Letter from the Producer LIVE XXXVI Set for May 22!

[Spider-Dan]

The predictability of stupid humans. I suppose it is more fun to get everything off your chest (no matter how depressingly negative) than sit on your hands and wait for info.

Seriously.

Have we even seen the potencies of full healer DPS toolkit?
Do we even know what Eos and Selene's new ability loadouts are?

Doesn't matter, still going to loudly declare hierarchy in new meta because of a few screenshots.

[Gokulo]

You'll find most of skills here, although fairy skills have been omitted, which makes me thing they didn't really change:
https://www.youtube.com/user/MTQcapture/videos

[solracht]

The potency changes I saw for SCH (on existing skills) are Ruin2 (+20 pot) and Embrace (-50pot). Bio/Bio2 changed too but idr the numbers, feel free to watch.

[Pooky]

All healers lost DPS due to these changes, WHM included. If nothing changes before EA we'll stick to AST+SCH in Stormblood no doubt. WHM is just a mess all around.

WHM got: slight Potency buffs on Cure I/II, Benni CD lowered, rng chance to lower some cd's, and assuming Plenary Indulgence works as speculated (only heals those with confessions)...I'm really glad I have SCH and AST leveled.

Edit: Whm also got Stone IV, which has the same 260 potency as Fire/Blizz IV. All aboard the AST train.

[Spider-Dan]

assuming Plenary Indulgence works as speculated (only heals those with confessions)

As I read it, Plenary is an AoE heal based on the Confessions of the target, not AoE targets. So:

- PLD has 3 confessions, MNK has 2, BLM has 2
- Cast Plenary on PLD for free 600pot AoE heal on frontline
- 15s (12s with lilies) later, cast Plenary on MNK for free 500pot AoE heal on frontline
- 15s later, cast Plenary on BLM for free 500pot AoE heal on backline

In a 2 WHM setup (with both generating shared Confessions), this could be substantial.

The thing that puzzles me is that it doesn't seem worthwhile to give up all lilies just for a 1.5x Stoneskin on 60s recast. Maybe a tankbuster tool?

[Vaspinne]

I was kind of down about the seemingly lack of Dragoon changes from the live letter. But looking at the info now, they got BUFFED hard. Potency increases across the board for more or less all weaponskills and abilities (Full Thrust going from 360pot to 440pot for example). BotD no longer decreases when you use Geirskogul/Nostrad, and when you get the job trait, you can immediately use Fang and Claw + Wheeling Thrust back to back to increase the timer by 20 seconds. Not to mention Mirage Jump being paired with Jump+Spine Shatter dive (both of which also got potency increases).

Oh and rotations now have a set finisher with Wheeling and F&C. No longer will I have to adjust to whichever ability randomly decides to proc at the end.

It was a little annoying losing Leg Sweep and even Mercy Stroke for some free damage, but it seems like you'll be ability spamming between weaponskills regardless with the combination of old and new abilities.

[Spider-Dan]

Some MCH notes:

- No more Lead Shot (DoT) or Rend Mind (magic damage reduction)
- Blank (knockback) no longer deals damage - this is a recurring theme in 4.x, with abilities like this being removed as OGCD filler
- Ammo limit is now 3, Quick Reload reduces Heat gauge by 10
- MCH can reduce Heat by 25 with a ~230pot GCD WS, but you generally want to keep it between 50-99 for 4.x mechanics to work
- If you Overheat you get 10s of damage-20%, followed by 10s where you can't use Gauss Barrel (damage+5%)
- 120s in-battle-only CD will set Heat to 50; if that's down then you have to use the crappy 6pot(!) Flamethrower to get back up to 50 Heat for 4.x mechanics to work
- Ammo is not consumed by Heated Clean Shot (when Heat gauge is >=50) - this is a buff long overdue
- Rook Hypercharge is now +5% damage (not just physical), but Bishop Hypercharge is still +5% magic (?)

[Pooky]

As I read it, Plenary is an AoE heal based on the Confessions of the target, not AoE targets. So:

- PLD has 3 confessions, MNK has 2, BLM has 2
- Cast Plenary on PLD for free 600pot AoE heal on frontline
- 15s (12s with lilies) later, cast Plenary on MNK for free 500pot AoE heal on frontline
- 15s later, cast Plenary on BLM for free 500pot AoE heal on backline

In a 2 WHM setup (with both generating shared Confessions), this could be substantial.

The thing that puzzles me is that it doesn't seem worthwhile to give up all lilies just for a 1.5x Stoneskin on 60s recast. Maybe a tankbuster tool?

Couple problems with this:
1. Lilies don't reduce the CD on PI.



2. In your scenario, that's 7 confessions at a 20% proc on targets under full hp. How many GCD's are you spending on Cures for that, instead of a single Medica II?

3. Confessions last 30s.

4. According to the tooltip, PI isn't targeted, it's AoE around the caster.



5.It's been reported that only party members with Confession Stacks get healed by PI. Granted that's coming from MrHappy, but still.

6. 2 WHM setup? Wut.

[Spider-Dan]

The way that GamerEscape described it, PI is a targeted AoE with C3's radius, but a strict reading of the tooltip implies that PI is intended to (poorly) compete with Indom.

You're right, if the ability works like that tooltip describes, it's pretty terrible. Confessions would need to have infinite duration for it to be even passable.

[Pooky]

The way that GamerEscape described it, PI is a targeted AoE with C3's radius, but a strict reading of the tooltip implies that PI is intended to (poorly) compete with Indom.

You're right, if the ability works like that tooltip describes, it's pretty terrible. Confessions would need to have infinite duration for it to be even passable.

At first glance I thought the same, until I realized that GamerEscape confused Radius and Range in that sentence. Cure III has a cast range of 30y, but only an effect radius of 6y, which is why it has very niche applications.

[Voyage1970]

Some MCH notes:

- No more Lead Shot (DoT) or Rend Mind (magic damage reduction)
- Blank (knockback) no longer deals damage - this is a recurring theme in 4.x, with abilities like this being removed as OGCD filler
- Ammo limit is now 3, Quick Reload reduces Heat gauge by 10
- MCH can reduce Heat by 25 with a ~230pot GCD WS, but you generally want to keep it between 50-99 for 4.x mechanics to work
- If you Overheat you get 10s of damage-20%, followed by 10s where you can't use Gauss Barrel (damage+5%)
- 120s in-battle-only CD will set Heat to 50; if that's down then you have to use the crappy 6pot(!) Flamethrower to get back up to 50 Heat for 4.x mechanics to work
- Ammo is not consumed by Heated Clean Shot (when Heat gauge is >=50) - this is a buff long overdue
- Rook Hypercharge is now +5% damage (not just physical), but Bishop Hypercharge is still +5% magic (?)

MrHappy posted his MCH video and from watching it I'm pretty sure Flamethrower tooltip is supposed to be 80 potency. He was getting ticks of about 800-900 damage during it while his Rook turret was doing pretty much the same spread of damage. The damage ticks seemed to happen frequently, about a tick per second, but it also generates 10 heat per tick so you'll overheat if you let it go the full duration.

Also all weaponskills generate some amount of heat (5 for most but 10 for Hot Shot and Heated variants).

[Elcura]

From reading MNK it doesn't seem like much changed except you get to do...more or less the same as before but Forbidden Chakra more often. Party buff sounds nice in that regard, and if I read it right, double shoulder tackle in wind mode?

The only thing to think about is using fire mode and/or Perfect Balance, that's going to be fun to figure out.

RDM and SAM seem fun, the queue times are gonna be retarded though. AST is still gonna be fun as hell, gonna be hard to decide what I should level first.

[Prothescar]

Glad the fairy totem reports ended up being bogus, that would have been so incredibly lame. Still reading through the rest but, unlike 3.0, it seems like 4.0 is really going to feel like a whole new game. At least for a couple of days.

edit: welp got to the tank part. that new PLD spell, while under the effects of Requiescat, comes in at 500~ potency. Finding it difficult to see a situation where PLD won't be able to MT and OT at a premium level.

[Alkimi]

Midare is clearly labeled as a 'Weaponskill' in the tooltip, so yes you can. But Kaiten doesn't work with the Hissatsu abilities since they're labeled 'Ability' (No 800 x 150% AoEs, darn~).

That's my understanding.

I'm just gonna assume that Kaiten is a tooltip error and it's +50%, not 150. There's no way that SAM can do basically a melee LB1 every 8 GCDs.

[Seha]

If we've learned one thing about SE is that they're willing to let sam be as op as they want!

[Obsidian]

PLD additions/modifications all look pretty nice. Should be fun.

Edit: Intervention actually looks like Eye for an Eye on steroids. 10 second cooldown but 6 second duration. Finally some real OT support.

[Prothescar]

So if I'm reading everything right, WAR now has absolutely 0 party utility with the loss of Storm's Path debuff. Hopefully there's something hidden out of our sight still here because the DRK and PLD additions and changes are very strong both DPS and utility wise.

[kisada]

From reading MNK it doesn't seem like much changed except you get to do...more or less the same as before but Forbidden Chakra more often. Party buff sounds nice in that regard, and if I read it right, double shoulder tackle in wind mode?

The only thing to think about is using fire mode and/or Perfect Balance, that's going to be fun to figure out.

RDM and SAM seem fun, the queue times are gonna be retarded though. AST is still gonna be fun as hell, gonna be hard to decide what I should level first.

yeah i wasn't all that impressed with mnk additions. basically some really high burst potential every 90s but other than that some more sustained dps added with the chakra trait at 62.

[Silenka]

So if I'm reading everything right, WAR now has absolutely 0 party utility with the loss of Storm's Path debuff. Hopefully there's something hidden out of our sight still here because the DRK and PLD additions and changes are very strong both DPS and utility wise.

They moved it to Maim.

[Obsidian]

So if I'm reading everything right, WAR now has absolutely 0 party utility with the loss of Storm's Path debuff. Hopefully there's something hidden out of our sight still here because the DRK and PLD additions and changes are very strong both DPS and utility wise.

Still has Storm's Eye (moved to Maim) if you're not using a NIN. So if you're dropping WAR for PLD+DRK, you're almost gonna need to bring a NIN for the slashing debuff.

Edit: SAM also has the slashing debuff I now realize. So without a WAR you need a NIN or a SAM.