FFT Arena: Balance Discussion Thread

[Dokurider]

I'm referring to MP cost, Damned. I never said Houkouton is strictly worse than Spin Fist, they are roughly equal. It's just one is free and the other isn't.

[CT5Holy]

I don't think Dia needs a nerf. It isn't used much and is for the most part an anti-sandbag tool. You have to do a lot to make it relevant damage-wise, and even then it's still subject to Faith and Setiemson. Ok it might see more use now that it's in White Magic, but that still doesn't change the fact that its damage is far from great, and it's not AoE, either.

Lore is not subject to Counter Flood or Counter Magic.

Shoes usage is something like Battle Boots ~= Sprint Shoes > Germinas Boots > Red Shoes > Feather Boots.

Spin Fist still does better damage.

[The Damned]

(*facepalms*)

Oh, MP-wise. I think I just automatically thought you were speaking of JP cost because I vaguely remember Spin Fist being free in 1.3 or something. My mistake.

Anyway, I'm still not entirely sure that it should be "free" since its unavoidable and multi-hitting, though really it's only the unavoidable aspect that matters in this comparison. I could see it taking less MP, though.

I don't think Dia needs a nerf. It isn't used much and is for the most part an anti-sandbag tool. You have to do a lot to make it relevant damage-wise, and even then it's still subject to Faith and Setiemson. Ok it might see more use now that it's in White Magic, but that still doesn't change the fact that its damage is far from great, and it's not AoE, either.

It's not like I'm saying it's broken on White Magick or anything, at least I haven't since Raven corrected me about its damage versus Holy a while back. I guess I just don't see why White Magick should have anti-sandbag power in the first place, especially instantly and for so little a cost.

Lore is not subject to Counter Flood or Counter Magic.

Ugh. 0-2 already. Hurray!

Wonder why the hell I thought it was despite checking the entirety of ARENA last week. Probably just because I noticed that "Severe Weather" team or whatever has Counter Magic on its units with Lore and I never use it myself, so.... Still not much of an excuse.

Shoes usage is something like Battle Boots ~= Sprint Shoes > Germinas Boots > Red Shoes > Feather Boots.

Really? Hunh. I honestly haven't seen anyone use Germinas Boots.

No one using Iron Boots anymore either? And, well, Rubber Shoes still tends to glossed over.

[CT5Holy]

Ok, maybe Battle Boots ~= Sprint Shoes > Germinas Boots ~= Red Shoes ~= Iron Boots > Feather Boots=Rubber Shoes is a bit more accurate (I think). =P

[Dokurider]

Anyway, I'm still not entirely sure that it should be "free" since its unavoidable and multi-hitting, though really it's only the unavoidable aspect that matters in this comparison. I could see it taking less MP, though.

If it isn't free, it should be 1, maybe 2 MP since it's easily less effective than the other -tons and is still somehow costs twice as much. Unevadablity only takes you so far, and it's mere presence doesn't alway justify a MP tag.

[Gaignun]

Seems like you want to throw out a skill with a unique role just to make a Dia clone in a skillset that's already been heavily buffed and has very few remaining drawbacks.

I want to throw out a skill that sees zero use and needs to be made nigh-unusable to be balanced.  You can't make instant-death spells viable in this kind of competitive play, nor can you for an AI with a dysfunctional risk-reward system.  See: 1.37 Odin.

Death isn't unique for tank-busting.  The resident tank-buster is Oracle, unless you're talking about tanks which stack M-EV, in which case neither Black Magic nor Yin Yang Magic are effective.

Expecting people to use skillsets like Draw Out or White Magic when they want an instant-gratification MA based skill?  Pfft, let me just tie their all-in-one mage up with a fancy little bow while I'm at it, too.

Even you know you're exaggerating here.

Even though I don't have a problem with Battle Boots and Red Shoes, I kinda like that suggestion.

...Too bad "we" can't get away with it because of those meddling Knives and their limited Item Attributes.

Ah, too bad.  It's something to keep in mind if knives ever get shuffled around, at least.

[FFMaster]

Updated thread title to involve item discussions as well. There's no reason why it should only affect abilities/stats when everything affects the balance of each other.

Houkouton is pretty outclassed by Spin Fist, I agree. I have no ideas how both can exist without the other one obviously being better though.

[Dokurider]

Houkouton can still be useful. Until PA>15, Houkouton is the better damage dealer, so it's good for Tanks, Evaders, Speedsters and Ninjas with Attitude. Plus being an unevadable AoE is nice. The problem is that it's 10 MP cost is just murder, especially considering the other -tons have the same MP cost for more damage with more range and for less JP.

[The Damned]

(Thanks for the thread title change, FFMaster.)

Actually, since we're talking about Monk, can you clarify whether their abilities are still "supposed" to be quadratic or not in the first place, FFMaster?

[RavenOfRazgriz]

Hate to rain on everyone's parade, but here's an actual problem:

Nether Magic is using the wrong UnFury Constant, according to the Master Guide.  It should be using (145-CasFury)*(145-TarFury) as UnFaith does, because this also allows it to replicate the boundaries of the current Faith and Fury constants, but is instead using (135-CasFury)*(135-TarFury).  Not only does this result in unnecessary mechanical inconsistency between Fury and Faith mechanics, but it also results in the Nether series of skills being noticeably weaker for it, losing roughly 22% effectiveness in a 70 v 40 scenario when compared to UnFaith, Faith, and Fury-based skills using the same criteria.   This needs to be fixed pretty much immediately.

[Dokurider]

Ultima's MP cost is way too high. Bio 2 has the same Y value for 12 MP. For 35 MP, you can use Zodiac and Bahamut. The only advantages Ultima has is unevadability and no faith modification.

[FFMaster]

Here's a current log of what I've done and what I plan to do(Doesn't include the bug fixes)

Balance
- Ultima MP cost reduced to 20
- Dia is now stopped by Silence
- Spellbreaker formula changed to MA*WP damage
- Cover Fire Y reduced to 60
- Poison JP increased to 100
- All Geomancy becomes Enemy only
- Meiton/Fuuton/Suiton Y reduced to 9
- Berserked units can now use reactions
- Added Movement: Warpath - Adds 2 Brave on Move action, Monk base, 250 JP
- Added Movement: Pilgrimage - Adds 2 Faith on Move action, Priest base, 250 JP



TODO

Test Frog AI
Life Song/Wiznaibus add status
Equipment break bugs? Needs further testing to see if it's an actual bug or not

[RavenOfRazgriz]

For Cover Fire, reducing the Y to 60 doesn't do much, just reduces damage by 10-30 points.  I recommend changing it from (1...3)*(PA+70) to (1...6)*(PA+25)

I recommend this for a few reasons.  Cover Fire currently in a lot of ways is like a random Comet - it does mostly stat-independent damage, but how much it does is left to chance.  What the above does is leave the "optimal" damage about the same, but it does two other things.    The "average" damage is more controlled because the center of gravity changes from 2*(PA+70) to 3-4*(PA+25).  The damage between these is more or less even, but it's a lot less likely to hit the 'peak' damage, so Cover Fire stays good while being a lot less swingy overall.  It also makes your PA factor in a lot more - If you stack 20+ PA, instead of only doing 20-60 more damage, you do 20-120 more instead, giving you more incentive to buff up.  (Considering 6*45 = 270, you could make the constant value as low as 20 for 6*40 = 240.  This would make the damage of a 20 PA Cover Fire user doing full damage about equal to what Gaignun displayed earlier, but make that max damage half as likely to happen while also making PA more important.  Overall improvement unless you really want the skill to pretty much ignore stats, at which point you may as well just make it 1...3*65 and just remove the PA element entirely.)

[The Damned]

(And I return to not actually help with anything again.)

I agree with Raven that Cover Fire needs to be centered out and since I'm both lazy and incompetent as well as confident that his math is correct, I'll just say he has my support on the specific change above.

I'm not really sure what the hell Kagesougi's deal is since apparently that's overpowered or something. I'm still not able to watch the videos (easily) due to Youtube still being magickally horrible for me. (Hurray!)

Here's a current log of what I've done and what I plan to do(Doesn't include the bug fixes)

Balance
- Ultima MP cost reduced to 20
- Dia is now stopped by Silence
- Spellbreaker formula changed to MA*WP damage
....
- Poison JP increased to 100
- All Geomancy becomes Enemy only
- Meiton/Fuuton/Suiton Y reduced to 9
- Berserked units can now use reactions
- Added Movement: Warpath - Adds 2 Brave on Move action, Monk base, 250 JP
- Added Movement: Pilgrimage - Adds 2 Faith on Move action, Priest base, 250 JP

These look good overall, especially the Berserked units being able to use reactions, even if that's potentially abusive with Concentrate being back.... Warpath and Pilgrimage should be equally...interesting.

I'm not really sure why Poison's accuracy needs to be upped, but it's not by that much, so meh. Similarly, I still think Dia should be weakened a bit more, chiefly making it so that it's not instant, but since everyone else seems ambivalent or fine with its current level of power, I'm not going to push that. I'm utterly ambivalent to Geomancy (and Counter Flood) becoming Enemy Only; I kinda "liked" it being able to hit allies, but that's probably because I wanted people to get screwed over by Counter Flood like I tended to get screwed over by it (even when I was the one using it).

That said, I have to agree with Dokurider that Ultima seemed quite weak at 30 MP after doing the math in my head. Knocking off a third of the MP cost helps, but it's still seems...kinda weak. Maybe increase its Y from 9 to 10? Because right now, I don't see any reason to use it over Comet really since Comet is way faster, way cheaper, and completely independent of MA. The only things Ultima has going for it are its AoE (unreliable between its slow-ish CT, the way the computer acts and potential backfires) and having higher potential damage on single target (after the user has MA > 11); I guess Ultima is also affected by Zodiac whereas Comet might not be.

Regardless, despite allowing for Berserk to use reactions now, you're going to still going to have it deny Move-HP Up and Move-MP Up gain, right? Similarly, you should probably check to make sure that it denies Pilgrimage's and, more importantly, Warpath's activations.

TODO

Test Frog AI
Life Song/Wiznaibus add status
Equipment break bugs? Needs further testing to see if it's an actual bug or not

This bug has been around since Vanilla. I don't know what causes it, especially since I still know very little about coding, and it doesn't really seem like anyone's looked into it after all this time.

That said, if I had to hazard a guess, I'd say that for some reason the game is unable to check that equipment's been destroyed until after the attack phase stops, hence why things are capable of being broken "twice" with Two Swords. Also, it's probably unrelated, but I can't imagine that the Breaks doubling as normal attacks when the equipment is broken exactly helps.

[FFMaster]

Ah ok, it's a bug that has been around since vanilla. That... doesn't really narrow it down lol.

As for Warpath/Pilgrimage, they are not disabled by anything currently. If needed, I can add the check for Berserk or other things. It works, but is shoddily coded, and the routine is in a very odd place, but was the only location that I could find. I'm personally not expecting much from these Movements personally, they are a very slow way to gain power, and there is a negative when you get attacked back as well.

Ultima will definitely need more tweaking, but I want to do this slowly or we may end up with the Double Ultima win teams again =p

Poison accuracy isn't being increased, the JP is.

Another TODO - fix constants for UnFury.

[The Damned]

(Sigh. I really need to pay more attention to everything.)

Understandable on all fronts. I was mostly asking the Warpath thing for consistency sake, not because I thought it was something you would be specifically doing or even anything that would be "broken". Maybe a bit overpowered depending, but given that Initial: Berserk units barely tend to last three turns, much less fifteen, I doubt it will end up being much of a deal. This especially when the AI is still going to try to cure Berserk at its earliest possible convenience anyway.

****

Speaking of "TODO" stuff, I'm guessing this means that the Monk formulas will stay quadratic for now then given your lack of comment on them.

Also, did you ever figure out what the problem with Hawk's Eye was?

[FFMaster]

Monk formulas will remain unchanged for 1 more version. I have a few rough ideas for different formulas, but that will come later.

I actually have no idea what the problem with Hawk's Eye is. I just remade formula 2D to work with multiple stats(which will work better in the long term as well)

[RavenOfRazgriz]

I'm not really sure what the hell Kagesougi's deal is since apparently that's overpowered or something. I'm still not able to watch the videos (easily) due to Youtube still being magickally horrible for me. (Hurray!)

It's not really.  You can combine with with Ninjato to do slightly more Attack damage than you would otherwise because you ignore the SPD component, meaning a fully-maxed Ninja has 4 more XA with Kagesougi than it does with the Attack command.  It's not really outpacing the damage other units can inflict, though, and you can simply remove the Ninja Knife (the one that gives +1 PA) to reduce the PA stack by 2 and basically make the difference between Kagesougi and the normal Attack command nil. 

Though, I really don't think that's necessary, since without a huge PA stack on a Ninja there's otherwise no difference between Kagesougi and Attack, and it helps them circumvent the weakness of their weapon type at a JP cost.

[FFMaster]

Unless there are any major debates, 138d will be released tomorrow. If someone can make Monk nice on the restriction that only the current formulas are used, I might also add that.

[The Damned]

(Didn't see the Monk thing until now. Oh well....)

Anyway, before I forget again, something else I noticed was that Rainbow Staff still says it's All elements when it isn't/shouldn't be. I think that there was something else, but I've forgotten considering how much real life is sucking right now.

Regardless, are we allowed to start thinking about/suggesting things for 139? Or it is too early to ask? (Or do you think that there might need to be a 138e?)