FFXIclopedia interview with Development Team at E3

[shukuffxi]

I've seen 24k/hour with WAR/NIN WAR/NIN DRK/SAM COR/RNG RDM/WHM BRD/NIN.

Just gotta have good DDs (this was on Colibri, said COR could do semi-decent shots and Slugs of 600-800 so he contributed at least a little bit as well).

Yeah, it happens, but i'm guessing not that often, because it requires all the members to really just not suck. If it's an LS PT, usually thats when you can count on people to not be retarded.

[FinalJustice]

But people miss roles for whatever reason,

With that you shoudl question them, and not yourself. Most of the time with a good brd theres no reall need to run around like chickens with yoru head cut off, because the mob is right next to you when you kill the other. Or if they are silly like that, then simply only roll DURING a fight. At that point they shouldnt be too far from each other. The other good key is not having silly mages who get caught in melee roll.

Like today, our rdm moved away from melee movements to not get melee rolls or songs.

Though Lucky numbers are usually very common, but yes XIs are more rare, but with the cat 2 merits they are at least easier to get. For some reason I pull of X's a lot. Though Im a high risk type, and i never stop at VI. Id rather risk the possible 1/6 bust at that point.

But bottom line positioning should not be your problem. If melee are missing your rolls then chances are they are missing bard songs too. Maybe you should try holding your melee for ransom in place witrh a quick double up LOL.

And anytime that I have gotten 24k/hr exp it has always been with a brd+cor duo...and attack heavy Cor contribute a lot of overall dmg, enough to nmake up the differnce from 2 brds to make it work. it pretty much comes down to Double attk+ double acc + no dmg beyond Req vs Attk song+ acc song + DA boost+attk roll+ 90-120 bullets+ 600-800 Slugs + 500 Barrages in the end the extra dmg you get from a sec bard on the melee shhould be made up by the cor instead...and it shouldnt take perfect XIs to do that. If it wasnt true i wouldnt be able to get 24k/hr so often when i did it.

[Intense]

Ok, you did blah blah blah to blah blah blah mob without a BRD. Thats not ground breaking. NINJA WAS GROUNDBREAKING. I say this in the sense where it changed how we play FFXI and none of these new jobs have that same impact. This is what I am referring to...

[Kaslo]

Really the sleeping TP is ok for Flying Wyrms but the DMG of a normal SA Cannonball + CASA Cannonball is about the same if not a little more, so for fights like Cerberus/Khimera it's better to just do something every min from my experience, and with the proper Cannonball gear VC can't even compete.

[BRP]

Why do jobs need to be groundbreaking?

I like the ground.

[Intense]

I DUNNO BUT IM FIRED UP AND IT MUST BE BROKEN

[shukuffxi]

Like today, our rdm moved away from melee movements to not get melee rolls or songs.

Though Lucky numbers are usually very common, but yes XIs are more rare, but with the cat 2 merits they are at least easier to get... Though Im a high risk type, and i never stop at VI. Id rather risk the possible 1/6 bust at that point.

But bottom line positioning should not be your problem. If melee are missing your rolls then chances are they are missing bard songs too. Maybe you should try holding your melee for ransom in place witrh a quick double up LOL.

And anytime that I have gotten 24k/hr exp it has always been with a brd+cor duo...and attack heavy Cor contribute a lot of overall dmg, enough to nmake up the differnce from 2 brds to make it work.

Usually it's the mages who're smarter I find, and stay the crap away from melee rolls. It's the melees who just completely do not pay attention. And the result is that I do what you said, I try to roll only during when they are fighting, in which case they are all next to the mob, which cuts a bit into my lolCOR DD time. As for adding up enough damage to make up for the lack of 2nd BRD, a really well geared COR can do it, just requires more gil and a non retarded PT, it's definetly doable. I prefer to crack out COR for endgame type events, because I find we shine alot more there than in XP.

For some reason I pull of X's a lot.

Give me back my luck ; ;

[Leroy]

The thing about SCs is that Light was seriously overpowered. It was really rare to see a resisted light while Darkness would do something piss poor like 48 damage. Make Darkness not completely suck and could solve a few problems with SC preference and make people who can make better Darkness SCs more popular in SC parties.

As for MNK and THF, why would you invite them to the same party when you're going for the SC method?

If TP burns do get nerfed, I'm dusting off the old great sword and pulling out the THF sub. Nolstalgia rocks.

[Intense]

Fuck that shit... Why do people want to de-evolve the game into the dark ages?

[BRP]

I've mentioned many times that they should boost most non-multi-hit/underpowered Weapon skills, by .5 or 1 TP modifier. (Maybe under the condition that you aren't dual-wielding). This solves "I don't feel like using that WS" in some/most cases.

If you increase the accuracy of all SCs to a great degree(let's say it's very similar to a BLM casting the same elemental nuke if his elemental skill was equal to your weapon skill), it matters less if you do Dark or Light(or Distortion) as long you aren't targeting a monster who is very resistant to the type of SC.

Another thing they can do is boost the closing WS of the SC. This would also increase the damage the SC as well. Something small though, but noticeable: like 25-50% increase in secondary modifiers... though I would make STR a little weaker than other mods.

If you do enough to boost SC+MB and add camps/monsters/enhanced exp rules for it, they will come back for at least some of the population.

Fuck that shit... Why do people want to de-evolve the game into the dark ages?

Exp capping at 6-8k an hour made it the dark ages, not using SCs. Make it so that you can get high exp and SC at the same time, you've got a win-win situation.

[Priran]

Exp capping at 6-8k an hour made it the dark ages, not using SCs. Make it so that you can get high exp and SC at the same time, you've got a win-win situation.

In order to make SC+MB as good as WS spam or manaburn, you've either got to practically double TP gain and halve casting time or create stronger-than-normal mobs that can break the standard EXP cap. Building 100 TP on VTs when they're losing significant amounts of their HP to magic isn't practical, if they even lived long enough to take the nuke.

[LD]

There are so many problem with trying to bring melee & Black Mages (lets be frank, that's all this is about) back together, there really is no point.

BLM was made to break through defenses. Making a mob that's difficult to damage physically would give BLM the advantage, bringing us back to the mage-centric days. Even if you gave it a resist rate or MDB greater than any HNM, you would have to improve the MAB/macc bonus that SCs give to make casting worthwhile, and that forces melee to use weaker WS (or weaker subs to make the weaker WS better.) To balance that, you'd have to fix the SC compatability of practically every WS. However, if you did that, melee would be able to SC more easily (and/or powerfully) in burns. So in the end burn would be just as superior as before. -_-

[Wizerd]

Add a bonus to the period of time after a mob dies before your chain ends, for completing a Skillchain and/or Magic Burst.

For example:

Lv1 skillchain performed: +10 seconds.
Lv2 skillchain performed: +30 seconds.
Lv3 skillchain performed: +50 seconds.

The base time after chain 5 to continue your chain is what, 50 seconds? or 60? Let's say 50 for the sake of argument. Performing a lv3 skillchain sometime during the last mob would give you double time to kill it in order to keep your chain. That is plenty of time for two melee to build up 100% TP, position for and perform a skillchain, and have the Black Mage magic burst on the mob. Ideally, there would be stronger and higher level mobs introduced to the game that are far too difficult for a burn party to kill in the 50 second period, but are weak enough so that the aforementioned SC+MB would kill it. Of course, like said before, the new mobs would have to break the current exp cap barrier, or at least give a 260-300ish base. With chain 5+ that would be 450 per mob, yes? 30 mobs dead in an hour = 13,500 exp/hr. Not quite what we have today with burn parties, but it'd be a start.

A mob should have enough HP and give enough time to keep chain that 3 melees (a tank, 2 skillchainers) and 3 mages (A refresher, a buffer, and a magic burster, with healing on at least one of them) should be able to go from 0% TP to killing it with a skillchain, nearly every battle. I think, anyway.

[Fridell]

Blame Sushi!
I remember the time where i got bored in PTs as BLM waiting for those silly melees to get their TP on a not too damn hard mobs at all.
Sushi & melees understanding their jobs better (yea many MNKs & WARs was DRGs in mind before lolz) made this situation also.
Anyways, BLMs crying to get TP burns can go and cut thier dick away. Tho im not saying TP burns are the best thing overall ever and nowdays ppl are too much "omgtpburn" imo.
All this with some playfull touch.

[BRP]

create stronger-than-normal mobs that can break the standard EXP cap.

This is very important.

If you create a monster that is easily IT++(maybe with an exp modifier on top) that is very durable, but simply crumbles at SCs, it could work. I'm really not using any math here, so bare with me, but a monster that gives 300-400 base exp(before chain, sanction, and natural exp bonuses) which takes half damage from everything except x4-6 damage on SCs and x4-6 on MBs. Maybe what I'm saying is a bit extreme, but it's just the best situation I can think of at the moment to represent what I mean. The idea would be you are doing nothing to monster while you build TP and maybe even during the WSes, but the SC + MB would make the monster's HP drop from 80% to 0%.

A crucial detail would be that the exp gain from killing the SC+MB monster(which takes longer) be about equal or maybe a little less than killing 2-3 VT monsters in the time it does.

[Fridell]

Didnt they say something like "when we going to balance out stuff you will also notice changing monsters" or whatever it was. Too lazy to check zzzz

[terraflarex]

So when are we killing AV?

[Fng]

create stronger-than-normal mobs that can break the standard EXP cap.

This is very important.

If you create a monster that is easily IT++(maybe with an exp modifier on top) that is very durable, but simply crumbles at SCs, it could work. I'm really not using any math here, so bare with me, but a monster that gives 300-400 base exp(before chain, sanction, and natural exp bonuses) which takes half damage from everything except x4-6 damage on SCs and x4-6 on MBs. Maybe what I'm saying is a bit extreme, but it's just the best situation I can think of at the moment to represent what I mean. The idea would be you are doing nothing to monster while you build TP and maybe even during the WSes, but the SC + MB would make the monster's HP drop from 80% to 0%.

A crucial detail would be that the exp gain from killing the SC+MB monster(which takes longer) be about equal or maybe a little less than killing 2-3 VT monsters in the time it does.

But but you are giving my Epeen to the BLMs!

[Leroy]

Just make mobs that have high HP and DEF/VIT, offer 250-300exp per kill, and go berserk and spam tp moves nonstop if your party has more than 2 people with utsusemi. That'll show those no good tp-burns. :D

[SephYuyX]

create stronger-than-normal mobs that can break the standard EXP cap.

This is very important.

If you create a monster that is easily IT++(maybe with an exp modifier on top) that is very durable, but simply crumbles at SCs, it could work. I'm really not using any math here, so bare with me, but a monster that gives 300-400 base exp(before chain, sanction, and natural exp bonuses) which takes half damage from everything except x4-6 damage on SCs and x4-6 on MBs. Maybe what I'm saying is a bit extreme, but it's just the best situation I can think of at the moment to represent what I mean. The idea would be you are doing nothing to monster while you build TP and maybe even during the WSes, but the SC + MB would make the monster's HP drop from 80% to 0%.

A crucial detail would be that the exp gain from killing the SC+MB monster(which takes longer) be about equal or maybe a little less than killing 2-3 VT monsters in the time it does.

But but you are giving my Epeen to the BLMs!

Just make it so melee can do ToAU-ish dmg, but the mob just has high HP. Melee can still do their big WSs and BLMs can do their big SCs.

Take a Colibri (or something), add more HP and more XP.