The December Version Update Cometh! (12/09/2008)

[Tickmeoff]

Re: The December Version Update Cometh! (12/09/2008)

Complication != Good

Different != Good

Zelda's combat is more complicated than No More Heroes. That doesn't make it more entertaining.

Entertaining doesn't necessarily equal good either.

And for the record, I love all the games I listed in that post (FFXII excluded), but I had to illustrate a point. Chrono Cross isn't even that different from a traditional JRPG battle system.

[Ellipses]

Re: The December Version Update Cometh! (12/09/2008)

WEST RONFAURE
Blind ring
[Ring] All Races
Enchantment: "Blind"
Lv. 5 All Jobs
<100/100 0:30/[1:00, 0:30]>

The ring obviously has its uses, so its existence is nifty. But the level requirement and drop location seem a little sadistic. This is destined to start showing up in those funny-newbie-stories threads.

[Armando]

Re: The December Version Update Cometh! (12/09/2008)

I've been farming Xarcabard these last ~3 hours. Still no Gothic Gauntlets, but I've only been able to open about half the brown chests that've dropped. Think I've seen like 6 brown chests and I've opened 3.

Despite my lack of success I love the system. The blue boxes are stupidly generous - they usually contain 3-5 temp items. I've gotten Hi-Potion +2, Hi-Potion +3, X-Potion, Hi-Ether +3, Elixir, Remedy, Catholicon, Daedalus Wing, Antidote, Eye Drops, Echo Drops, Prism Powder, Silent Oil, Melon Juice and Pamama au Lait off of Xarcabard. Since I'm on /BLU for kill speed they've really helped me burn through MP while keeping HP up because of random DoTs and Eye On Me. I even solo'd Light with that Daedalus Wing =P Drop rate's pretty good, the 1/10 chance mentioned at the fanfest seems about right. I can see these being a big help to parties and farmers alike.

I've gotten a Potion +2 and two Ether +2 off of the three brown boxes I've succeeded at unlocking. That and the fact that I can get boxes off of any mob in the zone means it's a lot less frustrating than camping NMs and I can just move to a different part of the zone if someone else is farming for the gauntlets.

I give SE an A on this part of the update.

EDIT: Also, it seems you can't take stuff from other people's caskets unless you're partied. At least, I've seen random blue caskets probably left behind by another farmer and nothing would happen when I checked it (it's not empty; if it were, it would've disappeared.)

EDIT 2: Make that three Ether+2. Opened a fourth brown box.

EDIT 3: Looool, suddenly there's 7 Ether +2 and 4 Potion +2 on the AH even though these are stupidly slow sellers.

[Lunaryn]

Re: The December Version Update Cometh! (12/09/2008)

We =! I here.

I ε We, so We = !I is a contradiction.

(That joke was officially more trouble than it was worth. Could have sworn element-of symbol was part of the original DOS charset somewhere...)

Edit: nvm, found it in Terminal font. Though that's not on the list of fonts allowed here either.

[Ziero]

Re: The December Version Update Cometh! (12/09/2008)

RDM should have had Homam access from it's release. You don't say "Jack of All Trades" and then halve a job's gear selection, limiting it almost solely to the magical. At present, BLU does a better job at being a generalist than RDM does.

Rdm have a great selection of melee gear, just as good as any other light melee job. It's not the lack of gear, it's the lack of reason.

A/A+ Sword skill would not be nearly as bad as many people like to imply. RDM is not going to start hitting like a Great Axe WAR simply because of it(after all, BLU has A- in it, and it's not like they're known for burgeoning sword damage), and the Acc provided with the bump in tier would make a much bigger difference than the increased damage.

How would an increase in skill give Rdm more reasons to melee? When people do something where Rdm's aren't meleeing it's not because they can't melee, it's because Rdms would be better used doing other things. In TP burns, Mobs die before Rdms can finish buffs and cures, so there's no time for them to melee. In many endgame events, Rdms are needed for enfeebles and support while the DDs are attacking so there's no need for Rdm to melee. On big HNMs, they don't even let Thfs melee some of these mobs, so why would Rdms get in there? A melee buff would only increase a Rdm's melee abilities for events where they already melee.

Regardless of whether or not big-time DDs take DNC melee seriously, it's still there, and still wired into the job. I dare you to deny a DNC an invite because you don't want them meleeing.

That's the problem, many people don't invite Dncs. I personally love the job, but then again I also think Rdms can melee just fine.

Barring that, if stubborn DDs(and stubborn "backline or GTFO" mages), are still intent on not giving it a try, jilted RDMs can simply pack up their bag of tricks, take that improved frontline ability, and simply group with each other. WHMs too. It's not like these two jobs can't take care of themselves, imagine what could happen if their damage improved.

Regardless of any melee buff they might get, there's nothing stopping Rdm from doing just that now. Why don't they?

Devil's advocate: Paladins tend to have so-flipping-many ways to improve their defenses and lock in their hate, that generally, they have a crapload of room left to invest in to their damage potential (which also helps with tanking, as it so happens). Which has always been really great and anybody that ever said otherwise was a fool, but still.

It's more the fact that a Pld can generate more hate and serve a pt better by doing more damage. Killing the mob faster and getting more hate while doing it is much better in many situations then turtling it up.

In all honesty, S-E may have been better off doing to Red Mages what they have done to Paladins: give them so many tools to make them so good at what they do (Paladins:defending themselves and their party::Red Mages:landing crippling magic) that focusing on damage is no longer a cost; instead, not focusing on damage becomes the cost. Elemental Staves, in this scenario, would be as excessive as, say, the Adaman Cuirass Set (for lack of a better example off the top of my head).

The problem here is that you're comparing Def/Vit, stats which after being stacked so high, start offering little to no returns, with Macc and Potency, two things Mages never seem to be able to get enough of. While I agree that the dependance on Ele staves is both outdated and overbearing, the only way to ween a Rdm off their need for them is to buff the job so much it's damn near broken.

That just speaks to a rather narrow vision of the player base. BLU enfeebles may not get big billing, mostly because you fail to appreciate the value of a smartly-geared Mind Blast. You certainly wouldn't turn down the Stun effect from a Headbutt, right? Or Disseverment's Poison? BLU have a plethora of capabilities, you simply refuse to see them.

The reason Blu's debuffs are "undervalued" is due to the fact that either they can't be landed reliably or it's just better to rip the damn mobs face off. Why bother spending MP on a def down spell when the mob is going to die in 30 seconds?

Except what you call "magely duties" are more perceived than real. Is RDM the only job with Haste? Is it the only one you can get Cure from? It's certainly not the only job anymore with a form of Refresh (it wasn't even the first). I've already pointed out it's not the only one with Enfeebling ability. You could just as easily pick up a WHM or SMN to take up the Curing and Hasting duties, or BRD to cover Ballads. Why then, single out RDM? These things are artificial limitations placed upon the job to justify putting the person playing it through the paces they do, to avoid inviting another class for fear of downtime.

Rdm may not be the only job with cures, enfeebles, haste and refresh, but they are the only job with ALL of those things. They gain the best abilities from every mage and can use them better in most cases then the original job. A Smn will never enfeeble as well as a Rdm, a Whm can't refresh like a Rdm, Brd can't cure like a Rdm. In a low man setting, one Rdm can cover a wide array of magely duties, far more so then any other job. Including the much often compared to Blu.

Part of it was covered by Karinya--this monopoly speedkilling wimps has over exp efficiency and party configuration. If parties were slowed down by bigger threats rather than being slowed down by mana-related downtime, they'd certainly have to pick up more than just a RDM for support.

You mean like how people lvl 10-70? Because Rdms certainly don't have time to melee those mobs either.

I haven't been championing RDM frontlining for the sake of being different, I've been a proponent of the job actually performing the way it was intended--unifying practice and theory, as it were. We should all be applauding attempts to make jobs perform better or more enjoyably, rather than holding them back for the sake of our own convenience.

In theory, Rdms have the ability to utilize both magic and melee effectively, depending on their gear, sub and combat situation. In practice Rdms have the ability to utilize both magic and melee effectively, depending on their gear, sub and combat situation. There are plenty of times where Rdm melee is both helpful and productive, many situations where a melee geared Rdm can beat the ever living crap out of something. But it's not all the time, which seems to be the reason so many Rdm have a stick up their butts.

I was unaware that move poisoned! I just thought it was a 5-hit piercing move.

It's a strong, 20hp per tick poison iirc. It's like combining Dancing Edge with Mercy Stroke.

I've been farming Xarcabard these last ~3 hours. Still no Gothic Gauntlets ...*snip*... and I can just move to a different part of the zone if someone else is farming for the gauntlets.

I give SE an A on this part of the update.

EDIT: Also, it seems you can't take stuff from other people's caskets unless you're partied. At least, I've seen random blue caskets probably left behind by another farmer and nothing would happen when I checked it (it's not empty; if it were, it would've disappeared.)

EDIT 3: Looool, suddenly there's 7 Ether +2 and 4 Potion +2 on the AH even though these are stupidly slow sellers.

I spent all night in BD last night going for the boots but never saw them. I even went as Thf cause tools are supposed to help open chests, but going 1/6 on "hints" using my tools I decided that it's not worth it and completely sucks. (incase you don't know, a thf trading tools to a casket has a chance to get an extra hint...at the cost of consuming the tool. And that chance seems to be exceeding low.) But overall, the concept is nice.

Though I woulda liked the option to leave the chests for other people to grab. Some temp items are either doubles, or just useless so I don't even take them out.

And as for the HQ pots from browns, if it's not a Hi-Pot I'll just NPC it.

[Pteryx]

Re: The December Version Update Cometh! (12/09/2008)

In all honesty, S-E may have been better off doing to Red Mages what they have done to Paladins: give them so many tools to make them so good at what they do (Paladins:defending themselves and their party::Red Mages:landing crippling magic) that focusing on damage is no longer a cost; instead, not focusing on damage becomes the cost. Elemental Staves, in this scenario, would be as excessive as, say, the Adaman Cuirass Set (for lack of a better example off the top of my head).

Well put. This is exactly why my #1 RDM melee tweak is... giving RDM MAcc traits. (It also has other benefits, like making us better at debuffing HNMs with the staves and rounding out the attraction of /RDM, but.) -- Pteryx

[Feba]

Re: The December Version Update Cometh! (12/09/2008)

Entertaining doesn't necessarily equal good either.

Nope, but boring is never good.

If you walk away from the game, it has lost any chance of presenting itself as art.

[Karinya]

Re: The December Version Update Cometh! (12/09/2008)

The thing I hated about CC's battle system was that it could have been great if you got any information about what mobs were going to do and could work it into your plan. Instead they (apparently) randomly interrupt your carefully planned sequence of attacks/spells/field effects, and even if they only poke you for 10 damage, it can still screw your plan, which made it frustrating to play instead of interesting.


As for RDM:

Rdm may not be the only job with cures, enfeebles, haste and refresh, but they are the only job with ALL of those things. They gain the best abilities from every mage and can use them better in most cases then the original job.

Now you're just being silly. Unless I've been overlooking the presence of Cure V, Regen III, Earthen Ward, Ecliptic Howl, Head Butt, Diamondhide, Geist Wall, Enervation, Minuet, and Madrigal in my spell list all this time, I don't in fact have "the best abilities from every mage" at all, let alone being able to use them better than the original job. What I do have is a very cool ability that is only sort of similar to 3 other jobs' abilities (Refresh), a pretty cool ability I share with WHM (Haste) and some pretty standard (or substandard) cures that only stay in shouting distance of WHM and SCH because I can waste more MP on them if I want to.

So let's talk enfeebles, the thing RDM is supposedly king of. SCH, SMN, BLU and BRD all have native dispels. WHM and BLM can get it at 64+ if they want it. WHM and BLU have native silence and SCH and BLM have it with common subjobs. BLM, BLU, BRD, and SCH can all sleep as well as, if not better than, RDM, and WHM and SMN have at least some sleep capability. Most other RDM enfeebles just slightly reduce the damage the mob deals to the party and aren't actually that important (although they're better than nothing) - in addition to being obtainable through subjobs and/or duplicated (or surpassed, in the case of Elegy) by other jobs' native spells.

Oops, I left out COR. Well, I'm not going to rewrite that whole paragraph, and COR isn't really a mage anyway, but you get the point: most of RDM's abilities aren't actually unique, and other jobs can do them as well or better.

RDM has a unique *combination* of those abilities - but most jobs have something unique about them, or nobody would bother to play them. Sometimes RDM is a better fit for what you need than WHM, or SCH, or BRD; other times it isn't.


I suggested a change that would help RDMs land their spells while meleeing, only if they were actually meleeing and getting a reasonable number of hits (and not WSing). You'd still need good macros and need to know what you are doing, but the whole point of my idea was to make staff swapping something that RDMs would do for HNM fights and *not* for everyday exp/merit/assault/etc.

If you don't think RDM should be able to land spells reliably on non-HNMs without staves, then there is no possible melee update that will work. If you *do* think that staves shouldn't be necessary to enfeeble in exp, then the whole problem of the melee update is how to make that happen without also overbuffing RDM at events where they use staves. So whatever the fix is, it has to be a benefit that you can't get while using a staff, or that doesn't stack with the benefit of the staff. If we got just a straight up macc trait, as cool as that would be, it would affect HNM fights, so unless SE believes that enfeebling HNMs more often would be good for the game, we won't get a straight up macc trait.

Increasing the benefits of melee misses the point: what's needed is a decrease to the opportunity cost of melee (i.e. the macc and nuke damage bonuses of staves; the former being much much more important). That's enough to make not meleeing become the thing with a downside, and then it becomes every RDM's responsibility to set up the right macros and cast between swings (rather than chuck it, sit back with staves and mock people who *do* cast from the front lines; in the interests of full disclosure, I have done both at various times but now usually sit back with staves, albeit without the mockery).

PBAOEs may still demand a change in tactics, but that affects relatively few fights/camps.

[Raydeus]

Re: The December Version Update Cometh! (12/09/2008)

If you don't think RDM should be able to land spells reliably on non-HNMs without staves, then there is no possible melee update that will work.

I have pretty low expectations for the "update" to RDM, but this is something that should've been changed years ago.

The way things work right now makes sense for magic where you have a rating A- and lower but not for an A+ rating.

So, the way I see it A+ rated Magic should gain a latent boost in M.Acc when capped, while all the rest would remain unchanged. Say a +25 MAcc for A+ rated magic skills as long as they are capped. With the restriction of said MAcc bonus only working on non-HNM and others who aren't specifically designed to be magic resistant.

And that increase in M.Acc should apply to every job with a native A+ magic rating.



Edit > Just in case, I'll clarify that +25 M.Acc bonus I'm talking about is at lvl 75, it could start at lvl 30 with a +5 MAcc and scalate from there.

[Malacite]

Re: The December Version Update Cometh! (12/09/2008)

Also, it seems you can't take stuff from other people's caskets unless you're partied. At least, I've seen random blue caskets probably left behind by another farmer and nothing would happen when I checked it

Well damn. This actually strikes me as semi-fail, since I might be farming something near where others are leveling and don't really need the temp items myself.

[Feba]

Re: The December Version Update Cometh! (12/09/2008)

Well damn. This actually strikes me as semi-fail, since I might be farming something near where others are leveling and don't really need the temp items myself.

Well, if they really want them, you could do what powerleveling BRDs have been doing since the dawn of time.