WAR/SAM in Exp. Parties

[Lmnop]

Re: WAR/SAM in Exp. Parties

Irritatingly, Third Eye has 0 effectiveness against magic. It isn't removed, but you'll never Anticipate a Quake or a Whirl of Rage.

Utsu is too godly, but I think Seigan/Third Eye should at least have some use. I seriously take 3-600 damage every time I pull hate. By the time my protection buffs are up, I no longer have hate. Sometimes it feels like a waste of time. I've done a lot of S/3E before WS, but +10 acc really does suck to lose. Still, if Bergressor's up, I can bear the loss easily. I think it's just bad luck more than lacking of stats, but I never pull hate when I WS like that. I just go -.-

the BLU was 73, I didn't watch him much but I never saw him tossing debuffs. I didn't even see a single Head Butt fly. I have a feeling he normally would, but since he wanted to "lol" at the war/sam, he set himself up to make sure he wasn't embarassed. Drg (/war, btw) and I were both 72. Actually, he used Magic Fruit (I think? The bigger of the 2 single-target games) once on someone in red HP.

[Ziero]

Re: WAR/SAM in Exp. Parties

Well I dinged 60 the other night and then tried to get a pt as War/Sam, but I was sadly asked to sub nin. Though I'm glad I did because we were fighting Puks with only a rdm healer and the shadows really helped out when they used their AoE. Still 60 now with my Gaxe at 184 so I haven't yet had the chance to try Raging Rush, but I'll make sure to get it by the end of the week to make full use of that /sam sub. Though something tells me that even after getting Raging Rush, I'll still end up /nin in pts. =/

[Karinya]

Re: WAR/SAM in Exp. Parties

Well, if he wants to prove the superiority of his job combo by testing against someone lower level than him, I'm laughing at him before the test even starts. The most he'll manage to prove is that a level 73 DD does more damage than a level 72. (And by neglecting his support/enfeeble spells he probably cost the party a fair bit of exp to prove that.)

He shouldn't feel *too* bad about being destroyed in damage by a DRG lower level than he was, though, because of piercing weakness.


In any case, it sounds like S/3E *does* have some use, but it also has some cost. If you want it to cover you while you have hate for a brief amount of time, you have to establish it before pulling hate, which means giving up Hasso for a while. Well, IMO, that's just why SE made Hasso and Seigan mutually exclusive. You can have more damage, or better defense, but not both at once. If there are timing problems relating to trying to WS and switch stances at the same time, I don't think that's necessarily bad.

Both stances are still useful; the question of whether and when to switch just depends on how you expect hate dynamics to work in your current party. Allowing the full damage of Hasso with the safety of Seigan even in parties where the tank can't hold hate through your WS would destroy the value of a higher-hate tank who *can* hold it (in situations where such a tank might possibly exist, which admittedly doesn't include mobs that are no harder than a T but rated VT).


Everyone else has to trade off offense vs. defense (in the general sense, not just the DEF stat) except for ninjas; that doesn't mean everyone else should be immune to those tradeoffs - it means ninjas *shouldn't* be. To be balanced, Utsusemi should be as much of a defensive stance as Seigan is, or even as much as Defender is (since it offers better protection even than Defender in many situations), with accompanying restrictions in your offensive power while you have it on. The fact that SE hasn't realized this yet or taken action to implement it continues to baffle me - surely they wouldn't *deliberately* unbalance their own game? - but maybe they're still working on how to fix it properly. They do work a bit slowly sometimes.


P.S. Whirl of Rage isn't magic. It's a physical AOE reduced by defense.

[Vyuru]

Re: WAR/SAM in Exp. Parties

I've got a question for you Lmnop.

Now I've only recently hit lvl 35 sam and have only played around with Seigan a little bit, but most times when I know that I am going to pull hate with a WS, I can normally WS, hit my Seigan macro about 1/2-2/3 of the way through my WS animation to get off Seigan right off, immediatly followed by Third Eye.

At worst, so far the mob has only been able to hit me once while doing this, it really depends on the mob's delay and when he had last attacked though.

But are you trying to do this and getting your character caught up in the animation, is that what you mean? Just a wee bit confused.


And to be perfectly honest, if I was that Blue mage I'd be tossing out a Headbutt or some other stunning/paralyzing/serious Flashy blinding move so that you could get off Seigan/Third Eye without being hit. Bad player on his part.

[Malacite]

Re: WAR/SAM in Exp. Parties

Actually, AoE (at least physical attacks) can and does remove third eye.

Without fail, whenever fighting those stupid puks in Wajaom on my SAM with Third Eye up I'd have it stripped from me by those AoE attacks.

[Celeal]

Re: WAR/SAM in Exp. Parties

IMHO, WAR/SAM and WAR/NIN are different animal. If we force WAR/SAM to act like as a WAR/NIN, I believe it would be suck. Seriously, in a party setting that shadows are valuable, it makes a lot of sense to use WAR/NIN. What I think WAR/SAM's unique point is great control over TP-gain and Great-Axe Break-WS.

[Lmnop]

Re: WAR/SAM in Exp. Parties

Can't agree more with what Celeal said. The one thing that is essential to remember (and that my naysayers didn't notice, despite the fact that I frequently mentioned to them that I had played and understood war/nin [better than them]) is that war/nin is still incredibly valuable. When you're fighting things that put your tank in a lot of danger, or your crowd control is risking, it's usually a safer bet to /nin.

Vyuru, I think you got it, though apparently you're better (or your connection is better). When I weapon skill, I'm locked in the animation. Let's say I'm doing Steel Cyclone. The moment I start swinging my GA over my head, I get hate because the server already knows if I did enough damage or not. Ideally, i'd time WSs to right after the mob swings, but I don't pay enough attention, typically. So now I have hate, the mob will swing in about 1.5 seconds, and I have over a second of WS animation yet, let alone the 1 second freeze it'll impose on me after the animation ends. I get hit once before I can activate Seigan, and since I usually can't start another JA 'til the first ends no matter how I mash, I get hit again before Third Eye is up. It's probably worthy of note that I'd get hit much less if the mob was slowed, but enfeebles are far from reliable in melee parties.

Ziero, I think the only AoE puks use is the knockback one (does no damage) and Obfuscate (Flash -- also no damage). In fact, I did a puk party where I asked if I could sub sam and they said i'd need /nin for pulling. It turned out it was slowing us down. If I stopped swinging mid-fight for utsusemi, I'd be losing DPS but more importantly, the damn dragon would just AoE it off again. If I waited 'til after the fight, I wasn't pulling fast enough. In this situation, I think I would've been better off just popping seigan/3e and pulling. JAs may still take time, but I can do them while moving.

Karinya, I think it's brilliant that they made offense and defense effectively toggles. The problem is, the greatest advantage to /sam is tp gain. And the fact that I can't use Seigan while i'm WSsing sucks. Reducing me to use Seigan for Weapon Skill only makes /nin unnecessarily better.

I know that 3E is effective against AoE (in some instances that I cannot remember, better), thanks for pointing out the Whirl of Rage thing. Does anyone know if you can Anticipate it? If so, I'm taking my DRG friend to Sky.

For anyone defending the Monk about getting Kick Attacks or whatnot: 75 levels of the job with -the least to do- should be enough to see yourself occasionally hitting 3 times. Anyone who thinks 2A kicks in on both hands w/out fail after all this time is a retard. No if's, and's, or but's about it.

[Malacite]

Re: WAR/SAM in Exp. Parties

Actinic Burst

Actinic Burst is a move used in Sea. I can't remember the name for the Puk's AoE Flash move (Obsficulate or something @- @)

As for whirl of rage, I'm pretty sure you can anticipate it. I remember blocking a few while leveling out in Sauromague.

[Lmnop]

Re: WAR/SAM in Exp. Parties

Fixed. Also, Crosswind is a cone attack that does wind damage. So technically, they do have damaging AoE, but at least it's somewhat avoidable.

[Karinya]

Re: WAR/SAM in Exp. Parties

Karinya, I think it's brilliant that they made offense and defense effectively toggles. The problem is, the greatest advantage to /sam is tp gain. And the fact that I can't use Seigan while i'm WSsing sucks. Reducing me to use Seigan for Weapon Skill only makes /nin unnecessarily better.

Well, I think the value of tanking has been destroyed enough in the last year, I don't want to see it destroyed further by reducing what little disadvantage there is to a DD stealing hate.

Admittedly, the *main* factor in destroying tanking has been the huge amounts of experience from destroying very weak mobs, against which tanking is both unnecessary and impossible, but I think forcing people to accept some vulnerability for maximum damage potential might give more value to a tank that can hold better hate *off* Mr. Suicidal; and I see no good reason to exempt a WAR/SAM from that principle.

I haven't given up hope that SE might still balance Utsusemi somehow, therefore I don't want to see everything else become equally godlike; it would just lead to worse balance problems once Utsusemi is fixed. So I'm willing to tolerate WAR/SAM being significantly more vulnerable rather than seeing Seigan become the *next* way to avoid all damage with no tank in the party. WAR/SAM's superior damage and the way it can support the party with break WS seem adequate compensation for the slight increase in vulnerability, anyway.

[Vyuru]

Re: WAR/SAM in Exp. Parties

Also, Crosswind is a cone attack that does wind damage.

Are you sure about that? I stand beside/slightly behind or directly behind the mob so that I don't get a misplaced TA from a thf, or get hit by a frontal AoE like Poison Breath and it seems Crosswind always hit me anyway, although I think I have parried/evaded it before.

I haven't given up hope that SE might still balance Utsusemi somehow

It might be interesting if they made the spell casting mobs a little bit smarter. Like if they see you cast Utsusemi then they will cast some low lvl fast casting AoE like Diaga/Poisonga to wipe your shadows.

Not the best idea since ninja tanking would become a pain, but maybe ninja would move into the DD role and we'd get blue mage tanks with Cocoon! :D

[Lmnop]

Re: WAR/SAM in Exp. Parties

actually, I'm convinced a lot of mobs -are- utsus-smart. You pull a gob whm, for instance, and you recast shadows when you get back to camp. He sees it and casts diaga. Maybe that's not a good example since he could've just really wanted to do it. But a better example is tanking raptors. I can't start to count the number of times that they timed their WSs to right when I was trying to recast Ichi. Since they have 2 or 3 physical damage type WSs (capable of interrupting) and always have tp, it just felt like they were waiting for their chance to interrupt. At any rate, not something I'll be able to prove but I think a lot of mobs have some counter-intel.

As I was mentioning before, war/nin is superior in any party layout with high risk of adds and insufficient crowd control ability. This is because a war/nin can hold a linked mob for the 45 seconds 'til the Corsair can Dark Shot again, for instance.

War/sam simply cannot hold mobs as well. The fact that I only anticipate once (all too often) already states my defense inferiority compared to /nin. I'm not guaranteed 6-9 shadows, I'm guaranteed one anticipate. The fact that mobs love to retaliate with WSs sucks enough (in Kuftal Tunnel, I took 3k damage over the course of 3 fights, because I'd WS, get hate, get Hammer Beaked, and the PLD would have hate before I could activate Seigan) without thinking about the brevity of my paper defense.

And yeah, that Kuftal party was my 1st experience with Seigan, it certainly had me doing S/3E before WS.

[TehTyr]

Re: WAR/SAM in Exp. Parties

The only way you could 'fix' /nin from being far too powerful, is to cripple Utsusemi as a sub. A solo ninja should not have to feel the brunt of a change because every tom dick and harry subs nin.

A few things I dream of reading next patch:

Utsusemi - Now acts in exactly the same way as the spell Blink.

Ninja - Recast time has been lengthend for all Ninjitsu spells.

Ninja - New Job trait at level 10; Ninjitsu master. Reduces the casting time of Ninjitsu. This trait can not be obtained with Ninja as a sub-job.

>=D

Also, as far as hate goes - isn't this what a PLD is for? Is Cover useless except for THF? Rampart?

[raidenn]

Re: WAR/SAM in Exp. Parties

Yeah shadows are too strong, 3rd eye doesnt hold up a lot but at least it cannot be interrupted.

[Karinya]

Re: WAR/SAM in Exp. Parties

IMO, monsters should have a chance of hitting through shadows (the way they can hit through blink) dependent on their level compared to the ninjutsu skill of the player. This should be set at a level where exp mobs will rarely hit through a full NIN's shadows (and since bypassing the shadows won't remove them you still have time to receive a heal before being hit again unless you are very unlucky indeed), HNMs occasionally but not so much ninjas are useless for tanking them; but for /NIN getting hit through shadows should be a frequent concern and keep subbed utsusemi from being practically the same as Perfect Dodge.