FFT Arena: Item Discussion Thread

[CT5Holy]

Knives and Staves are the biggest problems/most useless right now. Knives simply need to be stronger; +1 move just isn't enough. Several staves (and similarly, Poison Rod) rely on a frail mage whacking something for a possibility of an effect. Mages whacking things don't really happen anymore with Move MP-UP, and people would rather have +2 MA/strengthen element/etc anyway.

No abilities use the move stat, either, which makes knives even worse. Is it possible to make Throw Item's range based on the move of the user? I remember there being some discussion about this. Well, even if we did this, people would prefer guns for anti-sandbag. Still fairly good range even with 3 Move. So... Knives need a rehaul =P. One of the new knives could keep a +1 Move bonus (to possibly go with the Throw Item range tweak).

As usual, I have no good ideas for these Item rehauls.

Oh, I was also 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)

[Squidgy]

Ancient Sword is set to the same status adding as Chaos Blade, so it's removing Haste/Protect/Shell instead of adding Petrify.

[FFMaster]

Thanks for the info. Fixed for my version of Arena.

[Squidgy]

How 'bout a dialogue on Two Swords/Two Hands? First, big suggestion, if you could hax the supports to lower the char's damage... so 2H would only be ~40% boost, and 2H would reduce damage ~40% (more discussion on numbers later), then we could rid the weapon list of the "2H/2S" options, and just have all of them viable.

Using Attack Up as a comparison (+33% damage)... I see Two Swords as one which should be slightly worse due to its flexibility, double odds of getting through evasion for anti-sandbag, and OP boost when comboed with Aim/Break. Two Hands should be slightly better as it disallows shields, though it can be used on people who can't equip shields to begin with. That's where I got the earlier suggestions of only +40% for 2H, and -40% for 2S. The current method works too, of just making the specific 2H weapons be roughly 70% the WP of the alternative, and 2S ones 60%.

This comparison is based on each being a support, disregarding their JP costs, or job attached. Geomancer isn't much of a fighter, so maybe Attack UP should be more potent, where Ninja/Samurai and "special awesome" classes, so they should be spendy... or something? JP is something I rarely let get in the way of my themes.

[CT5Holy]

I think the current setup is fine. 2H/2S-able weapons are right around 70% of the highest WP weapon in each category, as you would like.
Then again, if we go with your way, we would obsolete a few weapons and free up some Item Attributes (that's what I think they're called?). Specifically, Platina Dagger (although all the knives still need to be reworked IMO), Hidden Knife, Diamond Sword, and three odd-looking, low WP Poles.

Hmm. I definitely agree that Two Hands should be better. Right now, Two Hands vs. AUP nets roughly the same damage, when there should be a clear, distinct damage difference between Two Hands and AUP. I think numbers will have to be reworked whether we use our current setup or your suggestion.

[Malroth]

Stone gun vs Gastrafitas.   Stone gun has 100% accuracy, longer range is eqipable with a shield and its drawback merely requires one ally to spend a first round action using Item, punch art, or white magic.   One would think that with all these advantages its equivilent the Gastrafagus would deal more damage,  but alas,  the stone gun in any set of hands deals 12*12= 144 base damage before brave effects,  while the Gastrafagus in the hands of either of the two classes that can use it deals 14*10 = 140.  I suggest weakening the stone gun by 1 WP while streghnthening the Gastrafagus by 1.     

[RavenOfRazgriz]

I think you messed up Octagon Rod.  It's landing 100% Frog Procs based on Barren's video.  I'm not sure if you just typo'd it, or if it's an error related to the part of Pride's Weapon Proc Hack you rewrote to save space, since it's the only really obvious thing I've noticed in videos or in tests.  Dagger procs (at least Climhazzard ones) seem to be a lot lower than advertised to, at least personally, since I almost never see them go off despite them being set to 33%.

I do recommend checking over Octagon Rod and the rest of the hack before releasing 1.33.  I really think you should just use the full hack and my spreadsheet to avoid errors and typos, since you're not going to be in dire need of the bit of space you're saving and you're more likely to cause errors editing something that already works, but that's me.  I'd rather have something that works over all else.  Efficiency should always come secondary to function, since I've no need for an efficient item that doesn't do what I need it to do.

EDIT: Also, can you make sure with 1.33, units in-game can actually equip what they're allowed to equip?  I was changing my Chemist setups in the menus to experiment with things because making a new memory card every time I want a new setup is tedious as hell, and once I un-equipped my H Bag by accident, I couldn't re-equip it, and my Dancers couldn't equip Bags through the proper menus either.  I don't know if it pertains to just Bags or not, but if you could, please double check all that when you're doing other bugfixes and updates for 1.33.

@Malroth, I know that's an old post, but you lose two turns with the Stone Gun, not one.  One turn is lost healing Petrify, and the Petrified Unit itself loses one turn, because most of the field has reached 90 or 100 CT if they've not already Acted, yet its own CT is still on 00, essentially meaning its first turn was skipped as well.  If you're using White Magic to heal off the Petrify, it's even worse.  Not to say Stone Gun is bad, but just putting the drawback into proper perspective.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

Defense Ring doesn't block Dead, just Death Sentence.  You should check over all your other anti-Dead and anti-Death Sentence items and make sure they properly cancel both, because there may be other errors.

[FFMaster]

Defense Ring isn't meant to block dead.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

Defense Ring isn't meant to block dead.

NOTE: Discuss Items ONLY
NOTE2: Cancel: Dead also includes Cancel: Death Sentence

?

Or are you saying Dead also Cancels Death Sentence but the reverse isn't true?

If you're saying the latter, it's a rather confusing and odd thing to do since Death Sentence is weaker than auto-Dead for anyone who isn't me, unless Wizard's Death misses that much more often and there's really no other sources of it.

[formerdeathcorps]

Some ideas:

1) Change H Bag to Initial: Innocent.  The current implementation is hard to use without self-haste for the benefits gained.

2) Make all items that are Always: Reflect into Initial: Reflect, but set Reflect's CT to 0 (so it never ends on its own, but is canceled by Dead).  Considering all the things Reflect can block (magic except summon and ninjitsu), it's useful on any team that doesn't run Raise2.

3) Please restore the Reflect Ring over the Heretic Ring.  It should grant:
+1 MA
Initial: Reflect
Null: Silence
This way, the offensive mage needn't fear enemy offensive mages.

4) Feather Boots could use a boost.  Since my above changes delete an Initial: Haste item, we can have:
+1 Move
Initial: Haste
Always: Float
Since this may slightly overshadow the role of Sprint Shoes, we should add Null: Don't Move to them, just for balance.  (Of course, doing this means Rubber Shoes should add Null: Don't Act, just so shoes have parity with mantles.)

5) Cherche and Setiemson need to be changed to always grant the status in question.  They currently are almost never used because they can be dispelled and are reset upon death.  (Yes, Persia with Always: Protect was broken, but you were tying the status to a weapon with reasonable WP.  Now, it's being tied to a slot that normally is used for anti-status/re-raise/power/mobility, which is much costlier).

6) With the advent of innate 2H + initial: berserk, katana WP need to be rearranged.
a) Murasame is arguably a weak katana since it never deals damage.  It should be 2Hable and have 11 WP to compensate.  This way, male samurai can actually function as healers despite not having the skill murasame heal for much.
b) Bizen Boat is actually fairly strong, in WP and effect.  Its WP should be reduced to 9.
c) Despite an "effective WP" of 11, Asura is actually fine since elemental = absorb/null/halve and to have that effective WP, your PA needs to be a multiple of 4 (or FFT rounds down), which is impossible on a samurai running salty rage + PA boosting gear + ATTACK UP.

7) The Scorpion Tail is similarly too powerful in the hands of a berserk ninja (576 damage before fury!)  I suggest raising the WP to 15, but unflagging 2 Swords.  This cuts the maximum power to 450 (high, but comparable to a similarly powerful Samurai), and gives Squire and Priest more options on offense.  Alternatively, if you really want scorpion tail to be balanced, while keeping 2 Swords, and don't want Squires hitting that hard, you can reduce WP to 11, which cuts maximum power to 462 on ninja only (and thus uses up both scorpion tails).

8) Books need to be redone.  What's currently on the list isn't very usable or exciting.

Papyrus Plate: 8 WP, 25% Flare
Madlemgen: 10 WP, 25% Stop (Status Effect, not TM Spell)
Battle Dictionary: 12 WP, 25% Undead (Status Effect, not Oracle Spell)
Monster Dictionary: 14 WP, 25% Reflect (TM Spell, not Status Effect)

This would be more usable and fun to play with.

[Eternal]

I would never use the Monster Dictionary with that change since all current Reflect does is cancels Charging.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

I would never use the Monster Dictionary with that change since all current Reflect does is cancels Charging.

Cancel: Charging + 25% HP Damage.

You might have a hope in high heaven of killing one of my Dancers!

It'd also serve as a check to all the mage-oriented buffs proposed, too, as well as just giving the best raw damage.  High-end damage weapon that gives me even more damage and disrupts their tempo on-proc?  Sounds fairly delicious, really.

[formerdeathcorps]

The table currently lists Gold Staff as 10 WP?  Is this supposed to be?

However, there's still a few things I think could be improved there.
1) No one uses the Rainbow Staff because All: Elements is a serious downside.  I'd rather it be 10 WP, Neutral: All Elements.
2) The Healing Staff should be 11 WP for the same reason why we argued that the murasame (2Hable) should be 11 WP.

[FFMaster]

Gold Staff should be 8, nothing is listed on the changelogs as far as I know. And I agree with Rainbow Staff and Healing Staff.

[formerdeathcorps]

Thinking about it some more, the Defender really could use a loss of 1 WP.

Save the Queen (20% W-EV / 33% physical damage reduction) ~ 53% physical damage effectiveness
Defender (40% W-EV) ~ 60% physical damage effectiveness
As you can see, the above effects are nearly equivalent.  Yes, protect blocks more things than P-EV, but protect can be removed (by death or by dispel magic) or can end on its own (CT expiration), while the effect on the Defender is permanent.  Thus, even when you consider the more "dynamic" metagame, protect is essentially equivalent to the extra evasion.  For equivalence purposes, then, the Defender should be 14 WP.

For the same reason why we nerfed poles from being 12 WP and 2Hable, the Slasher should also lose another point of WP, giving it 11 WP.  But since doing that would make the Giant Axe a better weapon (10 WP + Elemental + Self-Boost + 2Hable), the giant axe also needs to be downgraded to 9 WP (making it equivalent to the asura knife).

[RavenOfRazgriz]

I'm not sure if I'd call Defender too good in that situation, though.  I don't feel the 15 WP on Defender is too much.

Save the Queen just honestly doesn't seem worth using anyway, even if you weaken Defender.  Personally, I'd just give all Knight Swords 40 Evade then have their effects and WP differentiate them.  Defender would still be good because Cancel: Don't Act on a weapon is a strong buff, and still constitutes the name "Defender", while the effects of all the other Knight Swords would be worth using in comparison to Cancel: Don't Act and some WP tradeoffs.  I think this is a case of not Defender being too good, but the other stuff being too weak.