Dev Tracker

[Byrthnoth]

Once again, that doesn't address the real problem with the Enmity system.

[Taruking]

Care to elaborate?

[Byrthnoth]

From the previous page:

Naw, this is a misunderstanding of the enmity system. The faster you attack, the better chance you have of holding hate. Using a high delay weapon like GS is substantially worse than using two katanas or a sword. The best option is single-wielding a dagger.

It's like this:
1) Everyone re-caps hate every attack because it's so easy to generate enmity through damage.
2) Monsters update their current target every X seconds (idk the exact number).
3) If you are the last person to have acted when the monster updates its current target, you will become the new target.
Therefore, it's best to use the lowest delay weapon possible so that you increase your odds of being the last person to attack. Using a GS is terrible for holding hate.

Naw, putting tons of enmity onto actions don't help because of the enmity caps. The Enmity system in FFXI is so broken that the only thing tanks can really hold hate on are things that you aren't trying to kill. There are essentially no fights at the moment that require tanks for the main monsters, and even if there was then there's no easy way to make a new form of tank preferable to Paladin (besides something obvious like raising the enmity cap for them and not Paladin).

DDs cap hate after about 7~14,000 damage, which is a minute or two of damage in most events that might potentially require tanks. I know I personally tank on WAR in Voidwatch for about the first minute and then the VWNM starts spinning even in bad groups. This is the "everyone hits the enmity caps" state I'm talking about. This behavior is unavoidable with the current Enmity system, and SE has been very resistant to changing it. This also means that "Tanks" can pretty much only tank fights where Summoners, Dragoons, Annihilator RNG/DRGs, etc. are the major hate sources due to their enmity-dropping abilities. If they have buffs, DRGs and RNG/DRGs are actually going to hit the enmity cap pretty quickly anyway.

So basically, enmity gain rates are totally irrelevant unless you're having ~60 second fights. Even if you are having 60 second fights, there's no way for jobs to gain CE faster than just by doing damage.

[Taruking]

If the modifier for physical damage is set low enough DD jobs will not be able to maintain capped hate, especially if they are taking heavy damage from AOE spells/TP moves which require regular cure to stay alive, i.e. massive hate gain by healers who are already generating excessive enmity. Without a proper tank job, mobs will go after healers, kill them then finish the DDs off.

[Byrthnoth]

WHM's fixed-enmity cures and the relatively minor amount of enmity lost when taking damage make that difficult. If you lose 99% of your HP, you lose 1782 CE. That's less than 1500 more damage worth of damage dealt without a modifier, or 9 Cure Vs worth of hate. Therefore, the obvious solution is to just have your WHMs stand in AoE range too to shed hate.

Still, you're essentially saying that they should redesign the entire enmity system for different monsters. I personally wouldn't mind them changing it, but I doubt it will happen because they have resisted all similar suggestions in the past.

[Taruking]

It really boils down to how far SE is willing to nerf DD hate. If the enmity modifier is low enough (in extreme case), DD will struggle to cap hate due to VE decay alone.

WHM getting in range for aoe is not going to solve the problem. It simply means more healing (and more hate) if WHMs somehow manage to survive the initial attack.

It's not difficult to introduce the new system. The beauty of modifier system is that they can keep the value for old NMs at 1.0 (unchanged from baseline) and just focus on NMs from new expansion.

[Byrthnoth]

WHM getting in range for aoe is not going to solve the problem. It simply means more healing (and more hate) if WHMs somehow manage to survive the initial attack.

Naw, WHMs getting in AoE range will mean the AoE cure hits one more person, and that the WHM loses Enmity whenever there's an AoE. I'm sure that a good old Galkan WHM can survive damned near anything a DD can.

[Taruking]

I'm a bit confused. Unless they change the way hate is generated by curaga, doesn't that mean WHM end up getting more hate?

Kind of counterproductive if only galka or elvaan are allowed to play WHM don't you think?

[Byrthnoth]

Curaga IV and V are fixed-enmity, like Cure V. Any AoE that a DD can survive in TP gear, a WHM can probably survive in a DT set. They do have native MDB traits and stuff, after all.

[Taruking]

Err is curaga IV fixed-enmity?

Not to mention getting in range also means WHM risk getting hit by aoe enfeebling spells such as silence/sleep/petrify or status inflicting TP moves, plus they will have to idle in PDT/MDT gear, just bring a tank!

[Byrthnoth]

Yeah, though I can't find the testing atm. Iirc, Curaga IV was AoE Cure V hate and Curaga V was AoE Cure VI hate. It won't be too hard to test when I can dualbox again.

I'm not saying this is an alternative to bringing a tank. I'm saying that's something you'd have to do so that the WHMs can shed hate if you make a system with constant AoEs where physical damage -> CE has a low modifier. The only ways to lower CE that are available to a WHM/RDM are to take damage or die.

[Taint]

If Defense played more of a roll in damage amounts the emnity system could work better. DDs can use zerk,LR etc with very little need for concern and all the Def gear PLDs get is worthless.

[Azat]

maybe this is stupid, but couldn't they just reduce the CE rate gained through damage by like 70%~, retain original values for magic/ja, and add directly a scaled decay loss through defense?

[Byrthnoth]

Yeah, but they're afraid of changing enmity mechanics because they've been spaghetti-coding hate resets and monster mechanics for the last decade. If you're going to do something like that, it will have to be specific to new monsters that are added.

[Eurell]

While the enmity system definitely does need to be reworked, I think the biggest problem is that we've been in god mode for the past 2 years. PLDs we're still used in abyssea until RR and MM came out. Thats when mages got infinite MP and DD had ridiculous dmg. PLDs were still used by tons of people in VW early on, until people started getting lots of temp items and figuring out procs. Fanatic spam on DDs, Staggered mobs for 80% of the fight, and 6 types of ethers restocked on mages after every fight, again make any kind of tanking strategy pointless. All the mobs at 75 started getting tanked by DDs, because they have been out for years and years, and DDs got better tanking sets to adapt to those fights.

Hopefully the new expansion will bring mobs that just hit DDs too hard, or too fast, to effectively stay alive without draining the mages MP (who wont have infinite ethers anymore). Spamming AOEs is not the solution, and neither is instant cast death spells. Hopefully SE will get it right with the new mobs.

[Kaisha]

Hopefully the new expansion will bring mobs that just hit DDs too hard, or too fast, to effectively stay alive without draining the mages MP (who wont have infinite ethers anymore). Spamming AOEs is not the solution, and neither is instant cast death spells. Hopefully SE will get it right with the new mobs.

We already have that. It's called Legion, and no one does it because it's too demanding.

[Eurell]

Haha, we attempted it last week and thought we were doing good till the second wave came in and curbstomped us. I need to read up on more strategies I guess D:

Although I thought the main reason its done is not because of the difficulty, but because the gear just isn't that impressive?

[NynJa]

Hopefully the new expansion will bring mobs that just hit DDs too hard, or too fast, to effectively stay alive without draining the mages MP (who wont have infinite ethers anymore). Spamming AOEs is not the solution, and neither is instant cast death spells. Hopefully SE will get it right with the new mobs.

The only problem to this I believe is the stupid attack/defense formula, in which your pld geared in defense (not PDT) isnt going to be hit for significantly less than your whm in mage gear or DD in DD gear. Recently SE has added good hybrid PDT/DD gear that lets your DD's contribute while maintaining defensive capabilities.

I was also thinking about the comment about needing gear to progress from one event to the next. How would this be possible in FFXI? Is there any gear set that makes one event go from 11/10 difficulty level to a 6/10 difficulty level? I dont see this being achieved at all in FFXI. All of their "in event: +++" items are pretty shittastic:
http://www.ffxiah.com/search/item?&d...ion=legion#adv
Does anything in there make legion go from "spam PD/Embrava every wave" 11/10 difficulty level (which is generally what I see from all the success stories in the legion thread) to "ok we dont have to resort to embrava/PD to beat these things" 6/10 difficulty level? I dont see anything in there. I see 2 or 3 items in there as somewhat useful, but nothing that drops the difficulty level to 6/10, nothing in there is required to win at legion.

Ambuscade Ring 96 [Finger] All Races
"Double Attack"+1% Legion: Accuracy+8 "Double Attack"+2%
LV 96 All Jobs

Change to
Ambuscade Ring 96 [Finger] All Races
"Double Attack"+1% Legion: Accuracy+100 "Double Attack"+50%
LV 96 All Jobs

Now it looks like a piece of equipment that may actually turn an event around, now it looks like a piece of gear you NEED to progress in an event...other than the fact the core problem with legion is the ability for mobs to just instantly wipe the floor with your face as they desire.

[Cail]

We already have that. It's called Legion, and no one does it because it's too demanding.

ive never tried it cuz i have no friends;;

[Damane]

While the enmity system definitely does need to be reworked, I think the biggest problem is that we've been in god mode for the past 2 years. PLDs we're still used in abyssea until RR and MM came out. Thats when mages got infinite MP and DD had ridiculous dmg. PLDs were still used by tons of people in VW early on, until people started getting lots of temp items and figuring out procs. Fanatic spam on DDs, Staggered mobs for 80% of the fight, and 6 types of ethers restocked on mages after every fight, again make any kind of tanking strategy pointless. All the mobs at 75 started getting tanked by DDs, because they have been out for years and years, and DDs got better tanking sets to adapt to those fights.

Hopefully the new expansion will bring mobs that just hit DDs too hard, or too fast, to effectively stay alive without draining the mages MP (who wont have infinite ethers anymore). Spamming AOEs is not the solution, and neither is instant cast death spells. Hopefully SE will get it right with the new mobs.

This is not the solution to bring tanks back. There is an "easy" fix. Either give Tank jobs a higher enmity cap (this makes it way too easy) or Remove the Enmity cap altogether. Removing the Enmity cap altogether would actually make things based around SJs more, it would bring /thf + /drg back as SJs to control enmity. Since the enmity isnt caped ever you could put as much enmity as you wanted as /thf on your tank, and with /drg and uncapped enmity that SJ would have a larger impact the longer the fight goes on, shedding hate with /drg when you are at 1201902912 enmity points vs 10000 @ current cap is quiet a difference. I still Dont see why SE is not removeing the enmity cap, it would open up some usefullness on /thf and /drg on fights where you want enmity control and raw dmg isnt a matter.