FFT Arena: Balance Discussion Thread

[The Damned]

Last Dance: 33% is fine with me. By that logic, though, Last Song should be fine with at 25% since the Bard isn't really giving up a turn since his ability could hit himself, right?

Nameless Dance: Yeah, I suppose it makes sense that Confusion was causing the problem. If it's going to be nerfed to do only Darkness, Silence, Poison, Slow or Stop, then I'm fine with it still be 50%.

Draw Out: Masamune being AoE Regen is fine, especially since I've never seen anyone with a Priest use Regen in an AI tournament, much less anyone buy it. It's always Regenerator or P Bag that brings Regen (assuming that non-Random Masamune was banned). Kiyomori as AoE Protect (or Shell) is a lot more iffy though, since Priests still use those spells and Samurai don't have to use any MP to spam those over and over again. AoE Reflect seems like it'd be less invasive considering that similarly, no one uses Time Mage's Reflect or Summoner's Carbuncle as they are now. I don't think we really need to change any of other Draw Outs. They differ enough since most them have some element attached now.

Auto Potion: We're agreed.

X-Potion: Yours was hardly the only team where 150 seemed OP. It kind of screws over any non-Knight unit wearing a Cursed Ring. Even with my bias against Item, I'd be less annoyed by it if Item use against Undead could be dodged, but it can't. At the very least, X-Potion needs to cost more JP if it's going to remain at 150 HP IMO.

Ethers: Yeah, they've always sucked. I think 30 and 70 or even 80 MP would be fine and at least Ether's cost could be dropped a bit since it's still outshined by Move-MP Up.

Lore: Yeah, it probably needs to be changed, but it's not that huge of a deal at the moment, especially if Knight is getting completely redone. It can wait until after the next test unless someone has a clear suggestion of what to change it to: the only thing I could imagine would be Blue Mage, would be kind of difficult to properly adjust when we haven't discussed monsters at present.

Bards and Dancers: Yeah, they really don't need extra move. I'd argue that no one needs Extra move besides Thieves and Ninja and maybe Mimes. Yeah, even Mimes kind of get screwed over by extra move, though I can at least understand why they (and Squires) have it.

Move-HP Up & Move-MP Up: While Geomancer isn't OP with it, it could definitely stand to lose Move-HP Up. Move it to one of the less classes, like Mediator or Thief that have crappy R/Ss. Move-MP Up is a lot trickier to say. I think it maybe should be moved to someone else, but they all cause their own problems. It can stay with Oracle for now as far as I'm concerned. (Priest [and Wizard] would actually be worse IMO since Oracles basically have to have above average Faith, which Defense UP doesn't negate the penalty like Magic Defend UP does or make you into a replenishing nuke like Magic Attack UP does.)

***

Finger Guard: Needs to be free. There's no reason that a Reaction skill so useless should cost more than some other useful Reaction Abilities.

Mimes: They really need some innate Reaction ability and maybe even Any Ground movement because even with all the status protection, the great stats and the Innate Concentrate + Martial Arts combo, they're still sitting ducks with no reaction ability who just tend to die, especially with all that move. I think Counter and Any Ground (or Counter and Counter Magic, though I forget how Reactions stack at the moment) would go a long way to improving them without making them OP, even if it meant that they're PA would have to take a bit of a hit.

Reflect status in Spells: Both Reflect and Carbunkle need to be buffed, IMO. Reflect could stand to hit on AoE of 1, cost slightly less JP and have an upped chance to hit without being OP; it should cost more MP if that's the cast. Carbunkle needs to either similarly be upped and cost slightly less JP (and MP in this case) or do something useful besides Reflect. I'd suggest the FF9 version of Carbunkle that I'm using, but since that involves the Random flag and Transparent.... I don't know, they just both need something to make them at least seem worth using, even if they're probably never going to use just like Float (the spell). Hell, you could even just change Carbunkle to Shoat since you seem comfortable with trying to hand-out instant death via Odin and mass-Petrify is something that no one has (constant) access to.

Geomancy: Speaking of Float, I've always found it kind of odd that Elemental has some attacks that aren't elemental. I think that Pitfall, Hell Ivy and Carve Model could stand to gain Earth elemental. I say this even being aware that if Carve Model was Earth, I wouldn't have won that one match that my janky team won, but that match was pretty BS anyway on my side.

Ignore Height: Depending on what maps we ultimately end up deciding to use (if we get rid of that many or any), it's cost should probably be reduced, especially with Teleport and Fly around--both of those abilities can remain the same cost regardless because they both allow you to freely move behind people (even if the computer isn't as abusive with Teleport as we are).

[Kaz]

I'm in favor of 33% last song/dance.  

Masmune adding regen would work i s'pose, but im against having kiyomouri have protect/shell.  hardly any white magic was used in the tourney iirc.

X-Pot is fine IMO, it was more of a disadvantage when the AI used x-pot on undead since I could hit higher with other attacks.

Agree w/ ethers needing buff

Lore: just needs more damage output IMO

Bards/dancers: agree. I remember seeing philsovs dancers run out in to the open on a few matches after starting a dance.  The AI is pretty much suicidal with these things if you give them the move they need.

Finger guard: If you wanted it to be free I don't see an issue with that seeing as no one used talk skill last tourney - that being said i think it needs some buffs.

I think mimes are fine with the innates they have atm... if anything buff their hp.  from what I saw there was just an absence of healing/support for them.

Agree with ignore height being reduced.

[CT5Holy]

Mimes: Counter Flood is a nice blanket reaction that takes advantage of their stats.
Last Song should also be 33% - even if LS hit on the Singer, what good does that do? They're not going to change actions. It's one unit sacrificing his turns to give his teammates more.
X-Potion is fine. If people really want it nerfed, I think 120 would be good.

Hmm, Lore might be ok now that we're back to 3/4 move. I wouldn't mind if it was taken out though. We'll see...

I agree with everything else though.

Another thing to keep in mind (although you all are likely aware of this) is that any given ability, particularly R/S/M, has an extra 250 JP attached to it. So tweak JP costs with this in mind.

Oh, Protect 2 and Shell 2 need their JP costs slashed. In my opinion, Wall outclasses it by far.

[PX_Timefordeath]

Lore: Double the CT, double the damage, you have the exact same thing, but procs once a turn instead of twice, weakening the Lore + Save strat.

Potions: I like the 50/100/no x-potion approach

Mimes already have the max HP considering we're using static growths to make things easier on ourselves, but they can stand for buffs. I like the counter flood innate reaction to them. They should have Any Ground though.

[The Damned]

I agree that Counter Flood is probably the best Reaction skill if we want a catch all one and it's not like having Concentrate makes it as buff as Counter potentially could be since Geomancy already hits 100% anyway. Any Ground seems kind of necessary, even if does sort of step on Geomancers toes (unless fights take place at Volcano, hehe).

I also agree with PX's Lore proposal, especially since Lore is affected by Short Charge, correct? I don't know if the damage needs to doubled as well, though, since it's not able to be dodged and Lore was doing like 30~ damage per hit. The damage could be stand to be buffed, though.

Last Song at 33% would be fine with me. It's hard to tell how powerful Last Song is since no one even used a Bard this time around.

hardly any white magic was used in the tourney iirc.

Yeah, I think that only two units (at most) used White Magic this entire tournament, one of them being Zaen's Undead Knight. Everything else was pretty much X-Potion this and Moogle that.

Although I guess this means I know what my next team is going to be.

Finger guard: If you wanted it to be free I don't see an issue with that seeing as no one used talk skill last tourney - that being said i think it needs some buffs.

Kind of my point. It works on so few things at present, especially with the 1.3 Talk Skill, that it's next to useless and thus shouldn't cost anything even though it still has its (very limited) uses.

It's rather difficult to buff. Believe me. One of the many things I'm trying to do for my patch is make Finger Guard stronger, but since most of it calls for formula changes, most of the changes have been to enemy classes and I had to keep the Brave and Faith affecting abilities of the original Talk Skill relatively intact.

Maybe we can look for ways to buff it after Scholars and now Knights (or Thieves) are dealt with, but as it stands now, making Finger Guard free is the easiest solution to a problem that will just up eat more time if we try to tackle it now.

[PX_Timefordeath]

Another idea we can do about Scholars

Revert them back to Calculators, with decent stats instead of pure shit they were in Vanilla

The list of Calc'd spells would look like:
Fire
Fire2
Ice
Ice2
Bolt
Bolt2
Poison
Cure
Cure2
Protect
Shell
Regen
Haste
Slow
Reflect
Blind

[Zaen]

Hmm... forgot about the undead part with having White Magic secondary... Oh well.

Anyways, I wouldn't mind the Calc coming back with slightly better stats, less options.

[FFMaster]

Potion - Heal 50 HP (Auto-Pot only)
Hi-Potion - Heals 40% of max HP (191 HP on a max HP Knight)
X-Potion - Heals 120 HP

Numbers may need tweaking. But this is the plan I have to make both potions useful.

EDIT: Last Song/Last Dance are now at 34%.

[philsov]

Last Song/Last Dance are now at 34%

.

I think Last Song should still be 50%.  The bard in question is dead in the water, and a good (stupid AI) bard who quick turns himself should go right back to last songing.  33% is fine for last dance because its against 4 targets, but with last song its 3 so following the same scheme 33% is the breakeven and 50% is the one beneficial bloke plus another one sometimes, plus or minus RNG.  

I like the new potion scheme too!

[The Damned]

Calcs: I guess that's fine. Since there's never really been enemy AI with neutered Math Skill (or at least multiple enemy AI with neutered Math Skill), I can't even begin to guess how the AI would use it though.

Last Song: Part of me wants to agree with philsov, especially since that's what the computer would do in most cases. The majority of me, however, wants to err on the side of caution since Last Song is even more powerful than Last Dance and I'm worried more about the Bard's teammates having a 50% chance of Quick than the Bard himself. I'd want to test it, though, so it's not like I'm going to fight hard for one or the other. I just think that it would be better if it was at 34%, though I'd gladly like to be proven incorrect.

Potions: Seems kind of bizarre that Hi-Potion could heal so much more than X-Potion. Why not just flip Hi-Potion and X-Potion around? Half of the teams tend to have at least one heavily armored (Knight) unit anyway.

[CT5Holy]

Doesn't really matter, item users will either buy both potions now, or stick with just buying X-Potion. On most units, X-Potion will heal more than Hi-Potion anyway.

Calcs seem fine - JP costs will really kill them, and I guess they'd be more like Bards/Dancers in this environment (heavily specialized role).

[FFMaster]

Since Zodiac decided to revert the forums back a fair few hours, a couple of updates were lost.

Chemist: Hi-Potion is now 35% healing. Remedy has been changed to Bandage - cure Don't Move and Don't Act.



Priest: Reraise now 100% hit, Protect/Shell 2 made stronger, Wall MP cost increased. There is also an error on the table. Esuna heals DM/DA



Samurai: Kiyomori is now 100% Poison, Masamune is now 100% Regen



Phil has convinced me. Bard Last Song back to 50%

[The Damned]

Repeating Fist is currently worthless as is. Wave Fist is better than it in every way AND costs the same amount.

This needs to change (even as much as I dislike Monks). I'm guessing it wouldn't change back to its original self since people understandably hate Random abilities, but just reducing the JP cost of it or increasing the JP cost of Wave Fist isn't really going to help improve Repeating Fist.

[FFMaster]

Repeating Fist isn't actually evadable. It's a typo.

[The Damned]

Oh.... That's fine then, even with Concentrate still around.

Since I forgot to mention it, I like the changes to Item, White Magic and Draw Out.

Not to conscend, but you did make sure to change the AI flags for Kiyomori, right? It'd be kind of funny if they still thought they should use a 100% Poison attack on their allies.

[FFMaster]

Oh shi... forgot to change the AI flags.

[CT5Holy]

Hmm. I'm leaning on Fire/Ice/Bolt 4 as being a bit too powerful. Right now, more damage, more range (summons still only at 3 range?), same AoE as Bahamut, the strongest damaging summon. Being evadable isn't a huge factor - ~0-20% evade (averageish), depending on shield and/or mantle. Max M.Ev setup with Abandon gives 84% M. Ev, 51% evade without Abandon, but that means very low P.Ev/lower stats/no status or elemental immunities. Low faith units still take a decent chunk (the first Fire 4 would've done ~140 to my 40 Faith Knight without Venetian Shield). Low HP moderate-high faith units will get one-shotted/close to it (Monk in critical, I think Sage died? definitely in critical at least), two or three in a row on a clumped team = death. Unless Venetian Shield/White Robe/lucky elemental absorb gear. I suppose that's the main deterrent, especially since Venetian Shield will be rather common.
18 MA Wizard with MAUP and ele boosting (30 effective MA) and 70 Faith will do 268 to a 40 Faith unit (neutral to element).

[FFMaster]

I agree. What should we do though? I don't see a good way to balance it. Got any ideas?

[CT5Holy]

Not really, unfortunately. Well, what if we reduced the AoE to that of the other black magic spells? (AoE 1 instead of 2) It'll be much harder to catch (and promptly blow up) 3-4 members of a team.

[PX_Timefordeath]

Huge single target nuke?