FFT Arena: Balance Discussion Thread

[RavenOfRazgriz]

The Master Guide says Mediator can't use Robes, but when constructing teams in-game I can equip Robes onto them.

Which is correct?

[FFMaster]

They shouldn't be able to equip Robes. I must have added them incrorrectly.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

Okay.

Also, Murasame at the bare minimum still has a CT, looks to be the only one though.  Pretty sure that's just an oversight, though.

[formerdeathcorps]

Okay.

Also, Murasame at the bare minimum still has a CT, looks to be the only one though.  Pretty sure that's just an oversight, though.

No, it's Murasame and Koutetsu.  To be honest, Murasame having a CT is balanced (so it's not obviating White Magic), and Koutetsu...I haven't tested it yet, so I wouldn't know.
EDIT: After seeing Wiz's battle, I think Chiri needs a CT timer instead of Koutetsu.  The rest of the draw outs are fine, though.  While we're on the subject, can we please reduce Ultima's CT and MP cost to 5 and 30, respectively?

However, there are a host of serious AI flag glitches.

Accumulate has check CT and faith flagged under AI flags.  Hence, it is never used.
Quickening does not have check CT flagged under AI flags.  Hence, it is rarely used.
Shell2/Haste2/Protect2 does not have target only allies flagged.
Slow2 does not have target only enemies flagged.
Consecrate has check HP flagged, rather than status.
Tzumazuku has check HP flagged, rather than status.
Draw Outs did not lose the target only allies flag.
Cyclops has both HP and Status flagged, even though the inflict status is only 25%.

For those of you who are wondering what I'm talking about, check this thread: http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=4714.msg104619#msg104619

Furthermore, a lot of higher power spells on Black Magic and Summon still have learn on hit flagged.  Although the chances of affecting a battle is small, it still could be an issue.

Other bugs:
1) The purple palette is glitched because units with it occasionally turn black if attacked.  If a purple unit turns black and then crystallizes, the result is a black crystal which freezes the game if grabbed.  A purple crystal is perfectly fine, though.
2) Coral Sword has a second sword strike animation, but this doesn't affect gameplay.
3) Oil does not double fire damage.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

Mimes are vulnerable to Death Sentence but are immune to Dead.  That definitely needs to be fixed one way or the other.

Coral Sword is being weird because it's set to Formula 02 instead of Formula 01, so its procing an empty skill.

Draw Outs/Prot2/Shell2/Haste2/Slow2 look fine to me, outside of the CT inconsistency on Draw Out.  (Though Murasame and Chirijiraden having CT is fine by me, they're pretty damn powerful and having a small CT to check them would be cool.  The others are mostly the ones who really need to be instant.)

E: I see which flag now.  Nevermind.  Third Unknown in the Learn On Hit box is incorrect.

[formerdeathcorps]

Mimes also probably shouldn't be vulnerable to frog.  It's stronger than sleep (which you can remove by taking damage) or stop (since stop wears off and doesn't cause you to take extra damage).

[RavenOfRazgriz]

Your info about Scholar HP/MP in the Master Guide and in this thread is inaccurate.  You copied the Priest HP/MP info for the female Scholar and the info listed for Male Scholar here and in the Master Guide are different.  The one listed in the Master Guide for the male appears to be the correct one, though the female is definitely wrong in both.  Should be 106 HP and I think around 90-91 MP, but don't quote me on that second number.

[formerdeathcorps]

Here's some more ideas.  Some will require some very simple ASM that I can do.

1) Dances are fundamentally not equivalent to songs because -Stats is stronger than +Stats on a percent basis.

Battle Song/Magic Song 50%
Cheer Song 33%
Polka Polka/Disillusion 40%
Slow Dance 25%

The above is probably more balanced than the current implementation.

2) Witch Hunt is really powerful to any squad that uses MP because it's currently too difficult to restore MP.  To remedy this, I suggest:
a) Move-MP UP needs to be 10% again.
b) Give Dia to Priest.  In exchange, give Reraise to Paladin.  Dia doesn't even make sense on a base class with 6 MA on females, while Reraise is hard to use on White Magic since healing interferes with its use.  Furthermore, Priest now has a form of offensive magic for those who can't afford Holy.  To make this useful for healing MP, hack formula 54 (MA * Y = MP Restored) to accept the status re-raise at 100% (so coded like if it were formula 2D).  Y should be 2 or 3 here.  This attack should cost 0 MP...think of it more as chakra (with the same range), but with a CT.  Thus also gives someone a good reason to use a paladin secondary (which right now is crap).
c) No one uses carbunkle because +Transparent bugs the AI.  Thus, I suggest we delete it and replace it with large AoE MP healing.  Because a lot of MP would be healed, this would require an MP cost, on top of costing CT.  Again, the same formula should be used (but no status proc).  Y in this case can be 6, though not higher than 8.

3) Damage Split is too weak now.  It should be 33%.

4) Considering Float is just Jump +1 and Earth Null and Move on Lava, it should cost no more than 200 JP.  Similarly, if Teleport = Fly in effect (the AI almost never goes the extra distance), then it should cost exactly 300 JP.  Lastly, Short Charge and MP Restore are overpriced (since 2S > Short Charge and HP Restore is roughly equal to MP Restore now even though both Short Charge and MP Restore cost more JP).  While we're on the subject, 2 Swords is definitely stronger than 2 Hands because of added weapon choice and that both weapons count for W-EV.  Thus, I suggest costs of 400 for Short charge, 450 for MP Restore, and 550 for Two Swords.

5) We overnerfed Regen.  The status itself in vanilla is weaker than protect, not stronger.
a) Cheer Up needs to be 100% Regen
b) Regen should either cost 50 JP and be the same as Protect/Shell in AoE/Y or be 250 JP and be the same as Protect2/Shell2 in AoE/Y/Ally Only.

6) Making Bio darkness elemental actually makes the spell weaker because of absorption.  Thus, I propose making Bio1/Bio2 non-elemental (since only Bio3 adds undead and could reasonably be considered dark).  Bio3 could also be slightly stronger to justify its CT.

7) Ultima is way too costly for what it does.  Right now, it's ranged chiri that costs more JP/MP/CT.  That's not worth the range.  To be worth 400 JP, ultima needs 5 range, the same AoE, 25 MP, and 5 CT.

8) Speaking of Chiri, I'll reiterate the above.  It NEEDS a CT of 3 to be fair.  Koutetsu does not.

9) It's kind of hard to use instruments or cloths because of class restrictions.  It might be interesting to let EQ: Magegear allow Instruments and EQ: Polearms allow Clothes.

10) Dispel Magic does not work on innocent units because the formula is faith dependent, even though the list of removed statii includes innocent.  Similarly, it is illogical to suggest that an oracle casting Innocent has a better chance of hitting a higher faith unit than a lower faith one when Innocent the status means 0 Faith.  Thus, I suggest that
a) Dispel Magic be made into (MA * 2 + 40)%
b) Innocent be made into (MA * 2 + 30)%
c) Faith be made into (MA * 2 + 30)%

Since these now resemble mediator skills, we can possibly delete threaten/solution/preach/praise and simply transfer the above three skills to Mediators so they'll have a better rounded skillset.  Oracle has more than enough going for it already.

11) Time Mage's Stop is too unreliable.  It's completely outclassed by petrify in terms of accuracy, range and staying power of the effect simply in exchange for AoE.  Increasing Y to 160 is probably necessary, as well as reducing CT to 4.  From there, you can raise the MP cost to balance any inequities (setting it equal to slow2/haste2 at 22 would work).

12) Anything that currently cancels charging needs to also affect perform since perform is charging, but better on CT usage (since it can cast multiple times between turns).  Specifically, this affects throw stone and reflect.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

Some thoughts on Magic:

Fire/Ice/Bolt balance is horrendous.  Ice costs more JP, and its only benefit over Bolt is that it costs less MP, which isn't a big deal.  It's useful, but not something so great it should cost more JP.  Ice should be normalized to 50/120/190/260 like Fire and Bolt are.  Fire is a joke.  The MP costs on the ones worth using (Fire3/Fire4) are essentially the same as Bolt, and Fire4 doesn't have the "AoE" benefit the other Fire spells do.  1 AoE 0 Vert?  That's not an AoE, that's fucking Geomancy.  Buff that vertical to at least 2.  The Ys on the lower Fires are also a joke, they're all essentially the same.  My recommended setup is:

Fire: Y=14, MP=6
Fire 2: Y=17, MP=12
Fire 3: Y=21, MP=21
Fire 4: Y=29, MP=30, Vertical 2

Bolt: Y=19, MP=12
Bolt 2: Y=23, MP=18
Bolt 3: Y=27, MP=30
Bolt 4: Y=35, MP=40

Ice: Y=16, MP=3
Ice 2: Y=20, MP=6
Ice 3: Y=24, MP=12
Ice 4: Y=32, MP=20

Across-the-board JP costs of 50/120/180/260 for 1/2/3/4.

Ice stayed the same, Bolt is basically the same with slightly rounded/higher MP costs, and Fire saw a combination of Y buffs and MP reduction to better situate them into tiers compared to Bolt/Ice, and Ice had its JP cost lowered because the higher cost is unnecessary and just further exacerbates the problem of Mages being nearly impossible to make due to JP constraints when compared to physical hitters.  This is especially true because Move-MP UP is essentially required for mages, and it was blasted to 5% MP for no reason and still carries a 500 JP cost + 250 class unlock cost, considering its not in a class most mages use magic from.  If you refuse FDC's suggestion of placing it back at 10% heal, at least reduce the JP cost to 250.  I prefer moving it back to 10% though, the current Move-MP Up is worthless on non-Mages, required on Mages, and eats a quarter of their JP.  It's basically like Short Charge in that regard.  Even when making a simple Wizard that took most of its R/S/M from the Wizard primary class... I only had the JP for two skills and one skill in its secondary class because Move-MP UP is overpriced and underpowered, and because Ice is overpriced for no reason.

Death is also a joke.  Half the hit rate of Petrify, for more MP and double the JP cost for a weaker effect that's blocked by a bunch of anti-Dead gear and one of the most commonly used Clothings and is far easier to recover from?  ...No.  If anything, Death is what deserves to be Y=200, not Petrify.  Really, just make that Y 200 please.  Buff Frog back to at least what it was before in terms of a Y value too, please.

MID-POST EDIT: Wizard's Poison could also go down to, erm, 50 JP.

Speaking of Y values... Oracle is a mess.  Petrify is essentially a guaranteed hit at 70v70 unless they have M-EV even if your MA is 0, and it's easily the most powerful skill in their skillset.  Their weakest skills oddly also have the lowest Y values.  Some recommended Y values:

Blind=255
Spell Absorb=255
Life Drain=190
Zombie=200
Silence Song=170
Blind Rage=160
Petrify=170
Beguile=150
Paralyze=170
Sleep=160

I didn't list Pray Faith / Doubt Faith / Dispel because I very heartily agree with FDC's idea of moving them to Mediator and giving it and Oracle some distinction, but good Ys should be easy enough to create for them if you disagree with that notion.  160/160/210, at least.

I think FDC covered everything else I could say in regards to mages.

EDIT:

Accumulate and Quickening could lose their CTs so the AI will actually use them on off-turns, too.  Quickening's MP cost is enough to prevent over-spamming, and Mime's idiocy has been dealt with so Miming both Quickening and Accumulate shouldn't be anywhere close to a problem.

EDIT 2:

Equip Armor could drop to 400 JP.  It sees some use, but is still prohibitively expensive, especially since the Paladin class' skillset as secondary is absolute shit, making Equip Armor's cost essentially 850 vs Defense UP, Magic Defense UP, and Unyielding which both only have a base cost of 400 and come in skillsets where you can actually use the skillset without being laughed at, meaning you're not always paying the 250 overhead for just your defensive booster.  Drop Equip Armor to 400 please, to make it fit in a bit better with its contemporaries.  Combined with what FDC suggested on the Dia/Reraise thing to make Paladin secondary actually at least begin to be worth a damn, Equip Armor should actually sit at least somewhat balanced against its three defensive counterparts.

EDIT 3:

Speaking of Paladins, Transfusion and Consecration could do to be a bit cheaper JP-wise.  Consecration is barely useful (and its stronger yet also barely useful contemporary of Seal Evil is only 200 JP) and Transfusion is super iffy and pretty much always weaker than Murasame for double the JP cost and a dedication requirement to offset the lost HP.  Lower costs would at least make these skills easier to experiment with, at least in the case of Transfusion.  Right now, it's prohibitively expensive, considering for the same price you can get the generally more effective Grand Cross.  Grand Cross is good enough to earn its high JP cost, Transfusion isn't.

EDIT 4:

Random question - Why does Jump, a situational skillset that the AI has a hard time using correctly, cost 900 JP to get the "full" version of, when a full set of Geomancy only costs 600?  

I know you can technically get four Jumpers by spreading out what you buy, but if you try to buy 600 JP worth of Jump, usually the Horizontal is too shit to be worth it, or you have almost no Vertical.  I'm not saying Level Jump 5 + Vertical Jump 8 need to be 600 JP combined, but some price cuts along the Jump skillset would be really nice considering Geomancy is generally both far better and far cheaper.  Also, ever considered adding a Level Jump 6 over what used to be Level Jump 8?  Easy to do in FFTPatcher, and 6 Horizontal would actually be worth 450-500 JP since its the range most other powerful skills like Flare, etc. utilize.  Level Jump 7 might be too much (though I'd add it too anyway for a test, but I like taking risks like that, you can easily turn Vertical Jump 2 into Level Jump 7 if you wanted), but Level Jump 6 wouldn't be an issue.  Having five different Level Jumps would also make reducing the costs of other Level Jumps easier, since as said before, Level Jump 6 can just take the place of Level Jump 5 at 400-500, and if you pull Vertical Jump 2 for Level Jump 7, you can easily just lower the costs of all the other Vertical Jumps by a tier as well and handle that.  

The other issue I'm for lowering JP costs on Jump / adding at least Level Jump 6 is because you generally also have to bomb 250 JP on Equip Polearm and give up having a useful Support to utilize Jump as a secondary, since Jump primary is almost useless due to Lancer's 9 SPD.  Level Jump 7 is probably unnecessary, but the rest at least should be definitely done, personally.

EDIT 5:

Half of MP should only be 200 JP, and be contrasted by Move-MP UP at 500 JP and 10% MP restoration and MP Restore at 400 JP.

[Dol]

Looks like 1.337 Quickening has the old Accumulate bug, where if you cast then move it stays on the panel rather than on the unit.   

[RavenOfRazgriz]

Looks like 1.337 Quickening has the old Accumulate bug, where if you cast then move it stays on the panel rather than on the unit.  

/sigh/

Give me 15 minutes.

Go download 1.338, everyone.

[Dol]

Hmmm, now Quickening does nothing, the way the old Scream worked way back in the day.  Such a pain to have to try and fix 

[RavenOfRazgriz]

Yeah I found the issue.  I trusted Accumulate to be "fixed" instead of actually checking everything myself... it wasn't fixed.

I think I got handled now.  No time to test it right now, but I'm 99% confident this will fix both skills so I'm uploading in a minute.

[Gaignun]

I have a few quick questions about damage modifiers.

1.  How does Attack UP modify the damage of a dagger?  Is it (4/3)(PA+Sp)/2 or ((4/3)PA+Sp)/2?

2.  Is elemental strengthening considered before or after Attack UP?  This matters for step-wise integer division.

3.  Are MA-based weapons (eg. staves) modified by Attack UP or Magic Attack UP?

4.  Are PA guns, MA guns, or flails modified by Attack UP, Magic Attack UP, or Overwhelm?

The battle mechanics FAQ states that elemental strengthening is considered before Attack UP.  It also states that Attack UP sets a dagger's damage to (4/3)(PA+Sp)/2, which doesn't seem right to me.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

1. It takes your final XA, multiply it by 4, and divide it by 3.  So in a case where PA and SP are 5, it should be (5+5) = 10, 10 / 2 = 5, 5 * 4 = 20, 20 / 3 = 6.  For Attack UP and Magic Attack UP, you perform the multiplication and then the division, not fractional multiplication (there's no difference, really, but that's how the game does it), and the decimal is dropped.  So with 5 base PA and 5 base SPD, your final Dagger XA would be 6.

2. Elemental Boost routine comes before the Attack UP / Magic Attack UP routine.  If you stack both, perform Elemental Boost, then perform Attack UP or Magic Attack UP on the new value.  So if you have 20 MA, Elemental Boost makes this 25 (20*5 = 100, 100/4), then Magic Attack UP boosts up this 25, resulting in a "final MA" of 33 (25*4 = 100, 100/3 = 33).

3. All Weapon Attacks (defined as the Attack Command, except Magic Guns) are always boosted by Attack UP.  Magic Guns are boosted by Magic Attack UP because their Formula merely calls a skill from a list, and that skill with WP substituted as XA is what's cast, taking the "shooting magic" example used to justify them in-game very literally.

4. Magic Guns are covered above.  Flails and non-Magic Guns are boosted by Attack UP, but only one instance of WP is boosted.  If you have 12 WP (Stone Gun), your final damage after Attack UP is 16*12, or 192 before Fury.  This is why Scorpion Tail only lost 1 WP despite its huge DPS, that 1 WP made Attack UP boosting go from 16*12 to 14*11.  Still very, very painful, but not OP.  The self-boosting Flails essentially use 12*10 as their base Formula for this reason, with Attack UP making them 16*10.

[Gaignun]

That was informative.  Thank you.

[formerdeathcorps]

Magicward and Iron Will are listed as 200 JP in the spreadsheet but 100 JP on the Master Guide.
Also, some of the moves under mediator are still listed as MA * 2 rather than MA on the Master Guide.

[FFMaster]

I fixed up the mediator problem about an hour ago. Fixed Magicward/Iron Will on the spreadsheet.

[Dol]

Any idea how to get a Paladin to use Quickening?  At first I thought that if they had Nurse they wouldnt do it, but my latest revision removed Nurse and they still wont use it.  Its pretty bizarre.

Also, Hawk's Eye really sucks.  Adds a charge time and does a very minimal increase in damage.

[Gaignun]

Another question: How does elemental weakness affect success rate?  I'm looking at Death, Demi, and Demi 2 in particular.