Dev Tracker - Discussion

Who? That person isn't me, probably an imposter. (Kaja for us cheap/gimp casuals. <3)

I agree Kaja Axe is really good, just not better then R15 Chango, while others seem to want to insist Kaja Axe or Sword is better then everything else period.

Now we can debate effort vs reward cause that's a huge *** can of worms, I'm just glad there are finally alternate builds for mainstream melee.

Its also a great weapon for /nin scenarios. Another tool in the toolbox even with R15 weapons.

/nin advantage is being mentioned over and over, that everyone here knows. I don't think anyone here says "Kaja suck" ever. We just question "So OP nerf!" And "70k ws!!!"(without saying a word about MS active) floating on the forum.

I know some of the claims here are either jokes or exaggeration to get readers attention quickly. But It can seem misleading to people that just skim through the forum and don't read the whole story.

Kaja war isn't nerf worthy, and I certainly don't want to see people in game yell "nerf war" because they read a post about 70k ws and "OP nerf" comment.

And yup, it can happen based on past experience if nobody post real info here lol. People frenquently read informations on forum without getting the big picture then spread false info in game with their one dimensional understanding on things, something Ejiin appearantly isn't aware of every time he argue with me :p



This.

I think they need to near-universally halve WS damage, it'll bring white damage back a little, bring magic back a little, etc.

I find it funny that COR does more magical damage than a BLM, overall. They need to adjust a lot of things.

They would also need to half high end monster HP to compensate.

What's really happened is SE has made stuff with entirely to much HP ~and~ ridiculously dangerous AoE "I Win" moves. Turns every fight into a "kill it ASAP to win" which gets old quick.

No, they wouldn't. Only fight this would potentially ruin is Dyna wave 3, and there are groups that can clear it in 15min so moving to 30min wouldn't make it impossible AND there's already partial progress built into that system. Otherwise it just slows down fights but still keeps them within reasonable means.

Almost every move can be countered with a proper assortment of debuffs and buffs, it's just a hassle to get that all together, so we try to zerg through it all and ignore it. That's a community issue as much as a development one.

I disagree, not all fights are like that. It is the player mentality that makes it like that. You don't have to zerg everything or it insta kills you. There are tons of viable strats you can use but people obviously jump to the easiest and quickest one available.

While not every boss has this mechanic, a lot of them DO have this constraint (Schah, Albumen come to mind), so something like a SMN zerg works really well. The issue is that this SMN zerg is also perfectly logistically fine for most other bosses in the game... so given that you have to zerg some fights, there's no reason to not zerg the other fights.

Pretty sure the JP community defaults to safer strats like ranged and magic bursting (even wave 3, I've seen a JP streamer doing that BLM strategy) so I'm really curious how they'll balance things going forward with the default mindsets of the two communities being so different of each other.

People used to do Albumen and Schah with Black mages and magic bursting, which is a different option than "Zerg only". Works well, works most efficiently. Different options, if zerg was the only way to beat something for a large majority of content, then I could understand.

The issue now is unbalance, which people were screaming with pitchforks when they thought BLU was unbalanced(which it wasn't.)

I personally feel the dmg is a bit too high, everyone pumping out close to capped DMG per WS seems a bit silly to me when there isn't enough content to support it. Just clear everything a lot faster to do nothing.

You don't seem to understand why we kill it ASAP, the longer it's alive the higher chance the team has for several bad rolls to happen consecutively and make the fight miserable. "Difficulty" in FFXI is just a set of dice rolls of the NM vs us with both sides stacking +1's to their side of the dice. The more you roll the dice the higher chance of you hitting craps. See SMN strat and why it's so popular.

Also it's not a 15m to 30m fight, it's a 90m to 150m fight, assuming the group regularly won with 30m to spare. Halfing the power of WS's doubles the kill time of ~everything~ in the game. Top of the line groups will likely be able to find another way to cheese through it, the other 95% of the population will suffer. See the reality is that the top 5% of a games population do not matter. Unless the games a pro E-Sport, removing the top 5% will have zero impact on the game itself. That top 5% is disproportionately represented among the forums so they appear to be more common then they really are and thus you think you need to keep them happy, you don't.

So SE's catering to the regular people who may have one or two super weapons but not a ton of them and just want to go around doing content. Content is just hard enough that a focused team of people can work towards it and eventually grow to winning that content. Messing with that balance is just creating another K-club AV situation.

Now if you want endurance fights, then SE needs to lower the offensive power of the NM's and reduce the number of AoE Stun/Terror/Amnesia/Encumbrance/Petrify/Paralyze/Doom/HP Down/Mute and Death that happens. Some debuffs are expected and a telegraphed crippling debuff move is fine, every other attack being an AoE debuff is no longer fun and just leads to a "finish the fight ASAP" mentality.


Capped damage is 99,999, people are doing ~30K most of the time with a few builds doing over 40K.

You people are vastly overstating everything, like those who used to assume every death hit for 99K regardless.

Sounds like we are all arguing about which one between a longer thin or thicker short stick is better for beating a dead horse.

Everything deal too much dmg, or is deemed useless. The devs make these crazy bad aoe we should avoid by changing our strats or using subtle ***, but we just wanna kill it 5sec faster. So we say *** it, and throw 2hr maze resets, Idris-Geo bubbles, and smash our faces in all the bad AoE these boss can throw and you know what.. it actually works. And that is the dev's fault for making these bad AoE bad enough to dissuade normal, sound minded people. But we're FFXI players. They underestimate the sheer power of dumb stubborn hardheadedness of westernfolks.

There is no strat you can use to avoid it, the NM rolls a D20, if it's under 5 then it use's a stupid bad move, if it's 6~10 then another bad move, if 11 or higher then a not-so-bad move.

That's literally all there is to the vast majority of FFXI AI. Roll dice to decide which move to do, 3/4 of them suck, 2/4 of them really suck.


And that's racist.

Oh please. If we can't make fun of ourselves anymore...

What NMs are you talking about for end game that REQUIRE zerging? I'm confused, it seems you are specifically talking about Dynamis only and theres more to endgame than just Dynamis. Not only the fact that those Nms have been done with a different strategy.

Yeah, WS are getting to that point. I'm not exaggerating.

Ahh interesting. I'm wondering what have you been offhanding?

Some weapons I was considering were:
Beryllium Pick (Su2)
Blurred Axe +1 (Su2)
Fettering Blade
Kaja Sword
Raetic Axe (Su3)

What I am worried about is that the devs still haven't came up with anything that can't be done by using either one of 2 FOO strats. (outside of Master Trials)

WS burns or SMN burns, it doens't matter much. The problems I think is that SPs are too powerful and slightly too easy to reset these days.

He's probably also referencing Schah and some T4's. But I think the fight is (mostly) possible without zerging. And even then, you don't NEED to zerg all of them(sandworm, and Erinys are perfectly fine going slower), so zerging is at best the strat of that fight, and not an overall necessary mechanic for all hard fights.

And the only Omen boss with any sense of zerg to it is Ou, and that's just the final 30s. Not everything is built for or in any way requires a zerg, it's just a nice boon most of the time.

Well, you can't MB Warder of Courage I'm pretty sure. The benefit of the SMN zerg strategy for Aeonics is that you can literally do every single fight with minor changes (add a bard or a BLM sometimes). This is pretty much my complaint with the current state of things.

Historically many jobs have been exceptionally useful for certain tasks. It's just that Nirvana SMN is exceptionally useful for almost all relevant content in the game at this point.

EDIT: One thing I think is overlooked is coordination. SMN burn requires almost no coordination. Other viable strats exist but generally require more cognitive load, so when you can SMN burn it and have to think less, why wouldn't you?

It might sound silly but it's definitely a thing.

That's how almost all the first few waves of aeonics were done...

Oh, that's cool. I've only seen SMN for it.

Can all the aeonic bosses be cleared with MB strategy? I'm just trying to demonstrate that one strategy is just simply superior for this task.

Yes except Erinys. In 2015-2016 That was how aeonics were done.

Edit: this is how Kirin fight looked like in 2015-09

Hell, I'd done Schah 4 different ways with completely different setups, SMNs weren't the first way to do it, and haven't been the last.

-Standard BLM burst method, allowing adds to pop and kill each, far from a zerg.

-Melee method, allowing the adds to pop and killing each, again, not a zerg by any stretch.

-Rangers and Corsairs using Fomalhauts for Last Stand>Last Stand Light/Radiance, allowing the adds to pop again.

-SMN zerg, with the intent of not allowing the adds to pop, due to the increased -DT on Schah itself while the adds are alive.

Everyone complains about the SMN zerg. Interestingly enough, the other methods are much more welcoming for additional players due to less fear of additional HP to the NM. Add to that the fact that a SMN zerg does require some coordination, just a very different kind and that coordination period is just compressed into a very tiny window of time. A Melee or Ranged Strat that allows the adds to pop can have a minor screwup where maybe a bubble doesn't get placed right away, or a Corsair busts a roll, requiring it to be down for 20-30 seconds possibly and still win.

In that SMN strat you so hate, the entire group's 1hour abilities and and the group's popset can be lost without positive results because of one person hesitating for a fraction of a second.

Lastly, you say "most of relevant content today can be SMN zerged". I don't recall too many VD Ambuscades capable of that method, Omen bosses really not so much either, and certainly not Dynamis-D. The honest fact is that you're complaining that the Aeonic path can be done this way bothers you.

Should we honestly be upset that this game we play allows us to "win" in multiple fashions? Or be happy that while we're repeating the same thing 12+ times we can vary our techniques? If you find that existing groups around you are only using SMN zerg for the Aeonic path, form your own group of disgruntled melees to do it in a more "standard" approach...oh but do realize the majority of you will need to be on BRD, WHM, COR, GEO and the like...everyone doesn't get to go beat things on the head.

Well, it's good to know there's a consistent alternate strategy. You don't have to use your brain for SMN though, that's where it really shines

I don't mind it on principle, I minded it when I thought the community thought it was the only viable strategy. I think it's bad for a single strategy to be superior to all strategies for most content. (Which doesn't seem to be the case theoretically, it's just that it's what most people default to, which is still annoying)

You can beat almost all Omen bosses with SMNs (not zerg), Ambuscade and Wave 3 you can't.

Ah, more like blm was the only endgame strategy at that time. In 2015 and early 2016, if you don't have run blm sch idris geo or nice friends then you dont get invite to endgame groups period lol. It wasn't so different from smn only nowadays.

I'd say even post 2017 when smn was dominate, the setup for endgame in 2017 era still had way more variety than blm only era.