The BLM Problem

[Celeal]

Re: The BLM Problem

IMHO, the Skillchain + MB model does not fit very well in TP-burn parties.

Try to make WAR/NIN Rampage spam party into Skillchain + MB won't work.

Lowering the resist rate of SC would make the mob die faster, but it may not fix BLM's problem if the exp. over time of traditional SC + MB party does not match those TP-burn in ToAU.

[Macht]

Re: The BLM Problem

The funny thing to me about those TP-Burns. Is when I see things happen in a good party like the last one I was in. Every time me and the melee reached the 100% TP roughly the same time. Next fight we have TP ready to go. We kill the next mob with 2 WSs creating a SC and BLM hitting with MB. Doing that every other mob, so for every other mob half of our party was not needed. All that was needed was 2 DDs and 1 BLM.

It got to the point that when we did that combo the PLD didn't even bother to try and tank because it would be dead before all his hate gathering abilities were back up and would set him back for the next mob. Because of how well the 2 DDs kept getting TP at the same time, it started becoming habit for the Puller to bring 2 mobs. 1st Mob downed by the 3 and then second mob recharged TP again for the next two.

In that party the BLM only had to make sure the MB was done right because his MB was needed to down the first mob after everything else hit. So literally the BLM got to sit down and just regen, only to stand up to throw that 1 vital MB and then sit back down. There was no problem with it and EXP was quite good considering we only did it for like 3 hrs. and everyone leveled 3 times almost 4.

[Karinya]

Re: The BLM Problem

Most of my gaming experiance has been with Dragoon, so I'm not that familiar with how some of the other jobs work, so I have to ask is that really the case?
[edited out some details for length]
So for me, rough order of WS preference would have to be Wheeling Thrust > Skewer > Penta Thrust, even though Penta thrust deals more hits.
Given the subject of the thread, I know it's a stupid expectation but I would expect people to take things like that into consideration.

Well, maybe it depends on the weapon, but just today I was bored on the boat to Nashmau and pulled one of those EP squids (as PLD75 using Joyeuse). All done as close to 100 TP as possible and all on the same mob.
Vorpal Blade (skill 200, requires main or subjob WAR, PLD, DRK or BLU): 400+ damage
Swift Blade (skill 225, requires PLD main): ~300 damage
Savage Blade (skill 240, requires quest): ~250 damage

Of the three, the easiest weaponskill to get does the most damage. It also happens to be 4 hits compared to Swift's 3 and Savage's 2.

I'm not high enough level with an axe wielding job to run the numbers myself, but I think there's a reason the 175-skill no-requirements Rampage is spammed in tp burns instead of the 200-skill job-restricted Calamity, 225-skill job-restricted Mistral or 240-skill quested Decimation. And the reason is that Rampage is 5 hits compared to 3 or less for all the others.

Maybe polearm is an exception to this - I'm only DRG36 myself, so I don't know. And some weapons have no multihit worth mentioning (great katana and greatsword). But for the ones that do, they are almost always more damaging than even higher level, harder to get WS that are not multihit.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: The BLM Problem

What I would hope it would change is that it would make TP burn parties more interested in skillchaining, and would increase a blm's invite rate to take advantage of that.

I'm sorry but the "easy way out" has already been cemented, all you're conjuring up are things that would be disregarded. Again, how many WAR/SAMs do you see now?

Omgwtfbbqkitten, one thing I'm wondering about is how many high level none ToAU zone TP burn party spots are there? I know of sky, I know of skeletons in King Ranperre's tomb, and I don't know of any others. Granted the Tomb is mostly for monks, but I'm sure that there are some jobs with blunt weapons could join Tomb TP burn parties.

The TP burn trend was out long before ToAU was released, so if SE did tweak ToAU mob's defense/hp, how much of a fix do you think it would be given the none ToAU tp burn party spots?

I don't think the Zilart on CoP areas where burns took place need to be tweaked, there's aready something else there that prevents obscenely high chains - spawn time. Also Manaburn wasn't this obnoxious because there was still downtime and respawn to contend with, there were no "roaming" manaburns ever.

Rampage burns or Arrowburns in sky still had to contend with AoE spam off weapons and respawn was longer. True here that BLMs weren't invited, but they have their burns at this level in sky and KRT as well.

Arrowburns of old aren't quite tha same, but its possible for DRG and RNGs to burn and burn well off Dvucca staging point. What offsets things there is wide range blood aggro and, oh yeah, RNGs and CORs pay out the nose to level anyway. MNK burn PTs only happen in KRT, MNKs have bonuses on undead by default and I don't seem them getting to do them in Eldimine earlier, still they have the old respawn to deal with.

The problem with TP burn in ToA zones is I'm not seeing any trade-offs. Its a win/win situation, FFXI on Easy Mode. Imps, Jnun, Puks, Colibri don't even get a chance to pull of their nastiest tricks in time. They're dead before they can do them. But they'll be back in five minutes.

Meanwhile, all the other mobs are pretty much unopposed by these mighty warriors. Again, Trolls, Lamia, Flayers, Puddings, Wamoura Princes, Porggos, Shades all have nasty tricks no one wants to face. Porggos aren't particularly high on DEF, but no one burns them because of what they can do... and it seems they're quicker about it than imps.

I really just want to see the exploited mobs of ToA ramped up. Undead and weapons already have their deadly tricks, no need to touch 'em and hardly anyone does these days anyway.

But when you pull and imp, he should be tooting his horn right off the bat and calling something nasty like Defenders in sky do. Puks just need defense upped. As for Colibri, they need to take a page from Kamle'naut and Mammets - shift their state to become immune to specific damage, opening themselves up to certain magic or possibly a certain weapon type, and then back to being immune to magic or something else. I probably said that before, but hey, its somewhat more creative than "Hey guys, let's tell SE to ignore what's really broken and give BLM new toys to play with so they still don't get invited."

[Legal Fish]

Re: The BLM Problem

But when you pull and imp, he should be tooting his horn right off the bat and calling something nasty like Defenders in sky do. Puks just need defense upped. As for Colibri, they need to take a page from Kamle'naut and Mammets - shift their state to become immune to specific damage, opening themselves up to certain magic or possibly a certain weapon type, and then back to being immune to magic or something else. I probably said that before, but hey, its somewhat more creative than "Hey guys, let's tell SE to ignore what's really broken and give BLM new toys to play with so they still don't get invited."

If you were SE, you would lose a lot of money.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: The BLM Problem

If you were SE, you would lose a lot of money.

And here I thought you disregarded everything I say, I'm touched.

Defenders called forth big, unpleasesnt friends in FFIV. The translation or physical/elemental damage into healing a monster started in the original Final Fantasy and we don't see enough of it in FFXI. Finally, there were plenty of monsters mostly immune to magic or instead, physically, the amorph family in particular has always been quite immune to physical since its introduction into the series.

And all this predates FFXI and continues in FFXII as well. SE didn't seem to suffer much for making players think back then, they made millions from such sadism.

If you want to help BLM, yet still want to keep the ToA "training wheels" mobs as they are, your argument is flawed because you defend the real problem here. The colibri, the imps and weak mobs of Mamool Ja Staging point and Caedarva Mire in particular are why BLM suffers for invites now.

If you think SE wouldn't change something and make a lot of people unhappy, look at the RNG nerf and the multihit TP adjustments. What I'm suggesting isn't a nerf, quite the opposite, I'm asking for something a little more challenging from these mobs at EXP and Merit levels.

[Vyuru]

Re: The BLM Problem

Karinya, this just might be the difference between two handed weapon WS and one handed weapon WS.

Rampage and vorpal blade are multi hit WS that have a chance to deal a critical hit. Which means that Rampage has 5 chances to get in a critical, and Vorpal blade has 4 chances to get in a critical hit. Could the difference in damage just be you got off a couple of criticals and that is the reason that Vorpal Blade dealt more damage?

The reason I ask is that the two handed equivilants, Vorpal Scythe and Vorpal Thrust, have fairly consistently low damage output unless you go either drk/thf or drg/thf and use SA with them, then suddenly they are among your most powerful WS. I've easily seen drk/thf put out 300-480ish vorpal scythes when used with SA.

In most of the exp parties that I have been in, I've seen that Vorpal Blade is a powerful WS for paladins to use, but I think that for higher hp races Spirits Within comes close to the damage that Vorpal Blade puts out, but it seems like Vorpal Blade is also more erratic with it's damage, maybe it'll do 200+ to an exp mob, or maybe it'll do 40.

I'm not a paladin, so I can't say for sure, but that is just what I have observed when partying with paladins.

Dragoon might be an exception with Wheeling Thrust since that ignores defense, more defense ignored with more tp. But even so there is still the exception of Vorpal Scythe/thrust and I don't know about the other jobs. I don't think there are any multihit staff WS, and even if there are nobody uses staff in exp parties, kind of a shame because Full Swing looks nice.

I don't think the Zilart on CoP areas where burns took place need to be tweaked, there's aready something else there that prevents obscenely high chains - spawn time.

But spawn time is offset by how many parties are in the zone aren't they? I've heard that in most sky camps you have to switch between multiple rooms to keep the chain going, which is something you cannot do when there are many parties there.

If SE were to change the mob's stats, I think it would just be best to up their def. I really like your idea about Colibris, but I doubt anyone would exp off of them anymore.

Definatly the Imps should summon something semi nasty or annoying to deal with (kinda like Marid and Chigoe) What's the point of their little horn if they don't? Heck, tie it in with the ToAU storyline, the Demon Baron What's-his-face could have escaped the demise of the demon army and the Shadow lord, and is trying to establish a base in Aht Urhgan, or something cheesy like that. I am really disappointed that they don't call out anything.

I haven't fought Sea Puks, but normal Puks seem to be just fine the way they are, their AoE attacks are nasty, but maybe change their Blink move to something like Phalanx, Blink doesn't stop anything and with 3+ melee in the party, some of who are /nin, it's gone in a second. A nasty status breath might be nice.

[Khevn]

Re: The BLM Problem

If you were SE, you would lose a lot of money.

Last i checked the FFXI population was on a decline in general, so technically, there already losing lots of money.

[Legal Fish]

Re: The BLM Problem

Last i checked the FFXI population was on a decline in general, so technically, there already losing lots of money.

Did you know the sun's lifespan is also on a decline? SE isn't losing any money.

[Khevn]

Re: The BLM Problem

Did you know the sun's lifespan is also on a decline? SE isn't losing any money.

Finacially speaking, when someone closes an account, they are no longer paying a monthly subscription. Hence, any future profit from that person, is lost income. Canceled accounts are lost money. Now if you see a trend of accounts that cancel over time. You also see a trend of lost profit. The goal of the enterainment industry is to make a product, in this case an MMO, and sell the product. If your steadily losing accounts. Obviously your not making less money. Your decreasing your total profit.

Somehow i don't think the marketing department is to blame, here. Last I checked the expansion pack it's self, sold very well. Expansion packs make a nice spike of income. Though, your true selling point is the gauranteed 13 dollars your getting from your millions of customers. Obviously, if the total active paying customers are decreasing, your losing LOTS of money.

The Goal of every large Business is to "make more money". Whether product of this goal, is used to line wallets, create new games or improve upon current ones, is the business's choice. Most Usually take a sizable amount to create more products and improve upon current ones to keep the customers happy. If your customer base is dropping. Obviously your not doing a very good job.

[Visper]

Re: The BLM Problem

If your customer base is dropping. Obviously your not doing a very good job.

Last I checked it rose because of all the 360 players, where are you getting info on the decline of subscriptions?!? Post it if you could please.

Edit: Also lets try and stay on topic too, I know i contributed to it goin off topic but I am curious about his statements.

[Gentoo]

Re: The BLM Problem

Last I checked it rose because of all the 360 players, where are you getting info on the decline of subscriptions?!? Post it if you could please.

It doesn't really matter where Khevn got his numbers, both Legal_Fish and he agree on the point that subscriptions are in decline.

...The population since Xbox's release has not increased at all, but its obvious there is a lot of new xbox players. Hmmm...
EDIT: Not to forget, the population used to be 700,000 at the release of CoP.

Their position is backed-up by MMOGchart which shows there was a 150,000 subscriber decline between Jul2005 and Jul2006. The XBox release was April2006 IIRC (and I probably don't). I also haven't seen any additional data released by S-E since Newsletter #14 (which announced the 2006 Vana'diel Census).

[Legal Fish]

Re: The BLM Problem

I wonder how many of those accounts lost were RMT. I also wonder how many were RNGs who quit, but came back. Anyway, SE isn't losing money, unless you consider not getting a large leap in profits a loss of money... but they never had that money to begin with.

[Kenki]

Re: The BLM Problem

I think SE already used a possible solution for this problem.

THE PROBLEM: Too many people are using Tp burn PT which spam WS and pure melee instead of normal party with a tank and SC and MB after lv63.

THE REASON: It's easier to get faster exp compare to a normal PT setup.

THE RESULT: Jobs that are incompatible with high-speed TP burn PT are casted out. This includes BLM, PLD and any slow 2H weapon user. SC and MB simple don't give enough damage bonus to offset the time delay loss in TP burn PT for waiting for TP.

THE SOLUTION: Nerf the TP burn or increase the normal PT ability to gain exp. Example would be the undead in the expansion area. If you notice, the err.. I can't remember the name but they are undead under lamia control, the undead have a lot of HP (15k+) making them really hard to TP burn but are extremely weak to SC and MB -> favors normal PT setup.

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I don't think modiying the TP burn PT will do any good. You don't want to put a melee job into a mana-burn PT and you wouldn't want to put a blm into a TP burn PT. They are PT working on different styles for earning exp.

It'd be more desierable to have more exp on ITs after lv70. This will help normal PT more. Make some higher level monsters with higher HP but weakness to SC. The monsters should give more exp (like exp bonus on wyverns) per kill. Then make it so that using SC + MB to do more damage than WS and freenukes alone. This will make normal PT more appealing.