Bringing back SC+MB to parties (And possibly blm!)

[Armando]

Re: Bringing back SC+MB to parties (And possibly blm!)

Level wears too many hats, but if it isn't going to be an indicator of dangerousness, then why are we bothering to /check things?

It never has been a direct indicator of dangerousness unless you mean to imply a Slime is equally dangerous to a melee as a Rabbit, or that crabs are equally dangerous as a Soulflayer of equal level, or that a worm is equally dangerous as a Spider is equal level, or that a bird is equally dangerous as a ghost. There is already a large disparity between the danger ratings in the natural fauna. The fact that we gravitate towards Colibri and Imps should already tell you that.

/checking things is still absolutely critical because Level Correction is a harsh, unmerciful mistress. No matter how weak you think X mob family is, they'll give you a hard time if you overhunt.

P.S. One thing colibri really need is to be smarter.

In my opinion all mobs should've been made "smart" instead of picking moves at random. Even crabs would be less pushovers if they had a predisposition to Big Scissors.

The first effect of that system is that nobody would fight +7s (willingly) because you could be just as effective against +11s, which have only slightly more HP/def/eva (without the level correction formulas chipping in), but are worth a lot more exp. (Unless they wouldn't be, I guess.) But if while you were merrily fighting +10s and +11s you accidentally got a +12... then you can't fight it and can't CC it (both because of the level correction for the +12 to +16 range, which is *five* levels worse than what you were normally fighting instead of just one).

IOW, level variation would be unimportant except when it completely murdered you and danced on the corpses. I don't think that's a step in the right direction from what we have now.

Eh, the level range was a suggestion. It could be extended to +12 or even +13. A party fighting something that can go up to +13 is really asking for it.

Either way I just would have liked for level penalty to play a smaller role in performance instead of being responsible for the bulk of your suck. It's part of the reason it's so much better to stick to VTs and the lowest ITs; without level correction backing them up, mobs can't put up a fight because of their slow-ass stat growth. It's not so much that level correction was a bad idea in itself, but it shouldn't have been the mob's main line of defence.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Bringing back SC+MB to parties (And possibly blm!)

While it'd be nice if the SC+MB and the (increasingly mythical) "traditional" party become more useful again, the number one job that everyone in my LS seemed to have been leveling in the past year was... Black Mage.

I'm far less concerned about the job being left out of "normal" parties than I was before Level Sync came out. With manaburn being suitable for group of 1 to up to 6 people at some camps/routes and the ability to synch levels, BLMs simply don't need that traditional parties anymore than the melees these days.

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Not to say SC+MB is useless; outside of exp parties, it's good for many ZNMs and sky gods (Shijin) depending on the number of people available and the jobs they can bring.

Popular? No, but not exactly extinct, either.