Status of the Balance of Defense-centered Jobs

[PTT]

Ninja, Paladin, and Warrior all have the ability to be powerful defense-oriented jobs. However, the current preference trend is to have in the party a Ninja only, or many jobs that have Ninja as the subjob, for the purpose of using the spells "Utsusemi: Ichi" and "Utsusemi: Ni."

Using these spells in the correct manner, it is possible for the user to take zero damage, or very little damage, for extended periods of time. Other defense-oriented jobs, especially Paladin, are viewed as "Less Safe" than simply having a Ninja perform the same role in a party.

Paladins, Warriors who do not use a Ninja subjob, and other jobs who could potentially be the main defense job in a party cannot seem to compete with a job that takes zero damage. The "Chains of Promathia" missions in particular seem designed to make it very difficult for conventional defense jobs to accomplish.

Question: Do the developers feel after the recent changes, that there is still an imbalance among jobs whose main purpose is party defense, and in the way defense and vitality stats factor into defense, and if so, are there any plans to bring further balance to these jobs?

[Legal Fish]

Re: Status of the Balance of Defense-centered Jobs

Let me makes sense of this.

The Vitality and Defense stats seem to lose their purpose somewhere in the mid-game and higher. On HNMs, putting on large amount of Vitality or Defense rarely takes importance over stacking large amount of Health Points gear. Is there any plans to improve the effect of Defense and Vitality to the point that its importance is equal to that of Health points or Attack and Strength to a damage dealer?

[PTT]

Re: Status of the Balance of Defense-centered Jobs

Yeah, pretty much. I didn't want to just come out and say "I'm a bitter Paladin, everyone likes Ninja and /nin better, help please!"

Think I should reword the question/topic?

[kuu]

Re: Status of the Balance of Defense-centered Jobs

The problem is XP pts revolve around xp/hr.

So the most obvious answer is to min/max and have overwhelming offense. The faster you kill, the more xp.

The problem outside of Xp might be the opposite.

Just like meriting vs HNM. Pld get no merit love, but if you don't have enough pld, you're screwed.

[Karinya]

Re: Status of the Balance of Defense-centered Jobs

MaxHP setups aren't that effective except on nuke-happy hnms (or magic special attacks like breaths and Megaflare). Even then, magic defense bonus gear would often be better if it existed (this is one area where HNM paladins could really use some help; many magic attacks can be absorbed by shadows but none are reduced by armor. None of the new merit abilities help against magic damage either.)


But the main problem is merit: killing weak monsters quickly (T-low VT) is worth *much* more exp/hour than killing high VT-low IT, if you can even find them. This makes defensive jobs basically worthless - both PLD and WHM suffer from this. 5 DD and a RDM or BRD that doubles as healer (if anyone ever gets hit, which they often don't) will outperform any other setup - by a LOT. Jobs that specialize in keeping the party alive are useless against monsters that are too weak to be a real threat to begin with.

This is basically a problem with monster stats and exp value. The exp value of monsters doesn't accurately reflect their actual difficulty. Monsters that are dangerous or take a considerable time to defeat should be worth much more exp per kill than harmless wimps, not only slightly more, so that overall exp/hr rates are similar across a range of monster levels. This would allow parties with specialized tanks and healers to fight tougher monsters where their defensive abilities are actually useful, without sabotaging the party's exp rate by doing so.

[csBahamut]

Re: Status of the Balance of Defense-centered Jobs

Basically, you're asking SE what their plan is to further balance Utsusemi. It's a really tough problem to address after having been left alone, and even encouraged, for so long. Taking 0 damage is just too good to pass up. Add to that the little bit of extra offensive power gained from Dual Wield, and you have what's call an imbalance. Generally when trying to balance jobs/classes in RPGs, you want to balance offensive and defensive power. Utsusemi offers the ultimate defensive power, which when combined with the strong offensive power of a job like WAR, and you get the broken state of the game we have today. NIN/WAR is almost just as broken. The main reasons are: 1) Utsusemi 2) Dual Wield 3) Berserk 4) and Double Attack. Putting those 4 things together makes a good offense and a good defense. PLD can't get all of that, nor can most 2-handed DD's, and so they get left behind due to claims of "efficiency". SE would have to lower offensive power while using Utsusemi, or lower the defensive power of Utsusemi, to re-establish balance.

Of course, PLDs really shouldn't be totally expluded from endgame merits. It is quite possible to make 10K/hr or more with a PLD/WAR tank in the new zones. It's just that most PLDs don't have the gear, the skill, nor the mages with the experience to make it happen. And of course you have the gradually expanding standard of comparing all parties with 4 x Ridell WAR/NIN, 1 BRD, 1 RDM parties get 15K/hr or more.

[nazlfrag]

Re: Status of the Balance of Defense-centered Jobs

There have been several adjustments to Utsusemi in regards to this, but I think the best adjustment that could be made would merely bring it into line with the 'Blink' spell, and remove its 100% efficiency to a chance based setup. Surely when striking at the shadows there is a chance to hit the correct one and damage the caster. This would not break the spell, yet it would remove much of its utility as a subjob.

Another suggestion often stated is to raise Utsusemi:Ni to level 38+ so only Ichi is avaliable to sub. Seeing that they are already weakened when subbed, this seems to be unneccesary but would remain an alternative to the 'Blink' treatment.

Personally, I am shooting myself in the foot suggesting this. As a redmage, the shadows from a ninja sub add to our powerful enhancing magic to make us excellent soloers. Either of these adjustments would change that for the worse. Yet for a greater game balance, I have no problem with this changing, as rdm/nin would still retain much of its strength.

[kuu]

Re: Status of the Balance of Defense-centered Jobs

Basically, you're asking SE what their plan is to further balance Utsusemi. It's a really tough problem to address after having been left alone, and even encouraged, for so long. Taking 0 damage is just too good to pass up. Add to that the little bit of extra offensive power gained from Dual Wield, and you have what's call an imbalance. Generally when trying to balance jobs/classes in RPGs, you want to balance offensive and defensive power. Utsusemi offers the ultimate defensive power, which when combined with the strong offensive power of a job like WAR, and you get the broken state of the game we have today. NIN/WAR is almost just as broken. The main reasons are: 1) Utsusemi 2) Dual Wield 3) Berserk 4) and Double Attack. Putting those 4 things together makes a good offense and a good defense. PLD can't get all of that, nor can most 2-handed DD's, and so they get left behind due to claims of "efficiency". SE would have to lower offensive power while using Utsusemi, or lower the defensive power of Utsusemi, to re-establish balance.

Of course, PLDs really shouldn't be totally expluded from endgame merits. It is quite possible to make 10K/hr or more with a PLD/WAR tank in the new zones. It's just that most PLDs don't have the gear, the skill, nor the mages with the experience to make it happen. And of course you have the gradually expanding standard of comparing all parties with 4 x Ridell WAR/NIN, 1 BRD, 1 RDM parties get 15K/hr or more.

Old news. It's more or less balanced as it is, as monsters are mostly split in half. Those that will rape shadows, and those that will not.

It's more of a min max thing, and only really related to Meriting.

Normal XP life span sometimes you want nin sometimes you want pld, and sometimes it's split.

Meriting wise is a tough issue,

as IMPs seems were thought to be to heavly favor of non nins (-ga spells, silence, no WS). But it ended up being just a bigger medicne bill.

Joysuse is another issue altogether, and is only really for war's anyway.

[Legal Fish]

Re: Status of the Balance of Defense-centered Jobs

Um, no, do not remove Utsusemi effectiveness at all.

Bitter PLDs, please stay out of this, this is a none biase chat about Defense and Vitality.

Here is a thought for yah! Instead of nerfing everything, why don't they make stuff stronger.

Defense and Vitality are ignored these days because the lack the any true use mid-game and up.

You start a nice topic and a bunch of cry babies have to go and try to ruin it. Here is a clue: if you can not keep up with a NIN in most situatons, go back and work on your PLD because you are not a good one.

[csBahamut]

Re: Status of the Balance of Defense-centered Jobs

There's very few NM/HNMs that significantly more PLD friendly. Even then, people would rather just make it so that the NIN can handle the fight aynways. People have done Faust with NINs.

And yes, the imbalance is more with merits, but also with lower level NMs. When people can take almost no damage for almost no MP cost, there's obviously some imbalance. If you take two well tuned LSes, they're more likely to use NINs because of the MP savings in the long run. Hate won't be an issue because they'll have SATA+WSes for that. They'll have the stunners needed already from the BLMs who are also nuking. Single target spells, especially AM, become more helpful that harmful. And there's always plenty of BRDs in these LSes to give the NINs haste or evasion songs (sometimes both).

Just take a good look at how much people depend on Utsusemi for doing things more efficiently. Heck, I've even been able to tank Hakutaku as PLD/NIN way better than I ever could as PLD/WAR.

Personally, I'd do something that doesn't ruin NIN tanking (I like seeing different tanking styles available), but tones down the use of Utsusemi by more than just NIN. Something like Utsusemi being like Blink when subbed, or having Utsusemi up increases weapon delay, or lowers evasion and accuracy, or or makes the next hit after go down do a critical hit.

[PTT]

Re: Status of the Balance of Defense-centered Jobs

Um, no, do not remove Utsusemi effectiveness at all.

Bitter PLDs, please stay out of this, this is a none biase chat about Defense and Vitality.

Here is a thought for yah! Instead of nerfing everything, why don't they make stuff stronger.

Defense and Vitality are ignored these days because the lack the any true use mid-game and up.

It's hard not to be bitter, but I'm trying to be as unbiased as I can.

I'd love to see Defense and Vitality actually mean something, but the sheer amount of math nightmares involved with reworking the entire damage calculation system is painful to think about.

I'd love some Paladin JSE with some -% Damage taken properties

I'd love to see Utsusemi have the condition "Chance of being struck is 1 in *Number of Utsusemi Shadows remaining*, or maybe a slightly more forgiving flat number, like a 10 percent chance of getting struck"

The fact is I don't know how to fix it. Not without getting one side or the other angry at me. That's why I'm asking. I tried to word it as carefully as I can. I'll try to edit in something here...

[DakAttack]

Re: Status of the Balance of Defense-centered Jobs

SE has a certain balance in mind, and making every other job stronger just because one job is above the balance would still offset that balance. The scale is three dimensional, and there's possibly more than one scale. All jobs have to be kept on par; if they get too strong weaken them, if they get too weak strengthen them.

Obviously taking away the effectiveness of Utsusemi would upset the balance more than we'd need to, but moving Ni up to level 38 would help out a bit, and possibly lessening the effectiveness of shadows as they're stripped would be a step in the right direction as well. Paladins are just concerned that Ninjas aren't putting enough into their defensive capabilities, which allows them to put more into their offensive capabilities, while still avoiding all damage. This makes no sense when you take Paladins' ability to take and deal damage.

At the same time, they might as well make ninja tool ingrediants cheaper or easier to find to lessen the cost for Ninjas. I don't believe anybody should have to pay so much money for a job.

[Karinya]

Re: Status of the Balance of Defense-centered Jobs

Yeah - the main problem is not that a ninja can avoid almost all damage, or even that a ninja can avoid almost all damage and still hold hate easily.

It's that a ninja can avoid almost all damage and hold hate easily *with no signficant gear/food sacrifices*. They can put their whole gear setup into attack and accuracy, eat sushi or meat and tank with Berserk on, producing a damage output comparable to other DDs, and completely blowing away a PLD or WAR who is using tank gear and food. They literally tank in hauby, o kote and snipers with Berserk on and *still* take almost no damage. That's what's insane.

Any other job that pulled hate while wearing that setup would be shredded in seconds - unless they were subbing NIN and had Utsusemi on, of course. Then they have plenty of time for someone else to take hate before they need to worry about anything.

If a ninja could tank about as well as a PLD or WAR tank while producing about the same damage output, it wouldn't be a major balance problem in exp/merit. It's the ability to tank exp parties in a full DD setup, putting out the same damage as any other DD while also holding hate and taking no damage that's the problem.

Ninjas should have to choose between their full defensive capabilities and their full offensive capabilities, and right now, they don't. Their full defensive capabilities are unnecessary for anything but a few HNMs. In the vast majority of situations they can take almost no damage *without really trying*.

[Hamlet]

Re: Status of the Balance of Defense-centered Jobs

I think that pld should have some sort of trait that makes their defense more worthwhile, and the end result is that they require about the same amount of healing as a ninja tank.

[csBahamut]

Re: Status of the Balance of Defense-centered Jobs

Yeah - the main problem is not that a ninja can avoid almost all damage, or even that a ninja can avoid almost all damage and still hold hate easily.

It's that a ninja can avoid almost all damage and hold hate easily *with no signficant gear/food sacrifices*. They can put their whole gear setup into attack and accuracy, eat sushi or meat and tank with Berserk on, producing a damage output comparable to other DDs, and completely blowing away a PLD or WAR who is using tank gear and food. They literally tank in hauby, o kote and snipers with Berserk on and *still* take almost no damage. That's what's insane.

Any other job that pulled hate while wearing that setup would be shredded in seconds - unless they were subbing NIN and had Utsusemi on, of course. Then they have plenty of time for someone else to take hate before they need to worry about anything.

If a ninja could tank about as well as a PLD or WAR tank while producing about the same damage output, it wouldn't be a major balance problem in exp/merit. It's the ability to tank exp parties in a full DD setup, putting out the same damage as any other DD while also holding hate and taking no damage that's the problem.

Ninjas should have to choose between their full defensive capabilities and their full offensive capabilities, and right now, they don't. Their full defensive capabilities are unnecessary for anything but a few HNMs. In the vast majority of situations they can take almost no damage *without really trying*.

Exactly.