FFT Arena: Item Discussion Thread

[Kaz]

You know, I think there's too much emphasis on: Add 1 or 2 status protection and lower the HP by 30. It's simply not worth it.

I'll start to CONSIDER status protection if the item has 10 less HP than the best gear (if status protection is its only pro).
Clothes are all fine.
Golden/Diamond armor are just utter trash. There are many things that can cancel Petrify and you only need one person with Holy Water in your team for undead.
Then Mythril/Gold/Crystal/Genji helmet.... all trash.

If you really want to make status protection worth something, you have to be able to build a setup that can resist nearly all negative statuses; whoever that would require all your item slots. Protection for Petrify alone? I can understand. As for the others you should have stuff that protects at least against 3-4 statuses.

Also for creativity you can have items that prevents good statuses. For example armor that grants more HP but immunity to haste: It would encourage non-haste setups.

This was really a breath of fresh air for me.  In choosing equips for my team I've almost never been tempted to pick the 1 status immunities over the MA/PA bonuses, even if they do have a little more HP.  I think it'd be interesting to try making immunities to either 2 good status or 3 mediocre status.  3-4 is sort of pushing it for me, seeing as ribbon blocks what, 7 meh ones? and only about a 30 HP bonus.

[FFMaster]

I can fix some of them up I think. I'll agree that most of the Armors/Helmets aren't worth using. I'll see if I have enough space to make them a fair bit more interesting, but don't expect too much. I think I have one free space left(which is being saved for Nagrarock) and from there, maybe 6 free item spaces if Armors/Helmets get changed. A few of the item attributes are also being used by other items.

[FFMaster]

Ok, here are proposed Helmets and Armors. I can't do much for Crystal and Genji Helmet, since they share item Attributes with other stuff and I am out of room =/

If people want, I can also add +2 PA/MA Helmets and Armors, like Clothes and Hats have.

[Pride]

I think Crystal and Genji Helmets should be boosted by 5 more, so only 10 less then Grand Helmet.

And I think Gold and Diamond Armor need more of an HP boost, cause that 40 points of HP is killer but I might be undervaluing the status immunities.

[Kaz]

anti-berserk is suckage on armor, put that on a robe or something! And didnt we get rid of confusion completely? other than that they're looking much better

[pokeytax]

Is Salty Rage still legal?  I don't think there's any way to balance it as an accessory - has there been thought given to making it a Body armor?

[PX_Timefordeath]

Berserk removes all evasion from the unit, so you can say it's somewhat balanced. Also, berserker units lost their evasion, reaction, and the accessory. I say it's pretty good as it is, other than the super powerful specialized units.

[Melancthon]

Possible noob question here, could someone give me a link to the full list of weapon formulas?

[pokeytax]

Bugfix - Gold Armor lacks Cancel: Death Sentence.

As far as I know, the differences from vanilla are:

FLAIL: WP * WP
BAG, AXE: [(0 + (1..PA)) + PA] * WP
KNIGHT SWORD: PA * WP

And the differences from 1.3 are
BAG, AXE: [(0 + (1..PA)) + PA] * WP

No clue about the Octagon Rod, and I don't know if the Katana formula is fixed.  These would be nice to have in the OP of this thread.

Code Select Expand

PHYSICAL (PA): SWORD, SPEAR, ROD, KNIGHT SWORD, CROSSBOW
MAGICAL (MA): STAFF, POLE
WEAPON (WP): GUN, FLAIL
RANDOM (PA..PA*2): AXE, BAG
HYBRID (PA/2 + MA/2): INSTRUMENT, CLOTH, DICTIONARY
SPEED (PA/2 + SP/2): LONGBOW, KNIFE, NINJA SWORD
BRAVE (PA * Br / 100): KATANA


[Squidgy]

Can the elemental flails get a boost to 9? I think the maths go:

Scorp: 10 * 10 = 100
Other: 8 * (8 + 2) = 80
Suggest: 9 * (9 + 2) = 99

Having an elemental attack isn't that much benefit, sometimes a hindrance. EDIT: Oh, they were originally proposed 9... heh...

[pokeytax]

I think flails could use a boost, but with no one using them it's hard to say.

Nerf handbags harder, no reason a universal equip should grant 2PA/2MA/H:All and have 8 effective WP (spikiness!).

There's not a lot of incentive to wear a robe - magic users have sufficient MP, Move-MP Up is available.  I think that they might as well be beefed up a bit, "Equip Clothes" is presently even less intimidating sounding than "Basic Skill".

[Skip Sandwich]

Perhaps we could use a pair of robes that grant Always: Shell and Always: Protect, respectively, I don't think that would be too imbalanced with robe hp levels (especially if we make it so that paladins can no longer innately equip robes). Also, i vote that we add the Snow Muffler to clothes as an ice-element counterpart to the Black Costume and Rubber Costume.

[The Damned]

First and foremost, hurray for Santa Outfit and Iron Boots! While I'm more excited for the former, I'll be testing out the latter first.

Now, from the video thread, Skip Sandwich brought up this possible solution to Stone Gun given pokeytax's video of Stone Gunners doing 232 damage to everything:

@pokeytax RE: Stone Guns
i'm pretty sure what you saw there was an example of good compat + 70-70 fury + attack UP, in other words, the worst case secenario.

Maybe instead of or in addition to Initial: Petrify, they could have Always: Slow and Immune: Haste, they should probably be forced 2-hands as well

I agree that they should be Forced 2-Hands--I believe I mentioned before that I think all Guns should--and agree on perhaps an immunity to Haste. However, I rather vehemently disagree on them having the Always: Slow disadvantage that Salty Rage has now.

Stone Guns already carry the problem of needing at least one other unit to have an ability to cure Petrify, which not only means that when you use Stone Gun, you're choosing the abilities of two units rather than just one, but there's the very real possibility that the unit that can heal Petrify gets offed before it does it's job. While this only tends to happen on small maps, it's still a big enough issue, even with two units dedicated to healing Petrify (as is usually the case on any team that has used Stone Gun so far) that permanent Slow would honestly make it not worth, especially given Arrow/Projectile Guard. (I'll admit some bias on the Arrow Guard part given I seem to the only person who uses that with any regularity).

I do, think, however it needs a nerf. It could probably stand to go 10 WP if it gets some additional boost to put further above Romanda Gun, even perhaps only being weakened to 11 WP. I think it could also stand to take go down from range 6 to range 5. Some combination of these should be enough I feel, but we exist to test things, so we'll see depending on what changes in Beta 128.

[Pride]

Can we increase Cross Helmet to gain at least 10 HP to compensate for the 45 HP difference between it and the highest hp helmet? Looking at the hats, Golden Hairpin trades of 50 HP for 50 MP, +1 MA, AND immunity to silence while Cross Helmet only has 40 MP to make up from.

[pokeytax]

I like having MP be hard to get on armor, so I think that discrepancy is fine. But with Paladins having minimal MP, maybe Cross Helmet could stand a lil' buff.

Lancers aren't very effective, because they have lowish PA and because spears are really, really bad. Buff spears.
Papyrus Plate is so much better than the other books that it keeps sidetracking my Zombie team, I get miffed that I have to give up 1 WP to use Battle Dict. Unless Choco Meteor is like MA*10 these need balancing.
Two-thirds of staves are weak, the 25% proc rate is not high enough for the "love tap" paradigm to work out unless it's MBarrier or something, or it's also a mild heal like Healing Staff.
The status crossbows and elemental bows are pretty weak.
Cloth is not good.

[pokeytax]

Re: current changelog

Cloths are nice - since the Fury and Defend hacks conflict (right?), Always:Defend is innate Abandon, which is very strong but also a fitting Dancer trait. I think they should be forced 2-hands to prevent Abandon/Equip Shield/Escutcheon and lose some W-EV, and maybe separate Defend and Protect/Shell, but definitely worth playing with now.

I love Iron Boots conceptually, but in practice they're kind of a drag - a mandatory equip on Singers/Dancers/Scholars that encourages turtling. That's aesthetics though. I'm kinda worried about the cloths for the same reason, but Performing/Charging should negate Defend, and Iron Boots already provide Protect/Shell, so it's not as bad.

The rest seems good, looking forward to trying it out.

[The Damned]

So I was watching the latest match between Skip Sandwich and myself again and I noticed something a bit odd. Balrog's HP was 40 HP higher than Sagat (who had the bad luck to get OHKO'd by a spell barely above his HP) even though the only equipment they're differing in is Santa Outfit vs. Power Sleeve and Santa Outfit is supposed to have 80 HP instead of 100 HP.

Is Santa Outfit supposed to have 100 HP to further mirror Black Costume and it's just not on item list (like a few other things)? Or is this just a mistake? (It's not like Balrog having 40 more HP mattered in that match-up anyway since he never even came close to dying.)

[FFMaster]

It should be a mirror of Black Costume in HP. 100 HP, and shouldn't have the PA. Table is wrong, I will update in a minute.

[The Damned]

Oh. Hunh. Well, that makes more sense, then.

I think I'll keep the Santa Outfit on Balrog for now though.

[pokeytax]

Fix the dancer cloth while you're there, I'm eager to try that out!