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

[Takelli]

As most of your probably know, SC and MB is almost non-existant. But why? Sure, it MAY slow down kill speed, and cant be used against Colibri. But it can dish out strong damage if done right, which helps with kill speed. But WS spam is what is going on now, rather than SC+MB now. People say its faster, but is it really with a good blm?

SE bassically dropped the SC+MB on the game and left it so its very weak, and does nothing besides a little bit extra damge (Or large amounts of damage if done correctly.). So no one really does it, and BLMs are left out of most parties. But, I think that if SE where to tweak the SC+MB slightly, it will bring it back along with BLMs.

What I think they can/should do is make it so that it gives you extra EXP, and extra time between chains so you can kill stronger mobs, and get even more exp with out needing to chain a bunch of T-VTs together. So for every 15 damage from a SC, and a MB will give 1 extra Exp and second to chaining. So say... You do 2 skill chains 60dmg, and 100dmg, and a MB 200dmg. Thats 360 damage total giving you 54 extra XP, and seconds to chain another monster. So thats 254 exp on a normally 200 exp monster. Then, when you start chaining monsters, the extra XP from the SCs and MBs will get boosted as well from the chain.

That is how I think SE should make SC+MB now so that blms are no longer left out of the parties, and that SCs get more use rather than to just sit there and randomly WS, and get no bonus from it.

[fairyoracle75]

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

I think that might work. Personally I didn't see why SE nerfed BLM just because some people didn't like Mana burns.

[Zoltar]

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

how'd they nerf it if you don't mind me asking? burn parties are almost everywhere still, so what did they nerf to stop it?

[Ketaru]

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

how'd they nerf it if you don't mind me asking? burn parties are almost everywhere still, so what did they nerf to stop it?

I believe mobs build some resistance to elements if the same element is casted on them over and over. In impact of nerf, it's probably down there with enmity loss from shadows because it didn't do anything in the grand scheme of things.

I think that might work. Personally I didn't see why SE nerfed BLM just because some people didn't like Mana burns.

I believe this nerf happened way back when people still did skillchains and magic bursts. This was back when people made inclusive, balanced parties consisting of tanks, healers, support, meleers, and nukers. In fact, this was why jobs like BLM were highly sought out while jobs like MNK were ignored because people thought spike damage trumped damage over time. So when people began forming parties consisting only of nukers, others began to see this as an unfair situation because a party of all nukers isn't balanced at all.

Much like how people viewed Arrowburn parties as unfair, actually because parties inviting only RNGs were not considered balanced either, leading to the ranged nerf (which made far more of an impact than the nuking nerf ever did). People even joked that, with RNG having lost a lot of its luster, BLM would be the go-to job for epeen damage.

Hurting the issue some was the way Divine Might was actually considered quite difficult back in the day. But a full alliance of all BLMs could defeat the Battle with simplistic ease, compared to what an inclusive alliance was able to do. A BLM I once knew even joined a linkshell made up of all BLMs that would defeat Divine Might for people for a price.

That nuking was once nerfed only looks inconcievable today because meleers decided, back then, that if BLMs didn't want to party, then by golly, we're gonna find a way to party without them! Enter ToAU and Colibri: an expansion practically tailored to this new style of partying.

I think BLM and bringing back some style to partying like skillchaining and magic bursitng is a genuine concern. But at the same, I often wonder if a sort of "sins of the father" thing is involved, where BLMs of yesteryear are partly responsible for the situation of BLMs today.

[Armando]

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

SCs are currently worth the damage if it's possible to use both member's strong WS but people don't do them because they're too lazy to.

Awarding longer EXP chain time for doing a SC will only fix part of the problem; the EXP for killing weaker mobs needs to be nerfed too so that it's at least slightly worse than a traditional party. It takes less effort to spam WS than it does to SC, even if SC isn't exactly rocket science. The traditional party should be more appealing.

I'm not very fond of the method though because it becomes very SC-centric and gives even more bias towards SAM. Just buff the EXP from IT mobs. SCs+MB will make a comeback on their own because they are a naturally better way of killing ITs. The goal shouldn't be to SC and MB as much as possible but simply to kill the mob as efficiently as possible.

Also SE never really nerfed manaburn EXP. They nerfed manaburn NM/HNM setups.

[Ketaru]

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

I'm not very fond of the method though because it becomes very SC-centric and gives even more bias towards SAM. Just buff the EXP from IT mobs. SCs+MB will make a comeback on their own because they are a naturally better way of killing ITs.

Regarding making parties more SAM-biased, that is probably another thing that is factored in when it comes to deciding what sort of parties should be optimal.

Consider this. The TP burn style of partying hurt BLM's prospects for parties. In fact, I'd dare say BLM is the only job it hurt. But how many jobs did it help? I'd wager it didn't only help one.

On the flip side, if optimal EXP shifted towards fighting higher level mobs all for the sake of helping BLM (once again, only one job), who will be hurt by this? I'm bringing self interest into this, but already off the top of my head I can name BST and PUP.

[Takelli]

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

I'm not very fond of the method though because it becomes very SC-centric and gives even more bias towards SAM.

Well... By level 30, any job should be able to WS atleast ONCE per fight though. And that when Blms actually get stronger as well, and get more options for gear (Seers set unless I cant remember the right level).

All that you need to do is have 2 jobs WS, and SC, then have the BLm or another job that can nuke MB for the extra XP/time for chains. One tank and DD do a WS, then the mage MBs. The next fight nothing, then they SC again and MB, nothing then repeat. I can see how it will make parties more Sam oriented as well from the SC+Mb. But it will make it so thatpeople will fight more than JUST Colibri as well at later levels.

[Solymir]

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

In my experience Bst and Pup are already left out of TP burn parties. I can see how some other jobs might be left out as well if they can't make a particular sc. Though with the introduction of Mythic ws's that should be less likely.

[Takelli]

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

Pup are already left out of TP burn parties

lol. I've had a few TP burns with a Pup/Dnc as main healer. Only had a rdm as a mage and we did great lol. The pup beat him at almost all his curing skills. XD

[Ketaru]

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

In my experience Bst and Pup are already left out of TP burn parties. I can see how some other jobs might be left out as well if they can't make a particular sc. Though with the introduction of Mythic ws's that should be less likely.

If you ask me, that's often more out of ignorance than any actual substantial deficit in performance. Just eyeballing it, I see a lot more BSTs joining parties these days than they used to. When I want to come to things like KSNMs or Nyzul runs or whatever as BST, it isn't as if I underperform once I come along for the ride.

But if the shift was to high level mobs, I "know" I will suffer a drop in performance in a way other jobs won't. My pet makes up for a great percentage of my damage and its accuracy is much lower against higher level mobs, only I can't feed it sushi to make up for that discrepency in level.

EDIT: One of the interesting selling points I once saw a BST use for joining a merit party was that she could use better food because, with Snarl, she won't get raped by Snatch Morsel as often (though I'm sure she did sometimes since mobs have horrible tendency to have TP right after multi hit WSs like Rampage)

[Armando]

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

Well... By level 30, any job should be able to WS atleast ONCE per fight though. And that when Blms actually get stronger as well, and get more options for gear (Seers set unless I cant remember the right level).

Again, it's still a more convoluted, indirect solution.

For starters, it doesn't even exclude parties that capitalize on weaker mobs and melee-heavy setups. In fact, they arguably benefit more since the easier the mob, the more WS damage they can do, which results in bigger SCs, AND weak mobs are less likely to resist the SC, resulting in double advantage.

Secondly, it detracts from logical gameplay. You're arbitrarily giving extra importance to a specific strategy instead of letting the players employ it whenever they deem it to be the best course of action. We want SCs and MBs to have be useful because of what they do, not because SE gave them arbitrary bonuses.

Thirdly it's far more work to implement this and hope you didn't introduce some unforseen imbalance than to directly attack the problem's source and tweaking the way EXP scales with mob level. To balance your idea, you'd need to have the Damage:Bonus ratio scale with party level (low level characters do less damage than high level characters) AND mob level (to compensate for the fact that higher level mobs take less damage and resist more.) And that still won't guarantee that players won't find an exploit.

[Firewind]

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

EDIT: One of the interesting selling points I once saw a BST use for joining a merit party was that she could use better food because, with Snarl, she won't get raped by Snatch Morsel as often (though I'm sure she did sometimes since mobs have horrible tendency to have TP right after multi hit WSs like Rampage)

After levelling WHM and PLD I would like to sat while Snarl is useful, it can be unreliable when you factor in latency and the fact that you can't see a mob's TP. Pets taking hate can cause stupid DDs tostart stroking thier epeens "because tha tank don hav to tank lul111!111z". I'm not bashing Snarl, it's just not the most reliable defensive tool out there that's all. It's a bit like using Flash as a defensive tool really, you need to have impeccable reactions becaus eyou must take into account server lag, message lag, the time it takes for the ability to fire etc..

Snarl is pretty epic for skill up and farming parties though or just low manning things in general though .

[Ketaru]

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

True enough. Though you did bring up an interesting point in mentioning low manning things at the end.

It's not just in EXP parties. It feels like the focus of the entire game has shifted more towards lower level mobs. Think of things like Campaign or FoV. In Campaign, almost all of the mobs fight like Decent Challenge prey, opening up the possibility for more jobs being able to differentiate their roles more (like BLUs acting as tanks and not just damage dealers). Or how people don't tend to go for Incredibly Tough mobs in Fields of Valor. Then there are the popular Assaults, most of which don't have mobs any higher level than Very Tough.

I don't think BLM performs quite as well in day to day activities in this game these days because it is specialized in nuking and nothing else. It cannot differentiate the roles it takes as well as...well...almost any other job in the game. At a group's most desperate, it can be a makeshift healer at best. It doesn't have the gear, abilities, or skills to be a meleer. It's lacking in any party support, though it isn't a bad Enfeebler. And it definitely cannot be a tank. It was always specialized in dealing spike damage to higher level mobs and the day to day activities of average players has shifted away from that, save for endgame where they are still quite desired.

Maybe, if we wanted to perhaps change the BLM job, we could instead talk about how we could make it fit more into the game as it exists now?

[Solymir]

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

Just to be clear I wasn't saying any melee class job should be left out, it's just been my experience that I have never seen those two in a tp burn merit party.

[ShepardG]

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

I don't know if this would work take...

Say you have a TaruTaru BLM with 1000MP, best Restin MP set you can have, and refresh and Balad X2, some sort of gear refresh. I just don't think you'd have enough MP recovery methods to keep up with a partys kill speed :/ It's hard for me to convey all the hypothetical situations, but if your getting 200exp a kill from a mob, and then say you do a collective SC+MB for 66 additional seconds and 66 Aditional exp, you'd still need to rest your MP after the 3rd or 4th mob... even with BLM/SCH. And it would only get worse if your doing more dmg, because you'd be killing the Mobs Faster, and all the while your healer has to keep the DD's alive, even with /nin IT Mobs don't miss that often.