Dev Tracker: Discussion

[ccl]

Sam is currently on a different plane, thats given and I agree with ccl. Sometimes nerfs are the better way to make the game more challenging again. he pointed out some of the broken stuff. Just as Embrava locking was broken and was nerfed, those thigns up there should be gone too.

I disagree on the unlimited MP: if you are a whm and you only heal, sure your MP will be unlimited, SCH GEO and BLM can run out of MP and will with excessiv nukeing and healing (no whm empy legs!). What makes whm so broken in MP management is empy legs +2 with strong Aoe heals basicly costing 0 MP, whereas a sch will have to pump out 160 MP on that one, in succession your MP pool will depleet fast.

Yeah for unlimited mp I was mostly talking about whm being able to spam curaga III and shit w/o worrying about mp, it doesn't apply to other mages; my bad.

[Damane]

Yeah for unlimited mp I was mostly talking about whm being able to spam curaga III and shit w/o worrying about mp, it doesn't apply to other mages; my bad.

thought so

but in any case, i dont think they can fix the mess at all. IF they fix enmity properly, then everyone will just roll with RNGs everywhere unless the mob is immune to ranged attacks and even then they will just roll with BLM SCH GEO nukers (tough good ones are very hard to come by). The point of no return was missed a loooooong time ago during the end of ToAU era.

[dasva]

Yeah for unlimited mp I was mostly talking about whm being able to spam curaga III and shit w/o worrying about mp, it doesn't apply to other mages; my bad.

The really funny/sad part is with enough targets it ends up curing about as much as cure4 but for less mp because of legs while curing more people

[ccl]

They could start by making Orison pant only work on single target similar to cureskin and see how we manage mp from there.

[Hitou]

I'm not sure why there's a constant whining for nerfs going on. The hardest content in the game is still only cleared by like 5-10% of the player base, yet there's bitching that it's "too easy." Sam too strong for you? Use another DD. WHM never runs out of MP? don't wear orison pants. Honestly there's nothing at all to stop players from being challenged but themselves. But apparently it's only fun if SE forces your hand and makes it so you have no choice but to do the things I suggested. Everyone must conform to the whims of the best players, or rather the players that managed to hold on to enough friends to avoid the retarded masses that make up the pick up community. Seriously, if the game is too boring and easy for you, grab some pick up whms or DD and let the good times roll.

But yeah, nerf SAM, nerf WHM, nerf whatever the playerbase is currently riding the bandwagon on. They'll move on to the next best thing. Then we can nerf that. In fact we should roll back the game to 75. Game was only fun then. Right?

[stamos]

Sam is broken. No other way to put it. It isn't even close to other jobs dd wise.

[Prothescar]

When a single SAM can replace 3 entire other DDs, it isn't a matter of "buff everyone else" unless you want all the content to be retuned as well.

[Hitou]

I don't see most SAM's being capable of that, and even then that sort of situation is entirely the groups choice. Are you going with 2 less people? Outside of Delve II what content are people doing that? I don't ever see shouts for SAM specifically, especially JP shouts. But you do see shouts for MNK all the time. I guess MNK should be nerfed too? Honestly I'd be fine with SE rolling back on the SC resistance update. Self SC is pretty much the only reason people hate SAM so much. Otherwise what nerfs do people want specifically? Delete fudo? Delete kogarasumaru? Cap Store TP so SAM can only get a 6 hit again? And what jobs are gonna be used over SAM when it's crippled? MNK and RNG probably. That definitely helps with melee jobs lacking like PUP DNC and THF.

But whatever, I admit to being biased. I've been playing SAM since '04 and it's my favorite job. That said I rarely ever use it on anything because most of the time I'll need to be on some other job. So I guess it's really doesn't matter if SE caved and nerfed SAM into the ground.

[Ophannus]

SAMs can solo a delve II boss in 4 or 5 weapkn skills with no real playernskill other than activating a few JA's and counting to 3 between them. They aren't Ragnadrk during Legion era broken, they aren't Ukon WAR during Abyssea broken, they aren't Juggernaut/ridill WAR broken, they arent MNK holding infinite boost charges for 3k chi blasts broken, they aren't penta spam DRG broken, they're like RNG circa 2003 broken, or PUP doing 8k magic mortar skillchain broken(yet they nerfed magic mortar but not sam's crazy damage?). In addition to ridiculous damage SAM does, their damage is cheap and free. Rangers pay for their ammo, mages use MP which limited and needs refresh, WAR and DRK pay for damage by reducing their HP or defense, DRG pays for damage by wagering their Wyvern's life, SAM does more damage than all of those jobs, at face value, for no cost. There's no reason for drk or war, jobs that specialize in ws damage when sam does stronger ws(and more ws) than them. Oh, SAM is the ws specialist? Fine. But should SAM be the ws damage specialist, the SC specialist and WS frequency specialist? Why not have drk or war deal the highest raw ws damage, drg be king of ws frequency with jumps and conserve tp, and sam specialize only in skillchains. The way it is now, SAM does every DD's job betterr, faster, more efficiently, with not even "less risk" they are "no risk". WAR needs bergressor, SAM has ws that have attack bonuses and all their one hit wa grt a native +100 acc bonus anyway and free +20% wsd, they dont even need /WAR sincr they grt a free +15% DA from zanshin.

This wasnt meant to be SAM rant but i want to drive home the point that SAM is far more broken than most players think they are. When 119 SAM with only delve1 gear and Tsusmaru can out damage a fully dedicated REM WAR/DRK/DRG from skillchain damage alone, a job isnt just strong, its broken.

SAM was broken when they got Shoha, then they made SAM stronger when Fudo was released for everyone. That was fine, but then they did the WS adjustments and supposedly buffed WS to make all WS competitive they buffed Fudo again, but ironically not Drakesbane? Like they were afraid drakesbane unhinged would be too strong but buffing a WS that was already extremely strong, on a job that progressively only gets god-tier weapon skills every weapon skill release? Merit ws came out to give non empy jobs *something* to put them within the same range as empy DD's during the abyssea era. Last Stand was still inferior to Wildfire, Shinjin was still inferior to VS, upheaval was still inferior to Ukko. But shoha? Shoha was stronger than fudo. They gave a stronger ws to a job that already had a stronger ws. Then when they buffed all ws, buffed fudo and shoha again. It's like SAM quadruple-dipped their proverbial weapon skill chip in the power sauce. Shoha should have been weaker than fudo, stardiver and entropy were stronger than their empyrean counterparts because the empyreans for drk and drg were trash fompared to ukkon, masa and vere. But instead of only giving good ws to jobs that needed them like drk, drg, they gave those jobs stronger ws but included sams too. Then when the wa update came and they said "hey we're gonna buff the weaker weapon skills so all weapon skills are relatively competitive, they buffed fudo and shoha again, but ws that have glaring flaws were ignored.

Dont talk about people jumping the SAM ship to the next bandwagon job. No bandwagon iob in the history of FFXI was as broken as SAM has been since the sc/ws buff. It's not hyperbole. A SAM can literally deal triple the damage of another DD. Ironically adding another DD to a party where the only other dd is a SAM has a good chance of reducing total dps due to the other DD interupting the SAM's skillchains with upheaval and shit.

Yes people complained about MNK during delve 1 because of formless shennaniga s but SD addressed that by vowing to add other non-formless weaknesses to exploit moving forward. They cant do that with SAM since skillchains are universal and they made them unresistable and it just so happens SAM gets a trillion skillchain damage boosting traits and abilities. They need to nerf fudo's ftp under 300% so the damage is less ridiculous and completely change the way multi-step skillchains work suck that if you want 99,999 damage skillchains you have to cooperate and use fucking teamwork between multiple players. Self skillchain damage should be nerfed to the ground and deal less damage per step, so you reward players with high damage for jolly cooperation and teamwork mentalities and not the "lol i'm the SAM, stand back i got this" mentality.

[PSOfanatic]

Basically what Hitou said. Community will find the "New" SAM and just bandwagon that job and not invite any other jobs. Again..community GENERALLY wants only the best setups.

Even w/o the SC bonus people still chose SAM over other DDs. Idk. Idrc what they do with nerfing or buffing. People will still complain about something. This game has had that since it started lol. I am definitely guilty of it ;3

[dasva]

While I'll agree with most of that but 5/5 last stand was a better ws than wild fire... cor could do better but a lot of that had to do with externals than the ws itself. Ie cor rarely getting ratt buffs, cor boots being OP for magic dmg and well people still commonly did content that had affinity buffs

Though I will say people do choose things because of lack of knowledge a lot. Like how blu often doesn't get invites despite all it's potential. Or how even with an ergon people don't like run even though it could take less dmg than most plds. Hell even before the buffs geo was good but most people didn't go to it until they hit it over the head with the jp button

[Shenrien]

I don't think just nerfing the damage of fudo or whatever is going to ultimately fix things, skillchain damage is what really set this all off and being that SAM is a skill chain machine is what really bolsters their strength. If they return skill chaining to be resisted by anything that matters you ultimately take away the most powerful part of the class, when a solo SAM can out damage another person in just skill chain damage alone it's pretty ridiculous.

[NynJa]

thing is if you go back to skillchains being worthless, you go back to no one using skillchains.

SKillchains need better utility instead of upping someones parse: Include a debuff, give a massive boost to MBed nukes. ie: MB gets a damage multiplier added at the end equivalent to the tier of the nuke, but the enmity generated is based on the damage before the multiplier. All of a sudden the damage mages can do is increased significantly, it encourages more than stone spam, and it encourages party dynamics of timed skillchains.

[Sechs]

they arent MNK holding infinite boost charges for 3k chi blasts broken

10k.
And I don't see how you can compare that annoying trick (which was patched soon enough anyway) to the other types of brokeness you listed.

[Sechs]

thing is if you go back to skillchains being worthless, you go back to no one using skillchains.

No one bothering with them, yes.
Altough they could fix something with multistep SCs honestly. The potential within that is a bit too much given the current situation.
They could leave it as it is but remove the additional increasing multiplier for multisteps.

[Prothescar]

increase MB effects to go with SC buffs, too. have MB damage multiplied significantly (2-3x) and give a significant enmity decrease for MBing (spell generates 20% the normal enmity or something). the disparity between mages and melees is at a historic low, which is impressive all things considered.

[NynJa]

No one bothering with them, yes.
Altough they could fix something with multistep SCs honestly. The potential within that is a bit too much given the current situation.
They could leave it as it is but remove the additional increasing multiplier for multisteps.

actually what you're describing as a problem is actually non existant atm. afaik sams just doing fudo>fudo light, fudo>fudo light, theyre not doing shoha > fudo distortion > kasha fusion > Rana Gravitation > Shoha frag and stacking a massive multiplier (or they are and I'm vastly mistaken).

[Prothescar]

The good SAMs that replace 2-3 other slots in the party by themselves are soloing multisteps, not spamming Fudo. It's far more effective.

Rana -> Shoha -> Fudo -> Kasha -> Shoha -> Fudo results in light

Rana -> Shoha -> Fudo -> Kasha -> Rana -> Fudo results in darkness


Kasha -> Shoha -> Fudo
Fudo -> Kasha -> Shoha -> Fudo
Shoha -> Fudo -> Kasha -> Shoha -> Fudo


all options



p.s. those BST things are nice. New tiger and ladybug can be interesting, low expectations for snapweed and fly. Free jug ability is sweet, as is the change to Ready.

[NynJa]

that's almost entirely reliant on Koga though, right? (or strongly aided by)

[Prothescar]

Not reliant assuming you have support. Sure Koga helps, but it certainly isn't a requirement, especially for the lower step SCs. I did it with a Tsurumaru.