Dev Tracker: Discussion

[Martel]

It caps at +40%. Although I' not sure how far down the ranking you have to be to hit it. I'm usually just in last.

[Kanriel]

What they should do is add a way to clusterize crystals, which would make it much easier as it would simply move AH traffic from stacks of crystals to stacks of clusters.

[dasva]

Snapshot (3/12)

As players have mentioned, the cap on Snapshot is not easy to determine, so we asked the dev team.
The upper limit, including buffs from magic, abilities, and equipment, is 70. The trait Rapid Shot is counted separately.

Hmmm now maybe if we knew how much the flurries were. Well nice to know that snapshot caps lower than melee delay reduction, while having higher delay weapons and an extra forced delay that melees don't have. It's a big we don't want you to ever shoot even half as fast as people will melee

[Marootsoobutsu]

Hmmm now maybe if we knew how much the flurries were. Well nice to know that snapshot caps lower than melee delay reduction, while having higher delay weapons and an extra forced delay that melees don't have. It's a big we don't want you to ever shoot even half as fast as people will melee

Except RNG still also have Rapid Shot.

edit: ranged attack. Figuring out Flurry values would help a ton with that, but it should mean that RNG and COR can wear some more rapid gear alongside snapshot in buffed situations.

[dasva]

Except RNG still also have Rapid Shot.

edit: ranged attack. Figuring out Flurry values would help a ton with that, but it should mean that RNG and COR can wear some more rapid gear alongside snapshot in buffed situations.

From what I remember of the rapid shot testing I don't think it was ever completely resolved how it worked but I believe the going theory was it was multiplicative with snapshot and at 99 with merits averaged out to 10% delay reduction. So with 70 snapshot you'd up with 73% delay reduction ie rapid shot not doing a whole lot. Heck even with 100% rapidshot activation (assuming that is even possible) it'd still only bring you up to about 79% reduction still lower than melee.

But wait they still have the forced delay which by itself is longer than capped haste melees whole delay which is unaffected by any of that... so in the end your overall delay reduction shot to shot with an Annihilator with capped snapshot and 100% rapid shot would be effectively only be 60%

[Martel]

What idiot was asking devs about something as easily testable as Lancer Plackart + Pet food interaction? It's like a 30 second test with check param. -.-; Waste of a dev reply.

[errantfish]

Flurry II is a 30% ranged delay reduction according to SE.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/th...l=1#post515764

They never provided a value for Flurry I, but given the relationship between Flurry and Haste and the values of Haste and Haste II, it's probably safe to say Flurry is 15%.

[Snprphnx]

For ranged delay, is Velocity Shot part of that maximum +70 value? Last I read, Byrths testing showed that they were included in the same term. If so, then Flurry 2 and Velocity Shot would put us at 40% ranged delay reduction. Add +10 more from merits. to put us at +50. Meaning we would only need Snapshot +20 in gear to cap it. Nahtirah Trousers were tested at 9%, NQ Iuitl Wristbands, unaugmented, are tested at 10%, so add a decent augment, and were are supposedly at SEs Snapshot+70 cap. After that, we can stack all sorts of Rapid Shot gear in the other slots. I'm seeing Rapid Shot +32 from Arc Jerkin+1, Orion Beret+1, and Arc Socks+1.

[Ligray]

Someone got their wish..

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/th...969#post542969

Hail, adventurers! Matsui here with an update for you.

I would like to inform you that, based on your feedback, we have begun to consider balance adjustments for melee jobs, specifically the thief and samurai, in the March version update.

We are currently looking at adjusting balance in the following two ways:

• The addition of a new spell known as “Ardor”
• The adjustment of certain dagger weapon skills

I would like to share with you the thought process behind these adjustments.

The addition of Ardor
In our preview of job adjustments several days prior, we made mention of a new magic spell known as “Ardor.” We elected to add this spell in order to decrease the gaps in damage dealt between the various melee jobs.

As noted in that topic, Ardor increases skillchain damage based on the number of successful melee hits up until the time the weapon skill is activated.

Jobs that often go for long periods of time without using weapon skills will receive stronger bonuses, thereby decreasing the damage gap that currently exists.

The adjustment of certain dagger weapon skills
One topic keeps popping up where we hear players discussing the thief: skillchain damage when using the weapon skills Sneak Attack and Trick Attack

These skills are particularly effective in content such as Wanted battles, where it‘s possible for thieves to accumulate TP in advance and when combat ends in a short period of time, but we believe that this is one of the job’s strengths.

Not all content enables players to accumulate TP in advance the way Wanted battles do, and other melee classes are competitive with thieves in extended combat scenarios.

As such, we wish to avoid adjusting Sneak Attack and Trick Attack, as doing so would be tantamount to destroying part of the thief job’s identity.

However, in its current state thief damage output is on par with or even surpasses that of other melee jobs even in long duration combat, and upon looking at melee jobs as a whole, we cannot deny that thieves are located at the top of the charts in a wide variety of content.

Ardor has an incredibly strong synergy with thieves, who autoattack quite frequently, and thus we expect that their skillchain damage would increase to numbers even higher than they currently are. As such, we believe it necessary to somewhat reduce the potency or certain dagger weaponskills in order to maintain balance with other jobs.

We are currently considering adjusting the following four weaponskills.

• Shark Bite
• Mercy Stroke
• Mandalic Stab
• Rudra’s Storm

These adjustments are meant to normalize damage between melee jobs, and there are some adjustments that can be viewed as nerfs when taken on the individual job level, so we wished to communicate these details to you in advance as we continue to thoroughly discuss this matter.

[Lyramion]

Well....

[Ramzii]

laughing intensifies

[NynJa]

I hope they discuss that consideration and tell everyone to eat a dick and deal with it. The lightbulb on the spotlight on thf hasnt even gotten warm yet.

The fact they're considering changing these because of Ardor is ridiculous. Just make it apply to main hand swings instead of main and off hand? DERP.

[Ramzii]

honestly, they should just nerf their SC damage and then they'd still be good without absolutely shitting on everyone else

[Byrthnoth]

So that post implies two things:
1) SE actually reads the JP forums.
2) Ardor is going to be pretty strong.
or possibly:
3) SE is using the introduction of Ardor as an excuse to address an obvious problem.

Doesn't really matter to me. Dancer attacks really frequently and relies on skillchains, so if Ardor is actually good then we're going to benefit. Also, our reliance on Rudra's Storm is much less than THF's.

Feels kind of weird that SE is nerfing Mandalic Stab too. It's decent with Vajra, but not that good without it.

[Tarage]

Boy am I glad I got my Wanted battles out of the way before this. I don't even want to think about how annoying Douma Weapon is gonna be without Rudra to take him down.

[Draylo]

Have done them all without it, it was just another fad.

[Ophannus]

Gonna get my thf snc and brd JP in before nerf.

[Sechs]

I'm not sure I get this post, either he's making up excuses to cover for real motivations, or he's trying to simplify things too much to make them understandable even to noobs (with the result of the post making no sense for hc players) or maybe there's something lost in translation, but I seriously don't get it.

They are acknowledging SAM and THF are in a too good of a position than they should be and their "solution" is adding a spell that's only going to be casted by RDM?
I mean... how is that a solution? Aside from the specific spell, I'm talking concept-wise, how can you even imagine of thinking to solve an issue with two jobs by adding a new spell-buff to a third job? How does that even make sense?
Also they refused to ackowledge the SC issue.
A good solution would have been reducing the multiplicator (or eliminating it completely) for multistep SCs, but instead they're adding a spell that makes that even more retardedly broken (Ardor).
I mean...

More specifically it's going to depend on how the spell works, but couldn't SAMs just start WSing at 2000 or more instead of shooting at 1000, so they can get more hits and hence bigger damage?
Meh, guess we'll have to wait and see how things are going to work out.



Regardless the THF nerf we all knew it would've come sooner or later. I have to say I wasn't expecting it in March though, they could've left THF there a bit longer honestly, not like it's the only first fucking time in 11 years... sigh.

[Ophannus]

Wasn't the point of the test server for us to peruse adjustments before implementation? I mean, if they let us play with OP rudra before the release, they would have seen it was OP and adjusted it to be normal before damage could be done.

Even a 15-20k stacked rudra is a bit too much considering 310 base damage alluvion gaxe wars can barely break 8-9k on a decent upheaval. 1h white damage is more or less better than 2h now that they have 99%acc, higher pdif, and the same str/dex to atk/acc conversions as 2h not to mention most thf dnc blu are rocking way more da/ta/qa than non war 2h job(except maybe SAM cuz hassozanshin).

[Ophannus]

Also inb4 nerf rudra+ardor>current rudra. If they nerf rudra by 20% potency across the board, but ardor is a 30% increase in sc damage, thf would be stronger but only with a rdm. I'm kinda fine with that, as it involves synergy and fosters teamwork. NMs should be given SC resistance too such that every SC does subsequently lower damage until x amount of time passes. First sc does regular sc damage, next one caps at 90%-> 80%, etc. caps down to 60% and goes up like 5% every min. Tens of thousands of extra damage for simply timing your own WS 2s after your last shouldnt give such a whopping reward. Nerf the fuck out of 2 step damage since it free and guaranteed but buff 4-5steps and give bonuses if other jobs/players contribute. A sc that does 40k should feel like a huge reward for 2-3dd that cooridnated it, not the one SAM that says "everyone hold TP, self skillchaining lol"