December Job Adjustments

[darkhorror]

Bonus seems like an odd term though to use for ftp on ws that had static ftps. idk se is being strange

Well the damage varies with TP ws's, are getting "TP Bonus" increase. So both are using the word bonus

[Malithar]

If it actually replicates fTP, they will be essential for every WS that's getting adjusted like that.

That would not be a minor change, though. It would be a worldcrushing "my dancer is now an evasive samurai with shadows and Fan Dance" adjustment.

I hope it's this. Now to make two handers useful somehow. ;o

[Squah]

I just want a good Scythe weaponskill that isn't Catastrophe :<

[dasva]

Well the damage varies with TP ws's, are getting "TP Bonus" increase. So both are using the word bonus

I don't think you understand the point I was making. It isn't that a ws is using the word bonus so much as you can't really consider the generic ftp that comes with most ws that isn't varying as an extra. The crit rate on evisceration that varies with tp yeah that's an extra. The higher amounts of dmg in the form of ftp from more tp even at 1000 yeah that's a bonus. Heck even the extra acc on the first hit could be considered a bonus. Now it could be bonus is a mistranslation but if it isn't really work

[Prothescar]

I mean if we want to use technicalities, fTP is an extra. It's an additional multiplier on your base damage that provides extra damage for the weaponskill!

[dasva]

I mean if we want to use technicalities, fTP is an extra. It's an additional multiplier on your base damage that provides extra damage for the weaponskill!

If you want to be really really technically normal hits have an ftp of 1 same as extra hits from non replicating ws . But it sounds really odd when they say ws with an initial ftp of 1.0 (which is what a lot of those ws listed are) will now have that "bonus" applied to all other 1.0 ws unless by they meant gorget/belt but that sounds even odder. Maybe they plan to give them damage varies with tp?

[Sechs]

Perhaps they're talking about the very large accuracy bonus that the first hit of most WSs have being applied to all hits.

This makes sense in theory but as others as said before it would kinda make the choice of the listed WS strange. If it's an accuracy thing why just those?

[vivbiibasjiu]

Does the removal of maneuver animations and animation lock mean it won't have JA delay or is that unrelated?

[Sechs]

I don't think anybody knows atm.
It could be a simple "ja0wait" trick for maneuvers, or it could be a removal/reduction of JA delay (or both?)
I'm kinda leaning for the former, yet hoping for the latter.

Removal of ja delay would be an incredibly interesting change not just for the job itself, but because it could represent a doorway towards the same thing happening for other jobs (DNC?) in the future.
In spite of this very much welcome change, I still think that 60 seconds lasting maneuvers is annoying and they should have make them last at least 5 mins.
If they think it's OP (lol) they could give us a "stance" that while active makes maneuvers last longer but in turn highly increases the chance to overload.

[Byrthnoth]

I've thought about this a bit, and even if they're willing to remove JA delay for PUP I do not think the same thing would necessarily apply for Dancer. We have fixed waits because UDP is unreliable and the packets occasionally arrive out of order. If you could perform actions sequentially (and quickly) then you could do Sneak Attack -> Mercy Stroke really really fast. However, if your Sneak Attack packet arrives after your Mercy Stroke packet, they'd have no way to know that they should apply SA to Mercy Stroke's damage. Maneuvers are a different story, because the puppet's behavior is controlled by the server. You can't really have a situation where a maneuver arrives too soon or out of order.

My round-trip ping to SE's servers is 185ms, but packets are only sent and received every ~400ms. They could easily speed it up, but don't.

[Sechs]

Wonder how much they could improve the client<>server communication system by deleting useless stuff and checks currently in place for PS2.
Or maybe nothing would change in that regard?

[Damane]

Wonder how much they could improve the client<>server communication system by deleting useless stuff and checks currently in place for PS2.
Or maybe nothing would change in that regard?

i wonder how much they could improve the game if they finally would ditch the PS2 for good together with Xbox

[Byrthnoth]

The vast majority of the problems they have in the game could be eliminated or severely attenuated without dropping PS2 support. PS2 players would not benefit from some of the changes, but they could even benefit from most of them.

[Byrthnoth]

Looking closer at dagger WSs, the order is going to be heavily dependent on exactly what buffs SE gives.

They basically said three things:

1) "The potency of the following weapon skills will be increased"
(Google Translate: "Pulled the power of the following weapon skills.")
WSs: Dancing Edge, Shark Bite, Evisceration, Mercy Stroke, Mordant Rime, Pyrrhic Kleos, Rudra's Storm, Vorpal Blade, Savage Blade, Knights of Round, Death Blossom, Expiacion, Rampage, Calamity, Mistral Axe, Decimation, Onslaught, Bora Axe, Ruinator, Blade: Jin, Blade: Ku, Blade: Metsu, Blade: Kamu, Blade: Hi, Blade: Shun, True Strike, Judgement, Hexastrike, Black Halo, Randgrith, Realmrazer, Exenterator, Chant du Cygne

This could mean fTP, modifiers, or some of each. I would bet fTP for the merit WSs (at least) because their modifier progression is tied to the number of merit points ranks at the moment and that seems like more hassle for SE. Historically it seems that SE has simply used the term "potency" to mean "damage" (including for magic WSs), so it really could be either or both.

2) "The TP Bonuses of the following weapon skills will be increased"
(Google Translate: "The following weapon skills of TP Bonus will be pulling up."
WSs: Mandalic Stab, Rudra's Storm, Savage Blade, Expiacion, Calamity, Mistral Axe, Blade: Ten, Judgement, Black Halo, Mystic Boon

This is pretty straightforward. They're going to increase the TP Bonus of these WSs, which all happen to be "damage varies with TP." Blade: Ten and Mystic Boon are the only two that aren't also getting a bonus in #1.

3) "Bonuses for the following weapon skills that only applied to the first hit will instead be applied at initial ranks will instead be applied to all ranks"
(Google Translate: For the following weapon skills, some of the bonus was effective only in conventional first stage, will now be applied to all stages.")
WSs: Dancing Edge, Evisceration, Pyrrhic Kleos, Vorpal Blade, Swift Blade, Rampage, Decimation, Blade: Jin, Blade: Ku, Hexastrike, Exenterator, Chant du Cygne

This is the most confusing one. Its wording is terrible and doesn't correlate well with any community term or concept. Swift Blade is the only one that isn't also receiving buff #1. Looking at these WSs, it's worth noting:
* When I read "rank" I'm thinking about TP Bonuses. However, Pyrrhic Kleos and Exenterator are both "additional effect duration varies with TP," which couldn't be applied to all hits. Therefore this adjustment likely doesn't involve the TP Bonus "rank" replicating across multiple hits. Additionally, we already know that WSs like Evisceration and Chant du Cygne already share their TP Bonuses across multiple hits. Therefore "rank" probably doesn't have anything to do with TP Bonus.
* Assuming that "rank" actually means "hit," Exenterator is the only WS from this list that's rumored to have a hidden (extra) effect on the first hit (+100% Attack). Otherwise the first hits just have the normal WS bonuses that only apply to the first hit (innate: +100 Acc, equipment: WS damage+%, fTP bonuses)
* None of these WSs already have fTP that replicates.
* None of them are "damage varies with TP."
* If you look at point #1, almost all the WSs that don't receive bonus #1 or bonus #2 either already have fTP that replicates or are one-hit WSs whose damage doesn't vary with TP. Shark Bite and Death Blossom are the two exceptions, and Shark Bite is kind of a one-hit WS in its own right.


So after looking at it again, I bet that SE is going to make fTP replicate for all the WSs in list #3. The lack of Death Blossom from list #3 feels like an oversight. As for list #1, I bet it's actually a mix of modifier changes and fTP increases.

If fTP is going to replicate for all the WSs in point #3, then it really matters what changes SE makes to each WS in point #1. If they monkey around with fTP then it will have a large impact on the order of those WSs. If they just buff modifiers then the WSs still improve quite a bit, but it will be more predictable. If this was going to be the case, Rampage would have to get an fTP buff in point #1 or this "buff" would effectively nerf it.


As far as Mythic Dancer goes, it seems highly unlikely that anything will beat Pyrrhic Kleos. Without mythic and with no adjustments to fTP, Pyrrhic Kleos, Dancing Edge, and Evisceration are all pulling about even. If Exenterator got a minor fTP boost then it would pull even as well.

[Sechs]

Awesome insight Byrth, as usual.
I've started to think there might be a chance that even if they listed all WS within one of those 3 groups, they might mean different adjustments.
So for example between all of the WSs in the group #3, they could mean different things instead than the same for all of them.

Either way, I demand more insights on dagger WSs! You didn't touch Mordant Rhime which, atm, it's the best WS for Mythic BRD. Surpassed by Rudra's Storm when beyond a certain TP value.
The Rudra thing is kinda true for THF and DNC as well. Even unstacked, above a certain % of TP (threshold changes according to the mainhand weapon and current buffs/current target) Rudra is the best. Normally always the best at 3000TP.
I don't think this is going to change after the patch.
My question is, given the changes in group #1 and #2, if Rudra might become the best even at 1000 TP. Would put twashthar under a different light I guess.

[dasva]

I really can't see them making CDC ftp replicate. The idea of a ws having at least 9.8 ftp at 1000 tp and can crit and with DA/TA/QA procs can have double that ftp is kinda bananas. Even more so with the acc update making it so you actually will connect almost all the hits assuming you are capped and increases it's potency especially if the potency is ftp. 20k cdcs for everyone

[Prothescar]

This is what I've been saying the whole time. The list is suspiciously void of several weaponskills for it to be just an accuracy bonus or WSD replication, it makes no sense whatsoever to have only these specific weaponskills on there if it were just that. There isn't a single ws on here that replicates fTP across all hits, another big red flag that I noticed almost immediately.

That said, 20k CDCs aren't going to happen. 7-8k with 11-15k spikes is more likely. Seems like it's high on paper but you need to consider two things here:

1) Sword weaponskill frequency is slower than that of, say, a great katana. The higher weaponskill damage (which for all intents and purposes merely matches Fudo or Resolution with these changes, tbh) helps tighten this gap but doesn't eliminate it.

2) Sword doesn't have the same self skillchain properties as a great katana. You won't be doing 5-step solo Light skillchains as a BLU without 1h.

This won't be dampening SAM's power all that much, but it will be making BLU a much more desirable DD in the eyes of the general population (despite BLU already being a formidable DD, but over the years I've had to come to terms with the fact that a lot of people are blind zealots without any ability to objectively look at things).

[Damane]

This is what I've been saying the whole time. The list is suspiciously void of several weaponskills for it to be just an accuracy bonus or WSD replication, it makes no sense whatsoever to have only these specific weaponskills on there if it were just that. There isn't a single ws on here that replicates fTP across all hits, another big red flag that I noticed almost immediately.

That said, 20k CDCs aren't going to happen. 7-8k with 11-15k spikes is more likely. Seems like it's high on paper but you need to consider two things here:

1) Sword weaponskill frequency is slower than that of, say, a great katana. The higher weaponskill damage (which for all intents and purposes merely matches Fudo or Resolution with these changes, tbh) helps tighten this gap but doesn't eliminate it.

2) Sword doesn't have the same self skillchain properties as a great katana. You won't be doing 5-step solo Light skillchains as a BLU without 1h.

This won't be dampening SAM's power all that much, but it will be making BLU a much more desirable DD in the eyes of the general population (despite BLU already being a formidable DD, but over the years I've had to come to terms with the fact that a lot of people are blind zealots without any ability to objectively look at things).

it might not close the dmg gap between BLU+DNC vs SAM, but if the gap gets close enough i'd rather take a BLU and DNC then SAMs. The utility BLU and DNC offer compared to SAM is mindblowing.

[Prothescar]

The utility comes at a cost of DPS and is often unnecessary. If you want to bring a DNC or BLU for utility, you may as well be bringing them now.

[Byrthnoth]

Mordant Rime with Carnwenhan is currently the strongest dagger WS at 1000 TP across all my dagger jobs (still making Vajra, but wouldn't expect Mandalic to beat it at 1000 TP). Whether it retains its supremacy is going to depend on what changes they make to it. I would be unsurprised to see it fall to Evisceration.

When I math out Mythic DNC's output with top tier gear at the moment after the TP replication and accuracy change, I still get only like 1791 DPS against Tojil with GEO+WHM as buffers/debuffers. I can push Koga SAM's DPS up to 1600 against Tojil easily in the spreadsheet with the same buffs/debuffs without optimizing gear at all (idk wtf to wear), so I imagine 1900 is probably possible with the right gear. If SE implemented the patch exactly as I'm reading it, my DNC would probably have an advantage over a Tsuru SAM against a neutral target and would be worse than a Koga SAM.

If SE's goal is to standardize SAM DPS (or thereabouts), then the other 2H jobs will need a buff and magic DDs will *really* need a buff.

Edit: To further clarify, my Pyrrhic Kleoses do 9511 damage to the Tojil that I described, while Tachi: Fudo does 6300.