with curaga 2 which is generally the most useful scale of curaga for exp at least in the merit parties I've been in) and you can't use it as much if most of the damage is going on one person.

I hate to admit it but it's probably more important for the damage to be fairly evenly spread with a whm healer than with a rdm healer but even so, if you have one DD effectively tanking a burn party your rdm is going to be struggling for mp.

My point was misunderstood, I didn't mean one great dd who overshadows to the point they are tanking. Because in most cases you can balance that in the fact of having your gimp player 1st voke and eventually thru ws or dot the hate will shift. Not like most of these mobs can't be easily tanked /nin by someone who understands haste gear and how to cast shadows.

[Saren]

Re: Will Al Zahbi be Thrown to the Wolves?

I don't really enjoy tp burns, but they are effective. I didn't really enjoy the "old" style either, exp is not the fun part for me I enjoy the events and bringing a new job into endgame. Exp is just the work we have to put in to cap out our jobs, people don't enjoy farming but they do it for gil. Thief is far better then say warrior for farming, but we shouldn't nerf thief because warrior isn't as effective right?

I agree in part, I don't really enjoy exp that much either and I'm not actually advocating TP burn be nerfed at all, merits are enough of a time sink even at 30k an hour. TH isn’t the same thing as exp, farming isn't compulsory, exp is: and besides, if SE found a way to make farming more fun/interesting/less monotonous, would you complain?

I like the bounty idea because it seems like a sensible way to encourage some variety without hurting TP burn as a tactic because it’s a clever tactic that does require some skill on behalf of all the members to do it well. Variety of setups means that it's more likely for more jobs to be included and people are going to get to play their jobs in a wider range of ways with a greater variety of other jobs. I don't have a problem with TP burns as TP burns, what rankles me about them is that they are the only way to hit 25+k/hour when I believe there are other ways to make exp that require as much skill, effort, organization and concentration but don’t give rewards in the same league as a TP burn.

Variety also means players will tend to be better players earlier. How many people hit 75, join an endgame shell and struggle to adjust for a while not so much because they are learning the new mobs, the event quirks or working in a larger group but because they have been playing a very narrow range of how their job can function for a very long time and haven't had any practice at things like working in a setting with one tank, prioritizing status removals correctly, pulling out SATA quickly and reliably, mitigating their damage and watching their hate when the mobs can actually hurt them, holding hate as a tank, playing with different subjobs, healing pld correctly, how essential barspells can be etc.

My point was misunderstood

No offence intended but your point wasn't well phrased.

[Sevv]

Re: Will Al Zahbi be Thrown to the Wolves?

No offence intended but your point wasn't well phrased.

Tho is it ever?

[Ziero]

Re: Will Al Zahbi be Thrown to the Wolves?

There are *two* main factors in gaining exp: exp per kill, and kills per hour (which takes into account fight time + downtime). The former exerts much less influence because of the current exp tables, not because of some immutable law of nature.

Actually, as I said before, there is only one factor to gaining Exp, and that's kill speed. Because regardless of how high or low the exp is on one mob, if you can contiually chain them then the exp on that single kill doesn't matter.

Do you happen to have a video of a level 20 party getting chain #100? I bet you don't.

Lower level parties can *kill* a 100 exp mob, sure. What they can't do is kill it in 30 seconds or less (even though, obviously, level 20-something mobs have far less HP than level 80-something ones).

TP burns don't need chain 100 to be TP burns, nor do they need chain 100 to blow away the Exp of a "traditional" party. A TP burn is an exp party with no tank, where melees use TP at 100%, and where T-VT mobs in high abundunce are the best target. So I don't need to get a chain 100 to have a TP burn at 20, consistent Chain 4 and 5 with no real downtime works fine for me.

Which doesn't matter, because their weakness is even bigger than ...*snip*... solo a T colibri, and then die to a DC of some other mob families, even if they eat food on the latter.

Any mob can be killed easily without food when it's T-VT. The only difference is that Colibri have low HP so they die faster. And the only reason why they're not mana-burned to hell and back is because of their Mimicry, because otherwise every Blm in town would be soloing them with no effort. And DC mobs stopped being hard to solo a long time ago.

True only in the sense that the second Amnesia wears off is the second the fight ends as 3 simultaneous WS rip the imp apart. It's still shorter than a fight against a real mob of comparable level. And some imps won't even use it, and die even faster. Most important JAs can easily be used before the imp gains TP.

Have you ever tried to use a traditional party against IT Imps? If so, go do it and watch it fail. Then take a TP burn of averagely equiped melees against an IT Imp, guess what, it'll crash and burn too. It's when they drop down to T to VT levels (starting to see a trend?) that they become burnable.

Amnesia is annoying. It is not dangerous ...*snip*... under this system and would never get a bounty, or constantly have a negative bounty if it were possible.)

Fomor certainly aren't dangerous, Dancing Chains is just as annoying as Amnesia if not less so. Hell if anything, Fox Fire and Grim Halo are the attacks that kill people. And Mortal ray is only dangerous if your tank sucks. Mow Dow, Backswish and the fact that they're Mnk Mobs are why Taurus are dangerous. And ANY party stupid enough to try and exp on Cactuars(why would anyone want to exp on these?) and Tonberry(seriously, Tonberrys? Are you even thinking when you suggest this?) are going to get the crap kicked out of them. Those mobs are bad targets for everyone to kill. But then again you do seem to be ignoring the fact that people would TP burns Pots, Golems, Weapons, Birds, Dhamels, Crabs, Crawlers (and I'm intentionally leaving out Bones, another popular burn target, just to humor you) and other mobs long before ToAU came out. Even if the "Rare Mob" bonus was put in place, there are certain things that people would not exp on, and ya know what, even before ToAU people did not target those mobs for Exp.

If they weren't weak, fast repops wouldn't be an advantage; if their base exp value reflected their actual lack of difficulty, the sanction percentage bonus wouldn't be enough to make up the difference.

All mobs are weak when they start conning T-VT, it shifts the advantage to players dramatically at that point. I have had plenty of times, in older areas, in non TP burns where the only reason why we couldn't keep killing was lack of mobs. This ranges from Sahagin at 30 in Yuhtunga to Crabs at 55 in Kuftal to Dhamels at 60+ in Bibiki. You can kill any mob fast when they're T-VT

ToAU trolls, lamias, and qutrub repop just as fast as ToAU mamool ja and colibris, don't they? And they certainly are all subject to the same Sanction advantages. If mob family weakness doesn't matter as you say, why aren't all those monsters burned just as often?

Bad camps? Long Pulls? Blood and Magic aggro everywhere? I mean Trolls and Lamia aren't "hard" mobs either. I've exped off Trolls when we would run out of birds and Crawlers and they didn't put up much of a fight. Perhaps you can explain if people are avoiding "hard" mobs like the plague then why do they burn freaking Wyverns.

That's not what I said - even if it's true that plds make more exp in a zone where your exp primarily comes from damage (kind of implausible), I'm just saying it's no *worse* for DDs to have to campaign than for plds, and that even if anyone ever actually did seek for days, Campaign guarantees that nobody will have to do that ever again no matter what happens to the rest of the exp system. (But then I also point out that meleeburns aren't being destroyed under any proposed system, and that DDs could find party slots even in traditional parties, both of which you ignore completely.)

And you're ignoring the fact that I said that if they could buff traditional parties to the point of balance with TP burns it wouldn't be a bad thing, as long as they didn't nerf TP burns, which people are suggesting.

Bull. People do them because they *work*, not necessarily because they *like* them. The proof is all over this thread, these boards and the game in general. Lots of people bitch about them while still participating because the rewards are just too big to pass up (or to expect 5 others to pass up, so even if you wanted to do something different you probably couldn't.)

And people constantly bitched about traditional exp pts. Seriously, you're holding the opinions of one internet forum up against a widely used practice by everyone who plays this game.

None of which you can participate in at level 1. (And almost all of which DDs are also highly required for, as I'm sure you know.)

Exp is not just "one small facet" of the game, it is the gateway to *all* other content in the game. Additionally it probably predominates most players' total time played.

Anyone who spends the majority of their time Exping is either doing it wrong or really enjoys exping. Though it is something everyone must do, it is not something everyone has to spend the majority of their time doing. Especially when there are so many other events and missions and battles and such that one can fully explore every aspect of their job. Even before TP burns, many many many people hated to Exp.

Yes, I remember numerous people leveling...*snip*...work quite well in a traditional party, as low level exp confirms.)

...then your nostalgia is screwing with your memories. Which would explain a lot. People did not want Thfs, Drgs, Whms(outside of specific mobs) and Smns back in the day, hell even Mnk and Drks were "second string" DDs. Plds were second to Nins in terms of tanking and Rdms were invited for refresh and haste and people would not pt without either them or a Brd. Drks were only wanted 61+ when they got spinning slash, so they could sub /thf and close light (which is where lolthf comes from btw). Back then it was a Tank, two support, two compatible melee and a Blm, or no pt and 10k an hour was incredible exp.

Then people started burning, specifically Wars, Nins, Mnks, Rngs and Blm, all of whom needing Rdm and Brd, and everyone else was left to the wayside. In terms of both invites and exp gain. And Blm didn't get screwed out of Exp pts, it was the fact that they started abandoning melee PTs in favor of far more efficient burn pts. Every Blm at the time had (|Burn|)(|Party|) in their search comment, and wouldn't take a traditional pt. And luck has nothing to do with their soloability, SE gave them their IT, fast repoping, weak-to-magic mobs, they're called Flans. But even before that many Blm could solo exp faster then traditional parties could.

WAR, MNK, NIN, BRD, RDM ...*snip*...except possibly in enjoyability.

Actually Whm and Smn won big time due to /Sch, now they can have their MP efficencey without needing a Rdm or Brd. And I see plenty of Rngs burning right along side the War, Mnk, Nin, Sam, Drk, Drg, Blu, Thf, Brd, Rdm, Cor, Sch and Dnc. Infact, as discussed earlier in this very thread, the only jobs "screwed over" by TP burns are Plds who can't adapt for Exp, Blm and possibly Pup because no one knows just what in they hell they can do other then people who actually play pup.

And who cares about them, right? Why should they have a game that they can enjoy? Clearly, whatever's best for the DDs should be what everyone is forced to do whether they like it or not (if they want a competitive exp/hr rate). That's your whole argument, isn't it? You like tp burns so make sure the rdms and brds can't go anywhere else without gimping their exp, and screw the jobs that don't fit into tp burns at all?

Wow, do you not read? I hate all exp pting. I avoid it as much as I possibly can. Both TP burn and traditional parties. But seeing as you ignore the fact that most jobs can TP burn, you must not be paying attention. And I specifically said in my last post that if you can boost traditional parties to the level of TP burns without nerfing TP burns like many people in this thread suggested then it's good for everyone. But hey, ignoring comments and making things up seems to be a good way to argue on the internet, just look at OMG's post.

*snip because it's not worth repeating*

Don't care what HNMLS's want, I play with my friends. Hell, if you read my comments you would see that I do solo often (infact, those comments were in direct response to YOU) and that I prefer to do campaign. But I love how you call everyone else "princesses" yet you're the one doting on how needed you are endgame. BTW, people like you are the reason I don't care about endgame stuff with strangers.

Though go on and keep pretending I said anything about having to force anyone to do things the way "melees" want when it's *everyone involved in the exp pt including Brd and Rdms* who are gaining Exp by the fist load. But then again, you'd probably prefer the days when Brd, Rdm and Rng were the only jobs that could be "princesses"