Final Fantasy Hacktics

Had a bit of spare time so it appears a little earlier.

For the upcoming version 131, I want to see if people disagree with the direction this patch is going. I know a few changes have been gladly welcomed, while others have been met with a lot of hate. Plenty of people have discussed about different balancing concepts, and it all gets muddled up. So here is a place to tell me exactly what you want. I have a list of questions you can answer. If there are too many questions for you, then just answer as many as you want. So here goes:

1) Overall, what do you think of the general direction of balance? Would you change/add/remove any core mechanics in Arena?

2) What do you think of the number of equipment options available? Are there too many or too little?

3) What do you think of the number of skills available? Are there too many or too little?

4) List the classes/skillsets which you think are too powerful/weak, explain why and what you would do to remedy the situation.

5) List the equipment which you think are too powerful/weak, explain why and what you would do to remedy the situation.

6) Anything else that needs to be mentioned that doesn't fit here.

1)  I would add some more disadvantages for Low faith units, Ideas I've had are reduced Haste/protect/shell duration, Magic that deals more damage at lower Target faith, and reduced chance for reaction triggering.

2) I like the number of equipment options avalible, Some tweaking of Poles, Staves and Knives might help things but The equipment is varied enough to be fun

3) I like the number of skills,  i think that some jobs might benefit from 1 or 2 additional skills but I don't think large scale cuts are necessary

4)  Too Powerful:  Paladins;  Enough HP to tank 3 Flares when running Min faith, enough Patk to 1shot any unit not wearing heavy armour, average speed and movement self healing, status buffing, Physical AOE that can be self healing when properly equipped. Tons of weapon options including unique access to the most powerful weapon class in the game.  How I'd fix:  I'd make their abilities Faith based and their speed to 7 and their CEV to 0,  the game needs a tanky hard hitting melee class, but it needs to have some drawbacks instead of being a universal trump card.


WAY Too Powerful:  Monks  Stupidly high Patk and a Patk squared based damage formula allows them to 1shot any unit if they're running Atk up or 2swords.  9 Speed on the highest Base HP unit,  Free Ribbons.   How I'd fix:Lower their speed to 7 Disallow 2swords punching, Lower the bonus from Martial arts to be only slightly better than ATK up, Halve the damage formula for Spin fist, Earth slash, and Wave fist but not Repeating fist.

Slightly Too Powerful: Wizards; Reason, Flare,  What I'd do Increase its MP cost to 60 so that it couldn't be spammed as easily.

Too weak: Chemists and Mediators: Reason Archers. Right now there are 3 classes whose main feature is the ability to quickly do ranged physical damage  However Archers Have Better HP, Better Speed, Better Reaction abilites, Better Movement, and better Evasion than either chemists or mediators.  Archers Also have better status affliction than mediators and are better users of Item than chemists due to their better speed and easy access to speed save.
How I'd change them.   I'd raise chemists speed to 1 higher than archers so that they're starting off as better Item based healers,  and for Mediators I'd raise their base HP to be on par with Geomancers and Lancers and give them Innate Unyielding So that there's a clear seperation on weither you want a fast gunner, a tanky gunner or an evasive shield wearing one who can bypass enemy immunities by breaking their stuff.


5) Too weak:  Daggers  +1 movement isn't bad on a weapon but its kinda useless when the best one you can dual weild has a 4WP
How I'd fix Let them all be dual weildable.

Too Weak:  Some Poles, There's no reason to deliberately equip the weaker weapons as they are,  I suggest either deleting the substandard versions or reworking them into weapons with various status adds

1)  Balance.  Balance is progressing smoothly.  As the beta continues, I think anything thats truly useless or broken will be snuffed out.  With the increase in teams and videos lately (thanks again casters, I know that setting up & recording matches is a pain!), you'll get plenty of info.

2)  Equips.  Total number of equips are fine.  Some are kinda useless, but thats addressed in #5.

3)  Skills.  Again, number of skills seems fine.

4.1)  Class stats balance.  This is the base job stats that need tweaking in my opinion.

4.2)  Skillset balance.  I'll take this set by set.  This is my viewpoint of skillsets as the secondary ability set.

5)  Items


6)  Misc  I think M-Ev needs some help.  When you look at the matches now, most of the MA based attacks you see arent evadable.  Flare, Holy, Summons, Black 4, Life Drain are all 100%.  The only thing M-Ev is really guarding against now is Draw Out and Yin Yang.  Its good, just not really even remotely prioritized.  P-Ev is good because most of the time you are going to face at least 1 physical attacker.  I'd really like to see Geomancy M-Ev.  I'd also recommend boosting the M-Ev %s on gear.  Abandon boosts your evasion by 50%, so best case scenerio right now is something like 60% M-Ev.

*Edit*  Was waiting for my 2 bard/mime teams to be tested rather than theorycrafting.  Mimes not being able to mimic any songs or dances would be for the best IMO.

Thats all for me right now I guess (and after reviewing it, its plenty long).

1) Don't know what is everyone else talking about, but for somereason people don't like low faith units even if they get beaten up by mages of doom(a reallly kick ass team), but yeah it's going in fine dirrection.

2) Well I can say that the more equipment is always better, but there really isn't need for it.

3) Personally I think I count whole jump skillset as one skills, and it's only skillset that feels like it's really empty, otherwise good.

4.1)

5)



6) Make almost every spell magic evadable(inculding elemenal and draw out).

I play Wall of Text, UU1, Creature - Wall, Defender, When Wall of Text comes into play, all players skip their next 14 turns. 0/0







EDIT: Tweaked Geo skill suggestions
EDIT: Lil' Finger Guard thing. Spear/Book tweak. Added Staves.
EDIT: Oh, maybe no robes on Squire if they get the "better" treatment.

1. Balance seems like it's headed in the right direction.
2. The number of equips is good, but some of the equips quality-wise is meh.
5. The main problem with the current set of equipment are some of the weapons, most notably, Axes, Knives, Staves. Making all knives Two Swordable would be a good start. Hmm, Eternal mentioned using Melly's skills. 25% to proc Hellcry Punch/Shellbust Stab/etc on either Knives or Axes would be good. Knives that proc Swordskill should definitely not be Two Swordable. Blargh, 25% feels too high. Could it be closer to 15%? I think it'd be reasonable at 15%. Alternatively, 25% to proc Steal Weapon/Helmet/etc. That'd be about 10-15% to remove a piece of equipment. And for the record, 100% Slow on hit would be OP.
A one-handed Axe would likely see some use. So, keep Battle Axe as is, make Giant Axe strengthen all elements, and have Slasher be a one-handed axe? WP values for Axes could go up to compensate for rando-damage, as well.
White Staff, Rainbow Staff, Gold Staff need reworking. Well, maybe not Rainbow - it's fairly interesting, but not sure how much use it is, especially since we've never seen one. But definitely White and Gold Staff - these rely on the AI whacking someone with a staff, and then hoping that it'll trigger something. Rainbow is too easily hosed by the abundant elemental absorb equips out there. Granted, that could make it an interesting healing tool, but that is likely it. Poles are better for MA-based melee damage, anyway. At the very least, make it 100% Esuna, Cancel Positive Status on hit (for White and Gold, respectively), but I'd like to see something new. Don't have ideas for them right now.
Speaking of Poles, there's those three weird low WP poles lying around. I don't think we need to change them to make them competitive with other Poles - we have enough options for Poles as is. Of course, if there's a super interesting idea, I would like to see it, but Poles are not a high priority.
Bags! H Bag (halve all elements) is the only bag worth using right now.
Monster Dict: Choco Meteor + Human MA = meh. Due to lack of ideas, Dol's suggestion seems solid.
I was thinking if we've maybe slapped on too many status immunities to the heavy armor. We're making the tanky, high HP units even harder to deal with by giving them immunities to the most commonly used negative statuses. (mainly Don't Act and Sleep)

3. Current number of skills is good.
4. Varying AoEs would be nice for Draw Out, possibly Summon and/or Black Magic as well.
Hmm, make Ruins AoE, but only remove -2 PA/MA? Speed Ruin could probably stay single target. Magic Ruin could also get AoE. Spellbreaker would be nice if it also did some damage.
Persuade - either change what it does or hit% way up. It only delays an action, whereas Don't Act/Sleep delays multiple actions, and are simply more devastating (no evasion, no reactions, etc).
Squidgy's suggestions for Pray/Doubt Faith, Blind Rage seem good. Yin-Yang in general is a bit weak due to weapons with 100% add status and the ease of gaining immunity to status through equipment.
Kagesougi, Haku Korosu are very meh. Haku Korosu is too unlikely to be used, and Kagesougi's Blind on hit doesn't feel too useful. I'd rather get Shuriken/Ele-ton or simply spend my JP elsewhere.

6. I don't see Cancel: Charging being too useful because most mages have Short Charge. Mages also remain squishy, so killing them cancels their action and forces another enemy to spend a turn reviving the freshly killed mage. (this applies to Reflect, obviously)

("Well, I had expected this to be up by Friday, when I might have actually started in on stats. However, given this is up now and I'm still behind--curse you, Excel--on what I was doing with abilities, I might as well get this over with and destroy all your eyes now," he said...12 hours ago.)

I'd say I'll try to make this as short and as painless as possible, but I'm not in the habit of lying and, given that I'm not a politician, I don't exactly need the practice. However, I am a merciful being, at least comparative to the utter, uncaring construct that is the rest of this universal existence.

*places cyanide pill on the table*

Feel to take that before this is over.

I will say here before I begin that I'll be trying to put things in order of importance when it comes to numerated lists within categories. Also, like Dol, since I am nothing if not original, I will be making use of spoiler lists as well or else this would be even more unreadable.

I'll also probably be mentioning 1.3 a lot. It's not to snipe (mostly), but rather because this patch is supposed to overtake 1.3. "tournament"-wise. So the comparisons seem pretty inevitable. I just felt that I should mention that ahead of time:

• Balance: It's going as smoothly as it can go given how much you've been changing and how much you've been doing basically by yourself. So let me again say congrats on that first and foremost.
  
  As for "core" mechanics, I'm still somewhat uncomfortable that there is no Brave and Faith restrictions like the other tournaments, but given that it's mostly been okay without them sans Faith-based magic, which just got buffed, I wouldn't say to change that just yet outside of raising the floor of Faith to 50 or something. Similarly, I'm still wary of Fury. If anything, it seems like the "floor" for base damage needs to be lowered Brave-wise, but people still seem to die all the same without it being as much as an OHKO-fest as 1.3 is for the most part, so that too can remain for now.



• Equips: This seems like a rather pointless and vague question considering you have a question specifically about which Items are too strong or too weak, but I figure I might as well answer.
  
  So, "Yes. It does much better job at making most equipment usable than 1.3 ever did." Perhaps that's unfair given how much the equipment in 1.3 was still like its vanilla counterparts, but it's true never the less, especially since some of the more stupid weapons have been done away with like Don't Act-inflicting Spell Edge and Death Sentence-inflicting Assassin Dagger.



• Skills: As above, this feels like a somewhat pointless and vague question, especially given that in this instance, you have not one but two different categories dedicated to answering this question. That said, like the above, I might as well give answer.
  
  So, "Yes, unlike 1.3, skills are generally viable enough for all classes except one or maybe two, which I'll talk about below. Unlike equipment, it's a lot more fair to compare skills in 1.3 to skills here since 1.3 skills are far less like vanilla than 1.3 equipment."



• Class and Skillset: Oh, boy. It begins: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAwWPadFsOA)
  
  
  spoiler: Class Warfare

  
  
  • Paladin: It's funny how even after all the nerfs these have guys have taken--even that horrible Jump 2 that got reversed but is still on the stat chart--and all buffs (relatively) that other classes have gotten, they're still arguably top dog. Perhaps because of this, there's not really much more you could do to nerf them before you crippled them into worthlessness (again) and then someone else takes top spot anyway. I'd say they need three changes:
    
    
    spoiler: Pure Power

    1. HP: They have the most HP of all three classes that can innately equip Heavy Armor. I'd say that they could stand to lose 10 HP (but probably not more than that), though I'd probably say that just because they can innately Equip Armor anyway.
    
    2. PA: They have almost as much PA as Monks, which they don't really need. They can stand to lose a PA point, especially if you can make it so that either the female Paladin doesn't lose that PA or the female Paladin actually gains a PA point. I'm not sure the latter is possible, though, so female Paladins are likely to remain good only for Dance like on pokeytax's Slow Dance team (that everyone bitched about).
    
    3. Weapons: There's really no good reason that Paladins can equip Katana innately, especially given Samurai's...lackluster equipment options. Paladins, IMO, need to lose the ability to equip Katana. Maybe they can gain the ability to equip Flails to "compensate", but more than anything (when talking about equipment), I think they need to lose the ability innately use Katana.
    
    
    I honestly don't think that Paladin could lose much more before it just starts to become crappy.
  
  
  
  • Thief: Ah, this class is similarly still problematic even though, unlike 1.3, it doesn't have that pesky Innate Concentrate. Like Paladin, I'd say they need at least three changes stat-wise:
    
    
    spoiler: A Too Smooth Criminal

    1. vs. Ninja: Thief is presently a lot better than Ninja at using Ninjutsu than Ninja are given how much better its stats are than Ninja. The only advantages Ninja has over Thief are more MP & more MA, which are pretty much moot given both of their skill-sets & how Ninja has only 5 more MP, and innate Two Swords, which is surprisingly not that huge of an advantage given how well you've balanced equipment, including getting rid of the stupidity that was Don't Act Spell Edge. This needs to change, which is primarily the reason for these changes before we start talking about skills in the section below.
    
    2. The Fastest Thing Alive: I never thought I'd say this, but there's really no reason that Ninja isn't the fastest class or, rather, that Thief is the fastest class, especially when Thief currently has Quickening. I'd argue that Ninja and Thief should trade speeds, but I'd be equally fine if Thief just dropped to 9 without Ninja going up to 10.
    
    3. HP: It seems really odd that Thief would have so much HP for both the fastest class and physical class with the most distance advantage (between Steal Heart and the Ruins, though more Steal Heart) this side of Archer. They can probably stand to lose at least 10 HP if not more, especially since they have Innate Flee now.
    
    4. PA: They probably need to lose a point of PA, if only on the male side.
    
    
    They could maybe switch Jump stats with Ninja as well, but that's hardly vital. My complaints about their skill set will likely be much longer unfortunately.
  
  
  
  • Squire: Never thought that I'd complain about this class, but like Thief, it pretty much obviates another class when it comes using its Primary better in most cases without really having to sacrifice anything, in this case Geomancer:
    
    
    spoiler: Be A Planeteer

    1. Move: There's really no reason that they should have 4 Move, though arguably it's a bad thing a lot of the time. Still, I'd lessen their Move to 3.
    
    2. Gender Inequality: Males need to lose a point of PA and females need to lose a point of MA. I'm tempted to say two points of MA, but then Ultima gets screwed even more and no one has even really bothered using it after its needed nerf when it was blowing up everything four or five updates ago.
    
    3. HP: I'd drop their HP by 10. The only way I'd drop their HP down by 20 (or more) was if they could suddenly Equip Armor innately (in which case they'd likely need other stats nerfs).
    
    4. MP: I want to say that this "deserves" a drop as well, but I think it's fine where it is, if only because Ultima already has a lot going against it with the other changes. In fact, with the MA drop, I'd even go as far to say to maybe switch it and Chemist's MP values, but that seems perhaps much as well. So I'd say to leave this as it is right now, actually.
    
    
    I feel like I should point out something about Squire's equipment, but that's more with the equipment itself than Squire's access to it (for the most part), so it can wait.
  
  
  
  • Mediator: Heh, almost forgot about these poor bastards, probably because no one has used them in a while. Unlike the three above classes, these guys need a lot of change because they're easily the weakest class. They need significant buffs:
    
    
    spoiler: Oh, Rate Her

    1. MA: It's pretty damn sad that Chemist, of all classes, can use their primary skill set of Talk Skill better than Mediators can; I'm really not sure why Chemist has that much MP and MA in the first place, but we'll get to that. Anyway, I'd argue that Mediators need at least 2 more MA, maybe even 3. 2 seems like a more reasonable suggestion at present, though.
    
    2. Better Innate: Currently, Mediator is the ONLY class with an Innate that's completely useless. Monster Talk has absolutely no value at present considering monsters are still not around (yet) and so a class with what might otherwise be a useful (if still likely mediocre) Innate ends up basically having nothing even though it's weaker than every other class. As such, people have been suggesting Magic Defend Up Innate, which I can somewhat see. For Embargo, I've currently been toying around with the idea of them having Defend Up Innate, so I'd be fine with that as well. They obviously shouldn't have both, though, and them having Unyielding Innate would just step on Mime's already tender toes. Additionally, you can't give them a reaction innately and there's really not a Movement that would really help them unless you wanted to be bold and give them innate Move-HP Up, which is..."controversial", but I doubt it would make them OP. Regardless, they need a better innate then what they currently have, even if Monster Talk might be useful eventually.
    
    3. HP: Even with one of the above innates, Mediators will still need more of it. +10 HP should be enough.
    
    
    I'm tempted to say that they should maybe get Poles when it comes to equipment, but enough people have those currently. They could maybe get Robes, though? I mean, they're basically a magical class as it is....
  
  
  
  • Monk: I'd actually say you've done a pretty good job of reigning them in stat-wise. That said, I think they could maybe stand to lose a PA point if Paladins are losing one. Not really as huge a deal as what's actually still a problematic about them. Other than that, the Jump of 4 is still a bit odd, but I suppose it's "sensible", especially given the low (read: necessarily non-existent) Vertical tolerance of their abilities still. So, again, it's of low importance. However, they should probably lose a point of Speed considering how hard they still (can) hit. I'm only bringing them up "this soon" as a contrast to....
  
  
  
  • Mime: Mimes honestly seem like they need (slightly) more HP. Most the time, they're still getting 2HKO or even OHKO'd despite Unyielding by teams that can do serious damage, even though they have no way of ever getting M-EV or more physical evasion (sans Innate Awareness, which is probably not worth it). They'll likely need some type of boost anyway since people are (rightfully) asking for Elemental (and thus Counter Flood) be nerfed. Female Mimes seem like they need (a lot) more HP given how even teams that use magic-Miming tend to use male Mimes just because of the rather marked HP gap being much larger than any other male/female class HP gap. I suppose males Mimes because they benefit more from innate Martial Arts.
  
  
  
  • Ninja: As said above, they're very much outclassed by Thief, though that has more to do with Thief being "overpowered" than Ninja being "underpowered" at present. I say they need slightly more HP (no more than 10) and maybe should become the fastest/only class with 10 Speed. However, if they gained Speed, then they might need to take a PA-drop due to innate Two Swords, even though not all Ninja Blades/Swords/Turtles/whatever can even be used with Two Swords any more (as it should be, IMO). But, yeah, they need "something" compared to Thief.
  
  
  
  • Samurai: Speaking of Eastern classes that I never though I'd advocate for, Samurai really has pitifully low HP for an Heavy Armor class, especially with all the (necessary) nerfs that Draw Out has taken. They could stand to have at least 10 more HP I'd say. I'd also argue that their C-EV should become 10 because they're also the only Heavy Armor class that can't equip Shields. That said, I can't say I really agree with giving them "back" Two Hands innately like some others are suggesting, especially given the PA hit they'd have to take.
  
  
  
  • Geomancer: While rather inferior to Squire using their own skill set at present, I don't think they need much in the way of buffs if Squire gets nerfed. They could perhaps get the 4 move that people are clamoring for Squire to lose, but only if Elemental gets its range reduced by one.
  
  
  
  • Chemist: Outside of its HP, for some reason it seems like it and Mediator have reversed stats. I'm not really sure why it has so much MP or MA considering it doesn't use either for its own class and it seems like it should be at 9 Speed instead of Mediator, especially since "Item Bots" pretty much always use Speed Save at present anyway. Honestly, just switching Mediator's and Chemist's current stats outside of HP would probably solve at least half of what I talked about under Mediator above.
  
  
  
  • Lancers: It's still quite the odd class. It's not overpowered outside of maybe the ease of 2-range, Two Hands-destruction, but that still requires quite a bit of sacrifice. However, it might need a slight nerfs to HP and PA with all the other suggestions I'm offering up for other classes. That said, to compensate, perhaps allow it to wear Robes? It's the only armored class that can't and it's not like it'd break anything, especially with as horrible MA as Lancer has.
  
  
  
  • Priest: It seems like it could stand to lose an MA point, though if that's the case, then it should probably trade MP values with Wizard. Not much else is "wrong" about its values, though.
  
  
  
  • Wizard: See above. Nothing really wrong with Wizard stat-wise.
  
  
  
  • Time Mage: It doesn't really need anything, but I could maybe see it getting slightly more C-EV since it fits with the whole "speed" motif. Not really necessary, though.
  
  
  
  • Summoner: It could maybe use more HP, but I don't necessarily agree with that as Summon Magic is now. It could maybe use slightly less MA, though I'd rather lessen Summon Magic than the Summoner.
  
  
  
  • Oracle: I'm not really sure. I've always liked Oracle, so I feel like anything I say here is especially biased, but I feel like they could use a bit more MA (at the expense of someone else like Scholar or Time Mage or Priest or even Summoner). Then again, they're already devastating enough with Poles. Then again, Scholars also gets Poles innately and have two more MA currently, so....
  
  
  
  • Scholar: The females could stand to lose one MA. The males could stand to have one more if it's possible to do both at the same time. Otherwise, the females should take precedence and then stat-wise the class would be fine. Other than that, perhaps lose the ability to equip Poles and gain the ability to equip Shields?
  
  
  
  • Archer: Like Oracle, I feel like anything positive I say here might be utter bias, so I'll just say that I think they're fine, stat-wise. They could maybe use more MA, but female Archers have 6 MA already, so, eh.
  
  
  
  • Bard & Dancer: These are completely fine. It's nice to see that they're (physically) credible threats unlike 1.3, even if they still have better things to do, as it should be.
  
  
  Sadly, that was probably the shorter part of the two:
  
  
  spoiler: Skill Madness

  Yo dawg, I heard you like reading, so I put spoilers in your spoilers so you can read while you read.
  
  ...Anyway, to help save what little space I'll probably have left, I'll just say here that all Equip X abilities sans Equip Shield and Equip Armor should probably lose 50-100 JP.
  
  

  
  
  • Mimic, Song & Dance: Might as well put these three skill sets together and get this albatross out of the way since these three classes greatly benefit from each other.
    
    
    spoiler: Dance Magic Dance, Sing Magic Sing

    1. Mimes: Despite having no actual skill of their own, they probably need to not be able to Mimic the stat-boosting songs and, arguably, any stat-boosting abilities. I say this even with that "stat-boost limitation" hack supposedly floating around. I don't think they need any other "restrictions" on their Mimic ability at present, though.
    
    2. Life Song: Should maybe become 5 CT, but that's iffy.
    
    3. Angel Song: Should maybe become 5 CT, but that's mostly to be symmetric to Life Song. Might want it to restore less MP, though, especially given the it restores as almost as much MP as Flare takes.
    
    4. Cheer Song, Battle Song & Magic Song: Need to not be subject to Mimic.
    
    5. Wiznaibus: It should probably becomes 5 CT given how its unevadeable and most of what makes it "backfire", i.e. stat-boosting reactions, needs to be fixed anyway. Also, can we just call it "With Knives" already? The Engrish being maintained on this name bugs me, especially when things like "Oberisk" were fixed--to "Obelisk"--forever ago.
    
    6. Witch Hunt: The only reason I can see this becoming 5 CT is purely symmetry since, frankly, it sucks. I don't think anyone has ever used it, especially given how one Angel Song is equal to about two of these and how usable Bards & MP Restore actually are now.
    
    7. Slow Dance, Polka Polka & Disillusion: Need to not be subject to Mimic.
    
    8. Last Dance: Might need to be not subject to Mimic, but given that it's already only 34%, it's difficult to tell. Maybe leave it alone for now.
    
    9. Brave Up & Faith Up: Could at least take a 50 JP reduction, if not 100 JP reduction.
    
    
    Sadly, Lancer couldn't make it to this party (yet).
  
  
  
  • Steal: Thief arguably has the most problematic individual skillset...despite the fact that it's only because of one skill, maybe two skills, that is/are the problem.
    
    
    spoiler: Heartbeat, Heartbreak

    1. Quickening: Needs to die in the strongest of fires. Giving it CT like some people suggest will not ultimately help and giving it more MP would arguably make the AI less dumb about using it; while that would normally be good, given that it's mostly AI stupidity that muzzles this broken thing.... So, yeah, it just needs to die.
    
    2. Steal Heart: As much as I appreciate you not being as heterosexist as vanilla or 1.3 were, the fact that Steal Heart works on both genders now makes it OP IMO. At the very least, it completely screws over Oracle's Beguile, which unlike Steal Heart, relies on Faith, takes MP, takes CT, is evadable, is subject to Reflect AND Counter Magic & Counter Flood. So, yeah. Steal Heart either needs to go back to affecting only the opposite sex or needs to get some heavy debuffs to its current form, like being subject to Counter Flood and costing MP or having CT. Hell, arguably, the heterosexual version of it could use some of those same restrictions.
    
    3. Bad Luck: As someone said, it probably needs to lose Oil for Poison. Personally, I'd also like to see it lose Dead for...something else.
    
    4. Spellbreaker: There's really no reason this should be subject to Counter Flood, of all things. Counter Magic, yes. Counter Flood, no.
    
    5. Steal Accessory: Similarly, there's no reason this should be subject to Counter Flood still. I also still argue that it shouldn't be subject to evade, though of course the X value would have to be lowered at least to 45 or even 40. Still, considering how much JP it costs, that's the least you could do.
    
    
    Funny how only two things make this class really obnoxious while two of its other skills are so underpowered as to be never worth using.
    
    I'm tempted to say that the Ruins shouldn't be subject to Counter Flood, but that's a bit much. I'm also tempted to say that Heretic should cost more MP, but literally no one has ever used it at all. I'm trying to remedy that with the new Strider, who I hope will get to do something other than Katon idiotically and then die.
  
  
  
  • Lore: Like Steal, it manages to be problematic only due to a few skills in its skill set, while the others are rather...underwhelming.
    
    
    spoiler: Grave Calculations

    1. Natural Selection, Rime Bolt, Earth Dragon, Thunder Flare & Shadow Shade: These need to be subject to M-EV. That way people who choose to (ab)use them with whatever would have to choose between either having M-EV or always getting hit by Lore to activate and/or absorb whatever. Should that happen, I would say that these could go back to being just 5 CT.
    
    2. Tornado & Quake: These both still need a boost. They, at the very least, need a JP drop of at least 50 and to not be evadable. It's pretty absurd Quake costs more than twice the JP of Titan despite the fact that Quake does less damage, costs more MP & can be evaded (even before Float). They probably both need a power boost, though I'm not sure that would help Tornado given how prevalent Wind absorb is due to Magic Ring....
    
    
    I feel something should be done with the Bio spells, but I'm not sure what, especially since unlike Mad Science and Tornado & Quake, people actually use the Bio spells somewhat; I think only two people have used Mad Science, one of them being me. Bio 3 could maybe stand to lose 50 JP, though, since Undead status is hardly as crippling as Frog (usually).
  
  
  
  • Elemental: Ah, Geomancy. Still such a SOB. Elemental would probably be "fixed" if it was subject to M-EV and if the Y value of 4 was lowered to 1. Perhaps making it so that all of Elemental actually have an element would be useful, but that doesn't really solve much (and, in fact, would probably make the AI even more stupid with Elemental); so I can endorse that, at least until we see how the other changes affect it. It could also probably stand a decrease in range, especially since Counter Flood gives free Elemental actions anyway regardless of the range.
  
  
  
  • Punch Art: Ah, Punch Art. Still such a SOB. As someone pointed out recently, the problem with Punch Art is still how utterly quadratic all its formulas are. So even without the stupidity that was pre-nerf Martial Arts, it still naturally benefits from PA-raising more than any other class. While that should maybe still be the case ultimately, it needs to be scaled back...somehow.
    
    
    spoiler: Punches from the Punch Dimension

    1. Earth Slash: Even before the quadratic weakening, I'd argue that Earth Slash's JP needs to be slightly cheaper given how easy it is to absorb or cancel Earth in ARENA.
    
    2. Secret Fist: Could similarly probably use slightly less JP. Death Sentence is pretty crappy, really, and Monks have middling MA. That it could be used on mage classes means that said classes would have to get close, which usually leads to them getting brutally murdered, so that seems fine.
    
    3. Stigma Magic: I'd argue that this needs to go up to 150 JP since it still cures the exact same thing as Esuna and Esuna usually ends up only targeting one unit in ARENA/tournaments anyway.
    
    4. Revive: I never thought I'd argue for it this, but it seems like its Y value could stand to go up a bit, even if it that meant you'd have to make it cost MP. I'd argue that all revival techniques should be costing MP, though.
    
    5. HP Restore: I'd argue this should go up at least 50 JP just because of how horribly it undermines efforts even more than Raise 2 if it goes off. It's such a difficult ability to balance, really, given it's necessary that it remain Critical-only and I guess it should stick around; admittedly, I've always hated this thing, though.
    
    
    I just want to take this particular time to say thanks for making the changes to Chakra and Stigma Magic that I asked for pre-130. I feel it's already helped balance them, especially with regards to Chakra.
  
  
  
  • Draw Out: Ah, Draw Out. Still such yadda yadda.
    
    
    spoiler: Iaido Not

    1. Murasame: This is still too strong, IMO. Its Y value needs to be lowered to 7 or, at least, 9. Perhaps compromise at a Y value of 8?
    
    2. Kiyomori: This could stand to become the Draw Out with the cheapest JP, though 150 JP is probably more appropriate than 100 JP. I'm still unsure how much that would help, though.
    
    3. Two Hands: This could honestly probably be lowered to 500 JP and still be fine. It shouldn't be less than that, though, at least as long it remains a straight 2x multiplier, which is why I'm hesitant to give it to Samurai innately.
    
    
    The Y values for all Draw Out might need to still lessened slightly, but between the fact that it's already been lessened, much of it can be absorbed AND it's magically evadable, it's already much better than it was in 1.3.
  
  
  
  • Summon Magic: While Summoner is a class close to my heart, it's always been kinda of problematic. First and foremost, let me say this: Summon Magic "needs" to still ignore M-EV because, really, some type of attack magic does. Otherwise, Paladin (and any class that can equip a Shield innately) already become a lot more powerful than they already are:
    
    
    spoiler: I Summon The Power

    1. Normalize the JP: Is there really any reason that Moogle & the elemental trio have their such odd values from vanilla even though they've been buffed and aren't tiered? Please bring them all up by 20.
    
    2. Titan: There's no reason why it should do so much damage and be both so cheap in both terms of MP & CT. It needs to be scaled down to level of Shiva, Ifrit & Ramuh at least, which themselves might need scaling back.
    
    3. Carbunkle: On the other hand, needs to cost less JP-wise, even if that would cause a decrease in it elsewhere. Literally no one has ever used it.
    
    4. Bahamut, Cyclops & Zodiac: Bahamut pretty much obviates the latter two as it is now and Cyclops obviates Zodiac in most cases given how little height differences, especially in the targeting itself, usually matter given the relative flatness of most FFT maps. Bahamut just needs to be weakened and/or cost more (JP). Zodiac could maybe become Holy or become AoE 3 (though then it would need to cost more JP) like Salamander and Leviathan are. Cyclops would I guess be fine if those two are changed since Blind is different, if underwhelming and unreliable. I'm really not sure how to balance these given the set as a whole.
    
    
    The set as a whole seems like, with Elemental, Punch Art & Draw Out, it might overall need slightly less power. However, given that literally almost half of it hasn't really ever been used, it's difficult to say. I'm still not comfortable with Odin's general existence, but, eh; I'm still the only person to ever be hit by it as well, so....
  
  
  
  • White Magic: Yes, I'd actually say this is more problematic than Wizard Flaring everything to death at the moment, though it's more its revival skills than anything else....
    
    
    spoiler: White Pow...Wait

    1. Raise & Raise 2: These need to cost more MP. It's pretty absurd that these can easily hit at 100% and restore so much HP for so little a cost, especially from such a distance now. The latest match against Red World shows how easily abusive it is with Move-MP Up. And the fact they both screw over Undead so easily just seems like additional evidence that they need to cost more than they do.
    
    2. Cure, Cure 2, Cure 3 & Cure 4: These also arguably need to cost more MP and/or JP given how cheap yet powerful they are. They're not nearly as bad as the Raise spells are, though.
    
    3. Protect 2, Shell 2 & Wall: I'd argue these could cost slightly less JP given how stupid the AI is about using them. I'm unsure. However, I could see Protect 2 and Shell 2 getting a decrease in JP before Wall at least.
    
    4. Esuna: I'm torn between Stigma Magic being arguably still much better than it & asking for it to be slightly cheaper (in JP) because of that and arguing that it heals too many damn statuses, especially with Remedy dead and Yin-Yang Magic & Talk Skill so weak, which would necessitate an increase in cost. Yeah. Something here needs to be changed. I'm just not sure what, though I'll go into that under Miscellany I guess.
    
    
    Should the Raise and Cure spells have their costs boosted, then I'd say that Fairy and Moogle would also need boosted costs.
  
  
  
  • Black Magic: Might as well get these guys as out of the way if I just finished with Priest.
    
    
    spoiler: CHANNNNNNNGE NOW

    1. Flare: What? You thought I was going to do some Solar Flare reference because of how abusive this spell has become? Nah. Too obvious. Anyway, this needs less power so it isn't as "herp derp OHKO" as it's been throughout all of 130 Beta so far, even on heavy armor classes. However, it should still be stronger than strengthened Holy despite my complaint about that earlier.
    
    2. Poison: This needs to cost less JP, especially if you allow Kiyomori to have less JP considering that unlike Kiyomori Poison both depends on Faith & can be evaded.
    
    3. Death: I still say this is nigh-useless, especially Flare is now a 100% accurate version of it. However, given that zxpr0jk has managed to actually hit people with it, unlike me, I'm not sure if should die just yet.... It probably should, though.
    
    4. Counter Magic: For something so ridiculously easy to have backfire outside and even because of absorption strategies (which is pretty the only thing it would be used for), it is absurdly expensive. I'd lower it to 400 JP, 450 JP max.
    
    
    The fourth level spells and Flare should continue to ignore magical evasion; the same with Frog.
  
  
  
  • Talk Skill: And now we start to get to the skill sets that are prioritized for weakness rather than power.
    
    
    spoiler: Talk Talk Talk

    1. Push to Talk: As Dol pointed out, pretty much all of Talk Skill probably could stand to use (slightly) larger Y values outside of maybe Mimic Daravon and maybe Persuade, even if Mediator's MA is increased as it should be. Upping Persuade would probably fine, though.
    
    2. Threaten & Solution: I'd actually argue that these should be reduced to only subtract 20, rather than 25, Brave and Faith respectively. 25 is a bit much, even if the AI tends not to use them (intelligently).
    
    3. Death Sentence: This probably needs its JP decreased between how the AI ignores Death Sentenced units and how easy it is for most teams to "sandbag".
    
    4. Finger Guard: It should be at most 50 JP. I can't agree that it should be free considering that seems like it would screw over Mediator even more than Mediator already is. However, Finger Guard is certainly not worth 100 JP, at least right now.
    
    
    As someone who likes status (that isn't named Haste or Slow) more than most, it's rather disappointing that the two classes with the weakest skill sets in ARENA are the status-based ones even with all the improvements that ARENA has made overall. So that brings us to....
  
  
  
  • Yin-Yang Magic: Poor Oracle. Ignored in vanilla. Ignored in 1.3. Still stuck only bashing people's face in with Poles and using only Paralyze even in ARENA. It has massive problems even before more usable equipment with status immunity comes into play:
    
    
    spoiler: So Sayeth Doom

    1. Paralyze: This is arguably an overpowered spell despite the fact it's pretty much the only reason to use Oracle right now since if you want to a physical mage, then female Scholars trump Oracle's only other strong suit. It obviates Mediator's Blackmail even with the low-Faith problems and basically acts like Time Mage's Stop...if Time Mage's Stop ever got used more than rarely & actually could hit things. At the very least, its JP needs to double to 200 JP and its rate of hit probably needs to lower at least slightly. I'd even argue that it should become single-target only given how devastating Don't Act is, but that might be a much, especially if Mediator's Blackmail gets better.
    
    2. Counter Flood and You: As with Spellbreaker and a few other things, there's really no reason that almost of all Yin-Yang Magic, of which only one spell does damage, should trigger Counter Flood. Life Drain? Of course. The more debilitating spells like Paralyze, Sleep and Petrify? Probably. The things that are nigh useless like Blind, Blind Rage, Silence Song and Dispel Magic? Uh...no.
    
    3. Silence Song: There's no way in hell this deserves to cost 170 JP considering how a) easy it is guard against Silence, b) cheap Echo Grass & other solutions are, c) it can be reflected and d) at least of couple other skills cause Silence alongside other statuses yet barely cost more like Doku no Kyoukai & Bad Luck; that Nameless Dance causes Silence among other things from anywhere on the map for 100 JP is just an extra kick to the groin. It needs to cost 100 JP tops and not trigger Counter Flood and then it might see some use. Might. Given how pretty much any class that's vulnerable to Silence wears something to negate it....
    
    4. Dispel Magic: This should be 200 JP tops. Arguably even 100 JP tops. That Y value needs to be above 200 at least, especially given the MP it costs, which should also probably be halved. At the very least, there's no way in hell that this should be triggering Counter Flood since at most it's a 1 for 1 spell that just resets positive status...if it hits.
    
    5. Blind: I tempted to say to up this to 1.3 standards where it has less Y value but it hits an AoE of 2. However, that goes back to screwing over Cyclops and outside of triggering Counter Flood, I think it's relatively fine. Still might want to give it slightly less of a Y value, though, given the lack of Concentrate.
    
    6. Spell Absorb: This needs to not trigger Counter Flood. Otherwise, it's fine. Maybe make it magically evadable, but eh. This could also potentially just make it absorb less MP instead.
    
    7. Life Drain: I'm not seeing why this, however, isn't subject to magical evade considering it's damage and healing all in one. (And yet next to one ever uses it for some reason.) It could potentially make it cost less JP if you made it absorb less HP, i.e. 25% considering the change to Demi.
    
    8. Doubt Faith & Pray Faith: The AI seems pretty stupid about these. I could see dropping to 150 JP or even 100 JP just because of that, though 150 JP is probably "safer".
    
    9. Zombie: This is relatively fine considering that nothing really heals it outside of Holy Water, it's permanent and Counter Flood will inevitably see a nerf. So, I could see this staying as it is I guess, at least if nothing else ends up curing it.
    
    10. Blind Rage: It needs to be slightly more likely to hit, cost less JP and maybe not be subject to Counter Flood given how easily it backfires.
    
    11. Petrify: Same argument for Petrify as for Blind Rage except that it should stay subject to Counter Flood even if it's rather easily healed. Might want to make it quicker CT-wise because of that.
    
    12. Beguile: Even before the comparisons to Steal Heart, this neds to be quicker in CT, cost less MP, be slightly more likely to hit and not trigger Counter Flood. It could maybe take a slight JP dip by 50, but it probably should not take more than that.
    
    13. Absorb Used MP: Maybe make it 150 JP rather than 200 JP, especially since MP Restore is quite (ab)usable now? People have been using it somewhat effectively, so it's not exactly in dire straits.
    
    
    I'm not sure what to say about Sleep. On the one hand, it has to compete with the instant speed of Mimic Daravon, Faith-values and being damn slow for something that's rather easily cured half of the time. On the other hand, its AoE plus new range is more than decent with the overall magic boost, Sleep lasts forever if not disturbed and the AI is rather...stupid about how it wakes up the Sleeping at times. Something probably needs to happen to it, but I'm not sure what; it should remain vulnerable to Counter Flood, though.
  
  
  
  • Jump: Vertical Jumps need a sharp decline in JP cost. No reason to not just let them progress by 50, which means that Vertical Jump 8 would end up as 350 JP instead of the 900 JP abomination it is now. I've argued before that Ignore Height could stand to cost slightly less and I still somewhat believe that, but I say to leave it is for now.
  
  
  
  • Item: As ever, it's a pain in the ass considering how "weak" yet game-changing it is. If it depended on at least some type of stat, it would be at lot easier to deal with.
    
    
    spoiler: Drug-Free Is The Way to Be

    1. Throw Item: I'd argue that its range needs to decrease to 3, but you know how much I hate Item, so this is admittedly really biased on my part.
    
    2. Hi-Ether: This probably does need to be lowered to 60 MP, especially considering how much damage Flare does now and the extra range of things and how easy it is to gain back MP already.
    
    3. Holy Water: It should probably only be 100 JP even if not another Zombie-curing ability should arise.
    
    4. Auto-Potion: It probably needs an increase in power to be worth that much JP. Alternately, you could probably just lower the JP, though it would still probably need a (lower) increase in power.
    
    5. Maintenance: I'd still argue that this should be 50 JP tops given how defeatist is and given that the equipment break abilities still do damage to a Maintenance user. Alternately, it would probably need a JP increase if you used Xifanie's hack that allowed it ignore/preserve stat-stuff.
    
    
    Ugh, I feel dirty advocating for Chemist.
  
  
  
  • Chivalry: It's rather telling that I feel Paladin's skill set is quite weak, but the class itself remains such a problem.
    
    
    spoiler: Is Dead

    1. Consecration: I can see why this skill exists thematically, but it's pretty unfair/pointless. I'll talk about that under Items when I get to Cursed Ring, though.
    
    2. Dia: This needs less range, to do less damage and maybe cost more JP, but otherwise I'm not to sure. It might just need to die considering how useless it is to Paladins yet utterly abusable by pretty much any mage class.
    
    3. Grand Cross: Grand Cross is fine, IMO. It could maybe use less Vertical, but considering that it basically limits usable equipment and abilities unless you want to keep smacking yourself in the face and/or deal with Blindness for the rest of match, I feel it's relatively well-balanced, especially compared to some other absorb plans.
    
    4. Transfusion: This should arguably cost less JP or MP (as in 8), but otherwise, I'm unsure since it tends to restore a lot when people do use it and it only targets allies (as maybe it should considering the cost).[/bold abuse]
    
    
    I'm tempted to argue that Nurse should only be 8 MP, but 33% HP plus Defending is also a lot. Maybe if it was 25% HP, but then arguably 8 would be too much. Meh. Paladins hardly need the help, so you could probably leave that alone.
  
  
  
  • Snipe: Considering you've said multiple times how you're already fixing Hawk's Eye, I won't talk about that at all here.
    
    
    spoiler: Boom Headshot

    1. Speed Save: Like Quickening, it needs to die in a fire. Unlike Quickening, it can maybe be saved if that +CT version of it has been hacked already instead. I certainly mind it dying for a while if that's not done yet/until that's done, though....
    
    2. Projectile Guard: This could stand to lose at least 50 JP. Maybe 100 JP, but that seems a bit too inexpensive.
    
    3. Greased Bolt: Greased Lightning should also cost less JP considering how inaccurate it is, how easily Oil can backfire and how much the AI loves to whore it despite that, maybe because they think it makes them cool.
    
    
    I'll talk about Seal Evil around Cursed Ring's area.
  
  
  
  • Basic Skill: I'm...really not sure about this skill set. I always think it's sub-par and then someone, like CT5Holy, ends up using something abusive about it.
    
    
    spoiler: Stone Cold Killer

    1. Throw Stone: Probably needs its Y value lowered and to become physically evadable.
    
    2. Dash: Dash will probably need to become not quadratic if Punch Art does. It surprisingly hasn't been problematic otherwise, though.
    
    3. Cheer Up: Cheer Up probably needs to be more accurate than it is now, especially with the MA-hit that Squires are likely to take.
    
    4. Wish: Speaking of accuracy, there's NO reason this should have less than an always 100% hit rate considering how little it restores and considering it has no range. I know that it shouldn't (come close) to rivaling Monk's Revive, but geez, this thing sucks. I'd say it's surprising the people use it, but considering how desperate people are for any type of revival....
    
    5. Accumulate: This should probably cost MP, but though not as much as 10 MP. Also, it should maybe not be subject to Mimic.
    
    
    I'm really not sure what to do with Ultima, especially with the MA-hit they'll be taking. I'll probably talk about it under the Miscellany section.
  
  
  
  • Time Magic & Ninjutsu: The two skill sets that I'd say are completely fine more or less. However, I'm less sure about Time Magic than Ninjutsu given the no one has used the new Demis and the new Lich yet; Stop could also possibly use a slightly buff. As for Ninja, the only issue at present is that Two Swords could probably stand to be cheaper and Kagesougi could maybe be slightly stronger given it has to compete with Grand Cross.

I'm...gonna split this up considering it's 20 pages in WORD.


Resigned EDIT (07/30/2011 - 2:21 A.M.): I should probably put spaces in between some of this...which defeats the point of manually doing a list. Sigh.

Eye Drop EDIT (07/30/2011 - 2:45 A.M.): There. After 25 minutes, that's (probably) more readable. Not that this is saying much. I just need to fix the second half now and not make as many manual screw-ups....

Limited EDITion (07/30/2011 - 5:33 P.M.): Now that I'm far more awake than I was after typing this (which isn't saying much, perhaps), I've fixed most if not all typos--mostly omissions as per usual--and added some clarifications while getting rid of some redundancies. Now to do it for the second half...again.

(That I have to double post this.... -_-)

5. Items: Oh, dear Zomalla. We're finally here. These should be much quicker, especially given that there's that new individual weapon proc spreadsheet or whatever:



6. Miscellany: I'll try to make this section mercifully short (comparatively):



Hmm...I feel like I'm forgetting something that's import--.

*hands crumble into dust*

"...Yeah, I think I'm done (for now)," he typed with his face.


Finally EDIT (07/30/2011 - 3:00 A.M.): And with that gone over and re-spaced, I think I've spent more than 12 hours just typing this up and re-checking everything, even counting for distractions. I'll read CT5Holy and Squidgy's proposals properly once I get some rest. Or my eyes stop bleeding. Which ever comes first.

No Finality EDIT (07/30/2011 - 6:01 P.M.): I still need to read over CT5Holy and Squidgy's proposals, but most if not all typos in this post should be gone now. Hurray.

I figured I'd post and give you some opinions from someone whose looking from the outside in and isn't heavily invested in this project, because those are incredibly important to design.  (I've looked over all of the design notes pretty thoroughly and toyed with the patch some, of course, but not enough to call myself "invested" in the patch.)

Core mechanics:

I know you're having a lot of trouble with Fury and Faith.  Looking over everything, I see several reasons for this.

1. Lack of parity.  This is twofold.  Firstly, while most of all physical attacks are governed by Fury, NOT all magical attacks are governed by Faith.  Things such as Talk Skill, Draw Out, Geomancy, etc. are all unaffected by Faith, meaning your potential magical output suffers far less with low Faith than your potential physical output does with low Fury.  Secondly, Fury has a +40 modifier to both CFu and TFu, yet Faith does not have its own +40 modifier.  This radically affects how much Fury/Faith dictate the respective damage / to-hits on their respective formula.  Personally, for Fury/Faith to be balanced properly, both these issues need to be addressed, so that the two mechanics have more relative worth to each other.  (Honestly, many things people have / have had problems with such as Draw Out, Geomancy, etc. would likely be complained about far less if you had the option to run low Faith and weaken them, and high Faith would be more imperative if more skills required it to make them work well.)

2. The modifier itself.  I'd lower it to +30, so that 70 Br (and Fa if you take my above suggestion) isn't getting a +10% to damage innately.

3. Fist Formula (if you've not changed it already) should become either PA*X or (PA+YY)/2*PA.  I'm pretty sure the first hack exists already in FDC's thread somewhere, and I know the second exists in Prideful's thread somewhere, as he originally made it for me.  Removing the second instance of Brave from the formula and drastically reducing the power boost gained from a simple +2-3 PA will fix many Fist-related issues.

I think everything else should be okay.

Equipment options:

Between Shields, the various sorts of Helmets/Hats/Armors/Clothes/Robes, and Accessories, I think a big issue is how "easy" it is to get things.  Specifically, how "easy" it is to Absorb/Cancel various Elements and Status.  It's very easy to get whatever defense you need vs any particular strategy if it relies on any certain Elements or Status - and yes, I'm saying this is a bad thing.  Counters to the metagame are important, as are "color hosers" to borrow a term from Magic: the Gathering that's somewhat applicable, but when I not only can easily counter things, but have a huge number of ways to do so, things become stale, and finding ways to counter strategies in these veins becomes incredibly easy.  This, personally, is very bad.  I also feel some Equipment is very "bloated" - affecting too many elemental properties needlessly or cancelling too many status for a single item.  I'd iron these two things out, myself, even if the end result is less Equipment overall.  It's better to have 15 quality somethings than 20 mediocre somethings.

Skill options

My main comment here is that fluff needs to be cut.  Things such as the Wizard's 4 tiers of spells, the Priest's equally bloated spellbook, etc. that only existed in Vanilla to allow for scaling don't need to exist here.  Even if you want to argue something as silly as a Healing vs CT/MP spectrum, many of these classes would be just as effective with half or less of their skillsets.  Echoing some previous sentiments in this thread, there also seems to be (personally) unacceptable levels of one-dimensionality (Wizard most notably) and skillset overlap. (Mediator and Oracle comes to mind - while Oracle has a larger spellbook and Mediator has Br/Fa modification, the places they do overlap [Sleep/Berserk/Don't Act] are some of the most powerful aspects of both skillsets, easily nullifying much of the distinction each set has because they both share in the one thing the majority of players will likely want.)  While giving you specific ideas for how to remedy this is beyond me currently (hell, even in my own patch I ended up killing Mediator entirely because I couldn't solve this issue), things like this are also pretty big and should be remedied, because distinction is a large part of making skillsets and classes useful.

Related:  I'm going to give a suggestion to "fix" Monk few people likely thought of.  Remove Martial Arts from the game, buff Monk's base PA and the Y values on its skills.  Why?  In Vanilla FFT, Martial Arts innate mostly exists to allow the Monk to cancel out the *Br on its Fist formula and keep up with the damage curve - it's not until cross-class pollination and level 40ish that you see huge damage bonuses from Monks, after all.  By removing this 1.5x from the stack, you greatly reduce the influence of a positive Fury modifier to what it is with most other classes, stop huge silliness with Attack Up, etc.  Less multipliers on the stack is always, always, always a positive thing when possible.  You don't need things that existed in Vanilla for the sake of scaling (Steal skills, Martial Arts, tiered magic, etc.), and honestly all those things seem like they're holding you back to some capacity.  Crunch some numbers then kill them off, it'll be much worth it in the long run.

Like I said, some balance thoughts from someone taking a look from the outside in on a number of the problems you seem to be facing, since this perspective is always pretty valuable to have.

Dammit, I lost progress on this! gotta start typing up again, oh well...

I've been meaning to do this for like the last 4.5 days so here it goes.

Unlike The Damned, my info will be consolidated in spoilers properly the first time and actually be organized :P

Note: If I don't mention a certain ability/stat/item of any kind, I think it's balanced and doesn't need to be changed.

Quote from: Wiz on August 02, 2011, 05:53:41 am

spoiler: 2. Item Availability

The number of items are fine. Having a larger pool of items (in particular elemental aborption-based ones) increases variety and creativity, which makes party synergy more prevalent (absorption of Earth/Holy/Dark + the standard three) and less stale (absorption of just F/I/L) contrary to Raven's ideas.

Do me a favor and don't put words in my mouth.  I didn't say "Don't have Absorb: Holy", that's dumb.  I said there's no reason to have 3 ways to do the same thing.   IE - by themselves, Helmets/Hats/Armors/Clothing/Robes have some decent distinction going on... but all that design space is also encroached upon in Shields and Accessories.  I'm not forced to reach to get a particular effect - if I don't like what I need to do to get it from source A, I get it from source B, and usually one combination is always optimal over all the others.  Tl;dr: Having access to everything isn't innately bad, it's that it doesn't feel like there's "work" in getting the properties you want onto your unit, because you can get what you want from so many different angles.  As a designer, forcing people to make a choice and stick to it is something you WANT to do... not give people so many angles that their choices rarely have a true drawback.

Quote from: Wiz on August 02, 2011, 05:53:41 am

spoiler: 1. Balance

The meta-game's not balanced due to exploitations like "Martial Arts + AU" Monks, Elemental, Draw Out, Sing/Dance + Miming, "X Save" abuse"

So you have a metagame of

1. Martial Arts + Attack UP.
2. Elemental.
3. Draw Out.
4. Perservering Mimes.
5. Stat Boost.
6. Rogue.

...That's a pretty decently varied spread if you're familiar with other competitive games.  Note that most metagames for most games are actually founded on "exploitations" of some kind.  

(Not to say these strategies probably shouldn't be weakened to allow room for even more, IE my aside on Martial Arts, etc.  Just saying that as far as metagames go, the fact you're complaining about 5 dominating strategies + rogues shows that Arena is actually moving in a positive direction currently.)

Quote from: Wiz on August 02, 2011, 05:53:41 am

spoiler: Monk

-2 PA for males and -1 PA for females off the bat. Why? Multiplicative factors from "Marial Arts" and it's 150% (1.5x) boost is outright nonsense, which I'll get to later. Knights also in the past had always had an edge over and should stay that way imo.

And this is where I again just bring up the suggestion of getting rid of the nonsense boost - stacked multipliers are the leading cause of insane damage.

Quote from: Wiz on August 02, 2011, 05:53:41 am

spoiler: Punch Art

Martial Arts -> Reduce its effectiveness from a 1.5x (150%) bonus to PA attacks to a 1.25x (125%) one. Why? Multiplies PA too damn well and ridding of it seems excessive/too much of a penalty to Monks (i.e. no innate "Martial Arts" for Monks).

If you got rid of it then gave them more PA to compensate for the lack of their huge retarded multiplier, they'd both have more of a reason to use either their ranged weapon (Poles I think, though why Monk has access to an MA*WP weapon is beyond me, these guys should really have Spears if you want them considering the less-damaging, two-panel attack) or an "Equip X" Weapon Support.  Basically, you fix the problem while opening the doors for more setups, enabling a more varied metagame.  Two for one, every Wednesday.

Quote from: Wiz on August 02, 2011, 05:53:41 am

spoiler: Geomancy

Attack UP -> Reduce from 4/3 Physical Attack increase to 5/4. Why? Stacking w/ Martial Arts is too damn good as well as melee units in general with a PA Setup.

This is another reason to scrap Martial Arts - everyone else who needs Attack Up needs to suffer, everyone who uses Martial Arts as a non-innate needs to suffer, and anyone using Monk's PA for a non-Punch Art needs to suffer just to keep them with innate Martial Arts.  For someone who wants a more varied metagame, I should not need to explain what's wrong here.

Quote from: Wiz on August 02, 2011, 05:53:41 am

spoiler: Sing

MAJOR PROBLEMS WITH "Stat" STACKING, don't get this confused with "Status"!!!
Battle Song -> Make it so that it gives out a Protect bonus. Why? In that same video at 13:16 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=472lsoiXUfI&fmt=18), you'll see mimes do 999 Damage which is a problem.
Magic Song -> Make it so that it gives out a Shell bonus. Why? Same potential, but with DO/Geomancy users.

To be fair in that Battle Song video, that team had lost years before those Mimes got anywhere near 999, and most instances of where the strategy is applied also sees the team either losing or winning long before it even hits 500 damage.  Also, Mimes are using a Quadratic Fist formula still if my memory is correct, so the leap from 500 to 999 is... honestly very small.  Basically, your problem here is coming from the abusing nature of the current Fist formula, allowing for every Battle Song to account for over double what it would for any non-punching unit.  Addressing Battle Song is like taking out a micro problem when you're really facing a macro problem.  As for Magic Song... notice how Battle Song is only an issue when Mimed and only hits those values because PA is factored twice, resulting in 1 PA meaning a huge damage increase.  MA doesn't even have this issue, and PA wouldn't either if Arena stopped using an incredibly piece-of-shit Fist formula and converted over to (PA+YY)/2*PA or PA*Y.  Fix the problem, don't kill the entire concept when it's merely demonstrated an overall larger problem.

Quote from: Wiz on August 02, 2011, 05:53:41 am

spoiler: Dance

Slow Dance -> Just the opposite of Cheer Song, decrease speed with the slow status, not -1 SPD. Why? Ditto (Abusive with mimicking).
Polka Polka -> Make it inflict the Berserk Status. Why? Ditto
Disillusion -> Make it inflict the Confuse Status. Why? Ditto

This on the other hand is possibly a pretty good idea because you want games to end, and being able to ruin their PA and MA down to 1 is not conducive to that.  On the other hand, you won't know if your opponent uses PA or MA beforehand, often meaning you need a Dancer with each song or to have both Dancers knowing both songs... meaning you're reducing damage at only half the speed Battle Song can raise it, and the fact you can't control factors on the opponent such as Zodiac Compatibility means you can't control how well your hit rate on your half-speed reductions are.  Give that, at least the PA and MA reducing dances can likely stay as they are, though the SPD reducer should probably go, as should Bard's SPD buffer.

Quote from: Wiz on August 02, 2011, 05:53:41 am

spoiler: Ninja Swords

Koga and Iga Knives -> Switch the strengthening between the two around. Why? To boost the weapon and it's kind of assholish to force the player to use both in order to get only one of the boosts.

That's... actually part of good design.  The player's forced to give up something in order to get something.  Having them boost themselves at no cost means they're basically (PA+SPD)/2*WP*1.25 damage instead of the (PA+SPD)/2*WP damage every other Ninja Blade weapon is restricted to.  ...That's NOT balance, to quote the explanation you like to use for most of your changes.  Make the player work for things and make setups actually have disadvantages.  Those are the kinds of things actually conducive to positive metagames, hence why I am for removing a lot of the encroachment shared by Items - to force those disadvantages to actually matter if you want something badly enough.

Well if you want the miming of song and dance and such to be less OP, why not have it mimed only once so that way you can spend more time thinking of a creative combo for mimes to use during battle other than SOS (Same Old Shit)

Plus it wont overwhelm the team so unfairly that they can't come back from the wiznaibus/battle song/lich/elemental spam, ect. Mimes needs to be limited to 1 IMHO

Disagree anyone?

Quote from: Barren on August 02, 2011, 07:22:11 amMimes needs to be limited to 1 IMHO

Disagree anyone?

The only problem is that taking that route slowly makes the rules needlessly complex and inconsistent.  You can only have two of everything... except Mimes... then starts the slippery slope of just making rules exceptions to toss a band-aide on things instead of just fixing the issue.  A rules exception should only exist when there is no other alternative.  There are clearly several alternatives worth looking into currently.  The main thing that doesn't seem to have much of an exception is Life Song... but a "this skill is unmimable" exception is far less questionable than actually changing the party construction rules themselves.  Either that, or just make the Songs Undead Reversed and make Mimes Undead or something so that Miming a Life Song is just not a good idea... there's a nice crazy solution to several issues at once. 

But what I am saying though is with 2 mimes and say 2 bards or 2 dancers or even 2 summoners can be pretty damn powerful....too powerful in fact especially if they are on a larger map and at times a medium map...small maps i don't think they'd be a problem but with spamming life song or wiznaibus 3 to 6 times is too much to take down for almost any team unless you're team is good at procing speed save, damage split, really anything to counter mime teams

Again its FFM's call and I'm fine with whatever happens really, its only a thought anyways...though I do understand where you're coming from Raven, it can be somewhat tediously complex....but still there has to be a way to not make miming teams OP but yet not UP

Admittedly, I know next to nothing about changing game mechanics.

However, if it is possible, can you make it where mimes cant mimic any songs or dances?  The only problem anyone has had with the stat increases is when you have a mime or two mimicing the songs.  Cheer Song/Slow Dance have low enough chances to hit that you cant really build a team around them as is.  The other stat boosts cant really snowball out of control with one cast per round.

If its impossible to change Mimes this way, then something will need to be done about the boosts & dances.  (Although I strongly disagree with Wiz's dances.  One decent Berserk or Confuse dance will win you the fight in one round.  No one wants that).

After rereading Raven's suggestions on Martial Arts, I've been persuaded with one caveat.  Ironically, I think that Mimes would need to keep it.  Boosting their PA to keep their punches from being tickles would be an issue given that they can mimic other weapon attacks that could end up being overpowered.

(work calls.  I'll finish this post this afternoon)

Quote from: Barren on August 02, 2011, 07:59:41 amAgain its FFM's call and I'm fine with whatever happens really, its only a thought anyways...though I do understand where you're coming from Raven, it can be somewhat tediously complex....but still there has to be a way to not make miming teams OP but yet not UP.

The problem seems to lie in Bard and Dancer, personally.  Who uses Wiznaibus without a Mime?  Who would if Mimes did not exist?  Same for the MP damage song, etc.  Life Song is borderline usable, but even then, I don't think I've at least seen anyone use them without Mimes.  In this sense, I'd call the problems the HP/MP affecting Songs/Dances themselves.  Like I said, a fix to the Fist formula alone fixes the Battle Song issue in a huge way, because a single PA point would mean far less than it does now.  (AKA, if Fists were PA*10, eg, a single PA point would be 10 damage.  So 20 PA and 10 Fist is 200 damage  But, with 20 PA, Fist damage is 20*20*.7, or 280, then adding a PA point makes it 21*21*.7, or 294 pre-Fury, pre-Martial Arts.  If we apply Martial Arts, the totals become respectively 300, 420, and 441.  Etc.  As you can see, changing the Fist formula alone cuts damage by about a fourth, and by removing Martial Arts, you remove the quadratic aspect of Fists which allows you higher PA totals.  This, in turn, would make a Battle Song Mime team scale in damage far, far slower than it does currently.)

Quote from: Dol on August 02, 2011, 10:59:06 amHowever, if it is possible, can you make it where mimes cant mimic any songs or dances?

That's a simple as a checkbox in FFTPatcher.  The issue with that would be sortof what I mentioned to Barren above - making a rules exception instead of addressing the issue.  It's not as drastic as banning the second Mime outright, but still not a favorable choice if you want Arena to have consistent rule setups.

Another simple alternate solution to the Songs and Dances is to outright make them adjust Fury and Faith - you get the same effect, but how drastic it can get is hard-capped by the Fury/Faith mechanic and using it now has a drawback.  (Like Wiz mentioned, Tanks that are buffed to huge levels lose a large part of their tankiness in trade for power, etc.)  Though this again would require a new Fist formula that removes the Brave factor somehow, or Mimes would be swinging for 1.35*PA*1.5*PA at 100 Fury, which'd still hurt like hell.  (With 20 PA, that's about 800 damage even, for the curious.  With the constant 10 I mentioned before, it becomes 1.35*20*1.5*10, or 400.  Yep, that quadratic element and Brave element affect the formula that much!)

  The only problem anyone has had with the stat increases is when you have a mime or two mimicing the songs.  Cheer Song/Slow Dance have low enough chances to hit that you cant really build a team around them as is.  The other stat boosts cant really snowball out of control with one cast per round.

Quote from: Dol on August 02, 2011, 10:59:06 amAfter rereading Raven's suggestions on Martial Arts, I've been persuaded with one caveat.  Ironically, I think that Mimes would need to keep it.  Boosting their PA to keep their punches from being tickles would be an issue given that they can mimic other weapon attacks that could end up being overpowered.

I don't think this is an issue because the AI isn't good at utilizing that aspect of the Mime, and because, assuming these changes, the Mime should STILL not be better than an Equip Weapon Monk by a huge margin, if it is at all.  In fact, this boost to non-Fist Mime damage would open a new team-design dynamic that should not be a problem at all if handled correctly.

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Dia -> Decrease range by 1, change multiplier value from 14 to 12, and increase MP cost from 10 to 15. Why? Too good of a sniping tool atm.

To be honest, the ability to snipe away targets who were just brought up is useful and should be retained.
1) It stops fights from going too long because it gives the squad the slight advantage the ability to retain the initiative.  The fact that you can block it with M-EV and does light damage (equivalent to Fire1) should prevent it from being that strong, even as a sniping tool.

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Formula -> Reduce range to 4 from 5, and make it faith dependent and reduce its Y value from 4 to 2. Why? Most people are going to optimize Geomancy and there's really no reason not to and it punishes those defensive units that run 40 Fa and get away with constant damage.

In Arena, not every physical skill is subject to fury or P-EV.  So why are we insisting that every magical skill be subject to faith or M-EV or CT?  If anything, there needs to exist magical and physical means of damaging someone without considering evasion or fury to check the squads that try using evasion or low fury/faith walling.
You do realize that optimized geomancy does a base of 160 damage currently, right?  Ignoring any changes to +Y, if you add in the standard faith multipliers, damage will be capped at around 80.  Against 40 faith, the damage is 45.  That's pathetic when compared to physical attacks that don't miss (like ninjitsu or repeating fist, or even dash at high PA).  The real problem I see with it:
1) Squires have 4 move + 4/5 range on geomancy + better stats than geomancer.  Thus, only squire can get this kind of maximized 160 damage.  (Geomancers cap at 144 damage, which was the maximum in S5 as well.)  In my opinion, squires should have -1 Move and geomancers should get +1 Speed to compensate for this obvious inequality.
2) Geomancy range certainly needs to be 4 or even 3.  However, remvoing AoE, status, or reducing power are all too much since all of those factors are needed to ensure parity with Draw Out (which does more damage than geomancy but is subject to M-EV) or Summon (which does more damage, but requires some minor charging).
3) If you really want to use Faith in this formula, geomancy should still be an anti-40 faith tank weapon.  Thus, I'd prefer to only consider caster faith, i.e...PA * MA * CasFa%.  This way, a maximum damage geomancer now functions like a summoner with slightly more HP but less damage and AoE (and is highly vulnerable to magic).  If you don't want 40 faith wizards spamming Draw Out like in S5, you can adjust Draw Out's Y values higher and do something like MA * Y * CasFa%.

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Accumulate -> Add 2 CT. Why? Becomes too easy to abuse w/ mimicking

Sadly, this would incur AI problems.  It's the same reason why Draw Out shouldn't have a CT timer.  I'd rather see (PA * 2 + 50)% so it's not consistent.  Quickening should be the same way.  Yell should be (PA * 2 + 65)% and only Cheer Up should be 100%.

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Wish -> Make it hit at 100% for a 10% heal. Why? Competes more fairly w/ PD even though it's weaker due to height tolerance.

I think the whole point of the squire class is to have varied but weak skills.  Thus, wish << PD << fairy.

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Martial Arts -> Reduce its effectiveness from a 1.5x (150%) bonus to PA attacks to a 1.25x (125%) one. Why? Multiplies PA too damn well and ridding of it seems excessive/too much of a penalty to Monks (i.e. no innate "Martial Arts" for Monks). Raise JP cost up to 300 as well. The formula for the reduction's here, so no ASM work required

Raven is right.  The biggest problem is:
1) PA * CasFury% * PA * (CasFur + 35)% * (TarFur +35)%.  NOtice that this formula is quadratic in terms of PA and CasFury.  That is what allows the crazy damage escalation (and why no one in their right mind would use a 40 Fury monk).  Thus, I propose the following damage formulas for monk:
Fists = PA * 10 * (CasFur + 35)% * (TarFur +35)%
PUNCH ART = PA * Y
2) Remove innate martial arts and scale the existing formulas to what monk would be if he had no innate martial arts * 5/4.

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This is another reason to scrap Martial Arts - everyone else who needs Attack Up needs to suffer, everyone who uses Martial Arts as a non-innate needs to suffer, and anyone using Monk's PA for a non-Punch Art needs to suffer just to keep them with innate Martial Arts.  For someone who wants a more varied metagame, I should not need to explain what's wrong here.

What if we made it so if you use a weapon, martial arts has no effect (even on moves like chakra)?  Then you reasonably would have a distinction between the two.  Speaking of which, keeping the multipliers at 3/2x (for Martial Arts) and 4/3x (for Attack Up) is fine.  The damage is already been reduced out of the 1HKO range from 1.3; there's no need to further this process.

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Angel and Life Song -> Make so they're not mimickable. Why? Otherwise you get 400+ HP Heals at 3:16 - 3:40 which is outright bullshit. Even Dol, who made that team agrees with me on this one.
Cheer Song -> Make it so that it gives out a haste bonus. Why? Permanent Speed trumps Haste considering it already got nerfed to have a 5/4x speed increase instead of a 4/3 one.
Battle Song -> Make it so that it gives out a Protect bonus. Why? In that same video at 13:16, you'll see mimes do 999 Damage which is a problem.
Magic Song -> Make it so that it gives out a Shell bonus. Why? Same potential, but with DO/Geomancy users.
Nameless Song -> Make it so that it gives out a Reraise bonus. Why? Too many buffs stacked on top of it, and even so the AI rarely uses it for some reason.
Witch Hunt and Wiznaibus -> Like Angel/Life Song, they don't need to be mimicked. Why? Ditto, and it's so annoying to watch it being spammed.
Slow Dance -> Just the opposite of Cheer Song, decrease speed with the slow status, not -1 SPD. Why? Ditto (Abusive with mimicking).
Polka Polka -> Make it inflict the Berserk Status. Why? Ditto
Disillusion -> Make it inflict the Confuse Status. Why? Ditto
Nameless Dance -> Make it inflict Death Sentence. Why? Too Many negative buffs out there and too random to counter otherwise.

0) Not allowing mimicry of the healing/damaging songs is understandable, but I don't see exactly why that synergy needs to be removed (since that's about 50% of the reason why most people even choose having mimes).  Granted, I don't have too many good ideas that don't require ASM, but if we must:
Life Song (12 MP per use [remember, this is every time life song goes off])
Angel Song (66% accuracy)
Wiznaibus (P-EV)
Witch Hunt (M-EV)
1) I see nothing wrong with +/- 1 PA/MA/SP, provided there exists a hard-coded cap on how much each team can gain/lose (this ASM exists).  Doing it this way would allow mimes to retain the ability to mimic songs and dances.  Changing to +Fury/Faith/Haste reduces the generality of bards/dancers (because not everything is affected by fury/faith and nor should everything, really), so that's not as good an idea, I think.  Adding only protective statii is dumb for AI reasons (see below) and reduces bards only to defensive support (Arena already has enough of those).
2) Are you sure the AI isn't using nameless song or that most people don't have a team with the skill/synchronized to use it?  Positive statii (except haste) are used by the AI defensively, not preemptively.  Thus, protect/shell/reraise will only be added when a unit is hurt and only when the AI can't heal everyone's HP instead.  Since bard can heal everyone's HP, if you have life song, nameless song will never be used.  What it currently adds is fine.  Not being mimicked here is a good idea, though.
3) Mass Confusing the enemy can cause matches to not end due to AI glitches.  Mass berserk can backfire, unlike -1 PA.  Overall, what you're asking for would constitute an unneeded nerf to dancer.
4) Nameless dance is unpredictable in landing statii and thus is hard to counter?  That's precisely why it should be kept in its current formulation.  Any competitive game should always have a risky strategy that's not easy to counter.  This way, even a "perfect" squad can lose on a bad day and the it becomes much harder to counter everything.  However, mimicking it is asking for too much.

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Shuriken -> Make it P-Ev. Why? Why not!? Magic Attacks are not common to block to begin with.

Reasoning issues aside, the reason why you even see so many M-EV skills was because of the ASM that Pride made, which was a copy of the Rafa skillset, but with PA * Y.  It's fairly simple to switch to P-EV, though.  Personally, however, I'm all for adding an element of unpredictability (having a skillset with attacks blocked by P and M-EV) so the enemies have to be well built to block everything.

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Steal Heart -> No Gay Love! Why? Female Units are no good choice then other than for compat reasons which can easily be negated by Serpentarius.

Agreed.  If you want to charm males, you should have less HP.
The second half of your sentence, however, is ridiculous.  Those compat reasons also extend into your own team (i.e. buffs/heals are more effective), but this is a debate for another place.

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Flare -> Increase its MP cost from 45 to 60. Why? Superior to Holy and every way and for 5 extra MP seems OP.

Make flare reflectable and holy not reflectable.  Then increase the MP cost to 50.  I don't mind a stronger and more MP efficient spell, but it should have more counters (just like how DO > geomancy in damage, but DO is evadable).

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It's not as drastic as banning the second Mime outright, but still not a favorable choice if you want Arena to have consistent rule setups.

I'd argue balance and strategic complexity comes before consistency.  That's why I went with my faith idea for Draw Out and Geomancy.

I haven't participated in this round of arena... So I don't have anything to add other then that I think Mimicing Song/Dance and Quickening both should die in a fire.

Quote from: formerdeathcorps on August 02, 2011, 04:43:50 pm1) I see nothing wrong with +/- 1 PA/MA/SP, provided there exists a hard-coded cap on how much each team can gain/lose (this ASM exists).  Doing it this way would allow mimes to retain the ability to mimic songs and dances.  Changing to +Fury/Faith/Haste reduces the generality of bards/dancers (because not everything is affected by fury/faith and nor should everything, really), so that's not as good an idea, I think.  Adding only protective statii is dumb for AI reasons (see below) and reduces bards only to defensive support (Arena already has enough of those).

I considered that too, but it seemed like an unnatural and intangible "cap."  A Fury/Faith "cap" is more natural to Arena's mechanics, and it makes moves like Accumulate still have their place over Battle Song and Magic Song - giving the player an actual "do I want X or Y effect" choice, instead of just two ways to raise PA - a continuous option that's faster and easily Mimed, but riskier and caps, or a slower option that's also easily Mimed but has no cap and less risk.  I think it'd add a nice bit of parity to Mime-based buff teams and buff teams in general.

Quote from: formerdeathcorps on August 02, 2011, 04:43:50 pmWhat if we made it so if you use a weapon, martial arts has no effect (even on moves like chakra)?  Then you reasonably would have a distinction between the two.

That... has absolutely nothing to do with what I was talking about.

I was saying that if we reduced Martial Arts and Attack UP just to keep Martial Arts innate on Monk, a Thief (e.g.) subbing Punch Art and Martial Arts is now heavily debuffed for no reason, as is any non-Monk attacker using Attack UP.  In the same vein, since his proposition makes both Attack UP and Martial Arts 1.25%, there's no reason to ever choose Martial Arts over Attack UP as a Support... basically giving Martial Arts no reason to exist unless you made it cost next to nothing so people could use it as a poor man's Attack UP. Etc.  You see where this is going - basically everyone loses because people are insisting Monks keep an innate Support instead of just removing it and rebalancing PA - in which case literally nobody loses.  

Aside:  Your Punch Art formula should be (PA+X)*Y or something most likely.  It'd make scaling the skills easier, but that's neither here nor there.

(Ugh. August has been off to quite the bad start.)

Oh, I'd totally be up for brutally murdering Martial Arts. I just didn't want to open that bag of worms again since I'm pretty sure I've nagged FFMaster about it before and everyone knows that I'm almost as biased against Monks as I am Chemist.

Ugh. This post is going to be a lot longer than I would like, but it's not my fault this thread literally doubled in size yesterday. I swear. You stare at something and it doesn't change and then you shift your attention and....

Anyway, this is going to be another wall of text, though multi-quote style, so it may more bearable or less bearable than before. You have been warned.

Quote from: Wiz on August 02, 2011, 05:53:41 amUnlike The Damned, my info will be consolidated in spoilers properly the first time and actually be organized :P

It truly pains me to realize that not only I have to do the function for decimal lists manually now, but there's no real point in using it for the things I actually want to use it for because it can't space itself.

Quote from: Wiz on August 02, 2011, 05:53:41 am

spoiler: Basic Skill

Accumulate -> Add 2 CT. Why? Becomes too easy to abuse w/ mimicking
Throw Stone -> Change Multiplier to 5 and make it P-Ev, not M-Ev. Why? It's a physical attack and shouldn't do more damage than Magical spells
Wish -> Make it hit at 100% for a 10% heal. Why? Competes more fairly w/ PD even though it's weaker due to height tolerance.

As FDC said, giving Accumulate a CT would just screw up things for the computer, unfortunately. Otherwise, agree with this, though 10% might a bit much for 100% since Revive is only 20%. Maybe 5%?

Quote from: Wiz on August 02, 2011, 05:53:41 am

spoiler: Item

Hi-Ether -> Change 70 for a 60 MP Heal Instead. Why? Excessive and puts Ether in the dust too much.
Auto Potion -> Change from 50 to a 100 HP Heal and reduce JP cost to 300. Why? Useless atm.
Equip Clothes -> When changing in the formation screen, this ability doesn't actually work. Fix this bug please >_>

I wasn't aware that Equip Clothes didn't work, but literally no one has used it. I wonder if it affects any of the other Equip X abilities (that people haven't used) like Equip Magegear....

Also, Auto Potion at 100 seems a bit much given that damage usually doesn't break 200+ unless it's going to OHKO anyway. I'm not really sure what it should be, though, since 50 IS weak. Hmm....

Quote from: Wiz on August 02, 2011, 05:53:41 am

spoiler: Snipe

Speed Save -> Change it to +20 CT OR scrap it entirely. Why? Speed's too abusive w/ things such as lore. My Speedsters Team also shows why clearly. If +20 CT, change it to 300 JP since 600 seems excessive
Projectile Guard -> Reduce JP Cost to 200. Why? Ranged attackers are not always and very often not present.

20+ CT might a bit much, but then again, it is 4 v 4, so that would probably work here.

200 JP seems a bit...low considering it almost completely blocks 3 types of weapons if your Brave/Fury is high enough. Perhaps 250?

Quote from: Wiz on August 02, 2011, 05:53:41 am

spoiler: Summon Magic

Salamander -> Scrap it. Why? It's the same MP cost as Ifirit and is weaker for more JP according to the Ability chart here (http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=5431.0) 0.o To be a tad weaker for 1 vert is not worth it making it too similar to Ifirit.
Zodiac -> (At the top of my head) Reduce Vert to 3, Reduce Y Value to 20, Increase AOE to 5, Increase MP to 55, Increase JP to 500. Why? Balance between that, Cyclops, and Bahamut.

You realize Salamander is AoE 3, right? Also, a non-elemental AoE of 5 with Y as 20 is...extremely overpowered, almost broken, for something that isn't avoidable.

Perhaps increasing the AoE is indeed the way to go though, like Shade suggested, when it comes to Zodiac. Then again, even an AoE 3 non-elemental spell might be a bit much....

Quote from: Wiz on August 02, 2011, 05:53:41 am

spoiler: Geomancy

Formula -> Reduce range to 4 from 5, and make it faith dependent and reduce its Y value from 4 to 2. Why? Most people are going to optimize Geomancy and there's really no reason not to and it punishes those defensive units that run 40 Fa and get away with constant damage.
Attack UP -> Reduce from 4/3 Physical Attack increase to 5/4. Why? Stacking w/ Martial Arts is too damn good as well as melee units in general with a PA Setup.

If Attack UP were to change, then Magic Attack UP, Magic Defense UP and Defense UP would have to change as well since arguably physical classes still have the advantage (sans Flare and Raise 2) over magic.

Quote from: Wiz on August 02, 2011, 05:53:41 am

spoiler: Draw Out

Formula -> Make it Faith Dependent. Why? Same Reason as Geomancy, no need for 40 Fa Wizards running around using this.
Every Attack DO except Chiri-> Make CT = 2 (Same as Haste). Why? No MP Cost incurred other than M-Ev, which isn't easy to build up with.
Chirijiriaden -> Make CT = 3. Why? Most Powerful DO.

Draw Out can't take CT (or MP), unfortunately. They're...annoying like that.

Quote from: Wiz on August 02, 2011, 05:53:41 amspoiler=Ninjitsu]Shuriken -> Make it P-Ev. Why? Why not!? Magic Attacks are not common to block to begin with.
Two Swords -> Reduce JP Cost to 600. Why? To make it more usable and worthwhile. Too taxing as it is now at 700.[/spoiler]

Does Shuriken really need to be physically evadable given how little damage individual blows do? I mean, I guess I could see why since it does hit 4 times, but it seems kind of...pointless to be the one of all the Ninjutsu skills to worry about, even given its range.

Quote from: Wiz on August 02, 2011, 05:53:41 am

spoiler: Lore

Bio 3 -> Reduce MP Cost to 18. Why? Bio 1 and 2 go up by multiples of 6. Doesn't make sense to put this handicap on it.
Damage Split -> Reduce JP Cost to 500. Why? 600 is too costly for a reaction ability especially since most people don't open up lore unless they're using a scholar.

While I can perhaps agree with Bio 3's reduction, I have to vehemently be against lowering Damage Split's JP. Trust me. People do still constantly open up Scholar just to get it considering how good it still is.

Quote from: Wiz on August 02, 2011, 05:53:41 am

spoiler: Sing

MAJOR PROBLEMS WITH "Stat" STACKING, don't get this confused with "Status"!!!
Angel and Life Song -> Make so they're not mimickable. Why? Otherwise you get 400+ HP Heals at 3:16 - 3:40 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=472lsoiXUfI&fmt=18) which is outright bullshit. Even Dol, who made that team agrees with me on this one.
Cheer Song -> Make it so that it gives out a haste bonus. Why? Permanent Speed trumps Haste considering it already got nerfed to have a 5/4x speed increase instead of a 4/3 one.
Battle Song -> Make it so that it gives out a Protect bonus. Why? In that same video at 13:16 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=472lsoiXUfI&fmt=18), you'll see mimes do 999 Damage which is a problem.
Magic Song -> Make it so that it gives out a Shell bonus. Why? Same potential, but with DO/Geomancy users.
Nameless Song -> Make it so that it gives out a Reraise bonus. Why? Too many buffs stacked on top of it, and even so the AI rarely uses it for some reason.

spoiler: Dance

MAJOR PROBLEMS WITH "Stat" STACKING, don't get this confused with "Status"!!!
Witch Hunt and Wiznaibus -> Like Angel/Life Song, they don't need to be mimicked. Why? Ditto, and it's so annoying to watch it being spammed.
Slow Dance -> Just the opposite of Cheer Song, decrease speed with the slow status, not -1 SPD. Why? Ditto (Abusive with mimicking).
Polka Polka -> Make it inflict the Berserk Status. Why? Ditto
Disillusion -> Make it inflict the Confuse Status. Why? Ditto
Nameless Dance -> Make it inflict Death Sentence. Why? Too Many negative buffs out there and too random to counter otherwise.

I can get behind Cheer Song causing Haste and Slow Dance causing, well, Slow, even if it actually works against the plan to try to make things more accountable to Faith. I can't get behind anything else, though.

To start off, Berserk and Confusion statuses would make Disillusion and Polka Polka MORE abusive with Mimes since they have unlimited duration, basically forcing every team to be immune to Berserk and/or Confusion unless they want things to be really stupid. You know how the AI acts with regards to Death Sentence and not going after whomever is afflicted even though a lot of the time that unit is still a huge problem? Confusion is usually that tenfold (unless you're using Thieves, and that class hardly needs more of an edge now) unless the AI can do 50+% of that unit's HP in damage in one strike. So...yeah.

Nameless Dance is fine. Okay, maybe change Stop into Don't Move or something, but then it becomes pretty toothless for its CT and hit rate, especially with how much Esuna and Stigma Magic cure currently. Stop's pretty much the only "dangerous" thing about Nameless Dance now that it's not Frogging or Confusing people from the across the map.

With regards to Nameless Song, I believe the AI rarely uses it because it's probably still flagged as Random or else it's all the AI would do since it just sees Haste and Regen and not that they only have a chance to occur rather than a certainty. Without the Random flag, the AI would keep spamming it like the old Masamune when ARENA first started up that randomly did Haste OR Regen, but the AI saw it as both (and would thus stupidly prioritize over EVERYTHING else, even healing).

Speaking of healing, I can get behind Life Song restoring less HP and being slightly longer than CT. Same with Angel Song and MP. I think they're fine being Mimicked, though. Same with Wiznaibus/With Knives and Witch Hunt, especially since those would be very unlikely to be used without Mimic.

Quote from: Wiz on August 02, 2011, 05:53:41 am

spoiler: Bags

FS Bag -> Give it Always: Protect. Why? Plenty of other gear out there which also give out +1 PA making this useless otherwise.
C Bag -> Give it Always: Shell. Why? Viable option between this and the Wizard Rod then.

I can't say I agree with this, unless Bags become Forced Two Hands or something and even then....

Also, I don't think that FFMaster has any Item Attribute space left over with which to make these happen anyway.

Quote from: Wiz on August 02, 2011, 05:53:41 am

spoiler: Staves

These Bitches need MAJOR lovins.
Gold Staff -> Add Cancel: Silence to it. Why? Staff whacks are just not enough.
Rainbow Staff-> Add Initial: Haste (Last for 2 turns such as Act and Move). Why? Ditto
White Staff -> Add Initial Faith (Last for 2 full turns such as Act and Move). Why? Ditto

I could get behind these. Unfortunately, as with Bags, I don't think FFMaster has the free Item Attribute Space for the last two; Gold Staff should be doable, though, and it does need a boost....

Quote from: Wiz on August 02, 2011, 05:53:41 am

spoiler: Rods

Poison Rod -> Cancel: Poison and Stop. Why? Why not!? Just cancelling poison is too shitty :O

I can't say I agree with this, even if the Item Attribute space was available (unless there was a lot left available). Should Rods get an increase in WP and Two Swords/Equip Magegear see a drop, these could be pretty obnoxious given the 100% Poison.

Quote from: Wiz on August 02, 2011, 05:53:41 am

spoiler: Ninja Swords

Koga and Iga Knives -> Switch the strengthening between the two around. Why? To boost the weapon and it's kind of assholish to force the player to use both in order to get only one of the boosts.

If it's assholish, then that's Squaresoft's doing since FFMaster literally didn't change those aspects. Also, I could see your point if Ninja didn't have Two Swords innate, but since they do...yeah. Even the "sacrifice" that RavenofRazgriz talked isn't much for them given they can use both weapons freely at the same time innately.

Quote from: Wiz on August 02, 2011, 05:53:41 am

spoiler: Bows

Ultimus Bow. Reduce its Range by 1 so it's 4 in total. Why? The Mythril Bow's a POS (Piece of Shit) then.

Mythril Bow is fine. 1 Speed is rather significant (or will be, once Quickening, Speed Save and Cheer Song die in a fire). I suppose I could agree with this even having said that, if not for the fact that Ultimus Bow would then become a POS because at 4-range, there would be next to no reason to use it over a Cross Bow given that you get a shield with the crossbow.

Quote from: Wiz on August 02, 2011, 05:53:41 amThieves DON'T need access to swords. Speedy units with blood sword I don't think so.

Hmmm...I guess I can agree with this; I honestly hadn't paid much attention to the fact ARENA Thieves can equip Swords innately. Although, as problematic as Thieves currently are, I think it's more a problem with Blood Sword itself and that all absorption abilities in FFT heal for the full damage they do than with Thief's Speedy Gonzalez routine--minus speed-boosting abilities, of course, since then pretty much ANY class is OP with a Blood Sword after getting enough speed.

Quote from: Barren on August 02, 2011, 07:22:11 am
Well if you want the miming of song and dance and such to be less OP, why not have it mimed only once so that way you can spend more time thinking of a creative combo for mimes to use during battle other than SOS (Same Old Shit)

Plus it wont overwhelm the team so unfairly that they can't come back from the wiznaibus/battle song/lich/elemental spam, ect. Mimes needs to be limited to 1 IMHO

Eh...it doesn't really solve the problem, at least in the case of magicians since three Summoners and 1 mime still equips 6 Summons, even if that two of those six summons have to be different. Even in the case of stat Song and Wiznaibus, it just seems like artificially dealing with the problem.

Honestly, Mimes just need to not be allowed to Mimic stat-affecting abilities, even if they lose Martial Arts and even if there's an "artificial" stat-cap via that ASM.

Life Song and Wiznaibus/With Knives being able to be Mimiced is fine (if the CT is increased and the amount they do decreased, though that in turns makes them MORE dependent on Mimes, not less). Sure, it will still be "boring", but, eh, not everything can be "exciting". Besides, it's not like you guys are doing tournament matches again. You can decline to just run teams that use Mime plus whatever Song or Dance since it DOES take up a lot of time usually and everything you're doing is from the kindness of your own heart (or whatever organ, let's say "brain" to be less cheesy). It's not exactly like those teams can sneak up on you anyway since you have to put their abilities in a spreadsheet before you can even run a match.

I'm not sure what to do about Summon stuff, though I think as a whole Summon magic probably needs to be weaker anyway.

Quote from: RavenOfRazgriz on August 02, 2011, 07:44:05 am
The only problem is that taking that route slowly makes the rules needlessly complex and inconsistent.  You can only have two of everything... except Mimes... then starts the slippery slope of just making rules exceptions to toss a band-aide on things instead of just fixing the issue.  A rules exception should only exist when there is no other alternative.  There are clearly several alternatives worth looking into currently.  The main thing that doesn't seem to have much of an exception is Life Song... but a "this skill is unmimable" exception is far less questionable than actually changing the party construction rules themselves.  Either that, or just make the Songs Undead Reversed and make Mimes Undead or something so that Miming a Life Song is just not a good idea... there's a nice crazy solution to several issues at once. 

Making Mimes Undead would be pretty bad if the current Cursed Ring situation is any indication. Similarly, making Life Song actually damage the Undead when it's already one of only two healing skills that doesn't--the other being Chakra--seems rather unfair/unnecessary.

Besides, I thought the "Undead Reverse" toggle only affected AI Behavior rather than the actual skill itself.

I otherwise agree that limiting things to 1 Mime is just a band-aid that doesn't really get at the problem and only starts a slippery slope problem.

Quote from: Dol on August 02, 2011, 10:59:06 amHowever, if it is possible, can you make it where mimes cant mimic any songs or dances?  The only problem anyone has had with the stat increases is when you have a mime or two mimicing the songs.  Cheer Song/Slow Dance have low enough chances to hit that you cant really build a team around them as is.  The other stat boosts cant really snowball out of control with one cast per round.

As Raven already pointed out, there's literally just a toggle for it in FFTPatcher. So you could make it that all Songs & Dances can be Mimicked (as is the current situation), no Songs or Dances can be Mimcked (as is your suggestion) or that certain Songs & Dances, say the stat-affecting ones, can't be Mimicked while the other ones can (as per my suggestion). It's quite flexible and, as of yet, I don't think that I've run into any problems with it changing things around and making things within the same skill set not all able to be Mimed.

Quote from: RavenOfRazgriz on August 02, 2011, 11:42:48 amLife Song is borderline usable, but even then, I don't think I've at least seen anyone use them without Mimes.

*raises hand*

I've used Life Song at least thrice without any Mimes, but then again, I tend to build (shitty) theme teams, so don't mind me....

Quote from: RavenOfRazgriz on August 02, 2011, 11:42:48 am
Another simple alternate solution to the Songs and Dances is to outright make them adjust Fury and Faith - you get the same effect, but how drastic it can get is hard-capped by the Fury/Faith mechanic and using it now has a drawback.  (Like Wiz mentioned, Tanks that are buffed to huge levels lose a large part of their tankiness in trade for power, etc.)

That's perhaps good for Songs, but it seems like a pretty horrible idea for Dances. Didn't you recently run into a problem in your own patch with regards to Fury and it getting to really low values, making dealing damage impossible? You think that Polka Polka is bad now? Matches would likely end up stalemating (or being extremely boring) if there was a -Brave/-Fury Dance, which wouldn't even affect all physical attacks, so it would probably just end up detrimental to the team actually using it, which is...bad. [/understatement]

Similarly, the -Faith Dance would be even more worthless than Witch Hunt, which is saying something considering no one has yet to use it, given the only thing that would exploit the lower-Faith would be, what, Ninjutsu? Given there are only 3 low-Faith "punishing" attacks and they're all elemental, it doesn't exactly seem like that Dance would ever get used either.

So, if we're fine with screwing over Dancer (and Mediator) even further, then Fury/Faith Song & Dance sound like an interesting idea. Otherwise....

Quote from: formerdeathcorps on August 02, 2011, 04:43:50 pm0) Not allowing mimicry of the healing/damaging songs is understandable, but I don't see exactly why that synergy needs to be removed (since that's about 50% of the reason why most people even choose having mimes).  Granted, I don't have too many good ideas that don't require ASM, but if we must:
Life Song (12 MP per use [remember, this is every time life song goes off])
Angel Song (66% accuracy)
Wiznaibus (P-EV)
Witch Hunt (M-EV)

I basically agree with everything that FDC has to say, though I just wanted to point this part out since, Life Song typo aside, I'm not sure how much I agree with it and we're focusing on Song and Dance a lot anyway. Granting evasion to Wiznaibus/With Knives and Witch Hunt seems like it hurts them a lot more than Song's suggested changes, even with the loss of certainty that Angel Song would have.

No one has used Witch Hunt when it's only 4 CT and not evadable. I can't see allowing it to be subject to magical evasion exactly helping matters. Wiznaibus/With Knives also becomes a lot worse between all the reactions that can make it backfire and how common (significant) physical evasion is. Maybe if you could make it not trigger certain reactions (like HP Restore), but I don't think we can affect Countergrasp reactions still....

Also, Life Song should probably be around 20-25 HP. Anything lower would be pathetic even with a Mime and anything higher, as it is now, would be rather abusive with one, especially with the 4 CT it has now. Making it into a guaranteed sort of Distribute seems like the way to go rather than taking a nerf-bat to its knees.

Angel Song is probably fine at 12 MP, though, if that's what you meant.

Quote from: The Damned on August 03, 2011, 05:20:09 amMaking Mimes Undead would be pretty bad if the current Cursed Ring situation is any indication. Similarly, making Life Song actually damage the Undead when it's already one of only two healing skills that doesn't--the other being Chakra--seems rather unfair/unnecessary.

Besides, I thought the "Undead Reverse" toggle only affected AI Behavior rather than the actual skill itself.

Both of those are easily fixed by ASM I know FFMaster is more than capable of, and it was more of an offhanded thought than a serious suggestion.  Outside of fixing useless formula, I prefer the path of least resistance.  Alternatively, we can just put Life Song and Angel Song on a 50% Hit Rate, putting them in parity with the other songs because they already play far more often than them.  I think this is probably the best solution, personally, since it keeps everything consistent with how Songs work.  (Wiznaibus and Witch Hunt should also see this change for the sake of parity since spamming Mimes with Wiznaibus can also be a quick way to wear down teams, but they should no longer trigger any Reactions in that case.  I just like making their accuracy all 50% over hacking them to do odd things like accept MP or Evasion, it keeps the skills more in-line with each other, and could possibly even allow their base to be buffed pending testing.)

Quote from: The Damned on August 03, 2011, 05:20:09 amThat's perhaps good for Songs, but it seems like a pretty horrible idea for Dances. Didn't you recently run into a problem in your own patch with regards to Fury and it getting to really low values, making dealing damage impossible? You think that Polka Polka is bad now? Matches would likely end up stalemating (or being extremely boring) if there was a -Brave/-Fury Dance, which wouldn't even affect all physical attacks, so it would probably just end up detrimental to the team actually using it, which is...bad.

Note your last line - it doesn't affect all Physical or Magical attacks.  I removed it from Redesign because at least one of them DID affect literally everything.  Hell, if you look at Mediator, they can drop Fury/Faith in increments of 25... and when you consider a perservering Dance would likely drop them in increments of 4 with 50% Accuracy... it's far less of an issue.  The thing just becomes that you can't expect to drop their Fury and win via Fury based attacks... or drop their Faith and do the same, meaning you either use unaffected skills such as Elemental yourself or only use one while running high in the other.  If Arena intends to keep skills that aren't affected by Fury or Faith, or skills like Ninjas which use UnFaith or UnFury, then there's no reason not to tap the design space those kinds of things open up by exploring the above.

Also, you want boring, go look at the team I just submitted.  I MADE boring.

Quote from: The Damned on August 03, 2011, 05:20:09 amSimilarly, the -Faith Dance would be even more worthless than Witch Hunt, which is saying something considering no one has yet to use it, given the only thing that would exploit the lower-Faith would be, what, Ninjutsu? Given there are only 3 low-Faith "punishing" attacks and they're all elemental, it doesn't exactly seem like that Dance would ever get used either.

Notice that there are Flare-based teams.  -Faith kills them, and it also kills other things such as Summon and White Magic.  -MP isn't useful often because most teams can restore MP.  Under this schema, without an appropriately learned Bard or Mediator, you can't restore Faith, so that 4% to damage is lost forever.  That seems pretty decent, considering everything, if only because you can expand the strategy beyond a Flare-hoser by using the Ninja skillset in some manner.

(So, FFMaster, when had you intended for 131 Beta to be out anyway?)

I'm still thinking about those 3 Poles for the record. It's just that the last two days have been rather...bad.

Quote from: RavenOfRazgriz on August 03, 2011, 01:01:56 pm
Both of those are easily fixed by ASM I know FFMaster is more than capable of, and it was more of an offhanded thought than a serious suggestion. Outside of fixing useless formula, I prefer the path of least resistance.

"Fixed" as in...do damage to Undead instead of heal them? Or...?

I'm curious, since I often agree with your ideas, provided you couldn't just completely kill it, I feel I must ask this: What would you do to fix Cursed Ring?

Quote from: RavenOfRazgriz on August 03, 2011, 01:01:56 pmAlternatively, we can just put Life Song and Angel Song on a 50% Hit Rate, putting them in parity with the other songs because they already play far more often than them.

I'm not sure I'm comfortable with making Bard (and Dancer, for the sake of "parity") so very unreliable when a mere additional CT seems like it would solve at least half of the problem.

I guess I'd be for if you could make Wiznaibus/With Knives ignore reactions, but Song and Dance formulas are rather...fickle as to what they accept.

Quote from: RavenOfRazgriz on August 03, 2011, 01:01:56 pm
Note your last line - it doesn't affect all Physical or Magical attacks.  I removed it from Redesign because at least one of them DID affect literally everything.  Hell, if you look at Mediator, they can drop Fury/Faith in increments of 25...

Which is why I said in that wall of changes that Mediator's Threaten and Solution should drop to a decrease of 20 at best.

Quote from: RavenOfRazgriz on August 03, 2011, 01:01:56 pm...and when you consider a perservering Dance would likely drop them in increments of 4 with 50% Accuracy... it's far less of an issue.

Oh, only increments of 4? You didn't specify the amount, so I wasn't sure. I was thinking you suggesting like -10 or something. To be truthful, -4 seems...underwhelming.

Quote from: RavenOfRazgriz on August 03, 2011, 01:01:56 pmThe thing just becomes that you can't expect to drop their Fury and win via Fury based attacks... or drop their Faith and do the same, meaning you either use unaffected skills such as Elemental yourself or only use one while running high in the other.  If Arena intends to keep skills that aren't affected by Fury or Faith, or skills like Ninjas which use UnFaith or UnFury, then there's no reason not to tap the design space those kinds of things open up by exploring the above.

I'm aware of that. The thing is, though, that tapping that design space pretty much pushes classes and skill sets that are already are stronger than most. It seems rather unnecessary to add a mass -Faith ability when magic is still arguably struggling besides Flare, Titan & Bahamut and the Raise spells.

Maybe after the floor of 50 Faith is installed, but I'd rather not do both things at once even if I end up being convinced we should do the Fury & Faith Song & Dance at all.

Quote from: RavenOfRazgriz on August 03, 2011, 01:01:56 pmAlso, you want boring, go look at the team I just submitted.  I MADE boring.

And? Provided that it's even effective doesn't mean that another situation would be any less boring.

Quote from: RavenOfRazgriz on August 03, 2011, 01:01:56 pmNotice that there are Flare-based teams.  -Faith kills them, and it also kills other things such as Summon and White Magic.  -MP isn't useful often because most teams can restore MP.  Under this schema, without an appropriately learned Bard or Mediator, you can't restore Faith, so that 4% to damage is lost forever.  That seems pretty decent, considering everything, if only because you can expand the strategy beyond a Flare-hoser by using the Ninja skillset in some manner.

I'd rather not make new move solely to be a hoser for things that will likely be getting nerfed already anyway, especially when it also screws over far more things that aren't as abused.

(The plan is for it to be out about a week after fdc releases his formula stuff, since it will make the patch cleaner to edit/etc, not to mention the new formulas it is advertising. I'm expecting at least 10 bugs on release though, so expect versions b,c,d,etc.)

Just to put my foot down, don't judge magic based on Flare. Everyone agrees it is too powerful, just pretend it doesn't exist and judge the rest of magic from there.

Here are some random ideas flying through my head right now(some from IRC for those who aren't actively there):

- A mage(thinking Oracle right now) has all his/her spells as Unfaith. On IRC, Eternal objected to this, but didn't say why or I missed his argument.
- Monks lose Martial Arts innate. New fist formula becomes PA*10. Overall, a nerf to Monk fist damage.
- Most weapons across the board gain WP, except the ones with already high WP. Pretty minor in most cases. Basically, everything under about 10-11 WP will go up by about 1-2, depending on how it has been used, etc.
- Armors with Immune: Statii will be condensed down and buffed. Vanilla Armors will gain more HP.
- More equipment with bad effects (similar to Cursed Ring, but well, we'll see how it goes)
- More equipment with Initial/Permanent statii

The last 3 will depend on how much space I can gather while removing/adding equipment. I may as well start naming equipment properly as well over the course. Shields will most likely be untouched, as will most accessories, so feel free to suggest names.

Quote from: The Damned on August 03, 2011, 09:56:20 pm"Fixed" as in...do damage to Undead instead of heal them? Or...?

Yup.

Quote from: The Damned on August 03, 2011, 09:56:20 pmI'm curious, since I often agree with your ideas, provided you couldn't just completely kill it, I feel I must ask this: What would you do to fix Cursed Ring?

"Fix"?  I was unaware an Item that had multiple weaknesses built in and characters who have abilities specifically designed to hose Cursed Ring was an issue unsolvable by adaptation.  Unless by "fix" you mean "it sucks, help."

Quote from: The Damned on August 03, 2011, 09:56:20 pmI'm not sure I'm comfortable with making Bard (and Dancer, for the sake of "parity") so very unreliable when a mere additional CT seems like it would solve at least half of the problem.

Making the skills too slow makes them not worth as much outside of Miming where you're getting triple the effect.  Making them as inconsistent as every other Dance and Song ability allows them to keep both Speed and Power (meaning you do get some heals still), but Miming it is just far less effective because you're rolling the dice even more and getting less for it.  Though honestly, I've had thoughts on Mime after a while that I think need addressing that may make "fixing" these issues unnecessary.

Quote from: The Damned on August 03, 2011, 09:56:20 pmOh, only increments of 4? You didn't specify the amount, so I wasn't sure. I was thinking you suggesting like -10 or something. To be truthful, -4 seems...underwhelming.

4-6 Fury/Faith is equal to about 3-4% damage, or just under a PA or MA point in most cases.  It's underwhelming for Faith, maybe, but that's because Faith lacks a constant giving it a damage floor.

Quote from: The Damned on August 03, 2011, 09:56:20 pmI'm aware of that. The thing is, though, that tapping that design space pretty much pushes classes and skill sets that are already are stronger than most. It seems rather unnecessary to add a mass -Faith ability when magic is still arguably struggling besides Flare, Titan & Bahamut and the Raise spells.

I'll come out and say it - that sounds far more like most Faith-based magics need to be made better, not that the non-Faith ones need to be weaker/discouraged, considering that most non-Faith magic skills don't do high end damage (160 or so for Elemental, etc.)... they just ignore a huge decrement against 40 Faith users, meaning they're harder to tank, which is again why they exist as an out to someone trying to wall out behind 40 Faith, just as outs should exist for walling behind 40 Fury, etc.  ...This is also again why Faith needs a constant value the way Fury does, so 40 Faith is far less damning to your damage total.

Quote from: The Damned on August 03, 2011, 09:56:20 pmAnd? Provided that it's even effective doesn't mean that another situation would be any less boring.

I'm just pointing out that I can already stack hilarious amounts of defense under the current Arena rules, probably better than you can with Fury/Faith flooring moves.  Hell, even now, I can just Mime -PA and -MA and floor your entire team if I wanted, your argument is basically saying "that's boring" while ignoring the fact I can already do it better than if I had -Fury/Faith because currently I can do it without suffering any loss to my damage totals. 

Quote from: The Damned on August 03, 2011, 09:56:20 pmI'd rather not make new move solely to be a hoser for things that will likely be getting nerfed already anyway, especially when it also screws over far more things that aren't as abused.

Again (similar to a conversation I had with FFMaster about equipment on IRC) - it looks / sounds like the majority of the unused stuff kind of sucks, not the other way around.

Quote from: FFMaster on August 04, 2011, 04:07:49 am(The plan is for it to be out about a week after fdc releases his formula stuff, since it will make the patch cleaner to edit/etc, not to mention the new formulas it is advertising. I'm expecting at least 10 bugs on release though, so expect versions b,c,d,etc.)

You sure it'll be done that soon?  I haven't spoken to him on it in a while myself, honestly, outside of random thoughts.

Quote from: FFMaster on August 04, 2011, 04:07:49 amJust to put my foot down, don't judge magic based on Flare. Everyone agrees it is too powerful, just pretend it doesn't exist and judge the rest of magic from there.

Like I said to The Damned - then it sounds like most magic sucks outside of Raise, Fairy, and some piecemeal Summons.  Then again, currently "most magic" is things like Wizard's remaining skillset being elemental mirrors of the same skill over and over again, etc. - so if one sucks, they all suck.

Quote from: FFMaster on August 04, 2011, 04:07:49 am- A mage(thinking Oracle right now) has all his/her spells as Unfaith. On IRC, Eternal objected to this, but didn't say why or I missed his argument.

This is a good idea, and this is the best magic-using class to do it with, personally.  It punishes low Faith without stepping on Ninja's toes, and makes Status a bit stronger.

Quote from: FFMaster on August 04, 2011, 04:07:49 amMonks lose Martial Arts innate. New fist formula becomes PA*10. Overall, a nerf to Monk fist damage.
- Most weapons across the board gain WP, except the ones with already high WP. Pretty minor in most cases. Basically, everything under about 10-11 WP will go up by about 1-2, depending on how it has been used, etc.

This works since it's in tandem, else I'm still for PA*8 instead.

Quote from: FFMaster on August 04, 2011, 04:07:49 am- More equipment with bad effects (similar to Cursed Ring, but well, we'll see how it goes)

More Auto: Undead items specifically would actually be kinda cool, though they'd probably all need to be Accessories so you can't stack them all up while only suffering a single drawback.  Though, just be careful on which negative status you use.

Re - Mime:

I've been thinking about it, and Mime as a class is seriously flawed.  I know it draws a lot of its innates and such from Vanilla and 1.3, but look at it:

-Innate Immune: All Negative Status.  Teams based on Negative Status literally cannot execute their strategies vs. teams that utilize Mimes (mostly Bard/Dancer teams).  They're forced to basically brute-strength through the Mimes then Status on the leftovers... which are usually so far less threatening up-front than Mimes are that it's trivial to just overpower them as well.  Basically, Mimes > Status Teams.

-Innate Concentrate.  Teams based on evasion can't evade Mimes.  Again, the entire team concept gets hosed before it begins just because the opponent is using Mimes and Mimes are stacked unless the Evasion Team can overpower the Mimes... at which point they win again, because the rest of the riffraff is usually too irrelevant for their Evasion to even make a difference unless said riffraff also got fairly stacked off Battle Songs.

-High Base HP (about as much as an HP-spec Clothes-wearer), Innate: Unyielding, 30 C-EV.  So we've established that most teams not set to win via Power or hard-tanking (DEFUP + 40 Fu/Fa, etc) are hosed by Mime innates... but Mimes are also fairly defensive in themselves, having respectable HP and a damage buffer.  To teams not MEANT to overpower things (Evasion Teams, Status Teams), that's a lot of shit to be forced to power through, especially when you consider most Mimes are climbing up in power via Battle Song and/or being constantly healed for almost 100 HP every few CT through Mimed Life Songs.  Even hard-defense teams are probably going to get worn down many times, because Battle Song is guaranteed to eventually overpower most defenses, and fairly quickly when combined with the old Fist formula, innate Martial Arts, etc., and they likely don't have the damage output to easily overpower Mimes themselves due to defensive setups.  The 30 C-EV is mostly just a kick in the face, but it does give them some nice extra survival potential on top of this.

-Innate: Counter Flood.  Mimes are immune to all status, immune to all evasion, moderately difficult to kill... and yet they have an innate Reaction that can counter almost any offensive act against them and inflict statuses of their own onto other people.  So basically, Mimes can utilize status while being immune to it entirely in retort, grind people down with a non-Fury/Faith Reaction that ignores evasion while their primary attacks also ignore evasion while still having evasion themselves, etc.  This... is very, very wrong, and I hope this is clear why without delving deeper.

-Innate: Martial Arts.  Not as huge as the others, but mostly mentioning because on 1.30 Arena, they have this and PA*Fu/100*PA*(FU+35)/100 with 70 Fury for their Fist formula... and this is the main reason Battle Song Mime is so powerful.  Those PA points just stack the damage up far faster than anything else, and this innate ensures that Mime's getting a boost to some great abilities (Punch Art skills and Primary Fists) on top of all the advantages listed above.

Tl;dr - Mime is fucking rigged, likely on the basis of it being a "niche" class the AI has a hard time using, and this is going to seriously fuck the metagame if it isn't already. 

Personally, what needs to happen here is:

-Fist Formula change
-Loss of Innate: Martial Arts

FFMaster verified doing this at PA*10, though if Mime keeps innate Martial Arts, they may as well have PA*15, which I'm against, but without double-factor PA it's still far more controlled and does at least give a bit of distinction to Mime outside of the obvious.  However, I'm saying the second because I want to recommend something else instead.

-Loss of Innate: Concentrate
-Loss of (most) Status Immunity

Should be obvious why, but this is to remove the bias against Status and Evasion teams these guys are rocking.  Counter Flood gives them a weapon vs Evasion teams, even if it is Reactionary, and the Mime's primary niche of the receiver of Battle Song means that Counter Floods will gain strength over times, as will normal hits that break evasion.  As for Status Immunity, maybe leave it immune to Frog, Chicken, Petrify, Stop to compensate for its lack of equippable gear, but otherwise there's no reason to hose teams that try to status their foes down with a blacket "screw you, broski."

-Gain of Innate: Overwhelm.
-Potential gain of 1-2 PA/MA points.

This is obviously to compensate for a loss of Martial Arts.  However, this is meant to "compensate" in a way that doesn't bias Mimes to the Battle Song strategy.  (All things considered, they're incredibly heavily biased into that use and that use alone, given their innates.)  This hopefully gives Mimes a bit more flexibility by making them better at other things besides punching people in the face.  I'm wary of saying adding Attack UP and Magic Attack UP innate because of the high multipliers, since Mime takes a lot of "free" actions, so Overwhelm seems "just right."

-Gain of Innate: Awareness.

Since Mimes can't use gear and lost innate Concentrate, allowing their 30 C-EV to apply on all sides only seems natural.  I'm trying to not make them heavily biased derpdederp damage dealers and strategy hosers, not awful unusable units.

So, the "final" Mime under my idea would look like:

-Innate: Overwhelm
-Innate: Unyielding
-Innate: Counter Flood
-Innate: Awareness
-Immune: Frog, Chicken, Petrify, Stop

Combine this with the Fist formula change that keeps getting mentioned (PA*10*[Fu+35/100] post-Fury), and I think this remedies not only the Battle Song problem, but most problems that result from Mimes.  Tl;dr - I propose the above changes to Mime, while making no changes to Bard or Dancer whatsoever.  Their skills shouldn't need to suffer for Mime's sake if it can be helped, and the above changes do tons to fix the problem by going to the source.  I recommend doing this for Arena 1.31, then seeing how Bard/Dancer/Mime teams and other Mime teams play out before considering how to change Bard and Dancer, if any change is at all needed.

(Yeah, I was under the impression that FDC's formula project was still a way off. If not, then great. If so, then, uh.... It's probably best to try to get this done or at least started before summer is over for most people.)

Okay, before I get to anything else, since this is looking like it's going to be another quite long post, I need to get this out of the way first.

So, last night, before making a new team, I decided to chart out the Item Attributes for ARENA (as far as I could tell) given that I was both curious and I needed a starting point if I'm going to come up with feasible ideas for those 3 Poles and perhaps other things.

Interestingly enough, it seems like you should still have three free Item Attribute spaces, FFMaster. I'm not sure if that's correct or not, but that's why I'm asking you to look over this. Obviously, they're not going to be in the same order that you have them in, but I put the Items that they relate to next to them in order to try to ease confusion. Similarly, I went straight down the Item list as it's in the Master Guide thread:



The numbers are in decimal, obviously, and anything that isn't listed would be under 00 for "nothing". I used "Immune" rather than "Cancel" because that's what I'm using for Embargo given that "Cancel" is horribly ambiguous when it's also used for removing status.

Quote from: FFMaster on August 04, 2011, 04:07:49 amHere are some random ideas flying through my head right now(some from IRC for those who aren't actively there):

- A mage(thinking Oracle right now) has all his/her spells as Unfaith. On IRC, Eternal objected to this, but didn't say why or I missed his argument.
- Monks lose Martial Arts innate. New fist formula becomes PA*10. Overall, a nerf to Monk fist damage.
- Most weapons across the board gain WP, except the ones with already high WP. Pretty minor in most cases. Basically, everything under about 10-11 WP will go up by about 1-2, depending on how it has been used, etc.
- Armors with Immune: Statii will be condensed down and buffed. Vanilla Armors will gain more HP.
- More equipment with bad effects (similar to Cursed Ring, but well, we'll see how it goes)
- More equipment with Initial/Permanent statii

The last 3 will depend on how much space I can gather while removing/adding equipment. I may as well start naming equipment properly as well over the course. Shields will most likely be untouched, as will most accessories, so feel free to suggest names.

1. Unfaithful Oracles: I'm...mixed about this. On the one hand, it would certainly help Yin-Yang Magic see use. On the other hand, I think what units it would see use on would be part of the reason that Eternal probably objected. It's (another) change that would favor physical, low-Faith classes over magical classes since most magical classes rather like their Faith to be high and thus would have end having even less of a use for Yin-Yang Magic than they currently do if they have to lower their Faith for it be effective.

...Wait. When you say "Unfaith", do you mean "more effective if both the caster and the target has low Faith" like Malak's Un-Truth and Suiton, Raiton & Katon? Or "Unfaith" as in "more effective if the caster has high Faith and the target has low Faith"? Because it just occurred to me you could mean either and, even though you probably mean the former, I'd have a lot more support if it's the latter. Otherwise, I'd rather just raise the Faith floor to 50, even though I know that means you'll probably have to completely overhaul Faith-based magic.

2. Overhauling the Art of Punches: Sounds good. As Raven talks about later, I'd argue Mimes also need to lose Martial Arts and that Martial Arts as a whole just needs to die & not even be an allowed option for RSMs.

3. WP Raising: Sounds good in most instances. There might be some exceptions, but I'll need to look over the list yet again, which is not something I feel like doing right now.

4. Vanilla Armor & Chocolate Armor: Explain "condensed", because I think that's kinda the opposite of what a few people were getting at.

5. Cursed Equipment: I can't say that I like this idea at all, especially if you're using Cursed Ring as the chief example. Given that only other examples of equipment with a strong negative are Salty Rage and P Bag, which I don't think anyone has used since they got those changes, I don't see why you would want to do this.

6. Temporary Permanence: This, on the other hand, I'm surprisingly more ambivalent too, especially if the negative status classes get buffed to be actually worth using.


Now we move on to That's So Raven.

Quote from: RavenOfRazgriz on August 04, 2011, 12:25:30 pmYup.

You know, if we hadn't talked so much, this mathematical answer would have confused me.

Quote from: RavenOfRazgriz on August 04, 2011, 12:25:30 pm"Fix"?  I was unaware an Item that had multiple weaknesses built in and characters who have abilities specifically designed to hose Cursed Ring was an issue unsolvable by adaptation.  Unless by "fix" you mean "it sucks, help."

"It sucks, help."

Quote from: RavenOfRazgriz on August 04, 2011, 12:25:30 pmMaking the skills too slow makes them not worth as much outside of Miming where you're getting triple the effect.  Making them as inconsistent as every other Dance and Song ability allows them to keep both Speed and Power (meaning you do get some heals still), but Miming it is just far less effective because you're rolling the dice even more and getting less for it.  Though honestly, I've had thoughts on Mime after a while that I think need addressing that may make "fixing" these issues unnecessary.

True enough. It's just that 50% seems a bit ...low. Perhaps 66%? Even 75%?

Quote from: RavenOfRazgriz on August 04, 2011, 12:25:30 pm4-6 Fury/Faith is equal to about 3-4% damage, or just under a PA or MA point in most cases.  It's underwhelming for Faith, maybe, but that's because Faith lacks a constant giving it a damage floor.

Yeah, that's kinda of what I was trying to get at.

Quote from: RavenOfRazgriz on August 04, 2011, 12:25:30 pmI'll come out and say it - that sounds far more like most Faith-based magics need to be made better,

*snip*

Also what I was trying to get at, since I've said it multiple times. (Not that I blame you for missing most of those instances given that you haven't really been interested in ARENA before now AFAIK.)

Quote from: RavenOfRazgriz on August 04, 2011, 12:25:30 pmI'm just pointing out that I can already stack hilarious amounts of defense under the current Arena rules, probably better than you can with Fury/Faith flooring moves.  Hell, even now, I can just Mime -PA and -MA and floor your entire team if I wanted, your argument is basically saying "that's boring" while ignoring the fact I can already do it better than if I had -Fury/Faith because currently I can do it without suffering any loss to my damage totals.

My argument wasn't only "that's boring". It was primarily "-Fury and -Faith Dances might lead to stalemates, which are bad and boring."

As for your team, meh. Like I said, we'll see how effective it actually ends up being in practice than on paper. I can't really say more about it until then, especially given how the AI acts up at times. (Oh, hey, Barren put a video of your team.)

Quote from: RavenOfRazgriz on August 04, 2011, 12:25:30 pm
Re - Mime:

*snip*

Tl;dr - Mime is fucking rigged, likely on the basis of it being a "niche" class the AI has a hard time using, and this is going to seriously fuck the metagame if it isn't already. 

*snip*

So, the "final" Mime under my idea would look like:

-Innate: Overwhelm
-Innate: Unyielding
-Innate: Counter Flood
-Innate: Awareness
-Immune: Frog, Chicken, Petrify, Stop

Combine this with the Fist formula change that keeps getting mentioned (PA*10*[Fu+35/100] post-Fury), and I think this remedies not only the Battle Song problem, but most problems that result from Mimes.  Tl;dr - I propose the above changes to Mime, while making no changes to Bard or Dancer whatsoever.  Their skills shouldn't need to suffer for Mime's sake if it can be helped, and the above changes do tons to fix the problem by going to the source.  I recommend doing this for Arena 1.31, then seeing how Bard/Dancer/Mime teams and other Mime teams play out before considering how to change Bard and Dancer, if any change is at all needed.

I agree with pretty much all of this, especially given that people can't seem to agree what to do with Bard and Dancer without weakening their skills into oblivion (IMO), except having both Innate Overwhelm and Innate Unyielding.

It seems like a waste of space using two Innates just to have them do and take 4% less damage than they would normally do without both at the same time. Might as well get rid of both of them, if that's the case.

Speaking of getting rid of, I'd actually be all for getting rid of Counter Flood too and just giving them Counter & Counter Magic as I proposed from the beginning, even as often as Counter Magic might backfire horribly. Innate Unyielding (by itself) would somewhat mitigate that, though, and the only other thing of use I can see them getting that no one else is Innate Move-HP Up, which is a bit...much probably. It helps that when they Mime, they don't even expend MP, so....

Quote from: The Damned on August 04, 2011, 10:10:50 pm"It sucks, help."

I'm unsure it actually needs help, zxpr0jk has a cool Undead team going.  A bit niche maybe, but still seemingly pretty cool.

Quote from: The Damned on August 04, 2011, 10:10:50 pmIt seems like a waste of space using two Innates just to have them do and take 4% less damage than they would normally do without both at the same time. Might as well get rid of both of them, if that's the case.

"This unit is healed for 20% less / takes 20% less damage."
"This unit gives 20% more healing / gives 20% more damage."

They don't multiply to each other - they affect entirely different things.  Unless their descriptions are 100% inaccurate, that is, so having both actually has a point.

Quote from: The Damned on August 04, 2011, 10:10:50 pmSpeaking of getting rid of, I'd actually be all for getting rid of Counter Flood too and just giving them Counter & Counter Magic as I proposed from the beginning, even as often as Counter Magic might backfire horribly. Innate Unyielding (by itself) would somewhat mitigate that, though, and the only other thing of use I can see them getting that no one else is Innate Move-HP Up, which is a bit...much probably. It helps that when they Mime, they don't even expend MP, so....

Counter and Counter Magic give them high-power Reactions, whereas Counter Flood is pretty weak, considering their PA and MA is nothing to write home about.  (No gear boosts, remember.)  It's also unaffected by Fury/Faith, so it does give the Mime some sort of pseudo-hosing, but not unfairly so because it's Reactionary.

I would SO abuse counter magic mimes

(Damn it. I promised myself I'd start working on other things this week.)

I'd honestly like to see someone abuse Counter Magic Mimes and it actually be effective without them ending up dead after more than 1 abuse without healing.

Quote from: RavenOfRazgriz on August 04, 2011, 10:23:12 pm
I'm unsure it actually needs help, zxpr0jk has a cool Undead team going.  A bit niche maybe, but still seemingly pretty cool.

Horrible jealousy that zxpr0jk apparently has the Devil's own luck considering he hit with Death more than once aside, zxpr0jk is function almost completely independent of Undead status. In fact, pretty much all it's done is way him down. His team would likely be better off if he just switched to Bracers or Sprint Shoes or even Power Wrists, especially since his Paladins don't need MA.

So, yeah, even on team that's won the most with Cursed Ring, it's more that it's been winning in spite of it because Wizards hit so damn hard now than it is because he's using the Undead status or Dark absorption in any particular way. I'm pretty sure all Death-healing attempts have failed and it's not like he's using Grand Cross with Koutetsu.

Quote from: RavenOfRazgriz on August 04, 2011, 10:23:12 pm
"This unit is healed for 20% less / takes 20% less damage."
"This unit gives 20% more healing / gives 20% more damage."

They don't multiply to each other - they affect entirely different things.  Unless their descriptions are 100% inaccurate, that is, so having both actually has a point.

I think their descriptions might be off, though maybe I'm just misremembering it or getting confused by something because I know a few descriptions for RSMs are a bit...vague/off. IIRC, Overwhelm is supposed to make you take 20% more damage as well.

Quote from: RavenOfRazgriz on August 04, 2011, 10:23:12 pmCounter and Counter Magic give them high-power Reactions, whereas Counter Flood is pretty weak, considering their PA and MA is nothing to write home about.  (No gear boosts, remember.)  It's also unaffected by Fury/Faith, so it does give the Mime some sort of pseudo-hosing, but not unfairly so because it's Reactionary.

Meh. I guess. I suppose it can stay because Elemental is doubtless getting weakened and there's a decent chance that I'm wrong about Unyielding + Overwhelm.

*shrugs apathetically*

Overwhelm does not make the unit take more damage.

(Hunh. Wonder why I had thought for the past couple of months then.)

Thanks, CT5Holy. So, it would appear that I am wrong. Gee, what a new and novel experience.

I agree with completely agree with Raven's suggestions for Mimes, then. For now....

After rereading my post, I realized just how big of an effect sleep deprivation can have on your thinking XD

@Raven

Item Availability: My apologies for saying that you advocated for just F/I/L absorption. I knew what it is that you were trying to say, it's just I wasn't sure if you meant the former too considering that you want the player to be forced to reach "X" effect. This lies in the fact that you can equip 2x of any piece of gear, and unless you wanted to throw the arbitrary restiction of "1x piece of gear at Max" on, I don't see how about this problem can be solved atm.

Martial Arts + Punch Art: Sure, I'd be alright with Martial Arts being thrown out the window provided Punch Art as a whole got buffed. The only thing I'm afraid is that Punch Art will mostly become more effective with other units besides the monk kind of like the Squire being dominant over Geomancers as of now in 130. If the PA was boosted to just two points for monks, totaling 15, then they'll be throwing around 30 damage shurikens (x4) or 120 in total making them essentially like miniature versions of throw thieves in S3-S5 provided they've got a decent speed (10+) :P

Metagame: I realize that there's always going to be ways of exploiting w.e. abilities, character properties, item properties, etc. but that doesn't change the fact (excluding Martial Arts for 131) these five things (Elemental, Draw Out, Perservering Mimes, Stat Boost, Rogue) are a necessity to combat otherwise you get roflstomped on by the opposing team, which has one or more of those. If you mean Arena's moving a positive direction in the sense that we (the viewers/analyzers) are seeing what's too good, and underrated, then I couldn't agree more.

Sing/Dance: Yeah, the Dance ideas for Polka Polka/Disillusion aren't the greatest. As long as mimes can't mimic ANY songs/dance whatsoever, I'm fine where they currently are (with the proposal of changing Cheer Song/Slow Dance being the exception of course).

Ninja Sword (@Damned as well): If Iga/Koga don't get a boost, then the Asura Knife shouldn't either since it follows under the same rule (Keep in mind, it uses "PA * WP * (5/4)", which without question makes better when it comes to DPS compared to Iga/Koga despite having one less WP). From what I've seen, there haven't been any (almost none...I could be wrong) teams running around using these two weapons to great effect, so I see no reason for it to not have a boost. If you think it'd be OP w/ a boost, then prove that it's useful (as in not OP), and just maybe you'll convince me otherwise. I've already fulfilled displaying my burden of proof (referring to Arena vids), now it's your turn. When it comes to a thief using one of them, the Sasuke Knife's better due to the higher WP and the + 1 SP bonus (leading to a higher damage output even with the element bonus), which greatly trumps an initial higher dps as a match goes on...for the ninja of course. Idk about you guys, but I'd prefer having 340+ HP 11 SP over 340+ HP 9 SP any day considering that the sword smacks are absorb-able where the damage can be nullified provided a sold hit then absorbed hit take place, which can easily happen with nearly any piece of gear out there.

@fdc

Geomancy

QuoteIf anything, there needs to exist magical and physical means of damaging someone without considering evasion or fury to check the squads that try using evasion or low fury/faith walling.

Provided that user gets punished as well for "turtling" via 40 Fa (Squidgy's Squire from "Faithless Cowards" for example). I should have been clearer when I threw out making it faith-based as a suggestion, but I was hoping that it could become faith-dependent such that it'd use the fury hack formula where it uses "Fa" instead of Fury as its variable (although I doubt it's possible to edit it as it currently is).

Accumulate: Ehh, I guess it could stay as is considering the AI doesn't use it unless they're out of range to attack meaning they'll get at most 5 uses out of it. When it comes to reducing its hit percentage, I'd prefer to wait and see if it solely plays out as big enough factor in winning/losing a match.

Wish: It'd still be weaker than PD due to the vertical, which makes quite a bit of a difference on elevated terrain. And yeah Damned, perhaps a 5% recovery would be better instead of 10, otherwise it'd become too similar to PD.

Shuriken: It uses PA in its fomula, it kinda makes sense it uses P-Ev instead of M-Ev. Also, as you'll see from my Non-OP speed-oriented teams after I get done posting this, not having P-Ev turns this (with 10 SP Dancers) into a an almost guaranteed 1x 24 Damage attack from 6 panels away at a 6.25% chance of hitting poison for each of the 4 hits (I'm fairly sure it's higher than that based on my experience XP).

Steal Heart: Why's it preposterous to say that choosing Serpentarius with your thief would negate compat? It does (For bad/worst), and so what if the compat affects your team? Not every team relies on good/best compat heals in some form of magic especially since those same units could get charmed and really bite you in the ass. I've kind of abandoned mages altogether because I believe speed and turtling trumps all (provided you make the match progress long enough ^_^). But yeah, picking Serpentarius is perfectly reasonable...if people don't want to take risk, they shouldn't be forced to.

@Damned

Summon Magic:

QuoteYou realize Salamander is AoE 3, right?

>_<, missed that detail. It's a shame Shiva and Ramuh don't have those equivalents at all *sigh* When it comes to Zodiac, perhaps 4 AOE would be better instead of 5, I don't know what else to do with it atm.

Geomancy: I prefer that to happen as well actually. As I've stated in the past, I'm biased for turtling and think it's too good atm.

Bags: What'd you think if they gave out Inital: Protect and Initial: Shell then assuming they lasted for two full turns (Act and Move)?

Bows: Hmm, the Ultimus Bow's description's outdated and actually doesn't have 1 SPD. Ugh, it's so annoying to see items in the list that aren't part of the actual hack or arent suppose to be there (Yoichi, Perseus, Javelin II). But yeah, they're fine as is.

DO: Actually, DO can be subjected to CT, testing confirms this. I'll let it slide for 131. If I clearly see DO wiping the floor in 131, I'll bring this up again. As a sidenote, I'm an advocate of a faith-based fury-like DO skillset (like geomancy) that way the damage varies but not so much that it'd make it utterly useless to speedy turtles like moi (Oh the irony XD).

Quote from: Wiz on August 05, 2011, 03:25:14 pmItem Availability: My apologies for saying that you advocated for just F/I/L absorption. I knew what it is that you were trying to say, it's just I wasn't sure if you meant the former too considering that you want the player to be forced to reach "X" effect. This lies in the fact that you can equip 2x of any piece of gear, and unless you wanted to throw the arbitrary restiction of "1x piece of gear at Max" on, I don't see how about this problem can be solved atm.

I... don't see how this has anything to do with what I was saying.

I was saying "The player should not have 3+ different means of accessing [eg] Water absorption.  They should have 1-2 [a primary Item and an Accessory of some sort], and if they want Water absorption, work around the units that can access it easily, give up their Accessory, or give up their Support for an Equip X."  Basically, outside of the Accessory slot, gear pools SHOULD be biased in certain directions, and the best gains SHOULD come from breaking that bias via either creative use of the Accessory slot or use of an Equip X skill.  Basically, encouraging people to break molds for high yields, not making every effect easily accessible for every unit.  If you want something, it should cost you something, and with the right finess it should be well worth that cost.  Having effects redundantly splashed around kills this factor of unit creation, since if I want something [eg, a Water Absorb team], the gear makes this easy, and the only thing holding me back is whether Water abilities are worthwhile to use on my units or not.  My team is "easy" to make.

Quote from: Wiz on August 05, 2011, 03:25:14 pmThe only thing I'm afraid is that Punch Art will mostly become more effective with other units besides the monk kind of like the Squire being dominant over Geomancers as of now in 130.

That's more the result of Squire as a whole being better than Geomancer as a class unless you need Elemental + a non-Basic Skill skillset for some reason.  Like you said, if you give Monk a few PA points (2-3ish) to compensate for the loss of Martial Arts, things will be fine.  The Shuriken thing sounds more nifty than anything, all things considered.

Quote from: Wiz on August 05, 2011, 03:25:14 pmIf you mean Arena's moving a positive direction in the sense that we (the viewers/analyzers) are seeing what's too good, and underrated, then I couldn't agree more.

It's moving in a positive direction because you have more than one or two dominant strategies.  If these strategies are handled properly (not killed, but weakened enough to allow others in), things will continue to move in a positive direction.

As for Draw Out and Elemental - they do serve a crucial role in the metagame, because they allow teams based on MA an answer to enemies rocking 40 Fa, especially in .30 where the Fury/Faith mechanics are so horribly imbalanced compared to each other.  I also think a prime reason they're prevalent is something I said to The Damned earlier - Faith Magic in general sucks.  Flare is good, Raise 1/2 is good, maybe a tier of Cure is good, and Summon has a few good entries... but the majority of Black Magic is shit (not only shit, but shit composed of nothing but mirrored skills, so if one is shit, all are shit), the majority of White Magic is shit, most of the unused Summons are unused because they're shit, Yin-Yang Magic isn't used because Mime teams shit on Status (and Evasion, see my proposed Mime/Song/Dance a few posts up) and because Talk Skill overlaps it in the few areas that are most important (Don't Act, Sleep).  Etc.

I honestly feel this isn't a case of "Draw Out / Elemental / Flare is too good", but a case of "everything else sucks ass, and the Faith mechanic itself sucks ass compared to the Fury mechanic."  Sure, you can weaken Draw Out / Elemental / Flare some... but if everything else is still shit, only bad people are going to use it.  Fix the Faith mechanic to properly mirror Fury and/or make the other skills and skillsets that use Faith better and less loaded with overlap, don't handhold us into only using shitty skills we'll probably ignore anyway by making the few good things not as good.

Quote from: Wiz on August 05, 2011, 03:25:14 pmNinja Sword (@Damned as well): If Iga/Koga don't get a boost, then the Asura Knife shouldn't either since it follows under the same rule (Keep in mind, it uses "PA * WP * (5/4)", which without question makes better when it comes to DPS compared to Iga/Koga despite having one less WP).

You are correct, Asura Knife should NOT have that property.  If it needs to be stronger, it should be Fire Element with more WP, or if it's meant to BOOST Fire, be Boost: Fire with more WP.  Not have less WP then boost itself to what's likely the highest end of Katana damage because it comes bundled with its own micro-Martial Arts at no cost.  If Iga Knife and Koga Knife suck, give them the WP needed to no longer suck.  If all Ninja Blades suck, give them a new formula (PA*WP) so that they no longer suck.  As FFMaster mentioned, MOST Arena Weapons go unused.  And in a discussion I had with him and Squidgy about the Fist Formula (I wanted PA*8, because PA*10 is better than most Weapons in Arena currently in terms of damage), we came to the conclusion that almost every weapon in Arena is useless and that the game may as well only have something like 5 weapons.

...This means you make the weapons more relevant by actually making them do respectable damage in terms of formula and WP, not make poor design choices that are basically screaming "PLEASE use this weapon instead of that really good one you're always using... I'll be your best friend if you do!" by giving them a free multiplier.  It's like  giving something innate Magic Attack UP - you could instead just give it the 3 more MA directly.  In this case, it's 2-3 WP, but you get the idea.  (Yes, by proposing Innate: Overwhelm on Mime I basically did this same thing, and no, I would not be opposed to just buffing their PA and MA by 2-3 then giving them a different, actually relevant Innate instead.  I made my idea quickly because it was off the top of my head so I made an error I don't usually make.)

Quote from: Wiz on August 05, 2011, 03:25:14 pmProvided that user gets punished as well for "turtling" via 40 Fa (Squidgy's Squire from "Faithless Cowards" for example). I should have been clearer when I threw out making it faith-based as a suggestion, but I was hoping that it could become faith-dependent such that it'd use the fury hack formula where it uses "Fa" instead of Fury as its variable (although I doubt it's possible to edit it as it currently is).

Basically, you want Geomancy to work the way I'm saying the entire Faith mechanic should be working.  Though really, you're only getting "punished" for turtling like that when you both try to use the same thing you're turtling from, and actually care about the decreased offensive output. 

Quote from: Wiz on August 05, 2011, 03:25:14 pmBows: Hmm, the Ultimus Bow's description's outdated and actually doesn't have 1 SPD. Ugh, it's so annoying to see items in the list that aren't part of the actual hack or arent suppose to be there (Yoichi, Perseus, Javelin II).

What's more annoying is to make an entire team around Mediator's Death Sentence then realize someone forgot to include it in the memory card generator then have to bullshit a win condition that's basically impossible to execute on the spot then lose to Derpy Hooves.

Quote from: Wiz on August 05, 2011, 03:25:14 pmDO: Actually, DO can be subjected to CT, testing confirms this.

If memory serves, the Arena Draw Outs are "fake", ie, not using the actual Draw Out formula, and can be subject to anything.  If not, they should be, because there's no relevance to breaking Katanas in Arena, so the limitations of Draw Out in normal FFT shouldn't be relevant.

Yes, they are all "Fake" as you call it. If people wanted, I could make them all use the Work formula, which would be funny to say the least.

Quote
Provided that user gets punished as well for "turtling" via 40 Fa (Squidgy's Squire from "Faithless Cowards" for example). I should have been clearer when I threw out making it faith-based as a suggestion, but I was hoping that it could become faith-dependent such that it'd use the fury hack formula where it uses "Fa" instead of Fury as its variable (although I doubt it's possible to edit it as it currently is).

I personally find that objectionable because I fundamentally don't think tanking should be so strong it blocks all types of damage equally well.  Just like how repeating fist and dash ignore your 40 fury, so should certain magics (like geomancy or draw out) ignore your 40 faith.  This is why I suggested only caster faith, if you were to use faith.  Then the risk of high damage geomancy (higher vulnerability to enemy damage magic) is only true when the other team has offensive magic.  If the caster has low faith, his geomancy damage should then take a hit as well.

(So, I'm going assume that Item Attribute list I typed out was correct, FFMaster. I'll try to have a proposal for some equipment changes by Monday's end.)

Ugh. My eyes are tired as always, but, also as ever, I am not sleepy enough to actually be able to go sleep. I'll make this short for once, though, since I have bunch of other things to do before Sunday.

Quote from: Wiz on August 05, 2011, 03:25:14 pm
Ninja Sword (@Damned as well): If Iga/Koga don't get a boost, then the Asura Knife shouldn't either since it follows under the same rule (Keep in mind, it uses "PA * WP * (5/4)", which without question makes better when it comes to DPS compared to Iga/Koga despite having one less WP). *snip*

You have a point, with regards to Sasuke Knife for Thieves and Asura Knife for Thieves. I don't think anyone's been used Iga and Koga (as a pair) outside of the very beginning, though I'd imagine they'll at least see some use if Martial Arts dies, Two Swords' JP get lowered and Magic Ring loses its Wind (and Holy) absorption. They probably don't see much use a)people like Speed and b)with Faith-based magic still being questionable, the skills worth note that they boost (for Ninja) are Earth Slash & Kikuichimonji and Heaven's Cloud and we all know that Ninja have no honor, so....

I still say they're fine, though, which is actually all I was saying when I agreed with Raven; I don't think they'd be OP with what you were proposing--I just don't think it's necessary (yet).

As for Asura Knife, you make a good point. I hadn't thought it much (just because I almost never use Katana since I almost never use Samurai), but, yeah, it should likely lose its Fire element property and retain Strengthen: Fire. That or gain Strengthen: Dark and then have Kotetsu have Strengthen: Fire for parity's sake.

Quote from: Wiz on August 05, 2011, 03:25:14 pm
@Damned

Summon Magic:
>_<, missed that detail. It's a shame Shiva and Ramuh don't have those equivalents at all *sigh* When it comes to Zodiac, perhaps 4 AOE would be better instead of 5, I don't know what else to do with it atm.

Agreed. I'd be all for changing Salamander to something else and making Leviathan the only AoE 3 attack so that Water elemental actually has SOME advantage over other elements (at this point).

(Hmm...I think I just realized what to do for Leviathan in Embargo. Stealing this....)

As for Zodiac, nah. AoE 4 is still too large, especially how stupid the AI is with walking into active, easily avoidable, already-Charging AoEs as it is. AoE 3 should be the max for anything, really, and I just realized that should maybe be exclusive to Leviathan unless Water gets something else to make it worth using (on the Faith-side/AoE side).

I'm really not sure what to do with it. Not that we need to do anything with it, especially given that the animation probably takes slightly longer than all the other ones. However, I'd still like to try to do something before just getting rid of it. Meh. Maybe I'll get an idea beyond "make a Holy AoE 2" summon later.

Quote from: Wiz on August 05, 2011, 03:25:14 pmGeomancy: I prefer that to happen as well actually. As I've stated in the past, I'm biased for turtling and think it's too good atm.

I see.

Quote from: Wiz on August 05, 2011, 03:25:14 pmBags: What'd you think if they gave out Inital: Protect and Initial: Shell then assuming they lasted for two full turns (Act and Move)?

I guess I'd be fine with that, though it steps on Cherche and Setiemson's toes since everyone can equip Bags now, especially if we let them use the same two Item Attribute spaces to save space (which I'd actually prefer). They might need to take a WP hit for it, but Bags are already rather crappy weapons when used by anyone who isn't a Monk/has Martial Arts, so maybe it's a tradeoff that would work.

*shrugs*

Quote from: Wiz on August 05, 2011, 03:25:14 pmBows: Hmm, the Ultimus Bow's description's outdated and actually doesn't have 1 SPD. Ugh, it's so annoying to see items in the list that aren't part of the actual hack or arent suppose to be there (Yoichi, Perseus, Javelin II). But yeah, they're fine as is.

What? Ultimus Bow isn't supposed to have +1 Speed. The Mythril Bow is. I may be misreading what you're saying, but yeah.

Quote from: Wiz on August 05, 2011, 03:25:14 pmDO: Actually, DO can be subjected to CT, testing confirms this. I'll let it slide for 131. If I clearly see DO wiping the floor in 131, I'll bring this up again. As a sidenote, I'm an advocate of a faith-based fury-like DO skillset (like geomancy) that way the damage varies but not so much that it'd make it utterly useless to speedy turtles like moi (Oh the irony XD).

Ah, I was unaware they were "fake", though I guess that explains why "Broken" has never appeared in match now that I think about it.

I don't think tying everything to Fury or Faith is necessary, but I'd be willing to at least listen to a detailed proposal provided it didn't seem to screw over anyone or anything horribly.

Posting a minor update to my proposed Mime fix to address the error I mentioned in my reply to Wiz. (Innate: Overwhelm instead of just more PA and MA.)

-Stats: +3 PA, +3 MA
-Innate: Unyielding
-Innate: Distribute
-Innate: Counter Flood
-Innate: Awareness
-Immune: Frog, Chicken, Petrify, Stop

Chose Distribute for the fourth Innate because I feel it could be pretty interesting with healing based strategies.  I realize this would technically strengthen the Life Song strategy, but this strengthens other kinds of healing strategies as well and talking with FFMaster today, he seems to want to weaken Life Song's constant value for healing anyway (and buff Wiznaibus' base damage), so I feel it's an overall gain.  Again, going for a setup that encourages the largest amount of varied uses for Mimes while also simply peeling away the parts of the old Battle Song derp strategy that made it abusive.  (Removing Overwhelm for a +3 PA/MA boost also technically weakens the Battle Song strategy, because the boosts to PA now no longer have a final 20% boost to carry them further, which is another reason I don't feel bad about innate Distribute buffing Life Song users that very tiny bit.)

A incomplete changelog:

Changelog

GENERAL
- Fury now correctly damages at (Brave+35)%. Before, it was still at 40.
- Darkness hack changed to halve accuracy(basically the same thing with less bugs)


JOBS

- Squire MAM down to 105
- Chemist MPM up to 75, SPM up to 120
- Paladin PAM down to 75, loses Equip: Swords
- Monk loses Equip: Poles, gains Equip: Spears
- Mediator HPM up to 80
- Samurai HPM up to 75, PAM down to 110, gains Innate: Two Hands
- Mime loses Innate: Martial Arts, Unyielding and gains Innate: Move-HP Up

ABILITIES

Basic Skill
- Accumulate now 3 CT, 10 MP and 200 JP
- Throw Stone damage reduced to PA*6
- Wish healing increased to 5%
- Equip Clothes JP reduced to 150
- Defend JP reduced to 0

Item
- Auto Potion increased to 80 healing on trigger

Chivalry
- Dia range reduced to 5
- Magicward loses Add: Reflect, gains Add: Regen

Snipe
- Hawk's Eye CT reduced to 3
- Projectile Guard JP reduced to 300
- Equip Ranged JP reduced to 300

Punch Art
- HP Restore JP increased to 500
- Martial Arts JP reduced to 0

White Magic
- Holy is now 4 CT, 30 MP and reflectable

Black Magic
- All Fire spells gain 1 AoE and Fire 1/2/3/4 lose 2/4/6/12 Y respectively
- All Bolt spells except Bolt 4 gain 3 Y and cost 5 MP more
- Bolt 4 loses 5 Y
- All Ice spells cost half MP and cost 100 JP more
- Ice 4 loses 8 Y
- Frog hit rate increased to F(MA*2+145)%
- Death hit rate increased to F(MA*2+100)%
- Flare MP cost increased to 50 and Y reduced to 40
- Counter Magic JP reduced to 300

Time Mage
- Don't Move hit rate increased to F(MA*2+200)%
- Balance CT reduced to 2, hit rate increased to F(MA*2+200)%

Summon Magic
- Titan vertical increased to 3, damage decreased to F(MA*20)
- Carbunkle AoE increased to 3
- Silf hit rate increased to F(MA*2+140)%
- Odin hit rate increased to F(MA*2+60)%
- Zodiac AoE increased to 3, damage decreased to F(MA*20)
- MP Restore JP increased to 550

Steal
- Quickening CT increased to 4, MP increased to 15
- Steal Heart hit rate increased to MA*2+40%, JP increased to 150, requires opposite gender
- Steal Accessory hit rate increased to Sp+70%

Talk Skill
- All Talk skills hit rate increased by 10%

Yin Yang Magic
- Silence Song CT reduced to 1, JP cost reduced to 100
- Blind Rage JP reduced to 200
- Petrify hit rate increased to F(MA*2+200)%, JP reduced to 200
- Beguile JP reduced to 100
- Dispel Magic JP reduced to 200
- Sleep CT reduced to 4, hit rate increased to F(MA*2+165)%, JP reduced to 150
- Move MP Up gain reduced by 1/2

Elemental
- All Elementals reduced to (PA+1)/2*MA damage

Jump
- Vertical Jump X now increases in increments of 50, starting with Vertical Jump 2 at 100 JP
- Dragon Spirit JP cost reduced to 300
- Equip Polearm JP Cost reduced to 250

Draw Out
- All Draw Outs now have a CT of 3
- Asura damage reduced to MA*6, how hits enemies only
- Kotetsu AoE now 3
- Bizen Boat MP damage increased to MA*9
- Muramasa damage increased to MA*9, AoE decreased to 1, loses Add: Confusion
- Two Hands JP cost reduced to 500

Ninjitsu
- Haku Korosu damage increased to 100%, and now also activates on Darkness
- Katon, Raiton and Suiton Y increased to 28, MP reduced to 7
- Sunken State JP reduced to 200
- Abandon JP reduced to 250
- Two Swords JP cost reduced to 500

Lore
- Tornado/Quake JP reduced to 250
- Equip Magegear JP reduced to 150


ITEMS

Weapon Formula changes!
- Fists now deal PA*9 damage
- Axes now deal [PA/2....PA+PA/2] damage
- Rods deal MA*WP damage
- Bags deal [PA/2....PA+PA/2] damage
- Cloths deal PA*WP damage

There's a few things I question:

-Paladins losing Swords?  I know people were calling for them to lose Katanas, but Swords?  Odd choice.  I see you took my suggestion on Monks with Spears though, that should make things interesting.  Have you considered giving them Hats as well?  Without Martial Arts innate or quadratic Fist Formulas going around, I think giving them Hats would be a good idea to ensure the class wasn't debuffed too heavily.

-Mimes keeping Immune: All bad Status and Concentrate.  I don't see why the opponent running Mimes should outright invalidate or otherwise put a huge damper on any non-huge-damage based strategy.  Mimes need to be valid, yes - but "buffing" them at least personally shouldn't be "invalidate multiple strategies outright via innates", especially when those strategies (stuff like Status and evasion based teams) are things that most people want more of to be able to come into the metagame.  The loss of Unyielding for Move-HP UP and loss of Martial Arts and the old Fist formula combined with no PA/MA boost makes being forced to aggro over them much easier, I suppose, but even then, it's a team not meant to do damage being forced to fight through piles of Life Songs and do huge damage while probably being unable to get to the Singers to status/kill them unless they move up.  Maybe it's worth testing with just the huge reduction to Fist damage, but I still can't say I like this factor, and the problem rests entirely on Mime's stacked innates, not the Songs/Dances... since if I can hit a Mime with Don't Act (eg), stopping a Song based team with something other than pure grawr becomes far easier.  The Song/Dance strategies are only so good (imo) because Mimes invalidate most of the countermeasures through their innates.  Like I said though, I guess testing this is still fine, but if it still proves to be an issue, the eyes should stay focused on Mime, not Bard and Dancer. 

-Accumulate getting a CT and MP cost.  Just, why?  Battle Song's still equal to or better than instant costless Accumulate for Miming, and the change to the Fist Formula and loss of Martial Arts makes Mimed Accumulates far less threatening.  It also doesn't provide a huge boost to Geomancy, so it can't be related to the Geomancer/Squire issue.  There's absolutely no reason for this considering you've at least started addressing the issue of Mime - and honestly, no other class should ever have their moves suffer just because of Mime unless that move is problematic regardless.  Quickening already had some issues. Accumulate?  Can't say I've seen it.

-Martial Arts costing 0 JP.  Sure, Monks lose it innate, so stacking Two Swords or Attack UP with it is impossible... but why is anyone who wants to shit 250 JP into the Monk class getting a 1.5x multiplier for free?  I know that this is a "popular" solution to Monk, making Martial Arts no longer innate and cost 0 JP in most patches, but it's still dumb.  There's no reason you shouldn't pay for your 1.5x damage boost like everyone else who wants a damage boost or decrement.  Monks shouldn't be given special treatment in this regard.  Two Swords and Two Hands are double damage, but only with the Attack command, and yet they still cost 250 JP for class then 500+ JP for skill... why a 1.5x skill that technically affects more things than those two do doesn't cost at least 250 JP itself makes no sense to me.

-MP Restore got it's MP INCREASED?  I assume you removed the need for Critical status from it?  Else that makes no goddamn sense.  If you did, you should rename HP Restore to Critical HP or something so people can tell one requires Critical and one does not.

-I assume Mediator's Death Sentence will exist this time? :p

Everything else looks cool.  The lack of lolTwoSwordsMartialArtsMonks makes that and Two Hands going down in cost fine by me, and nothing else looks all that questionable.

A couple things that I see on first glance:

Quote from: FFMaster on August 09, 2011, 08:35:39 am
A incomplete changelog:

Changelog

JOBS I'm at work and cant really play with the BMG and formulas.  Can you post in (  ) what effect these have at 35?
(I'm pretty sure he meant Paladins lose Katanas, not Swords.  Probably just a typo.)

ABILITIES

Chivalry
- Dia range reduced to 5 I still think this needs a CT for how good it is on a magic user

Summon Magic
- Silf hit rate increased to F(MA*2+140)% I dont get this one.  Silf was already really good.

Steal
- Steal Heart hit rate increased to MA*2+40%, JP increased to 150, requires opposite gender.  Still feels high.  A 50% chance to change a fight to 3v5 at neutral compat is still pretty game changing.

Yin Yang Magic

- Beguile JP reduced to 100 ?

Elemental
- All Elementals reduced to (PA+1)/2*MA damage Do you plan on keeping this at 100% accuracy?

Draw Out
- Kotetsu AoE now 3.  I think it needs to lose 100% Blind if the AoE is that large.

Ninjitsu
- Haku Korosu damage increased to 100%, and now also activates on Darkness With the buff to Oracle Sleep and Mediator abilities, I think this is an overbuff.  Darkness is on a lot of good things (Cyclops, Dia, Night Killer, Koutetsu, Grand Cross).  If you tell me you can instadie if you get hit with Blind now, thats not really necessary.  Having the 100% death if you get slept is a neat addition though.

- Katon, Raiton and Suiton Y increased to 28, MP reduced to 7 These already felt pretty balanced.  I dont know if this will make much difference in the big scheme of things though

Quote from: RavenOfRazgriz on August 09, 2011, 10:55:02 am

-MP Restore got it's MP INCREASED?  Thats JP, not MP

Accumulate with CT + AI = problems. IIRC Accumulate targets panel, so the AI will charge Accumulate, then move out of its effect.
Petrify accuracy up a lot! Dunno if that's intentional or not. But since Petrify is fairly easily countered, I guess it's ok.
I don't think MP Restore JP needs to go up just yet. It isn't appearing very often as a mage's reaction ability.

Everything else looks fine.

Chemists get more MP? I thought their MP was already absurd given their skillset doesn't use any, but good to see a speed buff. Monks... buffed? Mediators still lacking in PA/MA, but that's fine if they're intended to only use guns. Samurai innate 2H doesn't sound good to me (but I'm against any innates which help damage or defense.)

Accumulate/Quickening CT seems unnecessary. What exactly's the purpose of a charge time if the effected target is always self? Exploit stupid AI decisions to charge when 10 people get turns directly after? Wish change is aesthetic. Equip Clothes has a JP cost still? I guess it lets you get robes too... ...lol... robes.

Interesting Black Magic changes... dunno what to say about them, but Fire/Ice/Bolt Absorb is so easy to get, I doubt I'll risk having one. Balance buff might just make me use it. Nothin' much to say for Summons, still seem mostly the same.

Steal Heart requires opposite gender again? *tear* Worst part of this changelog.

Yin Yang Magic... First: Silence Song is fine, but everyone and their mother is immune to Silence due to equip options. Oracle's problem is much more in equipment, not their skillset. Petrify being double Death's hit seems wrong, but anti-petrify is fairly common. It still stops CT. Still too many spells which seem exactly the same. Good call in Move-MP nerf, but nothing for Move-HP?

We'll see how the CTs work for Draw Out, but I'm glad some of them do different effects now. With Draw Out having all these downsides, Elemental's gonna look even better. Any chance of M-Ev for Ele? I'm for a select few skills bypassing Evade... but Elemental is too easy to pull off.

Haku Korosu shouldn't work on sleeping units; killing them is helping the enemy team most the time. Working on Blind units with 100% Night Bows? Yeah, Night Bows, yeah. Two Swords/Hands still seem expensive...

Equip Magegear would be neat if Squires couldn't already equip those things, and even then, Wizard Rod can be replaced with Rune Blade for better stats, and books are just awful... just... awful. Maybe if "Magegear" was gear mostly for +stats, and there weren't Swords with bonuses on par with mage gear... Nah, I doubt anyone will touch this.

Cloths deal more damage... why? Because you have some Dance/Sing nerfs in the works I hope. I don't care how overpowered Angel Song is, I don't think I can stand to see that animation thrice for every Bard/Dancers turn, or the extra thrice per Mime... Hate hate hate hate hate hate hate Sing/Dance now.

Dance/Sing changes are still in the works, not sure what to do about them. Probably make them lose Persevere and just go from there.
All items are still in the air, but expect a few items to lose Immune: Silence.
Accumulate will follow target if possible.
Mime changes are also still in the air, they are gaining more HP and a few other changes.

Quote from: FFMaster on August 09, 2011, 06:27:22 pm
Dance/Sing changes are still in the works, not sure what to do about them. Probably make them lose Persevere and just go from there.

This... is an elegantly simple solution I hit myself for not seeing earlier.

Losing Perservere probably means they'll need to be buffed of all things, in a lot of cases.  I agree with heavy but well-thought Mime buffing and a lose of perservering on Songs/Dances combined with the classes / skills themselves being made generally better to compensate.  Making Mimes less rigged and making things not perservere fixes that problem pretty nicely.

It also makes the Accumulate change make more sense, but I question whether it'll still be usable unless you buff it to +2 PA or something to make it actually worth some CT/MP investment.

(For the record, I'm not sure if I agree with Raven's latest Mime proposals just because of the significant PA and MA boosts to "make" up for Overwhelm.)

Also, for the record, I was having ideas for the new Poles despite still being unsure if the Item Attribute list I put up was even correct. But then something happened (besides my computer acting up 12+ hours ago while I was typing this):

Quote from: FFMaster on August 09, 2011, 08:35:39 am
- Monk loses Equip: Poles, gains Equip: Spears

So, yeah....

*flips table*

Sigh. Back to the drawing board.

Anyway, speaking of those changes, I'll just break up my opinions into the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Spoiler time a-go-go!







You'll have to forgive me if I don't proofread the above right now just because of how long it's taken to type this up. It's been...annoying.

Quote from: FFMaster on August 09, 2011, 06:27:22 pm
Dance/Sing changes are still in the works, not sure what to do about them. Probably make them lose Persevere and just go from there.

As much as I don't feel this is necessary, it's probably for the best. At the very least, it's a starting point.

Unforgivable EDIT (08/22/2011 - 1:35 P.M.): Actually, don't forgive me. Because the amount of typos in this were atrocious and there's no excuse for that, tiredness be damned.

If geomancy gets changed... just by lowering the formula... I will go out on a limb and say I wouldn't bother using it anymore...

There isn't anything wrong with it in all honesty...

Now as for the draw outs... if I could make a suggestion~ I would make it use the geomancy formula... then you wouldn't be forced to give it a CT as mages won't be able to abuse it and samurais with a somewhat balanced stat could actually use it effectively....

I do feel ninja is a bit pointless at the moment... outside the skillset.

Also for axes... if I could suggest anything,if you lower the damage on geomancy, then give them multi-element boost similar to the giant axe... but one that will boost 4 at a time~  that way they aren't "forced" to use 108 gems and hey that means axes can be "useful again"


I also think that these weapons could be placed in more classes:

Flail, Ninja Knife, Spear, and dagger

like... the paladin getting a spear

ninja knife usable by a squire and geomancer~

dagger on geomancer

flail on paladin and geomancer...

the reason why I say allow geomancer to use those weapons as options... is because if your nerfing the spell... give them some more equipment... I mean after all squire already is doing a better job at being geo than a geo XD

Quote from: The Damned on August 10, 2011, 06:30:54 pm
(For the record, I'm not sure if I agree with Raven's latest Mime proposals just because of the significant PA and MA boosts to "make" up for Overwhelm.)

You... do realize that +3 PA / +3 MA is the exact same thing as having innate Overwhelm, but without the bias toward Battle Song and Magic Song strategies because you no longer get "free" PA/MA points every so often, right?

Sometimes I love how I can go "let's boost them by 20-25%" and people will go "sure" then I'll go "let's move that 20-25% boost somewhere less abusive" and then people have an issue with it.  Confuses the hell out of me, man.

Well if you want to change equips and what not why not give paladins flails

geomancers are fine with swords and axes and flails.....daggers im not too sure

ninja knives should just stay with thieves and ninjas otherwise squires are just too universal

Here is a list of attributes from Arena 130. As Damned worked out correctly, there are exactly 3 spaces left. With some items shifting around and others being condensed, we may have more. I have yet to start work on items, since it's normally the messiest project and requires a bit of playing around.

Here is the list, you can check it in Patcher/Item Tables to make sure. One of the free attributes is used by Dagger, and is more a test item than anything else.

1 - Battle Boots
2 - Save the Queen
3 - Excalibur, Healing Staff, Diamond Helmet
4 - Ragnarok
6 - Thunder Rod
7 - Asura, Flame Rod, Flame Whip
8 - Ice Rod
9 - Rune Blade, Wizard Rod, Wizard Staff, Mythril Gun, Ice Bow, Lightning Bow, Mythril Spear, Ivory Rod, Holy Miter, Wizard Outfit, Wizard Robe, Magic Gauntlet
A - Spell Edge, Murasame, C Bag, Circlet, Platina Armor, Linen Robe, Genji Gauntlet
B - Platina Helmet, Dracula Mantle
C - Gold Helmet
D - Light Robe
E - Giant Axe
F - Ice Shield
10 - Flame Shield
11 - Genji Armor
12 - Kaiser Plate, Black Robe
13 - Venetian Shield, White Robe
14 - Green Beret, Defense Armlet
15 - Gold Armor
16 - Iga Knife
17 - Hidden Knife, Sasuke Knife, Mythril Bow, Javelin, Secret Clothes, Sprint Shoes
18 - Obelisk, Twist Headband, Judo Sleeve, Bracer
19 - Koga Knife
1A - Golen Hairpin
1B - Flash Hat
1C - Thief Hat
1D - Reflect Mail, Reflect Ring
1E - Santa Outfit
1F - H Bag
20 - Earth Clothes
21 - Platina Shield, Vanish Mantle
22 - Black Costume
23 - Rubber Costume
24 - Gold Shield
25 - Chameleon Robe
26 - Persia
27 - Cashmere
28 - Diamond Shield, Small Mantle
29 - Ninja Knife, Heaven's Cloud, Cross Bow, FS Bag, Barbuta, Carabini Mail, Power Wrist
2A - Aegis Shield
2B - Iron Boots
2C - Germinas Boots
2D - Rubber Shoes
2E - Feather Boots
2F - Leather Mantle
30 - Oricalcum, Red Shoes
32 - Mythril Shield
33 - Ryozan Silk
34 - Crystal Shield, Mythril Helmet
35 - P Bag
36 - Defense Ring
37 - Magic Ring
38 - Cursed Ring
39 - Angel Ring
3A - Diamond Armlet
3B - Jade Armlet
3C - 108 Gems
3D - N-Kai Armlet
3E - Flail
3F - Morning Star
41 - Chantage
42 - Cherche
43 - Setiemson
44 - Salty Rage
45 - Cachusha
46 - Barette
47 - Ribbon
48 - Stone Gun
49 - Genji Helmet, Wizard Mantle
4A - Crystal Mail
4B - Defender, Crystal Helmet, Dracula Mantle
4C - Mace of Zeus
4D - Platina Dagger, Main Gauche, Assassin Dagger, Air Knife
4E - Diamond Armor
4F - Genji Shield

Free Attributes - 5, 31, 40

EDIT: As for things that are addressed for Abilities/Classes so far(changed from the original changelog i posted):

- Monk loses Equip: Poles, loses Innate: Martial Arts
- Mediator HPM up to 80, MAM increased to 145, Move increased to 4
- Steal Accessory hit rate increased to Sp+70%, no longer triggers Counter Flood, not evadable
- Haku Korosu damage increased to 100%, and now also activates on Darkness, no longer activates on Sleep

Things I really want to try out but will change if people really hate it(in the order as they appear in my brain):
- New Fire/Bolt/Ice
- Paladins without Swords
- Sing/Dance without Persevere
- New Draw Out
- Move-HP Up Mime
- Monk, just... Monk lol

Feel free to flame and argue, as it is the only way to a balanced game. If it gets out of hand though, I ask any mods just step in.

Also, I want to condense some items, which I have said multiple times. My plan is to change the way gear works slightly. Right now, I'm going to try to gear Helmets/Armor towards status protection, while Hats/Clothes will have Elemental affinities. This would give some reasons to use Equip Clothes if you don't have a spare spot for an accessory or something and also give more diversity between the two. Not too sure what to do about +Stat items. If you have some good ideas, just put them here =)

PS: Item names are also appreciated unless you want terrible names plaguing the lists.

- Haku Korosu scares the hell out of me if its going to work off of Blind and not Sleep.  In addition to all the ways to add Blind and how good of a status it is with Concentrate out of the picture, Blind persists through death.  I absolutely would abuse that tactic with something like a Grand Cross Paladin, Night Killer Archer, Summoner w/ Clops, and a fast something or other with Ninjitsu.
My suggestion would be for it to proc off of Poison rather than Blind.  Not only is Poison rarer than Blind, it would give it a nice synergy with Shuriken.

- Paladins without swords still confuses me.  Katanas are better than regular swords (with the exception of the Blood Sword).  I guess youre trying to remove the Blood Sword as an option for Paladins to weaken them a bit, but I'm not quite following how this is really going to be helping the overall balance any.  Some enlightenment would be welcome  :)

- The nice thing about being the boss is that you can do what you want to  :cool:.  Go ahead and try what you want and we can test things out to see if they work well or not.  After thinking about it, I'm wary of the CT on DO now for the whole move after charging thing.  We will see though.

I don't think bloodsword is even that great with a paladin right now... the elemental weapons + absorbtion are much more powerful when combined with grandcross.

The proc on darkness will make my paladin/ninjitsu combo only that much more potent XD  even if people block against blind/darkness.Sleep made more sense on that one skill, and poison would just make the ninja stupid strong again.


However, I think I see where this is going... this is to counter the turtle teams that just try and outlast with low brave/faith

You guys, FFMaster has a fix for the move after charging thing.  But no one would know this because he has a few hacks he's never released and that I know about only through pipelines.  You kids need to learn to release things, really.  :P

Looking over Paladin more, I think the problem is that the class is good at everything - high PA for damage, healing access, status access, buff access, high HP, etc.  combined with access to four different weapon types and Robes on top of heavy armor to allow it to compensate for its main weakness of low MP with ease if it desires.  It's a problem because it does too much - it hits hard, it tanks, it debuffs, it heals, and it supports, all without considering its secondary skillset or R/S/M.  I think the main issue is that the class is just able to do too many things at once and has far too many perks vs. faults, and honestly, removing Swords isn't going to fix that much outside of aforementioned Blood Sword.  Kind of like how I feel about the .30 Mime iteration, since it has the same issue - tons and tons of perks that play right into the most abusive strategy and silence many counters with little backlash for them outside of "it's a Mime", which obviously isn't a big decrement right now.

As for gear - segregating things like that is a good idea.  Let Clothes handle MP / Element related things, and Armor handle HP and protective related things, such as Status guards.  Just make sure you can't stack too many status defenses at once, or absorb too many elements at once, etc.  As for PA and MA boosting - I'd give Helms/Armors a PA +1 and MA +1 "set", and Clothes/Hats a PA +2 and MA +2 "set", and make them the lowest-HP items of their classes.  This way there's a 'standard' for people who want something less risk-reward or metagame oriented, but the lack of HP still gives them a suitable decrement.  In the same vein, there should obviously be a high-HP-end item of each Helm/Hat/Armor/Clothes for the same reason - but for more defensive oriented teams.  Having both an offensive and defensive "default" is good for the metagame, since it gives people a go-to while experimenting or trying to counter a strategy they're unfamiliar, then the higher-risk-higher-reward Items exist for them to begin trying to use once their strategy is down.  I know I don't mention Robes, but that's because I've always found them to be a frivilous Item type - they're Clothes that heavy armor units can wear as well as light armor ones.  ...Yeah that's not redundant at all.  Dunno what you can do with them, really.

As for names and shit, that should wait until after you have a good idea of what you actually want the stuff to do.

I concur with Raven on this. Pretty much to the T.

I would add that I think the axes/flails need a better use! I think FFM has some ideas in the works though. :)

Just had a discussion on IRC about this:

Female mimes need a PA boost. As it stands, they're only really useful for mimicking, but they insist on using their melee attack. All they do is trigger reaction abilities while doing 50 damage or so. This differs from male mimes who can be used as attackers and do decent damage.
--Not sure if this has been discussed in the topic above, honestly didn't want to read all those walls of text.--

Quote from: FFMaster on August 09, 2011, 08:35:39 am
Black Magic
- All Fire spells gain 1 AoE and Fire 1/2/3/4 lose 2/4/6/12 Y respectively
- All Bolt spells except Bolt 4 gain 3 Y and cost 5 MP more
- Bolt 4 loses 5 Y
- All Ice spells cost half MP and cost 100 JP more
- Ice 4 loses 8 Y
- Frog hit rate increased to F(MA*2+145)%
- Death hit rate increased to F(MA*2+100)%
- Flare MP cost increased to 50 and Y reduced to 40
- Counter Magic JP reduced to 300

So bolt is stronger, fire hits a wider area, and ice costs more JP?  I feel that these changes give black magic more personality, but not any more attraction.  Has the thought of adding status effects to black magic been entertained?  For example, fire could inflict poison, bolt don't move, and ice slow.  Black magic would be as yin yang magic, but with damage as insurance.  This would also ease bad matchups, as units who halve the elemental damage may yet be vulnerable to the status effect, although whether the AI will bother to cast the spell on the units at all is a different story.   Yin yang magic might need a buff in compensation, such as lower CT times or higher Y values.

Second, I support Squidgy's suggestion that one of black magic's spell tiers be removed for other spells.  Dark elemental magic is under-represented.  With dark elemental spells, black magic could be used as a counter to teams that use light robes for passive regen and to heal undead units.

On the subject of undead units, is it possible to let them die and be revived as normal units?  Susceptibility to healing damage notwithstanding, their gimmicky auto-revival feature is what keeps me away from incorporating them in teams.

Draw out with a cast time is interesting.  I believe this harms the skillset's reliability.  Is this warranted?  Draw Out's attraction is its flat, instant damage at zero cost.  If a damage nerf alone isn't enough, why not give it an MP cost?  That way, it would still be attractive with its instant damage, but it would require maintenance.  An MP cost would only further increase dependence on item and move-MP up for MP healing, though.  Perhaps it's time to do as Tactics Ogre does and implement passive MP regen across the board?  That's probably impossible.

Pride made an ASM that regenerates MP over time, replacing Wall status. Just give every job Auto: Wall. This disables Regen, though, IIRC.

It can be easily altered to not require Wall and doesn't disable Regen. If you have both, however, it won't display the MP Regen and only the HP Regen.

That's nifty.  It could even be set as an innate for only mages if they need the perk.

(Giving everyone access to innate MP Regen seems like a horrible idea, at least to add on top of a mass of other changes. We hardly need to make MP-damaging techniques, of all things, even worse.)

*cracks knuckles*

So, I was gone for a week, so a couple of things I was going to reply to a while ago went unanswered. I suppose I should do this before I start watching Wiz's 4 and a half hour long video, so here goes:

Quote from: RavenOfRazgriz on August 11, 2011, 11:37:12 am
You... do realize that +3 PA / +3 MA is the exact same thing as having innate Overwhelm, but without the bias toward Battle Song and Magic Song strategies because you no longer get "free" PA/MA points every so often, right?

Sometimes I love how I can go "let's boost them by 20-25%" and people will go "sure" then I'll go "let's move that 20-25% boost somewhere less abusive" and then people have an issue with it.  Confuses the hell out of me, man.

It's because it's a lot easier to work in percentages for people than it is for them to just see additive numbers to some unknown initial total, even if those percentages just as meaningless without knowing that beginning sum. Not everyone works with stats.

Anyway, that's what I figured you were getting at, but it doesn't quite emulate the same effect across the board, does it? If it does, then ignore this.

Even with the lack of the "abuse", wouldn't it not equal the same 20% for a quite few things, at least where magic and probably gender differences are concerned? Again, if it doesn't, then ignore this.

Quote from: FFMaster on August 12, 2011, 09:35:08 am
Here is a list of attributes from Arena 130. As Damned worked out correctly, there are exactly 3 spaces left. With some items shifting around and others being condensed, we may have more. I have yet to start work on items, since it's normally the messiest project and requires a bit of playing around.

Here is the list, you can check it in Patcher/Item Tables to make sure. One of the free attributes is used by Dagger, and is more a test item than anything else.

I honestly don't know how I managed to get the right number when I realized how much I screwed up just by going over the list I made an hour ago. I guess sometimes luck can overcome my idiocy in rare occasions.

There are some errors on your list too (as far as I can tell), but I think I sussed everything out. So tell me if this is "combined" list is accurate:



Regardless, even though, yeah, equipment is quite annoying to try to do, I'll try to come up with something by Wednesday evening (my time).

Quote from: FFMaster on August 12, 2011, 09:35:08 amEDIT: As for things that are addressed for Abilities/Classes so far(changed from the original changelog i posted):

- Monk loses Equip: Poles, loses Innate: Martial Arts
- Mediator HPM up to 80, MAM increased to 145, Move increased to 4
- Steal Accessory hit rate increased to Sp+70%, no longer triggers Counter Flood, not evadable
- Haku Korosu damage increased to 100%, and now also activates on Darkness, no longer activates on Sleep

1. Monks loses Poles and Martial Arts: A good start (even if them having Poles was fine to me), though I must ask: Is Martial Arts still available to equip as a Support even though it breaks the game? Do Monks still get new Spears to play with even though that stomps on Lancer's toes? If yes to either of those, then I can't say I like this change (in light of those).

That said, Monks should probably be able to equip Hats if they're losing Martial Arts. I don't hate them that much to say they shouldn't ever get anything (if they're losing quite a few things, as they need to).

2. Mediator gets more buffs: I'm guessing this is in addition to the aforementioned buffs Chemist got? I...guess it would still be okay even then. We'll see.

3. Steal Accessory isn't evadable and doesn't trigger counters: Thank you. I'd say you overcompensated a bit since Sp (which is at least 8)+70% is rather huge. Not sure if that's because it's still going to be 300 JP or not, though, so I don't think I'll complain too much about that. (I'd personally think that the X value would be fine at 50 or 55, but that might be a bit "low" for the JP cost and target in most cases.)

4. Haku Korosu triggers off Blind for 100%: As Dol pointed out, this is rather terrible idea, even if Blind didn't last past death. That it does combined with 100% damage, though, is quite bad. I'd say to make it trigger off Poison (though there's still a cross-bow for that) as Dol also suggested and to make it take 75% HP (since it's not like it goes off CurHP anyway, right?) rather than 100% HP. Poison is still relatively easy to apply, but at least it has half of the potential triggers that Blind does and it wears off after death; also, most of the poisoning abilities could use some incentive.

Quote from: FFMaster on August 12, 2011, 09:35:08 am
Things I really want to try out but will change if people really hate it(in the order as they appear in my brain):
- New Fire/Bolt/Ice
- Paladins without Swords
- Sing/Dance without Persevere
- New Draw Out
- Move-HP Up Mime
- Monk, just... Monk lol

Feel free to flame and argue, as it is the only way to a balanced game. If it gets out of hand though, I ask any mods just step in.

I thought you counted a mod, though?

Anyway, I'm fine with "trying out" all of these. I just want to know why you got rid of Swords instead of Katana for Paladin. It's just such a...bizarre decision and I know I'm not the only one confused, especially with Paladin being as problematic as they are.

Quote from: FFMaster on August 12, 2011, 09:35:08 amAlso, I want to condense some items, which I have said multiple times. My plan is to change the way gear works slightly. Right now, I'm going to try to gear Helmets/Armor towards status protection, while Hats/Clothes will have Elemental affinities. This would give some reasons to use Equip Clothes if you don't have a spare spot for an accessory or something and also give more diversity between the two. Not too sure what to do about +Stat items. If you have some good ideas, just put them here =)

As Raven pointed out, that sounds good.

Quote from: FFMaster on August 12, 2011, 09:35:08 amPS: Item names are also appreciated unless you want terrible names plaguing the lists.

Again, as Raven pointed out, for most of these, you should probably just wait until you (think you) know what you want the item to do.

When I brought up the "terrible name" thing, I was just bringing up my (slight) annoyance at you correcting the Engrish from vanilla on only some things and not everything. I couldn't really care less if things like "Night Killer" become the intended "Knight Killer" from PSP just as long as egregious things like "Oberisk" and "Wiznaibus" are fixed.

Quote from: The Damned
(Giving everyone access to innate MP Regen seems like a horrible idea, at least to add on top of a mass of other changes. We hardly need to make MP-damaging techniques, of all things, even worse.)

I don't get it... Witch Hunt was stupidly powerful in some of those matches. I doubt the AI will use MP Regen correctly though, but I fail to see why letting the Time Mage with 0 mp do more than a suicidal staff whack is horrible. Or is every mage supposed to use Ether/Angel Song (so broken, even if it triggered only once due to mimes.) secondary? Currently I see Move-MP UP as a necessity, not a decision.

QuoteI just want to know why you got rid of Swords instead of Katana for Paladin.

Especially since Katanas are for the most part just better than Swords.

I'm still for gutting mimes, even though I'm sure lots of people enjoy their... "variety".

Quote from: The Damned on August 22, 2011, 05:10:41 pmAnyway, that's what I figured you were getting at, but it doesn't quite emulate the same effect across the board, does it? If it does, then ignore this.

It actually does, because you're essentially increasing the PAM and MAM of Mime by about 20-25%.  Because Mimes don't scale, this is almost exactly the same as the 20% boost from Overwhelm.  It's slightly different because Overwhelm affects final damage, but not to a noticeable degree.  The only time the effect between +3 PA and +3 MA is different is when using Battle Song or Magic Song - and again, +3 PA and +3 MA is the weaker of the two choices, because Overwhelm will give you +20% on all your stat boosts as well, which a hard +3 will not do.

Quote from: The Damned on August 22, 2011, 05:10:41 pmIs Martial Arts still available to equip as a Support even though it breaks the game?

Fists are using PA*9*(CasFury+35)*(TarFury+35)/10000 on this new setup and not PA*.7*PA*(CasFury+40)*(TarFury+40)/10000 that they use in .30, and Martial Arts now takes a Support slot instead of being able to be stacked with other skills such as Attack UP, Overwhelm, Two Swords, or even defensive Supports like Defense UP and Equip Armor.  So, it doesn't break the game.  Honestly, Martial Arts is probably required as learnable to give Monks incentive to still use their Fists over a Spear - you can use Martial Arts, gain 1.5x to your 9 WP Fists and all your skills, or use a Spear + Attack UP for a 1.34x boost to your X (usually above 9) WP and all your skills while also getting a second Attack panel... or you can mix the two, using Martial Arts to maximize a skill like Chakra with a Spear to keep your Monk further from the fray, etc.  The game is far from broken.  You're just being colored by your hateful bias.  It just needs to cost ~250 JP to share some kind of commodity with Two Swords / Two Hands.

Quote from: The Damned on August 22, 2011, 05:10:41 pmThat said, Monks should probably be able to equip Hats if they're losing Martial Arts. I don't hate them that much to say they shouldn't ever get anything (if they're losing quite a few things, as they need to).

^ This.  Losing innate Martial Arts is like losing 6-7 PA on a minimized PA male... with maximum PA, it's more like 10-11 most likely, but I'm too lazy to click into other threads and check their gear options.  So yes, they definitely need Hat access to make up for this on some level.



I still don't think Song/Dance needs to lose Perservere personally if you go with even something relatively close to what I suggested before, because neither Bard/Dancers themselves or the Sing/Dance skillsets themselves are really the problem, it's Mimicing those things to essentially get 8 turns to the opponent's 4 - and the blame for that solely falls on the Mime's inability to be countered well because of its boss innates.  I honestly think just dropping those retarded-level innates (and maybe that debuff on Life/Angel Song you spoke of a while back on IRC) is enough - the source of the issue, Mime, becomes about 5x easier for most non-HERP DERP DAMAGE teams to deal with, and in turn the Mimicing becomes far less of a problem.

(Only made it through like 2 hours of Wiz's video before Firefox crashed on me. Great. This computer....)

I see, Raven. Very well then.

Agree that Persevering probably doesn't need to be done with regards to Songs or Dance, but if it's what most people are agree on, then I'd rather than not allowing Mimes to mimic Songs or Dances at all. "Lesser evil" and everything.

Quote from: Squidgy on August 22, 2011, 05:51:54 pm
I don't get it... Witch Hunt was stupidly powerful in some of those matches. I doubt the AI will use MP Regen correctly though, but I fail to see why letting the Time Mage with 0 mp do more than a suicidal staff whack is horrible. Or is every mage supposed to use Ether/Angel Song (so broken, even if it triggered only once due to mimes.) secondary? Currently I see Move-MP UP as a necessity, not a decision.

If Mist/MP Regen is innate, it doesn't matter how the AI would otherwise use it as a skill since it would be innate, which is the problem that I'm getting at: why would anyone use MP damage if the game was automatically geared towards negating that damage every turn? Every turn spent using a MP damage spell is essentially wasted unless it negates a spell being cast, and even then, it at best turns matches into a stalemate based upon AI stupidity if it manages to be "effective" still at all.

As for Witch Hunt being "stupidly powerful", realize you said in some matches. I could understand if Witch Hunt was a dominating force (like Quickening) that basically screwed all other strategies if it appeared (luck aside), but you're honestly trying to convince me it's "stupidly powerful" just because once a great while it can actually, against all odds, succeed at the thing it was supposed to do?

What? How is that "stupidly powerful"? Especially when the only shitty mage weapons (in terms of pure WP) are pretty much all Rods? You saddle your mage with that (or a Bag) as means of last resort physical attack and have no reliable means of restoring MP and it's your own damn fault when they become dead-weight.

Even if the only solutions were the ones you listed and we ignored Chakra, the boost to MP Restore, Absorb Used MP & Spell Absorb, you act like those three options are in skill sets that are out of the way. Honestly, when was the last time you saw a team forego Item? The only teams that I can think of have all Mimes on them, which tend to have Bards on them. And can you tell which Movement mages would benefit from more?

This is like saying Silence Song is stupidly powerful because in some matches it would utterly shut down mages who didn't bring gear to block it or means to cure it, even though the majority of the time, as with Witch Hunt, it's pretty inconsequential.

Quote from: The DamnedThis is like saying Silence Song is stupidly powerful because in some matches it would utterly shut down mages who didn't bring gear to block it or means to cure it, even though the majority of the time, as with Witch Hunt, it's pretty inconsequential.

Yes, it is. Except Witch Hunt doesn't have an equip or skill to counter it (except OP Angel Song, maybe). The way you counter it is by making teams with little mp reliance, not by throwing on easy-to-find anti-Silence equips and skills. Witch Hunt would be OP if casters were better than phys units. Right now it's just stupid, because it's a hard counter to something which doesn't need a hard counter in the first place. That's the main reason you don't see Magic Ruin and Spell Absorb much, not because MP Damage is worthless; it will gut certain teams, but those certain teams aren't very powerful.

I'm curious what sort of numbers you think this innate MP regen would be cranking out, because I was thinking of it like FFTA, ~5, for a caster, therefore much less for people without robe gear. Even if it was a huge number, the AI will churn out high cost spells until it hits 0, then either spam low-cost stuff, gimping itself, commit suicide by going into melee, or most likely use the inevitably equipped Hi-Ether/Angel Song, and still lose a turn.

I'm actually all for a 6% (1/16th) MP Regen on every unit, because of the nature of Arena.  Right now, MP costs are biased heavily towards casters, given their skills both have the higher MP costs and their Attack command is usually shittier than a non-caster's.  If you were to fix this issue and instill some parity (better Mage-based Attack options, more MP costs on non-Mages)... you'd still probably want this 5% MP Regen floor both because the AI is absolutely retarded with MP and because MP breaking would become an easy means of forcing units out of relevance as more than a matchup-based thing.

I think this fills nicely with the reduction to Move-MP UP - you get a 5% MP Regen "floor", then if you need MORE MP, you have Move-MP UP.  But maybe that's just me.

(Ugh. I feel like there's something unrelated to equipment I'm forgetting to mention.)

I'm not sure I even agree with the Move-MP Up reduction, actually. I'd much rather resurrection skills be made to cost [slightly] more MP so you can't have an infinite supply of it (but would run out extremely slowly, normally) like Redworld's team than Move-MP Up be made nigh-worthless.

I also can't really agree with even a minor "auto-MP Regen"--I figure it will only be "5" MP every turn like FFTA overall--if Quickening is staying around and a few other cheap abilities (pretty much all Paladin skills and some Ninja skills) are potentially getting buffed. If you want to add Mist as an active ability/status to further test out the AI (since that's another large part of what ARENA is about, IMO), then please do that rather than being "lazy" about it and just making things even easier to get around by giving it to everyone innately.

If it was really going to be as low as 1/16 MP turn, then perhaps I'd be more willing to consider it, but then it would be rather useless to give to everyone since only casters would benefit from it, which, again, makes seem silly if you're making it innate. That it wouldn't show up every turn just cause it to have another strike against it for me, but it's not like I'm the ultimate decision maker on this, so let's just move on.

Quote from: Squidgy on August 23, 2011, 12:33:26 am
Yes, it is. Except Witch Hunt doesn't have an equip or skill to counter it (except OP Angel Song, maybe). The way you counter it is by making teams with little mp reliance, not by throwing on easy-to-find anti-Silence equips and skills.

Witch Hunt doesn't have equips or skills to counter it? Perhaps it doesn't have anything to block it (or anything that automatically gives you Move-MP Up or Mist), but Robes arguably "counter" it considering that Witch Hunt tends to hit only for 23 MP twice or four times before the Dancer either dies or does something else. Most dedicated mages have a lot more than 92 MP even without Robes.

Also, while Move-MP Up may be the only skill that out and out counters it, again, it's not like it's asking mages to bend over backward and use a Movement skill they aren't going to use anyway. They hardly benefit from Movement skills that augment actual Move or Jump stats, which either that, Float or Move-HP Up when they tend not to have that much HP. And, hell, Move-MP Up counters Witch Hunt without needing to waste an action on it, which is what I'm getting at: Witch Hunt managing to do it's job is far, far less common than it just being a pointless, wasted action. So how can it be "overpowered"?

(It's also arguably countered by Half of MP, though few people have been using that give its cost versus MP Restore and having to compete with Magic Attack UP & Short Charge.)

Quote from: Squidgy on August 23, 2011, 12:33:26 amWitch Hunt would be OP if casters were better than phys units. Right now it's just stupid, because it's a hard counter to something which doesn't need a hard counter in the first place. That's the main reason you don't see Magic Ruin and Spell Absorb much, not because MP Damage is worthless; it will gut certain teams, but those certain teams aren't very powerful.

Perhaps, though I doubt it considering if casters were outright better than physical units, than pretty much all those teams would be using Move-MP Up, which shuts down Witch Hunt (or any other MP damage move) effortlessly as just mentioned, a Monk for Chakra, a unit with Item for Ether and/or a Bard with Angel Song (regardless of whether you think it's OP or not). So, again, MP damage would be fairly pointless/easy to combat even if people were building semi-suicidal double Witch Hunt Dancer and double Mime teams.

As for Magic Ruin and Spell Absorb, that's only part of the reason they aren't used. Unlike Witch Hunt, every other MP damage has to be used from what's basically melee range, where units with them either have better options or tend to die; even Samurai have lowish HP compared to other units that get armor innately. Unlike Witch Hunt and Bizen Boat, both Magic Ruin & Spell Absorb take MP and Magic Ruin, if it were ever used, would be on melee units with piss-poor MP; Spell Absorb gets used rather often, but the AI is rather stupid about it. Both Magic Ruin & Spell Absorb also have the problem of being in skill sets where out and out better skills exist in a system where a (probably necessary) JP cap exists. Magic Ruin has to contend with being in the same skill set as the brokenness that is Quickening, sexless Steal Heart, the other Ruins and Bad Luck; Spell Absorb has to contend with, even for all my bitching about Yin-Yang Magic being severely underpowered at present, Paralyze, Life Drain, Defense UP, Move-MP Up and even Absorb Used MP.

I'm not saying that Witch Hunt isn't somewhat stupid in terms of the MP damage it does for its range and hitting the whole enemy team without fail and being unable to be countered. However, it's not overpowered just because someone's team that relies on heavily on MP--hardly any team has all casters on it--didn't have any form of MP restoration like it should.

If Witch Hunt was doing Angel Song numbers of MP damage, then, yes, I could see you calling it OP. However, it's not and it hardly does it job as it is even when Angel Song isn't around to give it the finger, so I don't see why you're so adamant on trying to prove that it needs to further weakened to the point where it would go from nigh-useless to totally useless.

Quote from: Squidgy on August 23, 2011, 12:33:26 amI'm curious what sort of numbers you think this innate MP regen would be cranking out, because I was thinking of it like FFTA, ~5, for a caster, therefore much less for people without robe gear.

As I said above, I don't think that the MP restoration would be that much per turn. I just view it extremely unnecessary for a multitude of reasons.

To me, adding Innate Mist status to everyone is essentially the equivalent of invasive surgery for what's a perhaps unsightly but ultimately shallow flesh wound: it's absurd.

Quote from: Squidgy on August 23, 2011, 12:33:26 amEven if it was a huge number, the AI will churn out high cost spells until it hits 0, then either spam low-cost stuff, gimping itself, commit suicide by going into melee, or most likely use the inevitably equipped Hi-Ether/Angel Song, and still lose a turn.

There are so many erroneous assumptions/conclusions here that are contradicted by all the videos Wiz, Barren and others have been doing that I really don't know what to say. However, I'll explain what I mean by that rather just condescend.

First, you're act like every low MP spell is utterly weak or that every spell team that uses mages that actually rely on abilities that use MP--since, you know, mages using Draw Out or Geomancy is still effective--uses MP heavy stuff like Flare and Bahamut for the entirety of its damage. This is pretty easily countered by the fact that, sans Flare, most of the more potent spells are dirt cheap as seen in many videos. For example, Shade's and Vilganti's magically based teams alone should show you how easy it is to blow off enemy faces with (multiple) tier 1 spells, which under the proposed auto Mist system, would effectively be free to case.

Secondly, you're acting like all mages are completely incompetent at melee. Yes, most of them shouldn't be rushing in, but that's more because of HP totals than close-combat weakness. The only mage weapons that utterly weak are, again, Rods; half of the staves still somewhat suck, but they can at least kill someone who is above single-digit HP unlike Rods. Mages with books and especially poles/sticks can fuck your shit up at melee range; Oracles, Scholars and Bards are actually some of the hard hitting melee units in ARENA if you want them to be just because of poles.

It's a pretty moot point anyway because usually, usually, a mage unit won't charge into close-range just to physically attack until it's already out of MP (or can blow your face off with its attack). So, AI stupidity aside (which I again, would rather not rely on), that kinda defeats the point of what we're talking about, especially since it's even less likely to happen now before MP drops to zero because of the additional range on all spells.

Finally, I can't think of many teams, much less effective teams, that have their method of MP restoration that takes an action on the same unit that would be doing the primary spell casting. The only effective team that comes to mind where a mage unit needs to "waste an action" using Angel Song is that Mages of Doom team, where every unit is a mage, which makes it inevitable even--an all mage team is pretty rare as it is. Every other team with MP restoration tends to just have a unit with Item chugging Ethers or Hi-Ethers around at the units that actually use magic or a unit that isn't really a mage--or at least an attack mage--that uses Angel Song or Chakra.

So, yeah, I'm not really seeing why you seem to hate Witch Hunt so much. I can understand why you could find Wiznaibus and Life Song repeating so often annoying and/or boring. However, for reasons I can't fathom, it's just starting to seem like you have a thing against Song and Dance as a whole even though they're ultimately of middling power (without currently overpowered Mimes or overpowered [innate] Martial Arts & quadratic fist formulas).

Quote from: The DamnedFirst, you're act like every low MP spell is utterly weak or that every spell team that uses mages that actually rely on abilities that use MP--since, you know, mages using Draw Out or Geomancy is still effective--uses MP heavy stuff like Flare and Bahamut for the entirety of its damage.

So you say that mages shouldn't rely on MP-intensive skill sets because they're MP-intensive skill sets?  I propose innate MP regen to shift team design away from this paradigm.  I would like players to depend on mages for their magic.  The AI is notoriously unreliable at restoring its MP.  From my testing for season 5, the AI seems to restore MP only when there is nothing left to do.  No strategy is as predisposed to the whimsy of the AI as spellcasting, and no strategy as unattractive.

A mage bereft of MP is no longer a mage.  They're the only class players expect during design to inflict its own paralysis.  Players must account for this, and it is here that discrepancies with non-mages arise.  Bards don't need support to sing, ninja to attack, or samurai to draw out.  These units are dependable.  Consequently, players don't need to design bards, ninja, or samurai with alternatives.  In this light, suggesting that mages must rely on an alternative course of action when they're out of MP is not convincing.  It is precisely what I wish to change.  If magic had more destructive power than any other form of offense, then this "self-paralysis" would be appropriate, but with the Faith system making magic damage as unpredictable as it is, it simply isn't so.

Pointing out that mages have Move-MP UP to cope with MP woes is symptomatic of the underlying problem: design is less about choice and more about necessity.  Combined with the reliance on Item (already a skill set with enough going for it) or Angel Song, the whole design process turns stale.  On the other hand, if mages did not need to rely on Move-MP Up, they could, for example, put the 500 JP into diversifying their skill sets to avoid bad status/elemental matchups.  

The proposed MP regen would be small.  Raven's suggestion of 1/16 sounds fair.  This rate would keep low-tier spells accessible to units with high MP pools.  If some low-tier spells are too strong, then, of course, they would need to be modified --  the current spells are not designed with passive MP regen in mind, after all.  MP damage would still have a role in denying units mid-to-high-tier spells like Flare, Bahamut, and Raise.  Under no condition would crippling spells be "free."  Sustained use of high-tier spells or sustained MP damage would definitely continue to require MP maintenance.

For those saying that it will counter Witch Hunt, just stop. The MP regen happens at end of turn, which will still leave the mage at 0 MP assuming that scenario, and will just get burned away again.

And yes, the AI is horrible at recovering MP...

Alternatively:  I propose removing MP.  It only exists to fuck Mages over in Arena's current design and nothing more.  It doesn't actually "balance" much of anything and is the source of one of the AI's greater flaws.  It adds almost nothing to current Arena and takes away plenty.

...Unless you intend to make Mages far more competent Attack users and/or make more skills across the board utilize MP, why have it?  We already have other things that can balance skills such as JP Costs, CT Costs, Gear Builds that modify skill effectiveness, etc.  There's no hurting for a means of balancing these magic skills, so why not tell it to go fuck itself?  Because it's "magic" and it "needs" to cost MP because that's what we're used to?

Unless you want to rework the entire MP System in one manner or another, it's only serving to fuck things over and force anyone using MP-reliant Jobs to be forced into using what are basically Mana-Bots in some form or another for something that's honestly rarely worth it.  The hit to Move-MP UP fucks up one of the only real ways to remedy this issue (MP Regeneration that doesn't cost you a second unit) on top of all this, really just making the problem worse.

So, what do?

That could work.  Personally, I'd still like to see MP be used for something.  Perhaps it could be used for a unique set of "special" moves like full-party haste, an instant-cast summon, or stat-increasing abilities (like Quickening -- or any other ability that is too useful and used too often.)  Give every skill set at least one special move.  Summon magic could have instant-cast Bahamut, Steal Quickening, Time Magic full-party haste/slow, Draw Out Season 5 Kiku, Black Magic 100% Death, White Magic MBarrier, and so on. (Brainstorming ideas could be fun.)  Assign every skill an MP cost in accordance with its utility.  Set every job's max MP to a flat 100 or some such.  Have every unit start the battle with 0 MP (if that's possible) and let MP increase on its own at a slow rate.  These special skills would then be as the revenge meter is in Street Fighter 4, or as TP in Tactics Ogre: they would give parties the chance to turn battles around.  MP-healing and MP-damaging abilities would need to be severely limited in this scenario.  This is just a wild suggestion, of course.  

(I am aware that Mist's restoration would take place at the end of the turn like Regen; just like I'm aware that AI is generally stupid about its more active options for MP restoration. Abortive debate over Witch Hunt aside, it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.)

I'd be up for trying out a "patch" devoid of MP costs, though that seems pretty drastic and a lot of magic already needs to be overhauled even with MP costs. So I doubt such an idea would make it into 131 and, even if it did, that it would be feasible for all spells.

(Oh, that's what I was going to ask? Given that FDC probably won't be finished before summer ends, when exactly should be aiming for this tournament thing [if it even happens at this point]?)

Still, it would keep mages from self-destructing, though in most instances, I feel that's the team designers' own fault given it's something that's been around since vanilla for better or for worse.

Quote from: Gaignun on August 23, 2011, 05:07:04 pm
So you say that mages shouldn't rely on MP-intensive skill sets because they're MP-intensive skill sets? *sigh*

I said no such thing and I don't see how you got that at all. I merely said that Squidgy's arguments about Witch Hunt being overpowered, which it isn't, are false. Given that one of them was about Witch Hunt automatically shutting down a mage's effectiveness in a single action, I then pointed out not all of a mage's most dangerous spells cost that much MP.

Seriously, it's like people just didn't watch videos of Viliganti's team or a few other teams that can do like 200+ with a mere Tier 1 spell. I mean, sure, Flare is pretty herp derp to the point where it's actually worth the JP and MP now, but Tier 1 spells didn't suddenly become less dangerous if they were properly built around.

I never said that mages don't have problems that perhaps are unfair in design--obviously they do since we wouldn't be talking about upping Faith or making Faith more consistent if they didn't. I was merely saying that the problem is so readily evident that it's your own fault for not addressing it with the current system since it's been around forever.

Is that fair? Probably not. Is it what is and something that's actually controllable unlike Quickening or X Save or Battle Song & Wiznaibus Mimicked quadruple times? Absolutely.

I don't have a problem with looking for solutions to it--I just don't feel like giving everyone Auto-MP Regen is it (presently) and I sure as hell know that crying about Witch Hunt, of all things, being overpowered isn't a solution to the actual problem either. Focusing on Witch Hunt is just all the other focus on Song and Dance when, for the most part, those skills aren't the actual problem.

FOOD FOR THOUGHTS ON FAITH CONSTANT:

FFM: !calc (0.7+0.35)^2
FFMaster: Answer: 1.1025
FFM: !calc (0.4+0.35)^2
FFMaster: Answer: 0.5625
FFM: !calc (0.4)^2
FFMaster: Answer: 0.16
FFM: !calc (0.7)^2
FFMaster: Answer: 0.49
FFM: hmmm....
FFM: !calc (0.7)*(0.4)
FFMaster: Answer: 0.28
FFM: !calc (0.7+0.35)*(0.4+0.35)
FFMaster: Answer: 0.7875
FFM: giving faith a constant looks pretty bad on paper, but my head probably isn't in the right state, since i'm trying to study marketing at the same time
FFM: to me, all it's doing is making the damage range bigger

Quote from: The Damned on August 23, 2011, 08:25:15 pmI'd be up for trying out a "patch" devoid of MP costs, though that seems pretty drastic and a lot of magic already needs to be overhauled even with MP costs.

...You do realize by "overhauled", the problem is "they suck, and MP costs are making them even worse", right?

Quote from: The Damned on August 23, 2011, 08:25:15 pmI feel that's the team designers' own fault given it's something that's been around since vanilla for better or for worse.

-> Well, this mechanic kind of sucks and is inhibiting our growth.

-> Let's keep it as-is because it was there to start with and removing it is new and scary and different.

Really?

Quote from: The Damned on August 23, 2011, 08:25:15 pmFocusing on Witch Hunt is just all the other focus on Song and Dance when, for the most part, those skills aren't the actual problem.

This is again true... but in this case, Mime debuffs really won't change it in the Witch Hunt case.  The issue is just how much MP one has vs how much HP, and again, the fact that units reliant on MP rarely have a non-MP alternative unless you drop Draw Out on them and begin wasting more and more JP to build around two weaknesses (MP costs and no good Attack command) that they have for no discernable reasons outside of "Vanilla said so."  If (and only if) Witch Hunt is a problem, which I'm not going to outright say it is, it is due to the shoddy way the MP system is currently implemented.

Quote from: FFMaster on August 23, 2011, 08:56:27 pm
FOOD FOR THOUGHTS ON FAITH CONSTANT:

FFM: !calc (0.7+0.35)^2
FFMaster: Answer: 1.1025
FFM: !calc (0.4+0.35)^2
FFMaster: Answer: 0.5625
FFM: !calc (0.4)^2
FFMaster: Answer: 0.16
FFM: !calc (0.7)^2
FFMaster: Answer: 0.49
FFM: hmmm....
FFM: !calc (0.7)*(0.4)
FFMaster: Answer: 0.28
FFM: !calc (0.7+0.35)*(0.4+0.35)
FFMaster: Answer: 0.7875
FFM: giving faith a constant looks pretty bad on paper, but my head probably isn't in the right state, since i'm trying to study marketing at the same time
FFM: to me, all it's doing is making the damage range bigger

That is what it's doing.

The difference is that it's a larger range on a lower value.  

Using old Faith, you have, say, 20*50, or 1000, and your range is .16 to .49 of it, or 160 to 490.  To get 490 damage with a +35 constant, you want to use 20*22, or 440.  Multiply by .56 and 1.10, your range becomes 246 to 484.  Compare to above, your net range actually decreased by almost 100 points.  This is why 40 Faith is currently so much more effective at lowering Magic than 40 Fury at lowering Physical.

Basically, while your range ITSELF has grown, your base value has become so much smaller in comparison that the difference is a far higher minimum value when you adjust Y to shoot for the old 70 v 70 value under the new system.  This makes Mages get raped far less by low Faith, obviously.

Aye.  Think of the extreme case, in which the constant is much larger than the difference between maximum and minimum faith.  If the constant is C and the difference is dx, the difference in scaling between the 70-70 and 70-40 cases is

C^2 - C*(C-dx)^2 = 0

since C >> dx.

(http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj174/FF255Master/FFT%20Arena/BaseStats131.png)

Makes me think Lancer will be #1 for physical, but that's okay due to limited weapon selection and skillset.
And Mediator would trounce casters at their job... zomg with that health, speed, MA... poor casters, but a little less MP than a bard.

(All of this is just a guess based on the new chart.  Testing will obviously need to be done)

- Squires got toned down a little, but I think they might still need more.  Highest HP, 2nd highest PA, 4 move.  I think dropping their PA by 1 and move back to 3 would be right.

- Monk's PA still worries me a bit, but with no more innate Martial Arts, it might be ok.  I'm still worried about Wave Fist and Repeating Fist being a bit too powerful, but we shall see.

- Mediator might have gotten a bit overbuffed.  I dont think the 4 move is necessary with the other changes and the boost to Talk Skill in general.

-  Geomancer is on par with Squire for using their skillset.  Yay.

-  Ninjas still suck as a base class :(

-  Both Mimes are viable now.  I think the boost to HP might be unneccesary, but its not overpowered now or anything.

@Dol: Losing Martial Arts for Monk was akin to losing 6 PA.  Considering that, and considering the weaker Fist formula... 13 PA shouldn't be a big deal.

The one thing that does strike me as odd is that average relevant male PA is 9 (only Monk and Mime have more than 10), yet average relevant female MA is chillin' around 11-12ish, with several 13s.  I dunno, just seems odd to me that they plateau at different areas, and that the high-end base MA is such a commodity for female casters when high-end base PA is a premium for male fighters.  Not going to call it a problem yet, per-se, but more an observation.

(I don't have comments on the Faith or stats thing right now.)

Ugh. I'm so tired. However, as I said I would, I'll try to get a list up of a theoretical equipment changes that Raven and others will likely tear to shreds in like...six or seven hours or so provided I don't get distracted (or drop dead from a heart attack/stroke at this point).

Quote from: RavenOfRazgriz on August 23, 2011, 09:34:04 pm
...You do realize by "overhauled", the problem is "they suck, and MP costs are making them even worse", right?

Mostly, yes. Just not in all cases or, at least, there are some cases where I think MP is the only thing restricting certain abilities unless you give them ridiculous CTs, which either makes them worthless or moot since that would be gotten around via Short Charge.

Quote from: RavenOfRazgriz on August 23, 2011, 09:34:04 pm-> Well, this mechanic kind of sucks and is inhibiting our growth.

-> Let's keep it as-is because it was there to start with and removing it is new and scary and different.

Really?

Not really. It's more that "this mechanic would be a drastic overhaul on top of trying to overhaul everything else. Let's make it its own patch after we've sussed out a way to make magic at least marginally more usable in the meanwhile."

I'd rather take things in steps and try out the "no MP" idea, if it gets used at all, mostly by itself so that it's easier to identify the inevitable problems with it than rush to add it for 131 and have it be a clusterfuck between all the stat, equipment and ability changes that are going to occur as well.

If I was "scared", then I would have never said that I found it a potentially interesting idea.

Quote from: RavenOfRazgriz on August 23, 2011, 09:34:04 pm]This is again true... but in this case, Mime debuffs really won't change it in the Witch Hunt case.  The issue is just how much MP one has vs how much HP, and again, the fact that units reliant on MP rarely have a non-MP alternative unless you drop Draw Out on them and begin wasting more and more JP to build around two weaknesses (MP costs and no good Attack command) that they have for no discernable reasons outside of "Vanilla said so."  If (and only if) Witch Hunt is a problem, which I'm not going to outright say it is, it is due to the shoddy way the MP system is currently implemented.

True. I just don't see it as necessary to single out because if the MP system needs to be overhauled/removed entirely, as said above, then it should probably be it's own patch and because I don't see Witch Hunt as a problem, much less overpowered. To me, Witch Hunt (and other MP damage) is at most a "winmore" in that it's  mostly useless, but the few times that it works, all it really did was enable what was likely an already probable victory that could have been achieved without it.