Rune Fencer Findings

[dasva]

Really? It's after FTP?

Yes and that looks about right. That's why generally speaking sata ws is ~ the same dmg as sata and the ws outside of the forced crit and 100% hit rate. Sometimes even lower since you can proc stuff like ODD on normal sata hits.

Also interestingly enough with all this dex boost talk I'm pretty sure it actually used to work /thf. But I can't find the really old update info on POL anymore. Which is weird cause I did just a couple of months ago

[Kyte]

JP button had good listing of all the ancient updates, but it seems Elmer took his website down.

[noodles355]

That's why generally speaking sata ws is ~ the same dmg as sata and the ws outside of the forced crit and 100% hit rate.

Interesting. And yet with SA, Mercy > Exen, and without SA, Exen > Mercy

On this tangent, I still never found out if 99 Mercy's Crit Aftermath ever pulled it equal/better than Exen without Aftermath. Not that it's really relevant now as Mandau is an offhand weapon really lol, but still, be relevent again after Relic boost.

Just to stay on topic. Um... Run has really cool JA emotes! Shame it's not for 1hr ability too ._.

[dasva]

Yeah it's weird cause I was looking at them just a month or so ago. The really old ones would send me to a OF posting of it I think but can't find now

[dasva]

Interesting. And yet with SA, Mercy > Exen, and without SA, Exen > Mercy

Yeah it's just the huge pdif boost and +crit dmg applying to the whole ws vs 1 hit thing. I mean using the easy 2 pdif you had going to 3 would be 50% dmg increase for that hit but divided over 4 it's only 12.5% on average. Of course there is going to be gearing diff too. Str adding to att using crit dmg on ms. Maybe some acc on exen since some hits can miss

[Talrandir]

Play Guide > Update History

EN: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/17021

JP: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/17020

The Japanese list includes the updates from before October 21, 2003, which were never officially translated.

[cassiraa]

Rune Fencer Merits
Group 1
Rune Enchantment Effect
Elemental resistance of rune enchantment increases by +2 per merit.

Vallation Effect
Magic defense increases by +1 per rune per merit.

Lunge Effect
Lunge accuracy increases by +3 per rune per merit.

Pflug Effect
Resist rate increases by +1 per rune per merit.

Gambit Recast
Recast is reduced by 10 seconds per merit.


Group 2

Job Trait: Inspire
Enhances Vallation and Valiance with casting speed reduction.
Additional merits decrease casting speed by 10%.

Job Trait: Sword Sleight
Enhances Swordplay with a Subtle Blow effect.
Additional merits increases the Subtle Blow effect by +5.

Job Ability: Battuta
Recast Time: 5 minutes, Duration: 90 seconds
While in effect, grants a bonus to parry rate. Additionally, upon parrying, attacks will be countered with damage dependent on the enchanted runes present when the parry was activated.
Additional merits increase the parry activation rate by 4% per merit and the counterattack damage by +4 per rune per merit.

Job Ability: Rake
Recast Time: 5 minutes, Duration: 30 seconds
Consume active runes to reduce the elemental resistance of the target.
Additional merits extend the effect duration by 3 seconds per merit.

Source http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/112...=1#post5761433

Rake seems wrong, since it's pretty much Gambit under a new name, unless they rework Gambit. And I was rather hoping for T1 to be recasts.

But if Battuta is right, that could be very interesting, and Inspire affecting 2 JAs means it can be up all the time.

[Fwahm]

Gambit lowers elemental Magic Defense Bonus.
Rake will lower elemental Resistance.

[Sechs]

Given these merits which ones would you guys get?
5/5 Inspire 5/5 Battuta for group 2?
Bit uncertain on group 1. Rune Enhancement, Vallation and Pflug all look potentially interesting.
Bit surprised we're getting recast reduction on Gambit only, was expecting something for Swordplay. Guess maybe AF will increase its lasting time.

Also, what is your guess on how some of these merits will work?
Will Vallation work on Valiance as well? Will Inspire affect recast as well? Is Battuta's basic parry rate 4%, like the increase you get with additional merits?

[Sechs]

Official translation. Some of my doubts have already been answered:

Rune Fencer has been added to the Categories under Merit Points.
Group 1
Rune Enhancement Effect
Increase potency of runes harbored by 2 points.

Vallation Effect
Add a magic defense bonus to Vallation and a magic defense bonus to Valliance of 1 point per harbored rune.

Lunge Effect
Increase the accuracy of Lunge by 3 points per harbored rune.

Pflug Effect
Enhance the likelihood of resistance activating by 1 point per harbored rune.

Gambit Effect
Shorten recast time by 10 seconds.

Group 2
Battuta
Increases the likelihood of parrying and deals counter damage after parrying dependent upon harbored runes.
Recast: 5 min. Increase chance of parrying by 4 percent and increase counter damage by 4 points per rune harbored.

Rayke
Expends runes to reduce elemental resistance of the target.
Recast: 5 min. Increase duration of effect by 3 seconds.

Inspiration
Grants a “Fast Cast” effect to Vallation and Valiance.
Increase cast speed by 10 percent.

Sleight of Sword
Grants a “Subtle Blow” effect during Swordplay.
Increase the maximum value of Subtle Blow by 5 points.

Appearently the Rune Enhancing merits work not only on the resistance part but on the damage too? At least according to description.
If this is true I guess it's gonna be unavoidable to go 5/5 on this category.

[Byrthnoth]

So Tier 1 would be Rune Enhancement 5/5... Pflug 5/5?
Tier 2 would be Battuta 5/5, Inspiration 5/5 or Battuta 5/5, Rayke 1/5, Inspiration 4/5?

What's up with the redundancy in Vallation Effect's description?

[Taim Meich]

If the Rune Enhancement effect actually affects damage too, I'll go for 5/5 Rune Enhancement, 5/5 Vallation. If not, I'll probably opt for 5/5 Vallation 5/5 Pflug.

In the second category, I agree with Byrth: either 5/5 Battuta, 5/5 Inspiration or 5/5 Battuta, 4/5 Inspiration, 1/5 Rayke. I'll probably go with the last option, because having a way to lower a certain elemental resistance so that a key enfeeble lands will probably come handy, and 40% FC is quite a bit already, anyway.

[Sechs]

What's up with the redundancy in Vallation Effect's description?

Was wondering that myself...
I agree with your Group2 distribution, but on Group1 I was kinda thinking about rune 5/5 and some sort of distribution between Vallation and Pflug

[Slycer]

The JP post explicitly states elemental resistance. I see no reason why they would do that unless it doesn't affect damage. My guess is the current official translation is incorrect.

[dasva]

Yeah might be bad translations... as for vallation maybe they just wanted to state vallation/valaince seperately and that's why they said mdb twice? Odd they don't mention recasts though

Regardless T1 vallation seems the 5/5. pflug is mixed feelings since it's hard to optimize for that sometimes. Between mobs strong enfeebles often being of different elements or just different element of it's magic dmg and well just being able to na stuff away... still it is really strong so who knows. gambit and lunge are sorta a well nothing else worth doing lol. Rune enchantment will highly depend on what they mean by potency...

T2 is a bit harder. sleight of swords is worthless but the other 3 are all decent possibly. Rayke would largely depend on how much it does lower it. Almost have to say you want at least 1 but hard to say if you want more. Of course it will probably only reduce it for that element highly limiting it's usefullness.

Battuta highly depends on their ability to make run a viable tank... it's potentially very strong ability for that time period but if you don't have hate it wont matter... and if you can't mitigate dmg that well you still going to eat dirt almost as fast as any other melee... but if they really push parry rate it could be crazy. So in the end would kinda also be dependent on how much the first merit gives and how high you can crank parry rate overall.

Inspire seems like a definite 5/5 though. I mean getting at least 40% fast cast from the last 4 and the first one might give more than 10%... so who knows maybe flash lock enemies lol. And foil spammage for hate. People goign to need to start refreshing run alot more that's for sure

[Sechs]

Still you have the issue of Hasso/Seigan fuckin up your cast/recast timers. Even with 5/5 Inspire, I dunno...
Realistically though it seems like a big loss to avoid /SAM for a 2H job.
5/5 Inspire, other FC gear and /RDM would be kinda nice, nomnom, but using /RDM just for the fastcast sounds like a major waste lol

[Shep]

Did some testing on the test server. Rune Enchantment Effect doesn't effect Lunge or Gambit potency just raises resistances by 2 per merit. It also lowers recast on runes by 2 sec per merit too. At 5/5 runes have no recast besides JA delay. No idea if this was intended, but if so Run will be able to generate a ton of enmity.

Also tested Gambit and it appears that SE worded the ability poorly. Each rune used increased damage by 10%. It's possible that it's a MDB down effect, but if so the effect per rune is non-linear.

[Hitou]

I did some testing on RUN too. Battuta is pretty good but the recast is way too long for how sort it lasts. Small sample size but VS a Blanched mandy in Ceizak I had 20 parries, 9 hits 1 miss and 1 counter while battuta was up. Tested again with swordplay up and only got hit 5 times, and forgot to count the parries that time. Obviously it was the evasion that lowered how many times I got hit though. Counter damage was 78 damage with both Gelus x3 and Tellus x3.

Tested Rayke on Steelshells in Boyahda. Used T1 water as RUN/RDM 155 ele skill, forgot to check int but it's w/e mithra has 99 RUN/RDM with no int merits. Will check and edit later. Water was doing about 12 damage pretty consistently alone. About 16 with rayke up. Got one unresisted water for like 190 or something. Tested Gambit too and it didn't seem much different from rayke. So w/e the difference is between resistance and defense it's not huge. Either way the merit seems like a waste.

Also tested Pflug while I was there on a thunder ele. 3x Tellus + Pflug got hit by Burst for I think 100-120 damage. Got hit by a 2nd one without Pflug for 60. I think I had Barthunder and Tellus x3 for that one though. Anyway it would take a lot of testing to see the higher resist rate proc. And there's not much else to put in Group 1.

[Hitou]

What's up with the redundancy in Vallation Effect's description?

It's Vallation and Valliance, just worded in the most stupid way possible.

[dasva]

Did some testing on the test server. Rune Enchantment Effect doesn't effect Lunge or Gambit potency just raises resistances by 2 per merit. It also lowers recast on runes by 2 sec per merit too. At 5/5 runes have no recast besides JA delay. No idea if this was intended, but if so Run will be able to generate a ton of enmity.

Also tested Gambit and it appears that SE worded the ability poorly. Each rune used increased damage by 10%. It's possible that it's a MDB down effect, but if so the effect per rune is non-linear.

What about enspell dmg with rune enchantment?

And yeah I posted the gambit dmg awhile ago... though something I haven't posted is it does work with qd... which means it's definitely not some form of +mdt. That would make it seem like some sort of -mdb but that would be kinda weird like you said. Basically would mean 1 rune is like -9 mdb, 2 runes -17 mdb and 3 would be -24 mdb... also every test I did the numbers came out perfect after flooring to 10/20/30% while -mdb wouldn't always unless I used fractional mdb... now that I have other sources of -mdb I suppose I can test those to see if it's not some weird unique term