Dev Tracker: Discussion

[Xantavia]

Some doors, like the tenshodo in lower jeuno, make it a huge pain in the ass for multiboxing.

Isn't that because you don't start with access to the zone? By having a clickable door it prevents using tractor to get people through who shouldn't be there like the airship. I think thats what I heard years ago.

While this deviates a bit from your question, there is an issue with rigidity when you are cured right when you are raised. As this affects battle difficulty, we would like to fix this moving forward.

I like this though.

[Sechs]

They said the same thing about reraise a couple of times in the past as well, but nothing happened since then.
Last time Matsui said he wanted to give a few seconds of invincibility to players who accept reraise, tho give them the chance to position themselves out of danger, since then nothing happen outside of Arise.

[Kaisha]

It's the cutscene doors that are a pain in the ass, not the manual ones. Can't see why they couldn't add an extra prompt for "Fast" to just skip it and appear on the other side/zone.

[NynJa]

I mean the door that gets you to the norg fame npc, inside the hotel thing, but not quite tenshodo

[Prothescar]

Also, rune fencers are currently weak to physical attacks, so we are looking into adjustments from various angles such as via equipment and job traits. We feel it necessary to make them comparable to a paladin for all-around tanking.

Interesting

[Sechs]

It's the cutscene doors that are a pain in the ass, not the manual ones. Can't see why they couldn't add an extra prompt for "Fast" to just skip it and appear on the other side/zone.

This I can agree with, totally. But normal doors feel better in FFXI than the automatical doors of FFXIV which just look silly and annoying to me.



Anyway, read Matsui's post on tanks and barance. Despite that post not saying much (it's all a bunch of blahblah) it's interesting that they want to focus into making tanks relevant again.
I've said it countless times, but while there are several possible ways to enhance their role (and probably SE needs to walk them all) there also is a main one which cannot be avoided, and it's by buffing the core abilities/traits of tanking jobs.
Relying on gear to make a job able to do its job (looking at you, PLD and Ochain/Aegis!) is just pure crazyness.
"Special" gear should make a job perform even better, it shouldn't be considered something mandatory without which you can't even perform what your job was meant for.
Now... since when SoA came out the situation got slightly better for PLD and other shield options I guess, but it's still nowhere enough.
Adding a supermegacool tanking Gsword/Katana with insane stats for RUN and NIN wouldn't solve the jobs' issues as tanks.

The preposterous part about RUN is that in 99% of the realistic fights it fails as a tank even in those situations (heavy magic damage) where it was meant to excel at compared to PLD (and Aegis is clearly the one to blame here).

I'm curious to what they'll do. Especially for NIN it's gonna be tricky since the job clearly has at least 2 roles (tank and DD). Without relying on Innin/Yonin it won't be easy to balance these two roles.
Don't want to get my hopes too high though... yet.

[NynJa]

How is that any different though from alienating mages without atinian? Melee's without 119's? etc

[Prothescar]

because it's quite an order of magnitude easier/less time consuming to get a respectable DD weapon or macc/mdmg staff than an ochain/aegis? You don't even need atinian anymore, Eminent Staff is almost the same thing. In fact, most eminence weapons are fine until you get a delve boss weapon.

[Kincard]

I'm glad they at least know that RUN and NIN are totally worthless compared to PLD. PLD is just nearly invincible- it's obvious they were in a rut when they were looking at Ochain/Aegis because they didn't enhance to them to 119 and they didn't want to release anything better. They already knew they were ridiculously overpowered (same deal with horn/harp). I think that's why they've been hesitant to give something of the same magnitude to NIN and RUN.

Good to hear they're thinking a lot about combat balance now, the quality of life changes are great and all, but there's actually been very few combat changes I can think of other than stuff that applied to every job (weapon skill, magic damage/accuracy etc).

[dasva]

Of course killedar is also quite fine (and iirc against lower level stuff better) until you get ochain.

I think a good way to help RUN out is to make it's buffs be able to be fulltimed and well make them undispellable. Most mobs with annoying magic dmg/statuses can also dispel. And dispelling vallation on run is basically the equivalent of removing a plds aegis for 0-3 mins.

Maybe changing the cap of 3 runes to 3 per element maybe and then maybe a total cap of 6 or something like that?

[Kincard]

I expect whatever the RUN mythic is to give another rune, so you'll have -60% which is already really good. Making it undispellable is a good idea too.

For physical, make their mythic gives lots of parry, I guess?

NIN, make one of their RME give lots and lots of evasion (before RUN existed I would've said to make NIN's parrying better, which they wanted to do with Tengen but I guess they scrapped that idea and then went "lol lets give it to RUN instead"), and let it break evasion cap. Either that, or give it a special property that lets it absorb aoe attacks/spells betterer. Also makes it easier for them to balance the RME in the future I guess, because they would only have to consider balancing the damage output of 2 of Kannagi/Kikoku/Nagi, while the third one is used for tanking.

It doesn't have to be on an RME but I imagine that's really the only way they can do it without a bunch of PLDs bellyaching that they're worse tank on a base level without RMEs.

[Darkmagi]

People vastly overstate the ochain requirement. I've done nonmagic VD AAs with aegis just to see if the lower block rate would make it difficult to tank, was never in any serious danger. Killedar shield would work fine with proper gear/buffs.

[dasva]

That reminds me I wonder if they've fixed vallation effect merits

[Prothescar]

I expect whatever the RUN mythic is to give another rune, so you'll have -60% which is already really good. Making it undispellable is a good idea too.

75% for Vallation, actually. 45% from 3 runes + 15% from merits (1% per rune x5) puts us at 60% already. Would be nice if they made the Valiance merit effect MDT too, but meh.

For physical, make their mythic gives lots of parry, I guess?

Meh, couple more tiers of Inquartata even for non-mythic RUN would be nice. Maybe a reduction for Battuta recast, too. Not sure what else they could do for physical mitigation on RUN tho.

[dasva]

75% for Vallation, actually. 45% from 3 runes + 15% from merits (1% per rune x5) puts us at 60% already. Would be nice if they made the Valiance merit effect MDT too, but meh.

Your math is a bit off there. If that's how the merits worked it would be 80% since the merits would effect the additional rune too. Which with capped mdt would put your total dmg reduction to that element not counting things like int and mdb at -90% slightly better than aegis with a huge increase in resist rates. On top of the highest tier of mdb of any job in the game would be great against single element magic dmg

That said I last tested it it actually only gave 1% per merit with all 3 runes up. And the bug report I filed for it in august is still sitting in the accept bugs section that they haven't really worked on clearing out in awhile. So as it stands a 4th rune with full merits would put us at 66.66%

[Prothescar]

Forgot about the extra rune even though it's what I was responding to, hooray. And it figures; bugs that are detrimental to the player don't get fixed. Just ones that give us an advantage.

[Spira]

I'd look forward to the RUN tanking buffs.. tho so far i can barely tell what the best step forward might be. I'd definitely welcome more Inquartata and Battuta buffs, but feel as though Parry itself is not enough to make RUN decent to tank with.

i've no issue with the doors but can see how some people are annoyed by it. they should mainly remove it in areas where the traffic is so regular that its a hassle to have them. kinda like in front of the assault issuance office, and so on. some doors they'd have to keep for event triggers and stuff, but i don't think people are asking them to remove ALL doors (cos it wouldn't look nice / make sense), just the annoying ones.

[Sechs]

I expect whatever the RUN mythic is to give another rune, so you'll have -60% which is already really good. Making it undispellable is a good idea too.

For physical, make their mythic gives lots of parry, I guess?

Don't want to sound like a whining ass but... doesn't this seem a stupid idea to you?
So you're basically saying that for a job to do what he's being made of (tank) you need to get one of the hardest weapons to get because that's the thing that will enable that job do tank?
I'm obviously all fine in making mythic RUN much better than normal RUN, but the only way for RUN to tank?
Not really...

NIN, make one of their RME give lots and lots of evasion

I thought about that too, but it's not gonna be enough.
Buffing Evasion/Parrying (without the use of special JAs which have cooldowns and you can't use them 100% of the time) is hard.
To make them really reliable you'd have to buff them too much, up to the point of making those jobs too "broken".
If you don't then it's gonna be nice but not enough because compared to straight damage reduction, they're just a "chance". Even at very high % how are you gonna rely on a job that completely cancels damage (evasion/parry) like 65% of the times but receives full damage the other 35?
So yeah, buffing Eva/Parrying too much is not viable, and it can't be the only buff they give to RUN and NIN.

It doesn't have to be on an RME but I imagine that's really the only way they can do it without a bunch of PLDs bellyaching that they're worse tank on a base level without RMEs.

They should do a peculiar nerf to Aegis and Ochain instead, imho.
Example with made up numbers. Let's say currently the total "power" of PLD with Ochain/Aegis is 100, 15 of which comes from the job, 85 from Ochain/Aegis.
"Shift" the power toward the job by buffing PLD and nerfing Aegis/Ochain. The overall power will still be 100 (so owners of Aegis/Ochain shouldn't complain... too much) but maybe something like 40 job and 60 Ochain/Aegis? Now that would be a better situation than the current one.


@Dasva
Not sure that would be viable. Runes get expended with Gambit/Lunge and it takes time to apply them, or to switch between them.
That's one of the reasons why RUN is not viable. Sure with 3 runes of the same element you're pretty powerful, but with multiple element damage incoming what can you do? It takes time to switch, it reduces your tp damage (and so the enmity you generate) and blah blah. Also it's retarded that it's just a "chance" to resist magic damage.
On the SKC BCNM in Throne Room, difficult, against that Astral Flow Shiva, I had Barblizzard, 3 anti-ice runes and Vallation up. Decent gear and guess what? Out of 6 fights I did 1 time I received full damage (or close to that, I died) 1 time I received almost no damage (dunno if Sacrosanctity was up though...), one time I received low damage, 3 other times I received kinda, I dunno, half damage? Around half of my hp was gone.
Those buffs (3 runes, barbliz and Vallation) were up all of the times.
And we're talking about a "Difficult" fight which probably wasn't even 119.
How retarded is that?
With PLD and Aegis you whould have received the same exact damage (or very close) every single time. No "chance" to reduce damage, it's 100% going to happen.
Making Vallation/Runes undispellable and making so Vallation lasts 5 mins (at least with body!) would be very welcome changes though. And Swordplay too plz! Doubt it would be enough though.

[ccl]

For RUN, I can see it doing well if they add an ammo/wpn or job trait that like triple Stoneskin/phalanx damage reduction on top of a lower recast on Battuta. Maybe add another spell for enmity but I think foil/flash/rune enmity is ok already.

[Spira]

Don't want to sound like a whining ass but... doesn't this seem a stupid idea to you?
And we're talking about a "Difficult" fight which probably wasn't even 119.

the level difficulty for the SKC fights is kinda unknown right? I know AA fights are from VE to Normal, 113, 116, 119, and "over 119" for the D, VD levels..

so if AA's drop 119 weapons, which is the level for normal, then it could be possible that SKC fights are 109 at normal, since they drop 109 weapons. so D could possibly be 112? lol. seems to be below 119 for sure tho. not sure what the point of me saying this is even