Dev Tracker: Discussion

[Prothescar]

Dat Cait Sith astral flow. Pretty lacklusters BPs, as one would expect. Less than most other avatars, no? 4 years of development well spent.



edit: oopsies double post, sorry



@below: most people had their 5/5 augmented sets from skirmish2 already, and there's very little reason to redo that entire expensive, grindy process for an extra point of STR and 3 DEF.

[Ramzii]

that's pretty impressive. i've probably done at least 15 runs completely sponsoring each one to lot all wings out of the pool and i only just 5/5'd my first set today

[Sechs]

Wouldn't be surprised if 119 relic bodies come with "Enhances (SP2) effect " augmented on the +1 version.

Well so far the other relic pieces don't have additional augments and, as far as we know, they are the same on the ilevel 99 version.

Long before they introduced SP2s, didn't they say they wanted to add a new Merit Category to "further augment" these SP2 and "reduce the cooldown to 30mins"?
Or was that just a possibility they were analyzing and sharing with us?

[Prothescar]

Nah they definitely mentioned new merits at some point. Whether we'll ever get them or not? Who knows.

[Sechs]

THIS makes no sense, why would you reduce the KI drop rate/general droprate compared to yorcia, when yorcias KI only needed to upgrade some weapons, while the KI from outer rakaznar is used for 40+ things (even more if people upgrade doubles of the same armor when going for different types of augments). That really makes no sense...

It does make sense. I mean, I don't like it, but try to see things from their (stupid) point of view.
Yorcia KI was easy because it was to obtain 113 weapons. Cap was still 119 back then, they wanted people to catch up and to offer alternative to those unable to easily obtain 113 Delve Weapons.
Because of this catchup thing, because of the alternative, and because of the ilevel being "only" 113, it was made very easy.
Skirmish 3 for them is not just "another type of content" like it probably is for us players.
They have some very structured "paths" in minds for the players, and for them Skirmish represent a "path" of content for lowmen groups. Skirmish Ra'kaznar is the (currently) "last tier" of this path, offering ilevel gear 119 which is "on par" with the best gear in game atm (lol... if only the stats on unagumented stuff weren't shit! ).
This is probably their perspective, and from this POV they want 119 gear to take a bit more time than 113 one (let's be honest, gear in Yorcia was raining down...). If you consider this, it's still much easier/faster to obtain Skirmish 119 gear than other 119 items (talking about AF+1 and Relic+1 here).

So yeah, I still think it was a weak and stupid choice, but it does make sense for them, in a certain wicked way.
Can hope for things to change but I doubt it.
Personally I'm not even sure I want to bother with Skirmish Gear as much as I did with the v2, but that's just me, I have little patience with RNG stuff and 119 skirmish gear compared to the current options doesn't seem as good as 113 skirmish gear was with the options available back then.

Still worse than Cair's Dressup

Talking about the /lockstyle.
Of course it's worse, did you really expect a built-in function to be better than something detailedly realized by a player? As far as I can remember it's never been like this in any MMO that allows addons, aside a few exceptions maybe.
There is one very big difference in purpose between these two possibilities though.
Dressup is clientside, if you lock a style for your character, only you see it locked.
/lockstyle works for everybody else. If you lock yourself with a certain gear, EVERYBODY will see you with that gear, and you will not blink for anybody else, not just yourself.
So yeah, while inferior, that's a big difference compared to Dressup (unless I missed something?)

[Sechs]

Man the new delve boss synthesis materials are gonna be hugely expensive. They will most likely be used to synth 117 weapons for weapon types that got r/ex's from previous 3 delve bosses(Polearm, GK, Dagger, Sword, Axe, Xbow, Katana, h2h) as well as relic 119+1 leg/body quests.

If new crafted weapons (supposing there will be any) will still be ilevel 117, I doubt there's gonna be such a huge demand for them like there was when the original ones were released.
I mean, 117 weapons back then was an insane jump.
Now you get 117 eminence weapons and a fuckton of other more or less easily obtainable 119 weapons.
In such a scenario, more crafted 117 weapons will have a very small market, imho.
So yeah, don't think that will produce any relevant difference on the market demand for those materials.
While I agree initially the demand will be high, I think it will be for different reasons, like people needing to learn how to 5nm+Boss those new areas etc. Three previous bosses are old content and as such it's easy to kill them on a daily bases (producing an income of materials on the market), for the new bosses it will likely take some time to get there.

cuz I'm pretty sure they're not gonna use the same Mweya Plasm they used for the last 3 delves, otherwise everyone would cap gear in a few days).

If you asked me about that 1 month ago I would have answered that it would have been bloody stupid on SE's side to allow the same currency to be spent in the new Delve areas, because people farmed billions of Plasm with no reason to spend it anymore over the last months, which would mean capping gear as soon as you get the KIs.
Back then situation was different though:
1) I was expecting higher ilevel from the new areas, now I think they will just be 119
2) There weren't 300k materials for sale
With these changes in mind, I'm not so sure anymore they're gonna change currency, they might keep the same one at this point =/



@Fhwam
Where did they say that?
I hope that in the future they realize that for stuff like that they need to do like they do in other MMOs though.
That is putting daily/weekly/monthly/whatever cap on the amount of "currency" you can farm, and/or an overall cap.
No timed and no overall cap on a currency used to buy gear is never a good idea. Other MMOs learned that the hard way, it seems FFXI devs have no clue other MMOs exist and aren't willing to learn from their experiences.

[Sechs]

Dat Cait Sith astral flow.

Considering there aren't many reasons to use Astral Flow these days, that BP could have some use.
Could like use it, then /convert and use Alexander or something? Easier recover from a wipe, I dunno, regardless it's a cool and originall BP.

Pretty lacklusters BPs

The TP reducing one could be cool if the amount reduced is noticeable and if it works regardless of Sleep sticking.
The Amnesia one too can potentially be insanely powerful if it sticks with a decent rate on anything worth it (i.e. not EP monsters )
Potentially even too powerful, up to the point it makes me think it will just be crap.

Overall yes, it's a bit disappointing maybe but I like the AoE Reraise, means I can just go /RDM without having to worry for RR items! xD Yai +1 for lazyness and stingyness.

[Damane]

Considering there aren't many reasons to use Astral Flow these days, that BP could have some use.
Could like use it, then /convert and use Alexander or something? Easier recover from a wipe, I dunno, regardless it's a cool and originall BP.


The TP reducing one could be cool if the amount reduced is noticeable and if it works regardless of Sleep sticking.
The Amnesia one too can potentially be insanely powerful if it sticks with a decent rate on anything worth it (i.e. not EP monsters )
Potentially even too powerful, up to the point it makes me think it will just be crap.

Overall yes, it's a bit disappointing maybe but I like the AoE Reraise, means I can just go /RDM without having to worry for RR items! xD Yai +1 for lazyness and stingyness.

the only potential BP is really the amnesia one, and I really doubt that one will stick to anythign remotly hard, (even tough Absolute terror worked on some mobs in delve 1, it really stoped working on all the VD battlefields).

[Julian]

That's lame, they should have just done Phoenix instead of fucking cait sith.

[Tarage]

I'll... take it...

Am I disappointed? A bit. The sleep ability I don't see working better than Shiva's, simply because it's at level 25 and Shiva's is 39... so having a more powerful sleep at a lower level is kinda dumb, but who knows. Eerie Eye could be good, but SE would never give us something good so it will probably have less accuracy than a RDM(Ba-dum-chi). Level ? Holy... that one worries me, because A. it's fucking AOE and SMN almost NEVER want AOE and B. it's probably random, which lowers it's usability to 0. Raise and Reraise are a boon because it means there is little to no reason to sub /WHM anymore outside of -na spells... which I guess maybe is still a reason to sub WHM for para shenanigans. Still, it's interesting. The AOE RRIIIGa/Arise confuses me a little bit. Does it cast Arise on everyone and then give RRIII? What if you aren't dead? I suppose the range on it will make or break it's usability, but I can't see someone going "Man, we need a SMN for this" because of it. No mention of what favor Cait gets, so I hope they didn't forget that.

But yeah... considering it's probably one of the last things SMN will ever get, I'll take it. Wish it got a 75+ BP, but whatever. I said I'd be happy with my kitty so I'll be happy.

Maybe in four years we'll get Atomos...

EDIT: For a lark I decided to look at what the JP were saying about it using the magic of google translate. Naturally I can barely understand any of it (lol Legal Scratch), but it looks like one of the first posts says exactly what I said.
Clicky...
I don't see much complaining. I guess we SMN have just been beaten down to the point where we just take whatever is given to us. Hey RDM, wanna go drinking with me?

[Sechs]

But yeah... considering it's probably one of the last things SMN will ever get, I'll take it. Wish it got a 75+ BP, but whatever.

While the fact they took so long doesn't make it sound particularly likely... we don't necessarily have to rule out the possibility of them adding new stuff/tweaks to Caith Sith in the future.

Maybe in four years we'll get Atomos...

I don't expect it to come soon, but not to take it as long as Caith Sith either.
They will probably release a high level battlefield fight with Atomos on something during their revamping BC plans, in the future, and that will be used to obtain the Avatar (which will be like Alexander/Odin, so single use) and maybe some random items like with Alex/Odin.
Dunno, whatever, doesn't seem something that requires as much balance/work as Caith Sith.
I expect Atomos to do something like Debuff (-stats %) on everything in a certain range, and buff (+stats%) on every player in range.
Lasting time scaling with SMN skill.

[Tarage]

Would be nice. Might make SMN wanted for big stuff like Delve again. If big stuff still exists by the time we get it...

I looked at the other avatars. Every avatar other than Carbuncle has 10 BPs, where Carby has 9. 6 is on the low low end. Granted each avatar only really has maybe 4 useable BPs, so maybe it will even out. I guess I just don't understand the logic of not having a BP above 75.

[Kincard]

Hey RDM, wanna go drinking with me?

Just remember to invite your dumpster neighbors NIN, BST and PUP.

[Byrthnoth]

Wow, Cait Sith looks terrible. I hope it at least has TH or something. I mean, raise and reraise II BPs? Hooray. Now we won't lose as much XP when we die with only a summoner healer in party. This is so much worse than I could have imagined.


... on the upside, Level ? Holy is SMN's second non-AF form of AoE damage (other than Thunderspark). That is really the single thing that this avatar brings to the table.

[Kincard]

I dunno, I think party-arise is pretty cool when you consider they're also thinking about reducing weakness timers, and while I doubt it, if the silence/amnesia can actually stick on stuff it's kinda cool.

[CoreyX]

I like the light-based sleep. And Altana's Favor (1-hour) is going to be sweet in reives, people will love you after like 50 people fall to the ground, instantly arising them and/or giving them reraise III. Plus it can be used multiple times since it doesn't wipe astral flaw. Maybe Level ? Holy will do decent damage? Carby's light damage isn't on par with merited bloodpacts. I wonder what its avatar's favor will be? (Maybe Regain?)

[Byrthnoth]

So you guys are saying that SMN is going to be useful in reives now? Nice!

I don't know what its Avatar's Favor will be, but I do know that it'll suffer the same flaws as every other Avatar's Favor. This Avatar is going to be another Diabolos at best.

[CoreyX]

Summoner has been pretty consistently useful in reives since they came out, do you not remember the barrage of summons in wildkeeper's when colonization% is low? Plus wards affecting everyone in range is pretty nice.

But yeah, they really need to fix Avatar's Favor. You can see now exactly what it does with /checkparam, and it's even worse than previously thought. I haven't touched it in years, it's that terrible. Even if it's a really good favor it probably won't be useable.

[Toth]

Pretty low amount of BPs for an avatar. I wonder if they are planning more...

I agree with the sentiment though. Some useful some...not. I guess we shall see!

[Byrthnoth]

Summoner has been pretty consistently useful in reives since they came out, do you not remember the barrage of summons in wildkeeper's when colonization% is low? Plus wards affecting everyone in range is pretty nice.

But yeah, they really need to fix Avatar's Favor. You can see now exactly what it does with /checkparam, and it's even worse than previously thought. I haven't touched it in years, it's that terrible. Even if it's a really good favor it probably won't be useable.

That was the joke. SMN getting another BP that is almost exclusively useful in reives does not make the job more useful because it was already good in reives.