Dev Tracker: Discussion

[Sechs]

Sure sometimes back then we would march up the tank for utsesmi recast essentially still a DD buff though being used for a different purpose.

I'm not getting this.
We were giving March (or haste) to the tank for Utsusemi, Flash, Reprisal and general recast, period. It was not for DD purpose. March is not a "DD buff", it's a haste buff.
Now if you were talking Minuet I would agree it's undeniably a DD buff, but March is a multipurpose buff.
I remember being very very happy as a mage when I could get ballads and/or other things like marches.
Ballads were making a difference even without Ghorn.
And let's not forget Elegy mattered back then, Requiem likewise. I remember we used BRD to solo a stone in Dyna-Beaucedine with just Requiem, and I remember how Elegy mattered on some NMs (Eleseal Elegy on Khimaira to name one!)

BRD was clearly a desired job in many situations, not just a "Buffer designed esclusively for DDs". It's just that the game changed -a lot- and the job did not.

Someone needs to do some real testing on threnodies though.

iWish!
We know the values already btw, and I don't think they convert 1:1 to meva-
If they do "convert" to meva (but for a single element) the conversion rate it's pretty bad. Like 1:4
But probably they're a completely separate thing in the magic damage formula calculation? I dunno.
Some deep testing would be awesome!

T1 Threnody are -70 and T2 Threnody are -180 btw, and that's at capped skill and with Ghorn.
Now compare them to Frazzle values (Frazzle II -50, Frazzle III -90, these are the max values) or to Languor values (Max Languor -50 Meva, Dunna Languor -75 Meva, Idris Languor => -100 Meva, no Bolster)
I can't say for Frazzle, but you can clearly see a pretty huge difference in landing rate and resist rate with just a Dunna Languor which is "only" -75.
You don't see such a difference with T2 Threnodies even though they are -180 (and can be resisted, and can be dispelled, and apply to a single element lol)

So yeah. Either ele resistance- converts at a bad rate to "meva for a single element" or maybe it's simply a separate thing in the formula.


I can't find it again but me and someone else did a small test long time ago, was it posted here on BG? Or FFXIAH? Uh... It wasn't anything particularly conclusive because of the small sample. We used a debuff on a monster with no known resistance to that debuff, and checked the stick rate with Dunna Languor (less than 900 skill iir), Ghorn T2 Threnody and nothing.
I think I was the one trying to land debuff with BRD, without swapping gear.
With Dunna Languor we were hardly getting resist, with nothing we were getting a somewhat high resistance rate, with Threnody (of the right element) we noticed a clear increase in the land rate, but numbers were nowhere close the high land rate of Dunna Languor.
Sample was really small, like 30, maybe 20 for each of the 3 setups (nothing, threnody, dunnalanguor).

So what do we get from this small test?
Not much I'm afraid lol
I tried to find that post again to link it but meh, in the end I don't think it matters, results hinted at something but weren't really conclusive.

[Tarage]

Surprise! The update is actually on the 12th...

[Byrthnoth]

Just for the sake of theorycrafting, you could imagine a Mana Wall BLM turtle set involving AG Claustrum with aftermath (20% DT/15 Refresh) and Sorcerer's Earring (activated by keeping HP<25% and TP<1000) that then fills in the other slots with Mana Wall, Refresh, and maybe Enemy Crit-% gear. It should be able to get around 30 refresh, which means you'd have ~70 refresh with SV Ballads and would effectively negate ~2800 damage/tick. Bringing yourself down to red HP could be done via Death+Convert. (ab)Using a super revit, you could keep Mana Wall going for ~14 minutes in Escha (Mana Wall, Super Revit, buy another from the goblin, run and pop).

I don't know exactly what you'd kill with such an extremely damage resistant setup, but I could see getting 2-3 players with a build like this, mixing in GEOs, SCHs, and BRDs and nuking kind of anything to death. Actually holding hate might be difficult (so it might not be tanking, per se) because being hit with Mana Wall up sheds a static 180 CE. Even if you're taking almost no damage (which you would be), you still might lose hate. It depends how quickly you can do damage.


This idea, which relies on you generating enough MP to offset that consumed by Mana Wall/nukes, would only become more viable with more Song+.

[stamos]

I knew there was a reason I AG'd my Claustrum!

[dasva]

I'm not getting this.
We were giving March (or haste) to the tank for Utsusemi, Flash, Reprisal and general recast, period. It was not for DD purpose. March is not a "DD buff", it's a haste buff.
Now if you were talking Minuet I would agree it's undeniably a DD buff, but March is a multipurpose buff.
I remember being very very happy as a mage when I could get ballads and/or other things like marches.

This whole thing was predicated on how the job was made. Can haste buffs be used for non dd purposes? Sure. Nin can also be used for tanking but that wasn't the intent. And notice both are on the way side for similar reasons.

Ballads were making a difference even without Ghorn.

A difference yes enough to take up a slot... rarely. I can think of the times I had a non +ballad in a pt just for ballads over say a rdm or another whatever was getting balladed unless you had an abundance of bodies (read events like dynamis) on 1 hand. Basically just nyzle since when we ran with 4 blus. Bringing it for more crowd control/pulling or for the tank and being happy to get some ballads yes

And let's not forget Elegy mattered back then, Requiem likewise. I remember we used BRD to solo a stone in Dyna-Beaucedine with just Requiem, and I remember how Elegy mattered on some NMs (Eleseal Elegy on Khimaira to name one!)

Ok requiem is a bit of a stretch. That's more of a lol look what I happened to do with it one time. Elegy had niche uses in certain nm fights but was basically for the same purpose as the marches. Keeping up utsesmi. So many fights became ridiculously easy when you severely limited nm tp gain

BRD was clearly a desired job in many situations,

This doesn't actually counter this

It was a job designed mostly around buffing melee dds.

One is a statement of how the player base used it another is a statement about perceived intent of the job based on what it got/mostly used for. We just found more uses for it. Can pretty much guarantee SE wasn't thinking of utsesmi spam when they made march. But let's count the things people actually specifically sought brd out for things. Harder nms for the purpose of recast of hate spells/keeping up utsesmi, ballad I guess on your servers, pulling/crowd control (though outside of meripo we used rdm/blms just as often). Very occasional in weird elemental resist tanking

It's just that the game changed -a lot- and the job did not.

Most of that is the jobs changing. Jobs either got better at their job or we got jobs better able to support. Like you look at what brd did in those situations and it's support was kind of indirect. And some of those jobs just got better at doing their jobs otherwise. Like SE finally making pld good enough to kill blink tanking or making mp mostly a non issue for mages. While mostly geo but to an extent cor provide more direct support with a wider variety of spells sometimes even condensing the similar brd ones. And then there is pets actually mattering lol. A little bit was SE changing nms in ways that made old non engaged blink tanking harder because it was somewhat clear our methods of giving no tp were not exactly what they intended lol. So then we started stun rotations. And then that became harder. Too bad those losers forgot about Cait Sith.

iWish!
We know the values already btw, and I don't think they convert 1:1 to meva-
If they do "convert" to meva (but for a single element) the conversion rate it's pretty bad. Like 1:4
But probably they're a completely separate thing in the magic damage formula calculation? I dunno.
Some deep testing would be awesome!

I'm confused by that question. Resistance has it's own calculation to determine if you resist and how much but once resist state is determined it's plugged right into the damage calculation.

T1 Threnody are -70 and T2 Threnody are -180 btw, and that's at capped skill and with Ghorn.
Now compare them to Frazzle values (Frazzle II -50, Frazzle III -90, these are the max values) or to Languor values (Max Languor -50 Meva, Dunna Languor -75 Meva, Idris Languor => -100 Meva, no Bolster)
I can't say for Frazzle, but you can clearly see a pretty huge difference in landing rate and resist rate with just a Dunna Languor which is "only" -75.
You don't see such a difference with T2 Threnodies even though they are -180 (and can be resisted, and can be dispelled, and apply to a single element lol)

So yeah. Either ele resistance- converts at a bad rate to "meva for a single element" or maybe it's simply a separate thing in the formula.


I can't find it again but me and someone else did a small test long time ago, was it posted here on BG? Or FFXIAH? Uh... It wasn't anything particularly conclusive because of the small sample. We used a debuff on a monster with no known resistance to that debuff, and checked the stick rate with Dunna Languor (less than 900 skill iir), Ghorn T2 Threnody and nothing.
I think I was the one trying to land debuff with BRD, without swapping gear.
With Dunna Languor we were hardly getting resist, with nothing we were getting a somewhat high resistance rate, with Threnody (of the right element) we noticed a clear increase in the land rate, but numbers were nowhere close the high land rate of Dunna Languor.
Sample was really small, like 30, maybe 20 for each of the 3 setups (nothing, threnody, dunnalanguor).

So what do we get from this small test?

Not much I'm afraid lol
I tried to find that post again to link it but meh, in the end I don't think it matters, results hinted at something but weren't really conclusive.

I know SE released the values for the other spells but I can't seem to find where threnody values were found. All I see on the bg page is saying it was inferred from carol values. Anyone have something else?

And yeah vague testing with noticed a change in rate wont really say much. Plus debuffs are harder to test for anything more quantitative since it's more important to determine rate of fully landing the spell than fully resisting with things with more than 1 resist state and further complicated if using a spell without a set duration. Testing actually wouldn't be that bad though if you made sure to set things up right. I'm half tempted to do some just to lay this to rest

[dasva]

In other news apparently technical support questions go into jp dev tracker lol. Got me all excited about new info and bam disappointment

[urat]

The other option would be to give bard new debuffs instead of just Threnodies, Requiem and Elegy...def down, MDef down, etc. Of course, they probably wouldnt land ever.

Actually on that note, a +macc and +matt song would be a welcome sight for bard. You'd just be expected to pianissimo yourself with macc+

I haven't played bard on 119+ content lately, but is our macc really that low? Do songs just take a big hit to macc or something? I mean if the other mage jobs can stack enough macc to land on things, whats wrong with bard?

If it literally is a matter of our songs being weak, that is a high priority for fixing then.

I think Reqium should apply a dia-like def down effect, and threnodies should apply a mdef down of the element as well. I think that could go well.

[Sechs]

This whole thing was predicated on how the job was made. Can haste buffs be used for non dd purposes? Sure. Nin can also be used for tanking but that wasn't the intent. And notice both are on the way side for similar reasons.

I don't get where you're trying to go here.
BRD wasn't a buffer designed for DDs. BRD was actually the only buffer, period.
What you're saying makes a lot of sense today, it just doesn't make sense to say BRD was specifically build with that in mind because it's not true.

A difference yes enough to take up a slot... rarely.

How does "taking a slot" matters in a game where things didn't scale with number of players and you could invite people from outside the alliance? Huh? o.o

Most of that is the jobs changing.

Exactely. Everything in this game changed a lot, whereas BRD did not! Or not as much.

I know SE released the values for the other spells but I can't seem to find where threnody values were found.

In ballista from the Equip screen. You can see the values there. Some guy on FFXI OF tested and reported those values with capped skill and Ghorn. He had to use Barspells to see the full extent of them because there's a 99 display cap or something.
Can check the full discussion and data report in there.

[Sechs]

I haven't played bard on 119+ content lately, but is our macc really that low?

With close to the best macc gear for BRD, AG Carnwenhan and all other cool stuff, with HQ food and Idris Languor down...
... it's not too bad to stick debuffs on most nms.
On some targets you kinda need to be in a pt with Focus up to be able to reliably stick them though.

So I guess this means for a "average" BRD it's gotta be pretty hard to stick things on that sort of targets, I guess =/

[dasva]

I don't get where you're trying to go here.
BRD wasn't a buffer designed for DDs. BRD was actually the only buffer, period.
What you're saying makes a lot of sense today, it just doesn't make sense to say BRD was specifically build with that in mind because it's not true.

I think we are getting wires crossed here. You seem to still be talking about how the job is played at a given time. I'm talking more about the overall focus that SE was pushing. And yes it is purely opinion but it's somewhat based on what useful spells we got and how they were at least officially against things like long drawn out fights (unless it suited them to say otherwise. looking at you AV lol) and blink tanking.

How does "taking a slot" matters in a game where things didn't scale with number of players and you could invite people from outside the alliance? Huh? o.o

Not everyone lived in huge lss that threw as many bodies as they could at things and not everything let you use as many players as you want ya know.... I mean if you quote that whole line I do say except when doing things with an excess amount of bodies. Also by the time I was doing endgame stuff generally played people who could job change... I mean it's not like we would say no to a brd every but also we might want another blm or a rdm more. As a rdm I definitely got picked higher for mage pts for example. Though in bigger events often that just meant brd got sent to melee pt. Or regulated to buff dropping.

Exactly. Everything in this game changed a lot, whereas BRD did not! Or not as much.

This is where I was making a technical difference between the game as a whole and specifically jobs (mp management is somewhat to do to the current nature of battle but hasn't mattered much in forever outside of manawall). I know I'm being nitpicky but it's for a reason. Like it's not that we don't need tanks anymore (though for a period that was true) and they don't have the same job to do but the way they do it has changed somewhat and we were using brd to indirectly help tanks by helping their recast mostly for utsesmi with some added benefit of. Vaguely similar ballads didn't help mages cast better just allowed them to continue casting without rest or resting as long. Meanwhile the DD songs tend to directly help you hit harder more often etc. The difference this makes is you can write out the indirect needs as have happened here and you wouldn't use brd for those things even if you had a bunch of people but the basic DD buffs will always be relevant... they just might not be worth a slot because another job does it better or you are capping or it's not worth a slot due to scaling shenanigans.

In ballista from the Equip screen. You can see the values there. Some guy on FFXI OF tested and reported those values with capped skill and Ghorn. He had to use Barspells to see the full extent of them because there's a 99 display cap or something.
Can check the full discussion and data report in there.

A though occurs that maybe that cap isn't just display but actual. Which could easily be part of the reason why amounts seem off. Even more so if we assume mobs naturally have some small amounts of -/+ elemental resists outside of the readily apparent ones. Another thought occurs that this might be one of the many it doesn't work as well on nms things which would make this even more difficult to figure out

[dasva]

With close to the best macc gear for BRD, AG Carnwenhan and all other cool stuff, with HQ food and Idris Languor down...
... it's not too bad to stick debuffs on most nms.
On some targets you kinda need to be in a pt with Focus up to be able to reliably stick them though.

So I guess this means for a "average" BRD it's gotta be pretty hard to stick things on that sort of targets, I guess =/

It sort of depends 119+ is a kind of large range. I got a very meh geared brd mule (we talking like the 109 bcnm duration dagger, 4/5 109 af3 and reforged af but ghorn woot) and only real event I really get to take it to was vagary but could land things fairly well except on the bosses and things with specific resistances. But yeah bosses were lol and I think apex mobs kind of sucked

[Sechs]

A though occurs that maybe that cap isn't just display but actual.

I doubt it.
When he did the test initially he could only see -70 from T1 and -99 from T2 and was wondering why Ghorn was not making a difference.
As soon as he boosted the base elemental defense with barspell, he could see the difference Ghorn made and that the whole subtracted value was 180.

Now I get what you mean: what if T2s can't go below -99 resistance? This could explain why they don't seem to be very effective.
Your hunch could be true but honestly I doubt it.
From my experience I noticed a somewhat noticeable difference between T1 and T2. I mean they both kinda suck, but T2 starts being something you can notice. From this I'd dare to say the difference between the two gotta be big, and not "just" 29 (99-70)
70 vs 180 is kinda in line with how the two songs "feel" when you apply them to target.
I know this has no statistical or scientific relevance, I'm just sharing my experience and I'm confident it's the same experience most mainjob BRD had on their own as well.


As far as we know Threnodies could even have a different behaviour on NMs compared to normal mobs, there are some spells that work like that /shrug
Despite knowing the exact values, there's still a lot we don't know about them. Wish SE could shed some light on threnodies.
The bottom line of it all is that they are hardly effective, whatever the reason for that may be =/

[detlef]

I lost track of what this discussion is actually about.

I think the biggest change for BRD is that Ballads just aren't as useful as they once were back when we were refresh-starved. Elegy, which was our most powerful debuff, has also fallen by the wayside because nobody cares about making an enemy auto-attack a little slower. Not to mention that Threnodies are vastly inferior to Languor.

[Nyarlko]

In other news, the December Login Campaign details are up.

Looks like they slashed prices for all tiers by 1/2. Only 750pts for top end stuff likes shanks now XD
Unfortunately, it's only a temporary X-mas present. ><;;

Also... Magic Pot mount & 23x trusts... And a bonus of 800pts to make sure we can get all the things.

[dasva]

I doubt it.
When he did the test initially he could only see -70 from T1 and -99 from T2 and was wondering why Ghorn was not making a difference.
As soon as he boosted the base elemental defense with barspell, he could see the difference Ghorn made and that the whole subtracted value was 180.

Now I get what you mean: what if T2s can't go below -99 resistance? This could explain why they don't seem to be very effective.
Your hunch could be true but honestly I doubt it.
From my experience I noticed a somewhat noticeable difference between T1 and T2. I mean they both kinda suck, but T2 starts being something you can notice. From this I'd dare to say the difference between the two gotta be big, and not "just" 29 (99-70)
70 vs 180 is kinda in line with how the two songs "feel" when you apply them to target.
I know this has no statistical or scientific relevance, I'm just sharing my experience and I'm confident it's the same experience most mainjob BRD had on their own as well.


As far as we know Threnodies could even have a different behaviour on NMs compared to normal mobs, there are some spells that work like that /shrug
Despite knowing the exact values, there's still a lot we don't know about them. Wish SE could shed some light on threnodies.
The bottom line of it all is that they are hardly effective, whatever the reason for that may be =/

I meant more along the lines of that's the lowest a monster/player can get to period. Similarly the lowest def/att you can get is 1 even though you can give -100% to the both. Or the lowest mdb you can have is 50 so on mobs with innate mdb bonuses mdb debuffs can do more.

Can't really go by feels though without stats or numbers in general for quantitative comparison but in this case it presents great problems. Namely the full range from floored to capped hit rate is only 135 meva/macc. So even if you went thru and did real tests chances are you wont even see the full effect of 110 though you would be able to see that is the case. And of course it means smaller amounts have larger effects then feel right. Like 29 meva/macc assuming non over capped/floored would be the difference of 14.5-29% hit rate which is pretty big change and even then if the mob had some elemental resistances you'd be farther away from my theorized cap so you might get more out of it in some situations. So eyeballing like that you can say yeah definitely a noticeable difference between the 2 but can't really say something like it's X big

[dasva]

In other news, the December Login Campaign details are up.

Looks like they slashed prices for all tiers by 1/2. Only 750pts for top end stuff likes shanks now XD
Unfortunately, it's only a temporary X-mas present. ><;;

Also... Magic Pot mount & 23x trusts... And a bonus of 800pts to make sure we can get all the things.

Nice for returning players but still pretty meh to me. Yay pot and some grand coffers I guess

[Nyarlko]

Nice for returning players but still pretty meh to me. Yay pot and some grand coffers I guess

Cursed stuff too :3 Prices on NQs at least are gonna crash again lol orz

[dasva]

Cursed stuff too Prices on NQs at least are gonna crash again lol orz

Wait is any of the cursed stuff worth that much anymore? Hexed maybe but shit would rather just get the rare mat

[dasva]

Couple new dev notes. One looks like people complaining not voucher +1 from silver pell. SE like we already making it permanent from the event calm down. And apparently all the mog garden gear is for pure looks no hidden effects yay.

Also it says a correction has been made to the update announcement but can't really tell what changed

[Hitou]

On the NA side it said the update was the 21st instead of the 12th for a day or so, might have been on the JP side too.