FFT Arena: Balance Discussion Thread

[Squidgy]

Do Scholars have innate Throw Item? Wouldn't let me set it in-game... minor thing. I'll edit more in this post with skill suggestions... Thief lovin' and such.
EDIT: OMG I just saw my Scholar use a Hi-Ether on herself! So it's possible... phew.

[FFMaster]

Oh, that would be a problem in the SCUS. It's because I swapped Chemist and old Calculator around, since there was code to slow down Calculator spells, which is why the Sage spells in 1.3 take so long. I can't exactly fix it right now, maybe in a while. Or... we can have Lore being super slow...

[pokeytax]

That way you get instant kill on a critical unit, or a kill on someone with <= 50% max HP at the cost of 4 CT (maybe 5 CT? seems quite strong).

Yeah, the Climhazzard formula is really strong, it needs a longer charge time.

[Squidgy]

It's a minor thing; I consider keeping Lore fixed of more importance.

Archer: I think the DA/DM makes it unique... Cover Fire has a place for secondary use, but the MP cost lessens that a little. If you want different stuff, I'm thinking steal some of Cloud's abilities pretty much directly, but make their damage PA-based. A Braver with range 5, similar to old Charge, but can be Short Charged... Climhazzard is the suggested execute change by pokeytax, which I agree with, but maybe 6-7 CT instead of 4.

Thief: Steal Heart was all I ever Thieved with, and still all I care for. In the 1.3 tourney Cherry has Steal Weapon since it's a stall team... but I really dislike Steal/Break Equip vs Maintenance. I'd love temporary equip removal, if possible, but really doubt it's so (via a status?) Also... Innate Two Swords... or Innate Awareness? I'm thinking physical Oracle mentality, but only in the uncommon oracle/mediator aspects.

"Heretic" Self: Innocent. High mp. 300 jp.
"Setup" Self: Transparent + Quick, if the AI doesn't go mad using it... Low mp. 80 jp.
"Break Status" Wep range, Phys%: Remove Reraise, Haste, Regen, Protect, Shell, Float. (Steal Status possible?) 200 jp.
"Noxious Gas": Range 0, Area 1 vert 1, Add: Confuse Sp+50 (Melee Mimic Daravon for Confuse) No mp. 300 jp.
"Distract" AoE 2, vert 3, (Draw Out area/range) CT: 00, Sp +20 chance. (Oh, Persuade could use a buff since Mimic Daravon or Blackmail trump it easily.) 200 jp.
Ruins back to Breaks, based on weapon, no mp cost, except Speed Ruin, unless that can be wep% Add: Slow?

Throw Stone... don't like the cancel: Charge version. What about just ranged single-target Houkouton (PA*8)? I always liked the knockback... is that able to come back?

[PX_Timefordeath]

Proposed Squire Skill

Ultima Shot: Weapon Ranged heavy magic attack, big MP cost. Pretty much from FFTA. Or we can put it on Archers

[Skip Sandwich]

I feel like mimes might be better served by having Overwhelm instead of Martial Arts as a support, they would benefit more overall, even with the loss of power for their attack command. They also still feel a little too easy to kill for a unit that is entirely reliant on others to heal itself, and they still have 1 support slot left, so why not put Unyielding in there?

[pokeytax]

I feel like mimes might be better served by having Overwhelm instead of Martial Arts as a support, they would benefit more overall, even with the loss of power for their attack command. They also still feel a little too easy to kill for a unit that is entirely reliant on others to heal itself, and they still have 1 support slot left, so why not put Unyielding in there?

I think Overwhelm is a good idea, male Mimes are better than female Mimes because they have a solid physical attack. While I like the fragility of Mimes balancing their power, losing Concentrate is going to be rough, so maybe Unyielding would be okay too.

[Skip Sandwich]

actually, unless something has changed, Concentrate would become available ONLY as a mime innate ability, rather then being removed entierly

[FFMaster]

Yeah, Concentrate is still innate on Mimes.

[The Damned]

So, while changing my teams over to 129 versions already, I noticed that Concentrate still shows up on Archer's chart despite being verboten as anything other than Mime's innate now.

Less contrarily, I noticed some weird things now that Reflect bars up, namely that Holy and Flare are reflectable and that "Reflect", the Time Mage Spell (which no longer causes Reflect and could probably stand to have a better name), isn't subject to M-EV despite being an attack. These aren't big things, but they seem like they might need addressing.

Besides that, I "look forward" to Thief (and maybe Archer) ending up as an obnoxious gits now, though I will gladly like to be proven wrong, even if I would like for Steal [Equipment] to reappear. Thank you for at least lowering Maintenance's cost, though; however, "techniques" is misspelled as "technipes" still, but that's ultimately still an inconsequential typo.

[CT5Holy]

Lich, I agree is strong. It has been that way since 1.3 tournaments, it's just that people have neglected it for other better things. With Steal Heart nerfed and Throw non-existant, Lich can finally show off what it does. Demi and Demi 2 have always been terrible imo, and needs a good boost. Odin will probably always be a gimmick I think.

Right now, Lich trades larger AoE for ~10% success rate. Boost Demi, Demi 2 hit% and lower JP costs as well?

I think Monk's Revive could also see a decrease in JP cost.

Someone mentioned it in the Tournament discussion topic, but Tornado and Quake could also use a buff. I'd go with damage.

Does Execute use Faith because that's the only convenient formula for it? Probably won't matter too much if it gets buffed since no one's using it, anyway.

[Skip Sandwich]

The biggest problem with Demi 2 is that it is simply too costly in terms of both mp and jp expenditure compared to Lich

Lich deals 50% hp damage with an area of 2 for 45mp at CT 7 and costs 250jp

Demi 2 deals 50% hp damage with an area of 1 for 40 mp at CT 6 and costs 450 jp

by comparison

Demi deals 25% hp damage with an area of 1 for 20 mp at CT 2 and costs 200 jp

[The Damned]

Yeah, that's really the killer when it comes to Demi, Demi 2 and even Death versus Lich: compared to Lich, their success rates are horrible for the JP, MP and range that they take and the limited targets they can affect. That Lich avoids Allies as well is merely the addition of insult to injury.

I think Monk's Revive could also see a decrease in JP cost.

I'd disagree unless it's just a decrease to a more even JP of 400. IMO, Monks shouldn't even be able TO revive, but they can not only do that, barring the unlikelihood of isolate terrain uneven-ness, also heal both HP and MP better than Priests often can instantly.

If anything happens with regards to Monks, I'd say that Chakra and Stigma Magic--which is basically instant, multi-target Esuna for free repeatably for a third of the JP--need to become single-target.

Someone mentioned it in the Tournament discussion topic, but Tornado and Quake could also use a buff. I'd go with damage.

That was me.

Personally, while upping damage would be nice, I'd be completely fine if their CT was lowered a bit as well, perhaps lowered significantly even if it meant the damage being lowered. Damage doesn't much help their case if they can be dodged.

[PX_Timefordeath]

For the faith problem, I propose moving the limits from 40-70 to 60-90. That's the same as adding a constant to faith

[FFMaster]

Not exactly PX. Your idea screws over people will plan to use Preach =p

EDIT:

I've been thinking about this a bit now.

For the Demi 1/2 and Lich problem:
Demi - Deals 30% damage, high accuracy
Demi 2 - Deals 60% damage, decent accuracy
Lich - Deals 45% damage(removes easy 2HKO), decent accuracy

JP costs for the spells need to be tweaked as well, I'm thinking of moving Demi to 150 and Demi 2 to 250.

[Skip Sandwich]

I just noticed a huge problem with Hawk's Eye, currently, it has a CT of 6, but whenever a unit moves after beginning to charge it, the charge cancels, resulting in the waste of a turn. So we either need to make Hawk's Eye instant cast or flag it to follow target.

:EDIT: scrapped what I said about a skillset swap, as it was pointed out to me that the problem wasn't with the archer's skillset but the flags set for Hawk's Eye, apparently this problem happens with any charge skill that doesn't also have follow target flagged.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

I just noticed a huge problem with Hawk's Eye, currently, it has a CT of 6, but whenever a unit moves after beginning to charge it, the charge cancels, resulting in the waste of a turn. So we either need to make Hawk's Eye instant cast or flag it to follow target.

:EDIT: scrapped what I said about a skillset swap, as it was pointed out to me that the problem wasn't with the archer's skillset but the flags set for Hawk's Eye, apparently this problem happens with any charge skill that doesn't also have follow target flagged.

Yep.

I remember this one.  I pointed it out.

My incredibly vague fix for this was to flag Weapon Strike and Normal Attack? and unflag Targeting.  I was mucking about trying to turn Item into a Support Ability when I noticed a different skill I made had this problem, so I mucked around with it for about an hour while failing horribly at using the Generic Skillset Hack to make my original idea work and the AI didn't do its "Charge and Move" thing again even when I offered it ample opportunity to nail me in the back for huge damage + 100% status.  I later removed CT from the skill and modified it some for reasons unrelated to this glitch so I haven't tested more but it's worth trying if it's a skill you don't want to scrap and can't fudge about some to make Instant Cast.

[Otabo]

Not exactly PX. Your idea screws over people will plan to use Preach =p

EDIT:

I've been thinking about this a bit now.

For the Demi 1/2 and Lich problem:
Demi - Deals 30% damage, high accuracy
Demi 2 - Deals 60% damage, decent accuracy
Lich - Deals 45% damage(removes easy 2HKO), decent accuracy

JP costs for the spells need to be tweaked as well, I'm thinking of moving Demi to 150 and Demi 2 to 250.

What about this?

Demi - 33% damage, 3 CT, good accuracy, 200 JP
Demi 2 - 66% (or 67%) damage, 6 CT, fair to bad accuracy, 400 JP
Lich - 40% damage, 5 CT, fair accuracy. Maybe 35-40 ish MP? At least more than Demi, but less than Demi 2.

Demi & Demi 2 would give another reason to use Time Magic other than the usual. 33% on Demi should be a decent buff to it; it'd put it up there with Life Drain at least, and Life Drain is a pretty good skill in itself. Now that I think about it, 66% on Demi 2 might be too strong, but perhaps the 6 CT (or maybe even 7 CT like Death) + accuracy nerf + JP Cost could balance that out. To be honest, I was thinking about 1.3's Gravi 2 at the moment. Lich as an even 40% would be still be pretty good.

On another note, can we please, please, get rid of song/dance mimicking? Way too strong. Battle Song is mainly the culprit here and is especially imba when mimed because of mimes' innate Martial Arts AND Concentrate. Wiznaibus is kind of bad too, especially for squishies, and when you've got both of them together, it gets crazy. Or at least make only Battle Song either not able to be mimicked or reduce it to Cheer Song's hit%. On its own, it's not that big of a deal, but when there's one or two mimes out, that is when it gets ridiculous. The other songs aren't as bad when mimicked (though, Magic Song could be bad, but it's not nearly as overused as Battle Song is).

I feel like mimes might be better served by having Overwhelm instead of Martial Arts as a support, they would benefit more overall, even with the loss of power for their attack command.

I agree with that. Mimes can one-shot anything given a few points of PA from Battle Song. I blame Martial Arts. They need to lose that, too. Overwhelm sounds good on them.

[Avalanche]

Hello,

i think there is a good reason why Demi is so much weaker than Lich.
Because time mage has the role of a supporter/disabler. If u want an strong atackspell u need to equip a second ability like black magic/summon magic. If Demi would become as strong that would boost time magic very much.

[CT5Holy]

Demi - 33%, 2 CT, 15-20 MP, 200 JP, very high accuracy (higher than it is now - it's already 100% hit against 70 Faith targets, so it would only increase hit rate against 40 Faith units)
Demi 2 - 66%, 6 CT, 35 MP, 300 JP, current Lich accuracy (or maybe a bit higher)
Lich - 45%, 6 CT, 35-40 MP, 300 JP, same accuracy (or maybe a bit higher)

Basically, buff to Demi, while trade off between Demi 2 and Lich is damage for AoE.

I think Overwhelm instead of Martial Arts is a good idea. Should lower the damage enough that we don't need to tweak Song/Dance hit% or make them unmimicable.