Why no one seems to care about Renkei (weapon skill chain) anymore?

[Lunaryn]

Re: Why no one seems to care about Renkei (weapon skill chain) anymore?

You have to use it right for it to work well. Ideally you'd do a level 2 or 3 skillchain, and the mob would be weak against one or more of the elements of the skillchain. The damage that the two players do also affect the potency of the skillchain. I think i read somewhere that the most damage a skillchain can do is 1/2 the damage of the last WS, so you want to tack your hardest hitting WS last, when possible.

I was partying against beetles in Garlaige, and we were skillchaining on each other w/e possible, though not in an organized manner. We all managed to fire off 4 WS's in sucession once, and I think we ended up with Liquefecation -> Scission -> Liquefecation , and the damage bonuses added up to around 300 points, and I think the BLU and the RDM both managed to Magic Burst as well. It was just a perfect storm, but it wasn't organized at all- but that's a lot of free damage (and it's hate-free too, isn't it?) and that beetle went down in about 1/2 the time.

No, it's not hate free. As a THF who got most of her levels back when hate control mattered, the parties that worked the best were the ones where one of the melees was ready to pop off a WS with a Transfixion chain property with first voke having been set up, so that I could SATA Viper Bite for a high-powered Distortion chain. All of that damage generates hate I could transfer to the tank, and at the time most melees weren't putting out the kind of insane damage that makes TA just a damage spike and not a hate tool.

BLMs from some years back can attest to it too. An MB'd nuke at low levels was your primary contribution to a particular fight; you had to be really careful not to peel the hate off the tank from overnuking. Especially if the tank is lower level than you and/or you're overhunting.

[meSchnitzel]

Re: Why no one seems to care about Renkei (weapon skill chain) anymore?

Wow, not quite sure how you got me saying that I don't think SE intended for gear swapping to be what it is into me calling it an exploit.

RNG has a wide variety of ammo it has to use - Sleep, Blind, Acid, Bloody and Holy Bolts come to mind. It's unreasonable to expect a RNG to change his ammo manually through the Equipment menu without slowing down significantly. Holy Bolts also aren't good for Weapon Skills because of their lower DMG compared to other ammo. Then there's single-use ammo like Patriarch Protector's Arrow or Gold Musketeer's Bolt which cost a LOT of CP and are clearly designed to be switched in and out for a single shot using RNG's Unlimited Shot ability (which makes the next shot not consume ammo.)

See, I think the above mentioned was the purpose of having a /macro command to switch gear. If you are changing Ammo for specific shots it totally makes sense!
Also I believe that its there so you can quickly switch between sets of gear or whatever, I was just saying that I don't believe it was intended to max all your stats with a /macro for a single ability, then switch back really quickly...

Now that doesn't imply that SE doesn't condon the action, obviously they don't care seeing as they haven't changed anything about it in 7 years.

Every game has its flaws. You could consider this to be one of FFXI's (just like our shitty UI) if you wanted to. You can't really argue it's an exploit though, much less when SE has done jack shit about it for like 6 years.

I agree with you here, and again I wasn't calling it an exploit, I was stating that I don't think the game was design for swapping gear to the extent that it is currently being used. The IU system is very clunky and I agree with you on that one.. I do like it better than WoW though... WoW got way to messy with like 100 different abilities to use at any moment. I was paying more attention to the cooldowns than the actual game!

But you would be wrong.

That is your opinion... And you could be wrong too.
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OH YEAH!

I totally forgot to mention the "some items have amazing benefits with some crappy side effects" argument.

Isn't that kind of the idea? You get a bonus, but take a negative consequence...

I believe thats how it was designed, however the players found a way around it. More power to you, literaly actually, if you play that way.

I suppose I'll be all gimped and playing alone for this belief, but thats not so bad I guess.

[Armando]

Re: Why no one seems to care about Renkei (weapon skill chain) anymore?

Nobody is saying you're saying it's an exploit. Feba did, though.

See, I think the above mentioned was the purpose of having a /macro command to switch gear. If you are changing Ammo for specific shots it totally makes sense!
Also I believe that its there so you can quickly switch between sets of gear or whatever, I was just saying that I don't believe it was intended to max all your stats with a /macro for a single ability, then switch back really quickly...

If they didn't want people to do that they would've done something about it. Changing shields make you lose TP, changing weapons make you lose TP, changing ranged weapons makes you lose TP. There's a dozen ways they could've prevented or punished rapid gear changing for specific abilities. They could reset TP whenever your character blinks out, they could lock an equipment slot for 15 secs after you change what you have equipped on it so you can't do 2 quick changes, they could prevent you from using abilities and spells after a gear change until 5 seconds pass. But they didn't.

I totally forgot to mention the "some items have amazing benefits with some crappy side effects" argument.

Isn't that kind of the idea? You get a bonus, but take a negative consequence...

Not when the negative consequence completely negates (and then some) the bonus. It's like a piece of gear giving INT+10, Magic Attack Bonus -15. It's pretty much useless for nuking. Likewise, Hecatomb armor is completely useless for attacking - you'd be better off naked than wearing Hecatomb. Its only use is Weapon Skills - but the increased Weapon Skill damage won't offset your decreased damage over time from being slowed. No matter how you slice it, Hecatomb gear was never meant to be equipped full time.

[meSchnitzel]

Re: Why no one seems to care about Renkei (weapon skill chain) anymore?

I know where you are coming from, I really do. I understand why people do it... Min/Max playstyle is at its best when everyones e-peen is out in the open for everyone to see.

However, since I believe the idea was to "balance" your gear for your overall play style I suppose I would have to give an example, and for this example I will use the Hecatomb gear that you keep mentioning:

Hecatomb offers a very high ATK and AC bonus while slowing your overall speed.

OK, my thought on this is that if you want to hit harder, you should try and balance the rest of your gear to negate the slow effect... how could one do this? Perhaps simply partying with someone capable of casting haste on you to bring you back up to regular speed? May-haps you will use other gear to give you a little haste, and maybe not wear that belt or ring or boots that would otherwise give you some other bonus?

That is how I believe this game was envisioned, and designed... Sure, the /macro command was coded into the game, and it does make perfect sense for swapping some gear (ammo being an excellent example) on the fly.

I guess I tend to look at it from a semi-realistic point of view, where if someone is out on battlefield beating the shit out of something, they probably wouldnt be rapidly taking off their clothes and putting on new pants or whatever between each hit... But again reloading your gun or crossbow with a different type of bullet or crossbow does make perfect sense.

I get where your coming from and I'm not fighting it, I understand the logic of it. I just don't feel it was supposed to be that way, and SE may just be scared that everyone playing that does employ this tactic would burn their building down if they altered it or took the ability away from them. haha

[Armando]

Re: Why no one seems to care about Renkei (weapon skill chain) anymore?

However, since I believe the idea was to "balance" your gear for your overall play style I suppose I would have to give an example, and for this example I will use the Hecatomb gear that you keep mentioning:

Hecatomb offers a very high ATK and AC bonus while slowing your overall speed.

OK, my thought on this is that if you want to hit harder, you should try and balance the rest of your gear to negate the slow effect... how could one do this? Perhaps simply partying with someone capable of casting haste on you to bring you back up to regular speed? May-haps you will use other gear to give you a little haste, and maybe not wear that belt or ring or boots that would otherwise give you some other bonus?

No matter what the circumstances, it's still better not to wear it. The set gives 43% Slow in total. To negate that, you need 43% Haste. Suppose you managed to get 43% Haste between other pieces of gear and your party members. If you didn't equip the Hecatomb, you'd have 43% Haste, which means you do 75% more attack rounds, which is MUCH bigger than the bonuses that Hecatomb gear give. Haste works exponentially - the more you have, the more of an increase you get from adding more. Slow is practically the worst stat possible for a melee. Not only is hitting 75% more often far more damage than the damage boost from Hecatomb, it also means you get to use Weapon Skills a LOT more often, making it even more superior. Hitting harder doesn't let you get to 100 TP more often, but missing less or hitting faster does (which is why Accuracy and Haste are "stronger" stats than Attack and STR.)

The only job that could've seen benefit from Hecatomb gear was RNG, because ranged attacks aren't affected by Slow or Haste. But RNG can't wear it.

I guess I tend to look at it from a semi-realistic point of view, where if someone is out on battlefield beating the shit out of something, they probably wouldnt be rapidly taking off their clothes and putting on new pants or whatever between each hit... But again reloading your gun or crossbow with a different type of bullet or crossbow does make perfect sense.

True, but very little about the game is actually even semi-realistic. Scythes aren't weapons despite their popularity, FFXI's great swords would be impossible to lift in real life, and a great axe should pretty much miss all the time and kill the opponent instantly when it hits.

EDIT: Oh, and the concept artists were on crack when they designed our H2H weapons too. Almost all of them look nothing like what they should look like, and 99% of them do blunt damage even when claws and hooks should slash and katars should pierce.

[LyonheartLakshmi]

Re: Why no one seems to care about Renkei (weapon skill chain) anymore?

I'm a returning player, quited 4 years ago. I've been in a few exp party so far, seems no one care about weapon skill chain anymore, everyone just use their weapon skill whenever available. Has the game changed on something that make it worthless?

Wanna know what really happened? People started paying closer attention to the numbers. Parsers became more common. More people started to use 3rd party tools to measure the rate of exp gain.

After that, the focus of players started to shift. Instead of being so focused on putting up the big numbers through spike damage, players started to be more concerned about overall damage over time. Job combinations that were purely spike damage (DRK/THF), which used to be viewed as the best choice for exp parties, were replaced by jobs that could do both good DoT and good (though slightly less impressive) spike damage.

Players also started to focus less on big exp numbers. It used to be all about the biggest single number you could get on chain 0 through 4. With players running 3rd party tools to actually measure exp/hour, people realized that fighting IT++ mobs which yielded 250+ exp per kill wasn't necessarily the most efficient way to gain exp.

[hexx]

Re: Why no one seems to care about Renkei (weapon skill chain) anymore?

I think this thread got derailed from why people dont do renkei anymore to the min/max being an exploit idea.

Honestly, armando put it best with the hecatomb gear example. Some pieces are just NOT meant to be worn full time. Throw them on for certain situations (i.e. weapon skills) and you get the full benefit from them. Dont get me wrong, I love sporting my hecatomb while I'm running around but as far as TPing in them? Thats a big HELL NO lol

[vanux]

Re: Why no one seems to care about Renkei (weapon skill chain) anymore?

Players also started to focus less on big exp numbers. It used to be all about the biggest single number you could get on chain 0 through 4. With players running 3rd party tools to actually measure exp/hour, people realized that fighting IT++ mobs which yielded 250+ exp per kill wasn't necessarily the most efficient way to gain exp.

Actaully this part I agreed on the first day I played FFXI, as a melee job killing IT++ mob at low to mid level range even with decent gears and food, all you got is hit, miss, miss, hit, miss, hit.......It takes much longer to kill and all mage run out of MP easily then require extra downtime. The exp given is even lower than killing two or more T/VT mob in the same time frame. Things will be a bit difference at High-level range since all job with most ability opened could do things better, but I'm tired of having a 15-20 party in dunes with ppls keep yelling at puller for not pulling them with a IT+++ mob....

[Karinya]

Re: Why no one seems to care about Renkei (weapon skill chain) anymore?

Things are a lot different at high levels, because lower (relative) level monsters are still worth fairly decent exp each, and because high level gear and merits make players gain a LOT of effective strength in just a few levels which is not reflected in the exp system. Ordinary monsters just can't keep up with the power of high level players (even some early endgame content suffers from difficulty decay).

So, effectively, you can plow through "VT" mobs at 75 easier than you could kill EMs at 60. When SE introduced camps that had a huge supply of those mobs, that's when the massacres started.

[Tickmeoff]

Re: Why no one seems to care about Renkei (weapon skill chain) anymore?

No matter what the circumstances, it's still better not to wear it. The set gives 43% Slow in total. To negate that, you need 43% Haste. Suppose you managed to get 43% Haste between other pieces of gear and your party members. If you didn't equip the Hecatomb, you'd have 43% Haste, which means you do 75% more attack rounds, which is MUCH bigger than the bonuses that Hecatomb gear give. Haste works exponentially - the more you have, the more of an increase you get from adding more. Slow is practically the worst stat possible for a melee. Not only is hitting 75% more often far more damage than the damage boost from Hecatomb, it also means you get to use Weapon Skills a LOT more often, making it even more superior. Hitting harder doesn't let you get to 100 TP more often, but missing less or hitting faster does (which is why Accuracy and Haste are "stronger" stats than Attack and STR.)

I'd just like to point out that nowhere does it say you have to wear the whole set. If gear swapping didn't exist, it might be feasible to wear one or two pieces and use other gear to compensate.

The problem I have with gear swapping is that it removes the need for the player to make a choice on what they should wear. You don't need to worry about gearing towards a purpose because you can just gear for anything any time with the push of a button. Negative stats on a piece of gear to compensate for other amazing stats become meaningless when you only need to wear that gear for half a second. Every mage can use every staff to have every boost to every element at all times.

"X gear wouldn't exist if gear swapping couldn't be done" is bullshit. It would only mean you would have to actually think about what gear you're buying/using instead of buying/using everything you want.

[Armando]

Re: Why no one seems to care about Renkei (weapon skill chain) anymore?

I'd just like to point out that nowhere does it say you have to wear the whole set. If gear swapping didn't exist, it might be feasible to wear one or two pieces and use other gear to compensate.
...
"X gear wouldn't exist if gear swapping couldn't be done" is bullshit. It would only mean you would have to actually think about what gear you're buying/using instead of buying/using everything you want.

Sorry, but in the case of Hecatomb, it wouldn't. Each individual piece is bad for you. They're even worse put together, but just one is already detrimental to performance. Just because you could negate one piece easier than you can negate them all at the same time, it doesn't make that Slow stop counting against you. E.g. 4% Slow is 4% Slow even if you neutralize it with 4% Haste - because if you didn't have the Slow, then you'd have 4% Haste instead of 0%. Not only is the Slow penalty bigger than the offensive boosts, but Slow makes you get TP slower and that drops your overall damage even more by making you use less WS.

That's just how the math works. Ignoring the Hecatomb case, could it be done? Well, it would've been better if the gear had been designed from the start with the idea that you can't switch it in and out in mind, but yeah, it could be done, and it would arguably be more enjoyable.

The problem I have with gear swapping is that it removes the need for the player to make a choice on what they should wear. You don't need to worry about gearing towards a purpose because you can just gear for anything any time with the push of a button. Negative stats on a piece of gear to compensate for other amazing stats become meaningless when you only need to wear that gear for half a second. Every mage can use every staff to have every boost to every element at all times.

I whole-heartedly agree, don't misunderstand. I'm just saying that unfortunately that's not how the game was made. As silly as swapping gear in and out may be, that's how the game is played and refusing to swap gear at all effectively makes you gimp. It's like playing a top-down shoot-em-up without using bombs, when the difficulty bar is set based on the assumption that you have bombs at your disposal.

I'm not suggesting anyone has to take it to the extreme, but there's a certain degree of gear swapping that's expected of any job.