FFT Arena: Item Discussion Thread

[Squidgy]

Genji Shield lost its PA boost awhile back... and I think it absorbs Ice now... and no more Immune: Dead/DA...
I'll check the image data to confirm: Ah... Sleep immune now. This is the same as Santa Outfit I assume? Yep, same location.

EDIT: Oh, right... was gonna throw up a random opinion thing on all items. I'll just say Defender WP (-2 perhaps) nerf, and Elemental attribute shouldn't cost so much WP (or any).

[CT5Holy]

I think Katanas could use +1 or 2 WP across the board. The Brave portion of the damage formula really hurts its damage, especially with no innate Two Hands.

[The Damned]

While making that new theme team (which is now finally in the team thread after a day of consideration), I also noticed that, to put it bluntly, Sticks kind of suck. There's really no reason to use anything except for Ivory Rod and maybe Whale Whisker (which is what I'm going to be trying...for now). Ivory Rod effectively boosts its own damage on top of boosting spell-casting capacity, so, even with 108 Gems and Whale Whisker (which you have to worry about being absorb/negated/halved), it still trumps that out with Two Hands since it's already effectively 10 or 11 WP.

Iron Fan is thus nigh-useless because it can't be Two-Handed and even if you're not using Two-Hands, you don't lose much damage using Ivory Rod, especially with Magic Attack Up; I'm not sure what to do with it, though. Gokuu Rod has always sucked due to Innocent being the last thing that a magic-using class wants to inflict, though I can understand why it IS on a magic-classes weapon's (that only one class gets innately) than a physical class; it could use more weapon power to make up for that.  Octagon Rod is, like Javelin, kind of dicey, but is more usable than the aforementioned two, if only due to how powerful Frog is.

Wanted to try out the newer Stone Gun, but I remembered that pretty much no one's used the spell-guns, so I thought I would give Glacier Gun a try. I'll have to reminder myself to test out the newer bows too.

(Also, as I said in the Stats/Abilities thread, it would probably do well to link to the Stats/Abilities thread, the Zodiac Chart and even the team making thread in the first post for convenience sake. I can't possibly be the only one who has multiple opens when making teams just because I don't want to go back and forth from the team thread.)

I think Katanas could use +1 or 2 WP across the board. The Brave portion of the damage formula really hurts its damage, especially with no innate Two Hands.

I agree with this.

[pokeytax]

Agreed on Poles and Katanas. I would rather just see Katanas made PA*WP though.
It would be nice to have a "Master Guide" thread even if it's just all the charts stitched together.

[BlameGod]

The problem with ice/lightning bows is that the only class that can use them innately has 4 MA and usually no use for faith. You could throw equip ranged on a samurai but it's no where near worth a support ability to occasionally proc a mediocre ice 3. At the very least increase it to ice/bolt 4.

Edit: Give them both +2 MA. It won't be unbalanced on archer and any other unit would need to use support so +2 MA is balanced in that case too.

[Skip Sandwich]

I agree with giving the ice/lightning bows a MA boost, without it, even max +MA gear female archers can only achieve 12 MA. let's compare best case scenarios

with +2 MA boost from bow
max MA gear female archer with Overwhelm - 8 PA, 6 MA, +6 MA from gear, +25% boost from Strengthen: Thunder, +20% boost from Overwhelm = 9 PA, 18 MA

Female scholar with Equip Ranged - 7 PA, 13 MA, +6 MA from gear, +25% boost from Strengthen: Thunder = 7 PA, 23 MA

without +2 MA boost from bow
female archer - 8 PA, 6 MA, +4 MA from gear, +25% boost from Strengthen: Thunder, +20% boost from Overwhelm = 9 PA, 14 MA = -4 MA from above example

female scholar - 7 PA, 13 MA, +4 MA from gear, +25% boost from Strengthen: Thunder = 7 PA, 21 MA = -2 MA from above example

[The Damned]

Did the Item list revert or something with the forum move? Because while I was looking over Vega's Spear options, I noticed that Javelin had lost 2 WP...despite being pretty mediocre beforehand.

Speaking of Spears, if we're doing the name change thing come 129, can we PLEASE change Oberisk to Obelisk? It bugs the hell out of me.

[FFMaster]

According to my table, Javelin has always been 8 WP... I wouldn't mind if it got remade completely. It sucks right now.

[The Damned]

Hunh. All the Spears were showing up as minus 2 WP when I posted that yesterday.

You have any Item Attribute space left? I'm guessing "no".

[FFMaster]

You guessed right.

[The Damned]

Figures.

Off the top of my head, I'd say to give the Frog proc to Spear and then give Javelin +1 Speed instead and maybe 9 WP as well. That's all I can think of right now, especially since I remember, even 8 months later, how limiting Item Attribute space is.

[Skip Sandwich]

Knives are pretty underwhelming, I mean, other then the Main Gauche and Oricalcum, they're pretty much worthless. What about something like the following?

Platina Dagger - WP 6, W-ev 15, Holy Element, +1 Move, 25% chance to cast Dia

Main Gauche - WP 8, W-ev 30, +1 Move

Orichalcum - WP 8, W-ev 15, +1 Move, +1 MA

Mage Masher - WP 8, W-ev 15, +1 Move, 25% chance to cast Reflect

Assassin Dagger - WP 8, W-ev 15, +1 Move, 25% chance to cast Demi

Air Knife - WP 8, W-ev 15, Wind element, +1 Move, Always: Float

[Otabo]

Just want to point out that Kikuichimoji (the katana, not the DO skill) isn't earth elemental in-game (unless that was intended - Kiku IS supposed to be earth elemental, correct?)

If it is, that needs to be fixed for next version.

[Skip Sandwich]

does anyone else think that maybe Earth Clothes should cancel or halve earth rather then absorb it? Also, what do people think about water and wind elemental equivalents to Earth Clothes? It would give people more of a reason to actually use Equip Clothes, since it would give some nice synergy with Paladins (Coral Sword, Heaven's Cloud and Kikuchimoji, with both sword attacks and grand cross) and Samurai (Heaven's Cloud and Kiku, both the swords and the draw outs).

I also feel that maybe Robes could use some Auto-Protect and Auto-Shell compliments to the Auto-Regen Light Robe, also balanced by a weakness to dark element. And maybe a pair of robes, lets call them the Red Robe and Blue robe, that function as the Black and White robes, but in respect to Water/Wind/Earth elements (Red robe strengthens Water/Wind/Earth, Blue robe halves Water/Wind/Earth)

[The Damned]

With regards to Knives: While I agree that Knives possibly need a boost, considering what crappy MA most Knife wielders have, I'm not liking any of the changes outside of Air Knife and maybe Orichalcum.

With regards to Earth Clothes: I think that Earth Clothes should keep Absorb: Earth, but they should lose Strengthen: Earth...maybe. It might be be pretty negligible once Monks get nerfed again and Zodiac compat. prevents things like Gotwald's Earth-eating team from effortlessly destroying most teams.

With regards to everything else: I don't think FFMaster has any Item Attributes left, unfortunately.

[FFMaster]

This was discussed in chat, and Pride is 100% for redoing Equipment completely.

If people agree to this, I wouldn't mind doing it. However, if we do, a new meta will appear. I believe that each weapon type should have a seperate formula though, if we do the rehaul. Something like this:

Knives: SP*WP
Swords: PA*WP
Knight Swords: PA*2*Brave*WP
Ninja Swords:(PA*SP)/2*WP
Axes: (PA/2 +(1...PA))*WP
Rods: MA*WP
Staves: MA*2*Faith*WP

or something like that.

[The Damned]

Just from looking at that, I'd have to say that Staves formula could probably end up being rather OP unless (or maybe even if) the WP was complete crap.

As far redoing all equipment, it's an interesting idea, but why prioritize that when equipment isn't even a huge problem right now. After all, it's not like it's a particular piece of equipment that won the tournament or even ruled. Hell, the most problematic class at present is the one that doesn't even use weapons.

If anything, I'd say weapons are mostly fine outside of knives and axes and maybe a couple of others.

[CT5Holy]

I sure hope you mean ((PA+SP)/2)*WP (extra parentheses for extra clarity) instead of PA*SP.... Otherwise we'd be looking at like 400 damage Ninja Swords XD.

I don't particularly care either way, but I'm with Damned in that the weapons are overall fine. Except for knives. +1 Move for less damage just isn't worth it, especially since Ninja's skillset no longer depends on the Move stat.

If people want, we could start brainstorming ideas for a new equipment list, then compare and stuff, I guess? But yeah, redoing equipment seems like a lot of work for not much benefit (especially since there'd probably be a lot of re-balancing issues afterwards).

[Pride]

It was talked about in chat how a large amount of items are not used and/or are plain terrible and how it should be fixed, rather then having a slew of useless stuff taking up item attribute space.

Edit: So not a complete rehaul of the items but fixing some of the ones that currently are terrible and such (like the mantle set current set up makes no sense, at all) but there are some good spreads (like I think, for the most part, the robes are well done).

[Skip Sandwich]

I mostly like the new proposed weapon formulas (except for any formula that deals straight Speed * WP), so taking whats already been proposed as a starting point, and adding my own crazy ideas, a more complete list might look like this;

Knives: (SP + Move + Jump)/2 * WP
Ninja Swords/Longbows: (PA + SP)/2 * WP
Swords: PA * WP
Knight Swords/Katana: (PA * 2 * Brave)/100 * WP
Axe: (PA + (rnd 1..(PA-1)) * WP
Flails: (MA + (rnd 1..(MA-1)) * WP
Rods: MA * WP
Staves (MA * 2 * Faith)/100 * WP
Poles: (MA + Move + Jump)/2 * WP
Books: (MA * 2 * CurMP)/MaxMP * WP
Cloth: (PA * 2 * CurHP)/MaxHP * WP
Spears: (PA + Move + Jump)/2 * WP
Crosbow/Guns: (SP + (rnd 1..(SP-1)) * WP
Handbag: (PA + MA + SP)/3 * WP