FFT Arena: Balance Discussion Thread

[Skip Sandwich]

The presence of the ARH means that we can get really creative in assigning restrictions to the use of various abilities. For example, we can make Shuriken only useable while Throw Item is also equipped, or only usable while under Transparent status or only  usable while equipping knives or ninja swords, for example.

[Shade]

I have to concur with Shade about Shuriken being rather disgustingly overpowered, though I think it's more a problem of Concentrate, Paladins and Speed Save all being overpowered individually at present than it is about abuse of Knight Swords, especially when the strongest Knight Swords have the least benefits.

?
1. Are you talking about ragnarok and protect queen? Aren't they one of the weakest weapons in arena? I consider defenders and chaos blades benefits alot higher level
2. Give that setup 8 wp weapon and the damage will start of 75(about), just concentrate and having knight swords combined with this skill is strong. It just makes paladins very good, cause they can have concentrate and knight swords at the same time.

Shinobi seal should be 75% atleast IMO

[Squidgy]

...though I think it's more a problem of Concentrate, Paladins and Speed Save all being overpowered individually...

Yes, yes, and yes.

Concentrate: really kills part of the game. I don't know what nerf would be possible. Can it consider all attacks back? Ignore W-Ev/Abandon? Due to Weapon Guard innate, this support just wins for any phys unit. I was going to put it on my Paladin Puncher, but he ran out of JP. If Conc gets axed, then Abandon would be stronger, but I don't know if that'd be too much a problem.

Paladin: HP + Innate armor = lots of HP. Can set PA Save/Speed Save to make up for other stats if they're bad, but Pally PA is still nice. I'm thinking Paladins should lose the heavy weapon equips. Most encourage not using a shield, which doesn't seem very Paladiny... Or could just make Paladin skills require a Shield, but Paladins aren't well known for their skills. Could make Knight Swords only equipped by people using the support, and balance accordingly.

Speed Save: Hmm... it wouldn't be as bad if there was no attack which scaled with speed, but that's a boring solution. Reduced chance to work with armor equipped? Too abstract? I blame Scholar all-magic on making these saves even more powerful than they already are. Would there be a way to make certain skills trigger counters 50% of the time?

[FFMaster]

Right now, the best thing I can do for Concentrate is to either remove it completely, or remove it's effects when they are inflicted with status(Darkness for example, remove Concentrate bonus and probably nerf to 30% miss chance). Maybe... I can make it just ignore 1 item EV? Like Shield EV?

For Lore, I planned to make it single cast again(no persevere) but decided against it for this version. It will probably become single cast next version.

Shinobi's Seal needs massive buffs yes, but I have been holding it out to nerf the stronger abilities first. Same for a lot of other abilities.


EDIT: Current changelog

GENERAL
- Previous bugs fixed

JOBS
- Paladin loses 1 Jump
- Paladin C-EV now 0
- Paladin MP Multiplier now 20

SKILLS
- Maintainence is now 100 JP
- Holy Water now also cancels Oil
- Maiden's Kiss now also cancels Sleep, 150 JP
- Dia can now hit caster
- Grand Cross is now Holy Elemental
- Katon, Raiton and Suiton can now hit caster
- Katon, Raiton and Suiton now (100-Faith)*(100-Faith)*PA*25 damage
- Shinobi's Seal is now Sp+70% chance to hit, seperate and inflitcs Blind, Silence, Poison, Don't Move, Don't Act(around about 20% chance for each status in tests)
- 5 Lores loses persevere and damage is doubled. Can be Short Charged.

ITEMS
- Stone Gun loses 1 WP
- C Bag loses 1 MA
- FS Bag loses 1 PA

[The Damned]

Those changes are looking rather nice, FFMaster. I do think that Maiden's Kiss could stand to go up to 200 JP if cancels Sleep given how long Sleep tends to last, but we should probably see how it performs at 150 JP first.

With regards to Concentrate, I think it would stop being (as) overpowered if it was actually affected by Darkness AND affected all EV except for Weapon evasion. I'd probably just test it out with the former, first, though if possible. Personally, I think that solution that Raziel said he could come with before he disappeared of making Concentrate be 100 + Br% chance to hit would be the most elegant solution, but I'm not sure if we can do that (yet).

1. Are you talking about ragnarok and protect queen? Aren't they one of the weakest weapons in arena? I consider defenders and chaos blades benefits alot higher level
2. Give that setup 8 wp weapon and the damage will start of 75(about), just concentrate and having knight swords combined with this skill is strong. It just makes paladins very good, cause they can have concentrate and knight swords at the same time.

Apologies for my wording it so nebulously:

1. I was referring to Defender and Chaos Blade having the highest WP of all the weapons and, arguably, the least benefits, at least of the Knight Swords. Defender could probably stand a bit of a nerf given it having the highest WP of weapons, one of the highest EVs and being one of the few weapons to prevent a Status as well. However, that's not something I want to address right now, especially since I haven't yet used Paladins with Knight Swords myself between my theme teams and my recent absence.
2. This is true.

[pokeytax]

Good changes.

Concentrate is a superpower and needs a nerf or a huge price tag.  Abandon is pretty strong and will be a superpower if 90% of physical attackers can't ignore it anymore.  Transparent is a neat status completely overshadowed by Concentrate. So you want Concentrate around, but not quite so mandatory. I think having W-EV or C-EV unaffected by Concentrate is a good starting point.

If Concentrate is affected by Darkness, Abandon + Darkness means 0% CtH always, which is sick (it was the original theme behind my Secret Hunt team). I guess it's risky to bring a team without Cancel: Petrify and it should be risky to bring a physical team without Cancel: Darkness.  I honestly can't remember how rigorous the AI is about cleansing, but I guess I've seen it use Eye Drops or Stigma Magic to do it before.

Shuriken's basically Throw so Concentrate-Throw is badass here like it is in S3/S4.  Gotta figure out a way to keep WP lower though.

Nicking 1 WP from Stone Gun is actually a decent nerf - 11 WP and Attack Up does maybe 10 more damage than unmodified 12 WP. I was originally going to run it with Salty Rage so we'll see how that goes.

I actually love Grand Cross as-is, although maybe it needs a slight buff to get the AI using it. But adding an element is going to make Paladins into combine harvesters, Defender/Diamond Helmet/108 Gems is a 240 splash that selfheals for 290 after Fury.

[pokeytax]

Code Select Expand

ST. AJORA Speed Save, Damage Split
STRONG    Auto-Potion, Counter, HP Restore, MP Restore, C.Flood, Dragon Spirit, Abandon
WEAK      C.Tackle, Arrow Guard, Regenerator, C.Magic, C.Quick, Awareness, Meatbone, PA Save, MA Save
TRASH     Caution, Finger Guard, Absorb Used MP, Distribute, Brave Up, Faith Up

Code Select Expand

ST. AJORA Concentrate
STRONG    E. Armor, MD UP, MA UP, Short Charge, Defense UP, Attack UP, Two Hands, Two Swords
WEAK      E. Shield, Throw Item, Martial Arts, Unyielding, Overwhelm
TRASH     E. Clothes, Defend, Maintenance, E. Ranged, Half of MP, E. Blade, M. Talk, E. Polearm, E. Magegear, E. Heavy Blade

Code Select Expand

ST. AJORA Move-HP Up
STRONG    Move-MP Up, Move +1
WEAK      Teleport, Fly, Ignore Height
TRASH     Jump +1, Jump +2, Float
Here is a tierlist I threw together. I don't want to provoke four pages of arguing about tiers, this is just my own opinion and a sloppy reference for what needs buffing/nerfing.

It's fine to have stronger and weaker abilities, some stuff I have in weak is more niche. The God tier and especially trash is what needs action.  Obviously movement is a special case, I would just lower Move-HP Up and Move-MP Up to 5-7% and move on.

The Equip X abilities, strictly speaking, don't need to occupy the support slot. You could make them freebies that don't need to be equipped, since we're directly editing equipment. Or you could put them in the less useful movement slot. I think these abilities could be balanced by adjusting the class growths and items themselves, but this is another option, although one of Arena's strengths is avoiding these kinds of arbitrary rules and metapatching.

[FFMaster]

Moving Equip X to the movement slot... is actually a really cool idea. I like it. Does anyone else like it, or do they think it is a terrible idea?

[Squidgy]

Equip X has no contest vs other supports... except Shield and Armor. If Equip Armor and Move-HP couldn't be shared, that'd be pretty spiffy... except there're the classes who can innately equip armor. So... I "support".

[Pride]

Its an interesting idea, and I really like it actually.

[CT5Holy]

I also think Grand Cross could stay as is. The only way to use it is to absorb the element, anyway. Now you're just restricting it to absorb Holy.

Equip X to movement is a great idea.

[The Damned]

I also support moving Equip X to the Movement slot. Only one I'm kind of iffy about is Armor, but thinking about it, it moving to Movement that would mean having to choose between it and Move-HP Up. On the one hand, that stops a lot of "laziness" or at least that combination from appearing so frequently. On the other hand, that favors the classes with heavy armor even more, especially if Paladin doesn't get a HP nerf or something.

Hmm.....

[pokeytax]

How to balance Equip Armor? Leave it Support? Change it to Equip Helmet? Raise the cost? Reduce Helmet/Armor HPs by 10? It does basically cost 850 JP now, since it's the only good Paladin ability, so it's not out of the question to leave it as is.

I think letting Paladins/Lancers/Samurai have Equip Armor + Move-HP Up is fine; previously they were the only ones who could have Equip Armor + any support which is vastly scarier. This might actually be the nerf that keeps my teams from being 50% Paladin by weight!

[FFMaster]

Damn. Changing Equip X to movement in the patcher doesn't work. Then again, I am using 457. Does anyone know a way to change it so that I can buy/equip it as a movement? I don't want to generate a new memcard everytime I want to make a small adjustment =/

[pokeytax]

Well, it's a major kludge, but you could just give every class all equips innately.  Not sure if that's really what you're looking for though.

[The Damned]

That'd probably create more problems than it would solve, unfortunately.

Given that I am lazy, talentless bum, I'm also unsure how to solve the Support to Movement problem, though I really should have remembered it would come up.

*whistles innocently*

[FFMaster]

Here is a new changelog
GENERAL
- Previous bugs fixed

JOBS
- Paladin loses 1 Jump
- Paladin C-EV now 0
- Paladin MP Multiplier now 20

SKILLS
- Maintainence is now 100 JP
- Holy Water now also cancels Oil
- Maiden's Kiss now also cancels Sleep, 150 JP
- Dia can now hit caster
- Grand Cross is now Holy Elemental
- Katon, Raiton and Suiton can now hit caster
- Katon, Raiton and Suiton now (100-Faith)*(100-Faith)*PA*25 damage
- Shinobi's Seal is now Sp+70% chance to hit, seperate and inflitcs Blind, Silence, Poison, Don't Move, Don't Act(around about 20% chance for each status in tests)
- New skill for Ninja: Houkouton

ITEMS
- Stone Gun loses 1 WP
- C Bag loses 1 MA
- FS Bag loses 1 PA
- All spears up 2 WP
- All bows up 1 WP
- Ice Bow now casts Ice 3
- Lightning Bow now casts Bolt 3
- Rainbow Staff is now all Elements and 11 WP. Loses whatever it had before.
- All non-status crossbows up 2 WP
- All status crossbows up 1 WP, gains 100% status
- Cloths status changed to permanent

[Skip Sandwich]

update tables? I want to see what this new ninja skill "Houkouton" is about

[FFMaster]

[Shade]

Show us a vid how it works.