FFT Arena: Balance Discussion Thread

[The Damned]

(I still wonder why no one is using Night Killer, so I have to wonder if it or Silencer [or Poison Bow] are probably working considering Bow Gun....)

Yeah, I guess can agree with all that, especially since it's not like Heretic is going to see much use otherwise.

I do have to wonder why the AI didn't use Persuade when I had it though since the AI is supposed to whore "CT to 00". Also don't think I've ever seen the AI use Preach, but Solution should work in the same situation as Heretic, if worse.

Speaking of Heretic going to Ninja, just rename it "Mu" (Nothingness/Emptiness). There. Done.

Not sure what the hell would replace Houkouton on Thief though without still getting obviated by Spin Fist in most instances. Having a tri-directional attack still might be nice though....

[Dokurider]

Air Knife's sleep is probably working correctly, but who knows? It keeps killing everyone before it gets to proc. Hehe.
But seriously, I think a Sleep proc is overkill.

I suppose adding Regen would be a little excessive for Heretic. Adding Defend would probably work out better. Or moving it to Ninjas. I'm fine with either.

How would you feel about making Houkouton Fire Elemental guys? Or at least replacing it with a Fire elemental skill? Fire Elemental has been very underrepresented in the physical department as of late, and while Asura Knife and upcoming Fire Spear and Orochimaru Fang will help that, an AoE Fire skill would see a more subdued return of Fire Absorb teams. Fire Absorb teams weren't bad, they were just powered by an abusable skill. This will be nothing like the Asura days of old, with less AoE, physical evadability, and an MP cost making it less abusable. It'll help differentiate itself from Spin Fist and it'll give Cursed Ring users a little more to be afraid of.

[The Damned]

(Let's see if I can respond concisely to this.)

1. Air Knife's Sleep proc isn't working. Your latest match against Jumza is where I finally noticed. It's easiest to tell if you pause it when your Thief attacks his Knight in the first round. But, yeah, it doesn't really need it, at least if it's keeping Two Hands and Oil remains around as it is.

2. Defending (or Haste) would work out better in term of use, but Defending would be really obnoxious, especially if it remained on Thief. Good luck hitting a Defending, Innocent Thief that just has C-EV & Main Gauche without Concentrate.

3. A Fire-type elemental skill and the original tri-directional Asura was actually what I think of when it came to possibly changing Houkouton if Thief gets it, so I'd suppose that. You could name it "Fire Bomb" ala the Juggler skill from FFT:A, though there's probably a better name if it's tri-directional.

[Gaignun]

Speaking of Heretic going to Ninja, just rename it "Mu" (Nothingness/Emptiness). There. Done.

How about Mushin (無心)?  It has strong Zen/Buddhist connotations.

[The Damned]

(Ugh. Damn it. I totally meant "no one" in that post at the top of the page, not "anyone".)

Sure, "Mushin" is even better. I mean, it's ultimately up to FFMaster, including whether Ninja gets what was formerly called Heretic at all, but it seems pretty clear that if they are going to get it, then it's going to be Mu[something].

[Malroth]

Move  Blind Charm and Stop  immunity from Chakra band to Choice Band so there's an actual reason to choose choice band.

[The Damned]

(Here are two more Ninja-related things that have occurred to me that I might as well post before I forget again like always.)

1. Kagesougi really doesn't seem like it needs to able to proc Don't Act given the good amount of damage--200~--it usually does on average. At present, Don't Act just seems like a leftover artefact of Doku No Kyoukai that results in making Kagesougi a bit too good. This if only because it's on the class that automatically gets pseudo-Concentrate via Hidden Knife and almost always hits twice via innate Two Swords. Damage and Don't Act would perhaps be fine if it wasn't for those, which is why I don't have a problem with Silf or the new Lightning Bow especially since those are 20% and elemental yet can't be used for team healing like so many other elemental abilities. So...yeah.

2. Should anything be done about Tsumazuku? In theory, it seems like it might be a decent enough ability, but the AI has literally never used it. At this point, I think the only other ability I haven't seen the AI ever use is Preach, and that was only after it was changed to Add: Faith. In addition, as just mentioned, with Kagesougi's ability to Don't Act present, there's really no reason to ever use it if you're "worried" about canceling Haste. So...replace it? Or fix it? Or just kill it? Or just leave it alone for now?

[Reks]

Opening at least one of the axes to Two Swords WILL allow for maximum hilarity. Hilarity i'm already hoping for.

[The Damned]

(So this is something that occurred to me while recording one of Wiz's matches....)

If this the part of the problem with Insult is that Berserk has infinite duration, then can't that just be solved by giving Berserk finite duration? I know this seems like a "well, duh" solution, especially since that "well, duh" seems to have the added "but obviously if it were that easy to just generate CT for statuses, we'd have done by now", but bare with me.

I was asking this because it was reminded that Reflect's CT in ARENA is currently 0 and thus effectively unused. This means that "we" could just use Reflect originally finite and thus existent CT for Berserk, doesn't it?

Of course, the other reason that I ask in this particular is because even if that's the case, and "we" change to be finite, that seems like it instantly screws over Salty Rage (and, to a lesser degree, Genji Helm). This seems like it would happen unless Berserk's new CT is made so pointlessly lengthy as for there to be no point in making the CT change.

So, yeah, a bit of a "dilemma" there, though I'd argue that Berserk getting a CT takes a lot more priority over a currently still-crappy Accessory that's pretty much pointless to use. That Spellguns are still outpacing Stone Gun now even when Berserk due to the ease of Pilgrimage + Strengthen seems only to add to this.

(For what it's worth, Insult probably could stand to hit a bit less though; I'd argue that Blind Rage could stand to hit a bit more though.)

****

Other things I've noticed is that Mage Masher seems to be procing 100% of the time and, unless I have even worse luck than usual when it comes to fighting Dokurider, so does Night Killer.

There is also some seem issues with Projectile Guard and with Berserk still canceling Abandon despite that technically being a Reaction, but I'll put that in annotations whenever (or if ever) I get things up to Youtube.

[Dokurider]

The thing about Tsumazuku is that it doesn't fit the Ninja class at all, in that it's a 1 range skill that lacks Two Sword capability. Even if the AI used it, it wouldn't be all that great anyways, even with it's SP*WP formula, because it's just completely overshadowed by Hawk's Eye.

I could keep trying to delve into the triggers of Tsumazuku, because I remember the AI actually used it once, but I don't think it's all that worth the effort. I think the reason it won't use Tsumazuku is that it will only use it when someone's turn about to come up because it's trying to maximize it's -25 CT proc. It's not an damage issue, because I ran a Sasuke Knife Thief with max speed and 40 brave, leaving Tsumazuku the only source of damage it had, and it still refused to use it.

So my suggestion is to get rid of it's current proc and give it 3-5 range. You could make it proc Don't Act or Blind, but those are probably too much. Or just scrap the whole thing and change it entirely.

Night Killer is working just fine. The RNG is just screwing with you. And Abandon doesn't work when berserk because you can't evade while berserked in the first place. 1.5 * 0 = 0.

[Gaignun]

I''d rather turn the Ninja class into a debuffing unit.  Give them a 0 CT ranged or self-targeting AoE skill that does damage and cancels Regen and/or Haste at 100% efficiency.  An AoE skill that cancels either of these buffs can be used well against Masamune since Masamune users can only buff one other unit at a time and need to bunch up to do so.  The skill would be less effective against the Haste and Regen skills, since these skills can be cast at a range and have a wider AoE.  Thematically, the skill could be depicted as an "explosive tag," such as the ones seen in Naruto.

[The Damned]

(Hmmm...sounds like we could combine those two things, especially if Tsumazuku's sound effect.)

All I know is that I'm really tired of there being nothing that can screw over Masamune on more than one unit, which then gets applied promptly and instantly at 100%.

Perhaps I'm even more biased than normal because I'm really tired of Masamune (and Kiyomori), especially sound effect-wise, what with having been doing video stuff for the past six hours straight.

So, yeah, let us kill the fuck out of Tsumazuku and replace it with something the AI will actually use, even if the name remains the same since it means "to stumble" anyway.

Night Killer is working just fine. The RNG is just screwing with you. And Abandon doesn't work when berserk because you can't evade while berserked in the first place. 1.5 * 0 = 0.

Oh right. Well, good to be reminded about Berserk & evasion and good to confirm that my luck is just that crap, especially since it tends to be the Archer with Projectile Guard that keeps getting arrow'd and blinded in the face.

*goes back to trying to do one more video*

*doesn't look forward doing to annotations for videos that have more than 30+ mins*

[Dokurider]

Well, you wanted to do it all in one go. You only have yourself to blame.

[The Damned]

(Yeah, I have only myself to blame.

Oh, this isn't all of it. Hardly. It's just Wiz's videos and then editing things because as much of a bum as I am, I'm still a perfectionist "at heart".

....

To keep this relevant to the patch itself, something I was ideally wondering in Domie's match with the aforementioned: Would Ice Brand be better if it's WP was slightly lowered, but it got (at least) +1 MA and the chance to cast Ice 3 2 was improved? Because right now, it seems pretty damn worthless on Paladins, especially given their other options.

*cough*Chaos Blade*cough*

Not that every weapon a class gets has to be tailor-made for it, especially since Paladin actually has a selection of weapons unlike some classes, such as Wizard or Time Mage (or Monk, technically). Similarly, it's not that I've ever believed it's an entirely a bad weapon, as will be attested by the first match I'll post in...some hours. It's just that what it does is rather counter to Paladin's have crap MA and usually Faith, so even if the Ice 2 aspect goes off at all, it ends up doing crap damage in most instances (if it even hits).

Shrug. Just a thought and definitely one of the things that would take the least priority in all the changes that have been flying around with regards to 138d going on 139.

[The Damned]

(I hate to double post, especially only hours apart, but I'll completely forget about this otherwise.)

Fuck (dual) Phoenix Blade. Not what this post is about, but I feel I have to that off my chest after just blundering in another match with those...abominations, that I probably can't even post after the match dragged for almost an hour due to audio issues. Hurray.

Anyway, what this post is about me noticing that Wizard, much like Time Mage, is horribly outclassed at present in the stat department. As Mediator outclasses Time Mage, Scholar outclasses Wizard. This is unsurprising given that Scholar is frankly becoming or already has become the magickal equivalent of early ARENA Paladin, in that they were a bit too good at their side of the physical-magickal split.

While Black Magic(k) including maybe even Death surprisingly is actually usable now due to the change, there's almost no reason to use Wizard as your primary class over Scholar when it comes to Black Magick unless you need Fire element absorption & (actual) revival; even then, that Scholars can just use Summon Magick for that Scholar can use Summon Magick for most of that is why I specific absorption.

(Unfortunately, I'm excluding Poison from "usable" Black Magick due to all the Masamune & Nurse running around. That and partly because it's still inferior to Bio & Hawk's Eye and even Kiyomori among other things.)

By themselves, Scholars hit all the other Wizard elements even with the new (and need) addition of the Water series & Maelstrom. Even if those counterparts are lesser in power, Scholar has them in forms that aren't subject to M-EV and hit everyone instantly. This by itself would be fine, however, given the power difference.

The real trouble comes the other things Scholar has (gotten). Scholar doesn't have to worry about Reflect at present. It gets a form of Reraise. It has access to Wind and Earth & Dark elements, with Wind & Earth being extremely quick and having AoE 2. It  even has access to damaging forms of Poison & Frog and the best equipment selection among mages.

Meanwhile, all Wizard gets that superior to Scholar is a bit of MP more.

Yeah...Wizard needs something just like Time Mage does and, "unfortunately", sans maybe getting rid of Poison or Death to make room for other things despite just buffing Poison alongside most of the rest of Black Magic, there's nothing else that can be (reasonably) done on the Black Magic side. So it has to come from the stat side.

At present, the "best" solution seems like it would be to just give Wizard 1 more MA point and maybe a bit more HP or MP or something. However, the MA aspect isn't even that great a "solution" for me given that I really don't think Draw Out-bots need any extra help, especially when it comes to Murasame's instant healing. Still, it seems "better" than taking away a point of MA from the Scholar side, which I'd be otherwise fine with if it wouldn't tie it for stats with Samurai. Then again, I don't exactly see Samurai or Scholar outclassing one another any time soon since they barely compete aside from the "uses MA" thing, so maybe that would work better too.

Shrug. I just think something should be done if we're buffing Time Mage for essentially the same reasons stat-wise, especially when Mediator isn't as good as Scholar is.

[Malroth]

Perhaps adding Innate:Magic Attack UP  to Wizards might make them usable.

[The Damned]

(Sure, that would make them usable.)

It would also make them completely broken, especially if Overwhelm stacked on top of that, which it probably does.

*shudders*

Innates should really be the last solution to something, at least where humans that aren't Mimes are involved. I honestly think it's as simple as just giving Wizard one more MA, taking away an MA from Scholar or both.

Oh, and in case I forgot to mention it, since I'm still recording, something odd seems to be going on with Move-MP Up and Berserk. Yes, I remembered this time that it isn't supposed to work with Berserk at all. However, it seems like in one instance, it worked with Berserk only. Not sure what the hell was up with that. Maybe I'll catch the cause when, sigh, I do annotations for all of this....

[Dokurider]

Scholars need a stat reallocation/rebalancing anyways, as it's pretty much a hold over from 1.3 (which I've hated since day 1, when Voldemort slapped them in, for being Wizard+, like you said.). They don't need that high of MA to begin with. Instead, they need higher HP to capitalize on their equipment options. Or better speed to attack with Tornado/Quake/speedy Lores. What's the point of giving them Poles and Swords and all these options if they can't even survive melee combat to begin with?

No comment on Black Magic vs Lore except that I still don't think Death measures up as a spell, especially up against Flare.

[Dokurider]

Did you remember to add the hotpatches, Damned?

Ice Brand currently stands as the strongest Grand Cross. One of my unposted team involves a 280 damage Grand Crosser with Dragon Spirit using that very weapon.

[The Damned]

(And my lazy ass returns to the land of consciousness more or less.)

And I still have no idea why the hell Camtasia suddenly won't let me record audio. Even searching on Google and their website has been less than helpful.

Whatever. I'll just record matches without game audio for now.

Scholars need a stat reallocation/rebalancing anyways, as it's pretty much a hold over from 1.3 (which I've hated since day 1, when Voldemort slapped them in, for being Wizard+, like you said.).

Oh, well that explains quite a bit really. I agree that Scholar and the patch as a whole would benefit from a stat reallocation, but I didn't think anyone would really agree to that, so I didn't say anything. I also didn't really have any ideas about what to change it to since I'm still horrible at stat stuff. (How surprising.)

They don't need that high of MA to begin with. Instead, they need higher HP to capitalize on their equipment options. Or better speed to attack with Tornado/Quake/speedy Lores. What's the point of giving them Poles and Swords and all these options if they can't even survive melee combat to begin with?

I can agree with their MA not needing to be that high and their HP could stand to be higher, especially if they're going to bother having the type of weapons they have (even if they get two "ranged" weapons). The speed part I'm ambivalent on outside of speeding up Priest and maybe slowing down Time Mage, though I must admit that formerdeathcorps's proposal to speed up Time Mages further to 10 Speed is...intriguing.

No comment on Black Magic vs Lore except that I still don't think Death measures up as a spell, especially up against Flare.

Oh, I never said that Death was good. I just said it was usable, at least if you have some luck.

*looks at Vigilanti*

spoiler: Warning! Incoming Poison Rant

This compared to Poison, where even if you get "lucky" with that spell, that just means at best you managed Poison your enemy's entire team without hitting your own. "Getting lucky" also means that said can't just Masamune, Nurse, Regen(erator), Heal, Stigma Magic, Esuna or heal it in whatever way that has a lot more chance of succeeding than Poison ever does. This on top of Poison belonging to the second "squishiest" unit, which means you're pretty much never going to tank anything unless you're using Black Magic as a secondary on a high HP unit...all of which has crap MA.

I mean, when was the last time you ever saw a Paladin use Black Magick?

Exactly.

Poison and Death actually have the same problem: they're too easily undone for the low chance of success and high risk, especially with Poison's damage being too slow for most Mages to take advantage of (especially Wizard) and Flare basically being an OHKO on most units that Death could maybe manage to hit anyway.

This also doesn't take into account the other disadvantages that the Poison spell has, namely being the only source of Poison aside from Kiyomori that doesn't also do damage and even Kiyomori does something besides add Poison. This is rather telling since Kiyomori, outside of Wiz's team, is basically still almost worthless, at least for the Poison aspect and because of the AI's idiotic obsession with it in the face of Masamune and the aforementioned ubiquitous Poison counters.

It also doesn't take into account my distaste for Poison (or Regen) lasting past death anyway since all that does is fuck over mages and the currently shitty Wish, neither of need(ed) yet another disadvantage. Yeah, it can occasionally screw over Phoenix Down as well, but that actually has range & 100% accuracy and any Poisoned unit with Item that gets revived can just Antidote or instantly Potion itself to not die again (by Poison anyway); even Squires can just Heal themselves, though it's a lot less likely for two non-Squire Basic Skill users to be on a team as opposed to two Item users.

This as opposed to mages, who have no chance to not die again from Poison unless they have Item or Draw Out (or Basic Skill or, improbably, either Chivalry or Punch Art) as a secondary since everything they can do (sans Dia) takes time that they don't have. Similarly, mages benefit less from Regen staying around after death since they just naturally have less HP, as it "should" be in most cases. Regen lasting after death also bugs me because of Masamune and Regen (and positive statuses) being a lot less likely to be dispelled than Poison and most negative statuses that aren't Undead or Berserk (or Oil).

...Yeah, I've not been a fan of Poison or Regen staying after death for somewhat opposing reasons obviously.

That said, I think I just had a realization about how to "fix" Death: Just make it add Undead as well as Dead and make sure that the Undead aspect takes before the Dead aspect gets added. (If it already doesn't; I keep forgetting if status order IDs being lower in number means they come earlier or latter.)

This way, if Death has to stay around, then at least with this change it isn't entirely obviated by literally any form of resurrection and isn't forced to have "I'm Raise 2's bitch" tattooed on its forehead. Similarly, it keeps Death as a way for Cursed Ring users, like Vigilanti, to maybe heal themselves.

As for "fixing" Poison, there's really nothing else that could be reasonably done to "buff" it given it just got an AoE buff. Given that everyone who bothered responding pre-138 shot down my proposal to just move it to Oracle (you know, one of the few mages that can actually "tank" since it has access to Defense UP in its primary and better HP) and give Wizard one of Yin-Yang Magic(k)'s spells in exchange, I have no idea what to do to help it.

And, right now, I don't really care anymore partly because of aforementioned "Poison-after-death" reason.

Did you remember to add the hotpatches, Damned?

...Fuck. I didn't because I'm idiot.

Dear Minerva, this means that at the very least I have to do Malroth vs. Reks again--two Phoenix Blades are so fun--since Reks could have totally won that second match after the gunner Weapon Broke the immobile Scholar has his Priest any MP. Great...this means I have to check the other matches too outside of the first one, which is thus far the only one to end under the 30 minute mark.

Fun times.

Ice Brand currently stands as the strongest Grand Cross. One of my unposted team involves a 280 damage Grand Crosser with Dragon Spirit using that very weapon.

Oh, yeah. I'm not saying that Ice Brand is worthless, especially with Grand Cross; the first match I recorded was AeroGP's "Snow Pirates" (as I had intended to do before he finally moved his post in the team submission thread). Both of the Grand Cross-using Squires on that team were hitting for 308, though I think compat. might have to do with that.

spoiler: Ice Brand Explanation

I just don't find Ice Brand all that threatening on Paladins because despite hitting hard still with Ice Brand, they can't use it with Grand Cross without sacrificing power. Similarly, unlike Squire (or Geomancer or literally any other Sword users, who all also get to wear Clothes), their own class doesn't come with any measures to get around Ice absorption or halving or nullification, which screwed DomieV over (again) when I recorded. So they either need a teammate with Oil (or Snipe) or they probably become useless as attackers against certain units unless they have Snipe or Punch Art.

As said, I'm not sure Ice Brand needs to become "better", I just think it sucks as a sword for actually attacking though unlike the current, admittedly broken, Air Knife, especially since Ice Brand's proc is underwhelming right now on the classes that actually use it. Maybe if Scholar actually had some HP and incentive to attack...though with their current stats, Ice Rod would still be better, so....

The currently best user of Ice Brand as an actual sword rather than as a Grand Cross MacGuffin is pretty much Bard...except that they have access to the still-overpowered Bloody Strings. Even among swords, unless maybe it's an Ice Absorb team, Ultima Weapon is better for them between Two Hands, its proc being 8% more likely to go off and its proc not taking Faith (or M-EV) into account.

So, yeah, as a Grand Cross and to a lesser extent Southern Cross MacGuffin, Ice Brand is great and has (the) power (of Greyskull). As an actual attacking sword, unless it's backed by Oil, Ice Brand is rather...lacking even when backed by Attack UP (or Overwhelm) or Strengthen; it pretty much needs to backed by two of those together to make a real "dent" as oppose to just overhand stabbing with Air Knife right now.

Ice Brand has these problems even though Jade Armlet remains among the least used accessories. And Ice Brand is only going to get worse if formerdeathcorps's reasonable suggestion to make Defense Ring null Ice instead of absorb Water and thus give Water absorption to Jade (or Coral) Armlet is heeded.

(As an aside, I'm not sure what can be done to make Defense Armlet see more use, especially since basically it's only "use" at present is to allow Grand Cross Ice Brand users with Ice Shield to not get burned up.)

Shrug. I just think Ice Brand could be better for actually attacking where Chivalry isn't involved is all, even if swords as a whole probably didn't need some of the buffs they got.

*looks at Phoenix Blade's increasingly dubious existence*