Dev Tracker: Discussion

[Fwahm]

Because magic burst spamming dominated almost all endgame content. Melees don't really get used at all on things like Escha/Reisenjima T3s or HELMs.

[Ophannus]

Because magic burst spamming dominated almost all endgame content

Never thought I'd see the day...

I mean SCH/BLM were strong in certain Delves when they buffed T1 nukes and added in Storm II and Job Points. I did remember hearing of BLM doing insane damage with Death and SCH getting Helix II's and RDM getting Tier 5's. Still, it's funny to see how over the years it ping-ponging between nuking, 1h, ranged, 2h dominance, in cycles.

[vivbiibasjiu]

Summoning magic skill does not increase blood pact accuracy . . . MYTH BUSTED

Interesting that the WS Accuracy stat only applies to the entire WS in the case of fTP replicating WSs. I guess the original fast blade testing was flawed. Also nice to get official confirmation of the +100 Accuracy number.

Your native skill itself does not affect bloodpact accuracy, but skill over the cap of your level (such as anything on equipment) DOES. Magic accuracy as well. This is plainly apparent by using summoning magic skill to lower resists. Summoning magic skill never did anything besides interruption until they specifically changed it so any skill over the cap increases bloodpact accuracy/magic accuracy and duration, and there are update notes documented that show his. It's not a "myth"

[Byrthnoth]

Summoning Magic Skill does not increase Blood Pact Accuracy. Avatar: Accuracy and Pet: Accuracy can fill this function instead.

It looks like they're specifically talking about melee accuracy, and I haven't seen any tests indicating that summoning skill affects the melee accuracy of blood pacts. Magic accuracy has been shown a few times, I think, but not melee (even though we all assumed it worked that way). Hence the MYTH BUSTED.

[Jem]

Your native skill itself does not affect bloodpact accuracy, but skill over the cap of your level (such as anything on equipment) DOES. Magic accuracy as well. This is plainly apparent by using summoning magic skill to lower resists. Summoning magic skill never did anything besides interruption until they specifically changed it so any skill over the cap increases bloodpact accuracy/magic accuracy and duration, and there are update notes documented that show his. It's not a "myth"

Disagree with this from first hand experience.

Unskilled/low skill SMN's were unable to land Shock Squall on ADL whilst high skill SMN's could. Which was why we started taking COR mules for the skilled SMN's rather than just taking more SMN's.

[Byrthnoth]

The change he's talking about took place in mid-late ToAU (possibly during WotG, but who remembers that expansion?) It was long before ADL, but it's also an example of magic accuracy being affected by summoning skill.

[Jem]

Ah ok, I just misread it then.

[Byrthnoth]

They did further buff the skill-duration relationship in the last few years, but the original change was quite a while ago.

[Dotsudoku]

Your native skill itself does not affect bloodpact accuracy, but skill over the cap of your level (such as anything on equipment) DOES. Magic accuracy as well. This is plainly apparent by using summoning magic skill to lower resists. Summoning magic skill never did anything besides interruption until they specifically changed it so any skill over the cap increases bloodpact accuracy/magic accuracy and duration, and there are update notes documented that show his. It's not a "myth"

So you pretty much adopt this policy for everything, then

[vivbiibasjiu]

It looks like they're specifically talking about melee accuracy, and I haven't seen any tests indicating that summoning skill affects the melee accuracy of blood pacts. Magic accuracy has been shown a few times, I think, but not melee (even though we all assumed it worked that way). Hence the MYTH BUSTED.

Summoning skill over cap doesn't affect melee accuracy, but it 100% does affect physical accuracy of bloodpacts (Predator Claws, Flaming Crush, etc. etc.) so no, the "myth" is not busted because it's a verifiable fact and any summoner worth his salt knows this (not to mention it's literally plainly said so in the update notes of yesteryear) Go use Spinning Dive naked on something Leviathan will wiff on constantly, equip shit tons of summong skill but 0 pet accuracy, and suddenly you'll land it consistently.

[vivbiibasjiu]

So you pretty much adopt this policy for everything, then

Using my knowledge of game mechanics I've learned by actually playing the game and not sucking? Yes.

[Kyte]

It was also recently tested by someone (Papesse? Tarage?), no longer than 2 years ago. I actually asked for that test by starting a discussion, and demonstrated that it did convert into acc/macc, altough at an unknown rate, it was assumed to be 1:1 but it could've been worse.

The post I think you're referring to is just in regards to magic accuracy for enfeebling pacts.

[vivbiibasjiu]

The summoner job has undergone the following adjustments:
[...]
-Blood Pact will now receive different effects when the value added by equipment or merit points exceeds the skill cap for that level.
*Players can experience increased accuracy when using Blood Pact: Rage or lengthened effect durations when using Blood Pact: Ward. The length of the duration increased varies depending on which Blood Pact is used, but will not exceed 180 seconds.
*A player whose summoning magic skill is lower than the skill cap will not experience any penalties, such as a decrease in accuracy or shortened effect durations.
-Players will now also experience increases in skill when using the Blood Pact: Rage and Blood Pact: Ward pet commands.

Either you can trust this post, or you can trust their new post. 50% chance either way, but if you actually play Summoner it takes all of 5 minutes to ascertain that summoning magic skill over the cap affects Bloodpact physical accuracy, Bloodpact magical accuracy, and Bloodpact: Ward duration

[Alistrianna]

Didn't Blood Pact: Rage used to have a minimum accuracy of 70% back then too? That doesnt appear to be the case anymore in my recent experiences in Reisinjima.

[Sechs]

It looks like they're specifically talking about melee accuracy, and I haven't seen any tests indicating that summoning skill affects the melee accuracy of blood pacts. Magic accuracy has been shown a few times, I think, but not melee (even though we all assumed it worked that way). Hence the MYTH BUSTED.

Truth be said all the tests I read were about Magic Accuracy, so it's entirely possible SMN skill only converts to that and not Physical.
Altough frankly I wouldn't be particularly surprised even if SE just gave us wrong information in that reply.
It wouldn't be the first time, would it?

[Viar]

Because magic burst spamming dominated almost all endgame content. Melees don't really get used at all on things like Escha/Reisenjima T3s or HELMs.

This can't be the reason, since pdif cap increase isn't going to fix melee jobs on T3 and helms.

The only reason that I can think of, is SE doesn't know how to balance jobs nor understand current DD hierarchy+strength and weakness very well, so they thought melee can at least "complete" with BSTs in lower lv content with a pdif cap increase.

They may just see average players bst every T1 and thought BST is OP, so they buffed melee jobs to compete with BST.

[Oyama]

I was expecting a buff to the dex -> acc and str-> atk conversions. The raise in the pdif cap doesn't surprise me, but by itself it doesn't fix anything unless you bring a ton of stacking def- debuffs to the fight, and/or Idris/Bolster. I mean, dia3+LightShot, a Blu def down spell (let's say crush for -20%), and (Bolster) Frailty, plus the various attack buffs, and I can see maybe exceeding old cap on some mobs. I don't know what escha t3/helms have for defense so it's hard to say.

But even then, AoE bullshit is easier just not to deal with if you can avoid it, which is basically on any mob that doesn't resist all magic damage or have insane meva. Fights like that you use melees on, and accuracy needs get astronomically higher as you go up. The "fix" for melees is some combination of AoE damage and status effect mitigation, boost to acc or nerf to mob eva, and nerf to Immanence. I personally don't want to lose SCH's ability to do what we're doing with it, so I wouldn't want a SCH nerf, but it does present a dilemma for melees. There is rarely room for a melee in a sch/blm sc+mb party except for gimmicks, so either they add a bunch more with melee-oriented gimmicks to force melees into fights, or they make melees as attractive an option as SCH with a similar difficulty curve. I don't think the focus should be on stopping SCH/BLM parties from doing what they're doing, the focus should be on making sure that comparable alternatives exist. Of course some fights will just never be melee-friendly just as nuking is all but useless on a few mobs.

TL;DR - Assuming mob is not magic resistant, making a skillchain with sch is often easier and more efficient than making a skillchain with melees.

[Sechs]

I dunno. Despite SCs doing a ton of damage and MBs being the same in the right condition, I don't think "damage output potential" was the real issue with DDs.
While inferior to other solutions, by itself it could be viable.
The problem is more about in the excessive accuracy requirements of the majority of endgame content (which forces you to stack too many buffs and focus too much on acc, furtherly lowering the damage output) and in the survivability of DDs.
Even if you can manage to make them hit the target, how can you possibly sustain them from all those nasty AoE moves and the plethora of debuffs they apply?

It's understandable that there is no quick and easy fix to this current situation, but again I don't see how buffing the damage potential of DDs could be a solution to this.
And in the end what they did affects the maximum damage potential of DDs and, again, that hardly was an issue. You have to stack so many acc buffs that, in a world where you can only give a limited set of buffs, you don't have slots left to buff damage and, hence, benefit from the higher cap.


Really, I don't understand what is their reasoning behind this change, what they thought they were going to achieve.

[Oyama]

It only works in a "true zerg" where you don't mind using 1hrs and you're just trying to down the mob before it downs you. Which is not a practical or viable solution.

EDIT: Nevertheless, plain Dunna frailty + Dia4 + BoxStep/BluSpell/Angon/Whatever gets defense down to about 25% or so, which is a huge reduction compared to what buffs from the same jobs do for hitrate. Maximum damage output may not be the primary problem, but with an acc buff or eva nerf, mobs dying faster through exploiting capped ratio would make some fights more melee friendly just by not lasting too long. SCH would be the safer way but the advantage to melees would be faster fights if damage goes a lot higher. But we can't do that until the acc/eva discrepancy is adjusted down a moderate amount.

Alternatively (or in addition to), put timers on mob tp moves instead of tp being based on players hitting the mob. Annoying TP moves are a lot easier to deal with if they are spaced out, speaking as an experienced WHM.

[Sechs]

I used that setup to kill Old Schuck with 16+ people! :D Maybe you can use that for something else but I doubt the list is particularly big