Dev Tracker - Discussion

Block is nice to have though.

I mean, why not let the job have the only mechanic it's good at?

Edit: Paged, so here's some blocks PLDs need!

Make physical WS generate less hate.

Tanks fixed

What's that? You want more monster rearing? Ok sure here you go.


;_;

its fun to dream, though really so far it seems like all the creativity was funneled into RDMs updates and maybe a bit of pups

I don't think Tank jobs need help on threat generation. If you want threat as a Tank, you can make it.

The problem is, SE cheated us of a proper system in most Merit Fights and Unity Fights, which for some of us players, creates scatterbrain idea of how threat works in the game. See Martel's post below.

The problem is that threat caps, and at that point, it basically depends who did the last action. RDM/NIN with something like Almace/Ternion +1 can quickly turn into the tank on just about any content, even if they aren't doing the most damage, as a result of the way enmity caps and attack speed (who did last action).

The only solutions are:

1) Increase the Caps. They've done this already, and it was a bandaid fix at best in the sense that it did help, but it wasn't enough. It helped most where a fight's duration was borderline for where threat would start capping out. Edit: And increased caps brings other faults with it. It's not a great option.

2) Decrease DD jobs ability to constantly float around the cap, either through gear options DD will actually wear, or through changes to the threat system in the game or a combo of the two.

If the BG-wiki page is to be believed in regards to how enmity works, Cumulative Enmity doesn't decay unless you're hit by a damaging attack, an enfeeble, or utsu takes the hit.

Cumulative Enmity caps at 30,000. Once a DD is there, they aren't dropping in CE unless they are hit by something. They aren't tanking, so all of this should mostly be coming from AoEs, which is probably not enough threat reset.

Volatile Enmity caps at 30,000 and decays at a rate of 60 per second. Volatile Enmity is also generated from damage sources.

So DD jobs are approaching the total 60k threat limit since both CE & VE build up from damage.

Tanks are attempting to hold the threat, and by extension it means they are losing CE from being hit, and they are losing VE from the natural decay. **Edit** Tanks have zero problems generating threat well beyond what is lost; it's why the start of a fight is basically never a problem **End Edit**

IMO, They need to increase the base rate that VE decays by 10 to 15% and have all enmity gears affect enmity from this starting point of 66 to 70 VE decay per second (up from base 60 per sec)... effectively making the value of enmity gears (plus or minus enmity gears) stronger, and let us see how it works out.

The first part that happens, which is largely meaningless, is that Tanks would lose VE more slowly relative to DD, mostly as a result of tanks wearing so much more +enmity and using Crusade. The 2nd part that happens, and has more value, is that it'd make DD using -enmity gears more worthwhile because the -enmity gears would be increasing the speed of decay compared to now since the -enmity gear would be starting from a higher base figure to multiply off of.

The only other thing SE could do, if they didn't want to upset their 60 per second number, is to start putting sizeable chunks of -enmity on gears that DD would actually consider using... because no DD wants to equip a Kuchekula Ring with zero damage increasing stats on the account of trying to generate less enmity. 1) You lose all the DD stats from a proper DD ring, 2) the -7Enmity isn't even enough to be noticeable in a TP set.

I've tried off-handing Egeking (-10), Ambu Cape (-10), Kuchekula Ring (-7), Clotharius Torque (-4) and in many of the same situations where my threat was an issue (because of reaching threat caps), it was still an issue with these gears. I not only crippled myself in terms of damage output by using these gears, but the combined -31 enmity still didn't help.

Once you reach the threat cap, that's it.

And to Xeno's point about decreasing threat from WS, I'd like to point to Elemental WS and the huge disparity we have here in WS output. Sanguine, Seraph, Leaden, etc can all be used in a borderline threat-free kind of way, and for huge numbers. I'm not opposed to these WS having this threatless advantage, but the gap needs to be closed.

Honestly, I'd love to see Unity fights better balanced with the rest of the game. Anecdotally, it seriously seems like Unity Fights still have the old, lower, threat caps. And I've no clue why that's lasted this long since the last attempted fix of threat in this game. It's always seemed really bonkers to me that SE can make a claim of fixing something, but it still works the old way in some parts of the game.

I've wondered if some of the Merit Fights still don't have the old enmity system, too. Tenzen being one of the more obvious examples (and I'm not talking about bow phase).

Ok here me out, this actually isn't an idea for PLD in general to fix them, but the Enmity system as a whole.

Change these spells, Crusade, Animus Augeo, Animus Minuo, Foe Sirvante, Adventurer's Dirge, Gekka: Ichi, Yain: Ichi.

+Enmity spells raises your enmity cap by 500 CE/VE each, -enmity spells lower your enmity cap by 250 CE/VE each. Not a huge disparity between caps especially if your spell drops from either the DD's or tank, but its enough to separate them and allows some of these spells to be useful.

Maybe lower the SCH only spells to 49 so they are available sub sch, main sch's might be mad but it would incentivise backline jobs such as geo to go /sch instead of /rdm to help with enmity control.

The fix to enmity is simple, use dirge. Not only do your DDs gain enmity slower, if they do pull hate they lose it faster. All they need is DT set to survive the few hits it takes to knock CE down. Tanks by comparison lose very little CE to damage. Thats how strong +/- enmity effects CE decay.

As someone who was hyped for BST changes, this is what you all should expect with the next update:

I would like something similar to Foil for PLD.

Damn its the first time i will agree with Saevel 100%. People want easy solution like make cap on tanks higher which is ***. Tank could hold hate forever then and DD could just go on a rampage and unique ability like high jump, trick attack would have close to no use (not to mention niche thing like tanking on non tank job). The whole point of tanking and DDing (which is tbh lost in current FFXI for the most part) is to balance dps and gaining enmity. In 75 era people had no problem to stop damage, turn or balance damage on Nidhogg, Tiamat or Ixion, but now they want to spam WS like there is no tomorrow and expect never to get hate.

Dirge is VERY powerful enmity tool. Its -32 enmity for both TP and WS (and -50 when soul voiced!). There was a problem in the past where it was hard to merit it because NITRO 5/5 is really good, but now there is literally 0 reason to use minuet as 4th song over Dirge when taking hate is a problem. I would be surprised if anyone would pull hate on wave 3 boss with SV Dirge (assuming balanced distribution of damage among several DDs not low man group with 2 DPS for example).

Beside Dirge you also have things like Collaborator/Accomplice, High Jump, Super Jump etc. This is the pros of those jobs and their utility for a reason.

Seriously expecting that SE will solve this problem by giving us a magic solution like increasing the cap for tanks is imo stupid. Sure they can slightly reduce enmity gain from damage (which they actually do. the higher the lvl of enemy the slower you get enmity with damage) or slightly boost enmity gain from tank tools, but tanking/dpsing on stuff that is threatening should be something you do with tactic and strategy, not mindless zerg.

You need a decent balance with the way enmity decays and how it's built or something like Trick Attack, which you bring up, is pointless.

*Cough* Adventurers Dirge *cough*.

Seriously it's that good, reduces hate gain and accelerates hate loss.

PLD can tank, but RUN brings things like Rayke, Gambit, and Vallation, while also being a better tank. This is the area that needs focus.

Think of threat as water flowing into a bucket.

The enmity cap being doubled that SE did basically just replaced our buckets with larger buckets. The underlying problem was still there, though. The bigger bucket hid the problem for something like Exp/Merit style mobs where a tank could grab it and actually hold it until it died and it hid the problem in longer fights by at least allowing the tank to actually tank a mob for a bit longer.

It's like this: there's a hole in the bucket that the water can flow out of and you can adjust that hole with plus and minus enmity gears.

Tanks have enough +enmity gears that that hole is so tiny and there's no real concern or issue with the water draining out. Tanks should've never been given Crusade. It was a bandaid idea, too. The problem is that it leaves no room for any real threat decay to happen except with induced ability or WS threat wipes from a target you're fighting and it leaves no room for something like Trick Attack to have any real value beyond the initiation of the fight.

Both tanks and DD are capable of being a fire hydrant filling their respective bucket, with tanks being a somewhat bigger fire hydrant.

Once the Tank's and the DD's bucket are full, both can just as easily end up tanking, with the attention largely going to whoever last actioned.

The Fire Hydrant water flow can be backed off somewhat with something like Dirge or -enmity gears, but it's still a f'n Fire Hydrant and given enough time, it will still cap and you'll play ping pong with threat.

The issue was never the CE or VE caps. Those caps could still be at 15,000 each and the game would work fine if SE had maintained the balance of threat generation and decay. That balance was lost long ago.

you can cut the flow rate in half with dirge and a little bit of enmity-, it's pretty substantial.. you don't need threat to be nonexistant for the game to function, if DPS are still capping after a few minutes with dirge you can add things like collaborator, /drg, or pacifying ruby.. it's another mechanic to think about, not a design flaw

it's perfectly fine as is

**Edit** This was all originally stated in the context of not knowing that Unity and most Merit Fights needs a whole other fix; See Martel's post below **End Edit**

Dirge is -32 enmity. That's it. It also requires a BRD. Do you know how many groups have DD's that can pull threat off a tank because they approach the threat cap that don't even utilize a BRD?

A BRD's Dirge should be a great asset to counter the other 3 songs worth of damage being provided to the DD, but it shouldn't be a flat out requirement for the whole game all because decay doesn't happen as fast as threat generation.

And the problem only gets worse with each gear option we're provided that's better than the last.

Not to mention Dirge, and the way you're bringing it up, is side stepping the problem of decay/generation balance to the point that it still renders something like Trick Attack pointless in this game. What tank says, "I sure could use that Trick Attack?"

The issue here is that UNMs and merits bcs(Except for the new WoE fights, Odin, Lilith etc) have monsters that are only lvl 99. SE didn't want to deal with the consequences of removing level correction in old areas. So they didn't and just made all new content in Pre-Adoulin zones have lvl 99 mobs with jacked up stats.

The dmg to enmity conversion is based on the monster's level. On a lvl 99 mob, you could cap CE and VE in a single WS.(It have to hit pretty hard though. about ~65k for capped CE/VE. Which is entirely possible. VE alone could be capped with much less dmg)

In these fights, damage is many many times more effective at generating enmity than spells and JA. So keeping hate via spells/ja is not feasible for tanks, even if there weren't enmity cap issues. And there definitely are enmity cap issues on these fights. So even if you're like RUN and can keep up with the DD DMG wise, you're all going to cap then the mob spins.

So, to be clear, the 30k CE/VE caps are global, but thanks to SE's laziness, areas that still have level correction have lvl 99 mobs on which normal tanking is hopeless.

@ Martel Thanks for that answer.

Enmity is a percentage, so it's almost 1/3 less hate generated. Throw in 18 in gear, which most jobs can do with little sacrifice, and you have halved enmity. But, since VE decays over time and doesn't require you to take damage, you're actually taking more than twice as long to cap hate. In many cases, a DPS with -50 enmity can go indefinitely without reaching hate cap, while one with no -enmity will cap in minutes. It's a matter of reducing your hate generation below VE's decay.


Okay, so use DRG. Use THF. Use SMN. Use DPS that can tank light content. This is only a problem because you're making it one in your head. Allowing a tank to unilaterally hold threat against any form of DPS is bad design, worse than the current state.

I've been pushing Dirge for a few years, but besides that you pretty much never hear about it on forums. If everyone's been beating all content without it, then it's certainly not a requirement. There are tons of ways to mitigate hate shifts without preventing them, such as using utsusemi, DT sets, healers.

It costs some Haste/Accuracy/Attack, but there's nothing stopping a BRD from using Marcato on Dirge for -48 which is almost capped reduction.

And losing some HM bonuses isn't really a huge deal; it's easy enough to cap Haste/Accuracy without.

You forgot "use elemental WS and pretend anything else doesn't exist"

There you go, yet another way to solve it. And here you are crying anyway.

Yup, crying. lol

You're still ignoring that no tank needs Trick Attack, which to me, would seem to indicate that there's a balance issue between threat generation and decay, regardless of what ever other things you want to throw at me to fix threat issues.

And Martel already answered a huge swath of the threat problems in this game, which would require a totally different fix.

If they gave scythe the treatment they have H2H that would be pretty great.

Trick attack may not be needed for a tank to cap hate, but who said it had to be. Decoy shot isn't needed for a tank to cap hate either. But, both are very useful for the character using them to reduce their hate.

You can still trick attack after a hate reset to help tank reach cap faster. You can trick attack a less optimal tank like NIN or BLU to help their threat generation exceed the other DPS. It has uses, you've just got a fixation on hate problems that don't exist.

It would be nice if they fixed unity and HTBC, but current endgame is perfectly fine.

We don't really need to carry on with this threat talk, anymore.

As I already said, Martel already covered a huge swath of the threat issues this game has. Those threat differences in Unity/Merit fights should be annotated on the BG enmity wiki page.

Maybe they'll add some synergy between PLD & DRK? Like if they are in a party together, DRK becomes an enmity battery for PLD... I would love that but totally not happening.

If they do fix scythe a bit, I really hope Apoc gains an edge to see more endgame use

I wager enspell 2 adjustments since both of those jobs are going at the same time. Not sure what else. Everything is speculation at this point.