Final Fantasy Hacktics

This thread, much like the job class thread is devoted to balancing items. Once we all agree on one set of items being balanced, we'll move to the next. I think it'll be much more organized that way.

KNIVES

Combat Knife
1500 Gil
4 WP
10% Evasion
PA +1

Dual Wield: Yes
Doublehand: No

Thief's Dagger
2500 Gil
5 WP
10% Evasion
Cast: Steal Gil

Dual Wield: Yes
Doublehand: No

Dancing Dagger
5500 Gil
4 WP
15% Evasion
Cast: Doubleshot

Dual Wield: Yes
Doublehand: No

Ripper
7500 Gil
4 WP
5% Evasion
Add: Immobilize or Disable

Dual Wield: Yes
Doublehand: No

Gladius
7500 Gil
5 WP
10% Evasion
Wind Elemental

Dual Wield: Yes
Doublehand: No

Main Gauche
10000 Gil
2 WP
25% Evasion

Dual Wield: Yes
Doublehand: No

Swift
25000 Gil
3 WP
5% Evasion
Speed +1

Dual Wield: Yes
Doublehand: No

Valiant Knife
35000 Gil
4 WP
10% Evasion
Fire Elemental
Initial: Reraise

Dual Wield: Yes
Doublehand: No

Mage Masher
50000 Gil
6 WP
10% Evasion
Drains MP on hit

Dual Wield: Yes
Doublehand: No

Tonberrian
Poach/Find Only
7 WP
Damages equal to user's lost HP

Dual Wield: No
Doublehand: No

Thoughts? Ideas? Any constructive feedback is appreciated!

Parted Ways is Newtype, correct?
Their prices seem a bit high to me. Also 25% evasion does not seem to me to be a good substitute to a higher WP. Or is Parry/Weapon Guard Innate?
The rest seem like great ideas to me.

Parry will only be innate on Fencers (Alicia/Lavian). For the rest, they'll need to equip it.

Knives already have a formula disadvantage [Sp+PA]/2, I don't think they need to be hit with such a low amount of WP. I believe the spread of them are good (I like having Mage Masher drain mp over inflicting silence as a nice touch) but could use a boost in wp.

Also agreeing with Arganthonius7 that Main Gauche could use a large increase in wp in comparison with other knives. 25% weapon evade without have innate weapon guard just isn't worth it on any level.

Remove the spoiler tags please, it makes trying to compare them difficult.

Also, are they listed in the order they appear in Shops?

Why does the Tonberrian matter if it deals damage equal to lost HP?
You might try a knife with a high WP but no other attributes.(evasion,inflict status,etc..)

Because it doesn't use the normal formula. Basically if you have 300 of your 350 hp remaining, you'll do 50 damage. If you have 1 of 900 hp remaining, you will do 899 damage. That why it matters and there is no wp displayed.

Spoiler tags removed, and yes, they appear in the order that you get them from the shops. That said, you'll be able to get every storebought item before the end of Chapter 2.

EDIT: Boost Main Gauche to 4 WP maybe, give every other knife a 1 WP increase?

Oh sorry, I meant why does the weapon power matter. Because it won't make a difference to your Hp, right?

Right. The only reason it has WP at all is because some skills require WP as a factor.

The tonberrian is a very interesting weapon, I assume it's not easy to get.

Nope, you'll have to poach it from the Tonberry Shade (found only in later floors of DD in Disk 2) or by stealing it during a certain battle from an enemy you may or may not know you can steal from. ;P

OOooohohohwhoooa.
Cool.

The Mage Masher doesn't have to be that strong because MP is not as prevalent as HP. The weapon becomes pointless if the attacker can drain the attackee MP with one or two hits. Cause I assume your knife formula is WP*PA so if someones PA is 10 and equip the mage masher it would do 160 mp damage and that could instantly drain a persons MP then it is pointless to attack that person again. I would recommend a lower WP.

So Thief dagger and Gladius are the same but 5,000 gil difference because the Gladius has wind element?

Is Main Gauche so expensive because it has 25% evasion, but it is only 2 WP... To use the Weapons Evasion, do they have to have 'weapon guard' equipped?

1) Mage Masher's formula uses Speed, IIRC. I can't remember if I used Drain[Weapon] or Drain[WP*PA] (or whatever that formula was). I'll have to look it up.

2) Gladius has the potential for higher damage, thus the higher price. Thief's Dagger is better earlier on.

3) Main Gauche's WP will be boosted, since Parry isn't innate.

Oh okay

QuoteThe Mage Masher doesn't have to be that strong because MP is not as prevalent as HP. The weapon becomes pointless if the attacker can drain the attackee MP with one or two hits.

What do you think about that situation?

Consider that you'll probably only be using one Mage Masher on your entire team. More times than naught, you'll be facing 5-6 enemies. 1 unit going around reducing 1 unit's MP isn't that big, unless the target's a mage, which I'll address later with Robes. Also, consider that enemies will have access to Ethers/Hi-Ethers and will be more than willing to use them. I can nerf the Masher so that it deals a pittance of MP damage, but against enemies with Robes (the highest MP robe will probably give around 200 MP, at this rate), it probably won't take their entire MP pool down. For physical units, yes. But they don't need the MP as much.

And again, you're pretty much sacrificing the Masher User's attack command to damage MP, and that unit will be less effective at actually killing units. The best build I can see thus far would be an Assassin dual wielding a Mage Masher and some other weapon. But, again, I can nerf the WP.

Alternatively, I could go back to making it inflict Silence. But that's boring.

So here are the options thus far for Mage Masher:

1) Nerf the WP
2) Make it inflict Silence
3) Make it un-dual-wieldable
4) Combination of the above

Sorry if that doesn't make sense. I'm terrible at talking about balance. >_>

It makes sense, don't worry love.

Well my experience was playing your patch at thief's fort. The Ninja (purple girl) had mage masher and within three hits (two regular and one critical) Ramza lost all his MP and he was at level *99*. He became useless. Then the purple ninja went to Algus and depleted his MP quick. So I am not sure if that makes it over powered but it is something to think about. People would need to give more insight.

Anything not commented on is fine.

Quote from: "Eternal248"Combat Knife
1500 Gil
4 WP
10% Evasion
PA +1

Dual Wield: Yes
Doublehand: No

Passable because its the starting Dagger, but otherwise it doesn't fit and seems pretty blah in the long run.

Quote from: "Eternal248"Gladius
7500 Gil
5 WP
10% Evasion
Wind Elemental

Dual Wield: Yes
Doublehand: No

Seems fairly pointless honestly. Being Wind Elemental is only good for damage boosting, and with 5 WP the damage isn't much even if you're double wielding Wind Boosting into a Weak spot on a Floating target.  All your other Daggers are based on disabling or otherwise procing, this straight up doesn't fit and seems worthless.

Quote from: "Eternal248"Main Gauche
10000 Gil
2 WP
25% Evasion

Dual Wield: Yes
Doublehand: No

30% Evasion, 5-6 WP because Weapon Guard isn't innate.  Giving up your Reaction for Weapon Guard is a big sacrifice, so the reward needs to be big to balance it out.  Having the highest base WP for Main Gauche is fine because none of the other Daggers besides the poorly-fitting Gladius are even about damage.

Quote from: "Eternal248"Swift
25000 Gil
3 WP
5% Evasion
Speed +1

Dual Wield: Yes
Doublehand: No

Just commenting because I love how you thought it would be okay for this thing to have more WP than Main Gauche, lol.  It's fine though.

Quote from: "Eternal248"Mage Masher
50000 Gil
6 WP
10% Evasion
Drains MP on hit

Dual Wield: Yes
Doublehand: No

Commenting to tell you not to do anything to it.  6 WP * likely 4-20 PA depending on where you are in the game is 24-120 MP per hit (noting that morel levels and better armors and helmets mean the MP totals getting torn into will be higher as this number increases) in trade for at least half your attack command and the fact it's essentially single-target range-1 skill more than it is a weapon.

Quote from: "dinosaur"Cause I assume your knife formula is WP*PA so if someones PA is 10 and equip the mage masher it would do 160 mp damage and that could instantly drain a persons MP then it is pointless to attack that person again. I would recommend a lower WP.

10*6=60.

Quote from: "dinosaur"The Ninja (purple girl) had mage masher and within three hits (two regular and one critical) Ramza lost all his MP and he was at level *99*.

Most classes with decent power in most iterations of FFT can KILL units in two regular hits and one critical hit.  :/

OMG ROR is right. I cannot do math.

I love your ideas, but I would strongly suggest running the numbers for how much damage these weapons would actually do.  What do you expect endgame PA MA and Speed to be, on average? Once you set down a good base, being able to see exactly how much damage each weapon can do would make it MUCH easier to balance. 
As for the Tonberry Knife, it is a great idea, I was wanting to do the same thing, now I feel like a copy cat.... As for balancing it, how much HP, on average, do you expect knife wielding characters to have endgame?

Quote from: DaveSW on December 28, 2010, 05:37:18 pmrunning the numbers

Eternal doesn't know how to do this.  He just kinda puts things that look right together and hope things end up in the general area he wants.

And surprisingly it works. Sometimes. But yeah, I mostly start with theme and do balance towards the end. >_>

Ok then. I'll do it for you if you want.  The main thing is what kinda speed are we looking at?  Once I know that, I can give you a better set of numbers.

I need to review Paheej's video about Speed growth. After, I'll be able to accurately ascertain what Speed system I want.