Final Fantasy Hacktics

I'm working on my own patch and I want to modify Draw Out to prevent it  being useful only for mage classes. It may not be totally useless on physical classes but it's pointless to use it that way. I believe this change would also make Samurai a viable carrier class.

My solution is to change the formula of the hp damage DO's to Elemental's formula. What do you guys think?

That alternative has been suggested before. Using the Elemental formula makes Draw Out a little worse on Black Mage, but it's still very good on him. Actually, IIRC the best Draw Out abilities will still be better on Black Mage because the formula will turn out to be  [(PA+20)/2]*MA  or something like that. Since PA isn't nearly as important as MA, Samurai's MAM still needs to be boosted so that he is better at using Draw Out as say, Geomancer. Samurai is then effective at casting magic, but his low MPM hinders his magic casting ability.

i'm working on my personal patch and i find extremely easy to limit draw out by putting crazy high prices on them.

I'd put a charge time...

karsten: crazy prices on the katana, right? Just making sure you didn't make Draw Out itself cost money.

I just think Draw Out should be toned down. High price katana is a nice idea too.

A good idea would be to just give Draw Out the Geomancy formula lower the K value and give Samurai higher MA multipliers and extremely low MP growth/multipliers. That would make Samurai best at using the Draw Out abilities then you could boost the prices of katanas (which was already suggested) and you have a more balanced skill set I think.

Quote from: "VincentCraven"karsten: crazy prices on the katana, right? Just making sure you didn't make Draw Out itself cost money.

I just think Draw Out should be toned down. High price katana is a nice idea too.

already tried and works.... when you PRECIOUS 50.000 gil katana is at a stake, you avoid using it for trifle battles or when there's no need, right?

You could balance it much more tightly by only being able to hold a certain number of Katanas or something like that. Money is an infinite resource after all.

The ideal number for me would be 2 spare of each katana at the current breakage rate.

So, in the end I decided to use the holy sword formula for hp damage Draw Out.

Turns out that IT WORKS LIKE A CHARM.

Why using that formula is great:

-First off, you have to set Y=0 to avoid broken damage.

-Second, a very interesting thing happens...the WP used by the formula is not the WP of the equipped weapon, but the WP of the correspondent katana in the stock.

-third, for some reason I don't know, using that formula makes katanas break much more often. There's no need to raise katana price because you're gonna rebuy them a lot, trust me.

-another side effect of this formula...the DOs that add a status now will do it everytime, at least I never saw it fail. It can't be just my luck. 100% status effect is tolerable IMO, better than broken damage.

-samurais are not useless anymore. For the first time ever I was using a samurai over a ninja in my playthrough. I must confess that ninja's PA multiplier is nerfed in my patch, but whatever. lol.

There you have it, a balanced PA based Draw Out. MA based Draw Out never made sense to me, samurai is a physical class. I mean, Imagine PA based summon magic, that wouldn't make any sense, would it?

:O That's right, it does the same with weapons: 100% Add status.

Actually that sounds really great...

You know why? Because with the samurai having innate Two hands, that means DO will cause half the damage of a normal physical attack. So, in the end, it won't be really broken! Except that katanas are normally Brave based.
So a 50 Brave samurai with innate two hands will cause the same damage as using Chirijiraden for area effect except that's its very liekly to break.

Great find BMS.

We finally found a solution. Yay!! This calls for the super happy face emoticon  

BS, you're my hero.

Yeah this is a great fix. Nice job.

The only potential issue I can see is Muramasa. With 100% chance of status infliction this skill could be extremely over-powered. Drop WP to compensate perhaps? Or maybe change the range to 2v3?

No kidding.　Perhaps just Death Sentence?

That would be the most sensible fix, yes. It's just a shame that we can't have both. It was an interesting combo.

Also, should Asura and Koutetsu have their WP increased? They're low damage AND have no interesting effects. I feel sorry for them

Wait a minute, this means that DO is PA based and not MA based! So much for Genji Gauntlet being useful for Samurai

And we probably need something like increased range for Kotetsu or better yet just another status.

Quote from: "VincentCraven"Wait a minute, this means that DO is PA based and not MA based! So much for Genji Gauntlet being useful for Samurai

And we probably need something like increased range for Kotetsu or better yet just another status.

Increased range sounds better, to me.

Quote from: "VincentCraven"Wait a minute, this means that DO is PA based and not MA based! So much for Genji Gauntlet being useful for Samurai

And we probably need something like increased range for Kotetsu or better yet just another status.

Genji Gauntlet is PA +2/MA +2, so it's useful.

Oh and another thing...Limberry's dificulty is borderline insane now, thanks to Elmdor's uber PA and 100% status from Muramasa. N-Kai armlets will help against confusion, but then Celia and Lede will screw you.  

I never went after him anyway, that damned hamedo.  I always attacked the assassins.  With the new formula, will that also mean that draw out will have the same amount of damage regardless of class?

Another suggestion.  Do ALL the swords have to have the same formula.   Let some be MA based, some PA based and/or some PA/MA based.  That way no other class will be a superior carrier. Some classes may have the PA or the MA But none will have both like the Samurai except maybe geomancer.

Since Craven is linking to this topic, it should be pointed out that a Monk with Draw Out and Attack Up will do nearly twice as much damage as a Samurai, due to it being bare-handed.

@BlackMageShin

We tested 2D on DrawOut as a possible fix to Chirijiraden for V1.3 and, a couple things about this:

1) On my game, 2D DrawOut ate up the katana 100% of the time, without displaying "broken". No, not some of the time, every single Draw Out used resulted in 1 katana GONE from inventory. It simply vanished.

In other fights, the Katanas simply didn't break. Ever. Very buggy.

2) It can be boosted by Martial Arts. This means a Monk with Draw Out and ATK UP will deal wayyyy worse DO damage than the original DO you were trying to nerf.

^ That is why when you tested on Elmdor he was doing insane damage. Martial Arts boosts it and Elmdor always has Martial Arts equipped.


What we did for V1.3 was leave the good old Draw Out formula, since it correctly displays "broken" when katanas break, and just give the Samu very good MAM and nerf the DrawOut formula Y values.

This way, Draw Out damage is down overall, and Samurai is still good with it, and it top-end PA + MA UP DrawOut damage is nerfed at the same time.

100% AOE attacks should NOT be capable of doing high damage. The damn skillset has killer support / healing spells too. Not to mention samu innate Two Hands.

As I already said, Martial Arts + Attack up OR Two Hands both results in 2x DO damage. Two Hands + Martial arts = 3x damage; not sure you actually NEED a 2H weapon, but I doubt.

Holy crap  

I didn't know about the Two Hands part.

I too did a test, and the katana broke every time with no "broken" text.  Unfortunately, since not all katana can use the Holy Sword formula this causes an imbalance between Bizen Boat, Murasame, etc. versus the other offensive katana.

Not only does the BMG say that Mod2 attacks that are wpn-elemental (like Holy Sword) cannot be boosted by Martial Arts, but also I did a test myself.

Here's what I did:

I set up my SCUS_942.21 so that units would have Samurai, Monk, and Ninja unlocked at the start. Also DO skills cost 0 so that I didn't need to get the JP for real. Instead of starting from the vanilla version, I started from my FFTSigma style one, so I have a link to that here in case you would like to look at it.
For some reason I cannot post the digest file of changes.

I then went to a file that I had gotten to chapter 3 in and bought 5 male Gemini soldiers to keep the Zodiac sign variable constant.

I then did two tests and got the results below.  In both tests the primary subject was either Aquarius or Libra (both good compatibility).  Asura damage on the left, Heaven's Cloud damage on the right.  Br/Fa seems to have no effect (and it shouldn't):

Test1 - All Barehanded; against Omega the Steel Hawk
          PA   MA      Damage     Brave/Faith
Squire:    5 3      42/66         66/65
Chemist:   4 4      35/55         42/43
Ninja:     5 3      42/66         42/61
Samurai:   6 3      49/77         67/64
Monk:   6 3      49/77         46/40

Test2 - All with weapons; against Aigiparn the Red Panther
(Damage in parenthesis is normal compatibility)
                    Damage              Weapon (all at regular 7 power)
Squire:          42(35)/66(55)       Mythril Sword
Chemist:         35(28)/55(44)        Orichalcum
Ninja:           42(35)/66(55)        Orichalcum x2
Samurai:         49(42)/77(66)        Asura Knife
Monk:            49(42)/77(66)           ---
Now this data alone does not really negate what you have been saying, but it does mean that whatever I did works just fine.  Please do a test yourselves and/or point out any flaws in my experiments.

Edit: No really. If Voldemort7 had some fights in which the katana DIDN'T EVER break, then we might need more data.

The units

More units and a bonus pic.

Wouldn't the simplest option be to make them require sword weilding? Then you can't throw it on a wizard without equip sword, which takes MA UP and rods/staves out of the picture. Still be pretty good on a Geomancer with the right gear, but thats hardly broken.

Quote from: "Stormlock"Wouldn't the simplest option be to make them require sword weilding? Then you can't throw it on a wizard without equip sword, which takes MA UP and rods/staves out of the picture. Still be pretty good on a Geomancer with the right gear, but thats hardly broken.

?????????

You mean changing Katana to a sword-type item, right?

Because if not, Samurais will not be able to use their own skillsets.

The Require Sword flag checks for Swords, FellSwords, and K Swords to be equipped.

It doesn't check for the Katana class of item.

Isn't the idea to check for Katanas to be equipped instead of Swords?

 Draw Out skills don't really have a weapon strike flag to begin with, they don't suggest that the caster must have a sword equipped, but rather, draws one out from inventory.

And if you do change katanas to sword-types to solve the problem, then that will remove Equip Knife from the game, and limit whoever wants to use DO to use Equip Sword as an S.

All a Wiz (or TM) has to do is Equip Sword + MA stack with standard DO Q's and reach insanely high damage no MA UP needed.


This method would also mean that every job that can equip Swords can now suddenly equip Katanas too.

It is a good idea, but it won't work as far as I can understand it.

Wasn't aware katanas don't count as swords for that purpose. How bizzare. Still, I don't see much of an issue changing katanas to swords and letting Sams equip them by default. Equip knife is pretty useless anyways, since katanas offer little besides raw attack power, and any class that would actually want to equip a high attack weapon would already have access to decent weapons and be better served by Attack UP or other support.

The main idea was simply to limit it to being used by tanky type characters. It's a pity the materia blade flag can't be fiddled with for this purpose- thats another skillset with an odd connection.

It's certainly a difficult problem. Raising Sams MA stat creates the issue of making them better spellcasters, which can be problematic with secondaries like Geomancy, Math, and summon. I suppose if you added MP costs or otherwise balanced those differently, gimped Sam MP and prevented them from wearing robes it would all work out. Otherwise Samurai are just mages with with knives and helmets instead of rods and hats. They also become better geomancers than geomancers. It's really the sort of problem you'd have to rebalance half the game around to fix, unfortunately.

Quote from: "Stormlock"It's certainly a difficult problem. Raising Sams MA stat creates the issue of making them better spellcasters, which can be problematic with secondaries like Geomancy, Math, and summon.

I do not see why this is a problem at all. Magical commands are HEAVILY under-used as secondaries.

If DrawOut Q are down (which they were too high for straight up MA*Y formula to begin with), Draw Out is automatically nerfed no matter what job it's on.

Let the samus get MA boost and be able to use nerfed  Q Draw Out just  as well as any other caster type.

I don't see the problem with high MA on Samurai supposing people decide to put Elemental, Summon Magic, or whatever other MA command they would like on their Samurai.

MA commands are heavily under-used on armor wearers, and it would hardly be broken on a Samurai. (By giving them better MA, it's a 10 or 20% boost, I'm not saying give them 150 MAM.)




I also don't see the problem with Samurai becoming a better Elemental carrier than a Geomancer.

Wizards carry Summon Magic better than Summoners. This hardly makes Summoner job useless does it?

Wizard and Time Mage also carries Math Skill better than Calculator, again, not a problem.

Geomancer carries Holy Sword better than Holy Knight due to their ability to wear clothes. Not a problem. Holy Knight still sees tons of use.

Ninja carries Talk Skill better than Mediator, and it also does not make them useless.

Hell, every job in the game carries the Item command better than a Chemist, you don't see anyone worried about Chemist job becoming useless do you?

If you're going to go nuts on balance, you must worry about the things the player will actually use, because no matter how "balanced" something is, there will simply be stronger mixes & strats than others, despite everything being balanced as much as possible.

One job carrying a primary better than the base job does not go against the idea of balance in the slightest.

QuoteStill, I don't see much of an issue changing katanas to swords and letting Sams equip them by default.

This works, as long as you're OK with Samurai now being able to equip Swords as well as Katana (Rune Blade plz!), Katanas being used to activate Sword Skill commands, removal of Equip Knife, and every job that can use swords (Knight, Geomancer, Squire, Sword Skillers, etc) now being able to equip Katana as well.