[dev1135] New Special Job Abilities

[Icemage]

Really the flaw at the core of FFXI's design is that none of the classes, aside from Beastmaster, was inherently self-sufficient. The reasoning for this was that S-E wanted players to be forced to rely on one another to fill roles, but it caused huge problems in game balance.

Refresh wasn't one of Red Mage's original spells; it wasn't until players complained that there was no reason to invite a RDM to a party that the dev team eventually added it. Now that everyone and their brother can /RDM or /SCH even outside of special environments which give extra MP regeneration effects, RDM is once again back in the situation of being jack-of-all-trades/master-of-none. Their mastery of enhancement and enfeebling doesn't matter because they don't have access to the best enhancement spells, and enfeebles are somewhat marginal in any case and can be provided by other jobs.

As for ToAU parties, I wouldn't say that there wasn't a distinct difference between good and bad RDMs at such parties. Sure, you could endlessly do nothing but loop Haste and Refresh and basically get away with it if the melee players knew what they were doing and had two bards/corsairs to control links, but if your RDM isn't working to help control links and zapping buffs with Dispel, it was really easy to break your XP chain or get overwhelmed on a bad pull. Of course, all of that is sort of a moot point with Abyssea.


Icemage

[Armando]

Really the flaw at the core of FFXI's design is that none of the classes, aside from Beastmaster, was inherently self-sufficient.

While I agree with you, I think it goes deeper than that. There's a good number of jobs that are fairly well-rounded for solo play, but mob HP scales too fast compared to any job's offence (except casters who can create spike damage on command, but any time they save now they pay back later in downtime.) The ability to put up a fight is worthless when it takes too long to kill the mob and your EXP/hour is going to be terrible even if you manage to have 0 downtime.

Besides, SE could've had party-based gameplay that actually worked, if they tried. The problem is that most jobs are one-trick ponies, and party size is too large. When something goes missing, everything falls apart. If the ideal party size were, say, 3-4 people, and every job had a second role that it's not ideal at, but passable, you could form a party more easily. E.g. Pretend a PLD could be a reasonable DD, WAR and MNK could make passable tanks, DRK a decent nuker/enfeebler, DRG and BST could make decent healers, and pretend Level Sync had been around from day 1, you could form a party easily. Smaller party sizes are also much kinder to jack-of-all-trade jobs like RDM that pack a lot of versatility into a single party slot.

[Malacite]

While I agree with you, I think it goes deeper than that. There's a good number of jobs that are fairly well-rounded for solo play, but mob HP scales too fast compared to any job's offence (except casters who can create spike damage on command, but any time they save now they pay back later in downtime.) The ability to put up a fight is worthless when it takes too long to kill the mob and your EXP/hour is going to be terrible even if you manage to have 0 downtime.

Besides, SE could've had party-based gameplay that actually worked, if they tried. The problem is that most jobs are one-trick ponies, and party size is too large. When something goes missing, everything falls apart. If the ideal party size were, say, 3-4 people, and every job had a second role that it's not ideal at, but passable, you could form a party more easily. E.g. Pretend a PLD could be a reasonable DD, WAR and MNK could make passable tanks, DRK a decent nuker/enfeebler, DRG and BST could make decent healers, and pretend Level Sync had been around from day 1, you could form a party easily. Smaller party sizes are also much kinder to jack-of-all-trade jobs like RDM that pack a lot of versatility into a single party slot.

Going to disagree with you here, at least partially. You're right about being 1-trick ponies, but I'm not so sure about party sizes.

EXP parties work well in XIV, and combat in general is much more fluid and fun - not to mention a full party consists of 8 instead of 6. However, they did give HP and Accuracy bonuses for being in parties which helps tremendously. If they could just overhaul XI to a degree and use some of XIV's influences it'd be great. Though a big part of why combat works so well in XIV is because as you pointed out, HP scaling - mobs aren't nearly as absurdly strong relative to players, save for NMs (and even then not all of them are real buggers). Defense actually does something in XIV as well.

I guess my point is that 11's combat is still very much salvageable, though I'm not sure just how much effort they're willing to put into it. It's too late for any major job changes (which is another strong point of 14 - every class is balanced wonderfully and has multiple tools for various situations, even if they don't excel at some areas. Case in point, GLA/PLD while being tank-focused, can still deal enough damage to keep hate and effectively kill things. It's also much more self-sufficient than it was in 11, though still not to the degree I'd like to see it).

[Firewind]

Quite a few jobs are pretty self sufficient now. NIN, DNC, THF ), BST, SMN, PUP and RDM are all pretty self sufficient. Most DD classes are easily able to put out enough damage to kill most mobs without worrying too much about HP as well. Also remember that due to the 99 cap, level correction now also more heavily leans in favour of PCs now and I think it's only a handful of regular mobs that even are at Lv99.

Things like Abyssea's stat and HP boosts and also Atma and Atmacite do a lot to help players as well.

Also your typical NM farming group will have the following:

NIN for tanking and Yellow procs
WHM for healing
BLM for Yellow Procs
BLU/BRD for the rest of the Yellow Procs
WAR or /WAR for Red/Blue procs (if the NIN isn't subbing WAR)
THF or BST for TH

And your NM fighting group probably looks like this:

NIN tank
WHM healer
BRD, COR or SCH
2x BLM, WAR, DRK, SAM, MNK or SMN

Bascially even if you play a class that isn't self sufficient like the WHM, BLM or BRD you are still pretty likely to get into a group (assuming you have a linkshell that isn't "Solo it or GTFO")

[Armando]

but I'm not so sure about party sizes.

Party size never matters when the server has a lot of players online, but people that played during off-peak hours always had trouble putting together parties. Small party sizes are also more conducive to static parties.

Also remember that due to the 99 cap, level correction now also more heavily leans in favour of PCs now

What do you mean by this?

[Malacite]

Yeah XIV gives you a light party bonus for having 4~7 people. XI does give that EXP bonus, but it's negligible.

And I think he means because NMs generally don't have the massive level gap advantage over us anymore.


As far as self-sufficiency goes, jobs in XI got nothing on XIV.

[Firewind]

What do you mean by this?

Level Correction Function and pDIF - FFXIclopedia, the Final Fantasy XI wiki - Characters, items, jobs, and more

Note that at Lv99, nearly every regular mob and quite a few NMs will be EM or lower to you.

As far as self-sufficiency goes, jobs in XI got nothing on XIV.

Ninja - FFXIclopedia, the Final Fantasy XI wiki - Characters, items, jobs, and more
Dancer - FFXIclopedia, the Final Fantasy XI wiki - Characters, items, jobs, and more
Beastmaster - FFXIclopedia, the Final Fantasy XI wiki - Characters, items, jobs, and more

Please, just play the game in it's current state. There is no job in XIV more self sufficient than the above

The below get an honourable mention in that they solo well enough but not compared to the above:

Monk - FFXIclopedia, the Final Fantasy XI wiki - Characters, items, jobs, and more
Thief - FFXIclopedia, the Final Fantasy XI wiki - Characters, items, jobs, and more
Red Mage - FFXIclopedia, the Final Fantasy XI wiki - Characters, items, jobs, and more
Paladin - FFXIclopedia, the Final Fantasy XI wiki - Characters, items, jobs, and more
Summoner - FFXIclopedia, the Final Fantasy XI wiki - Characters, items, jobs, and more
Blue Mage - FFXIclopedia, the Final Fantasy XI wiki - Characters, items, jobs, and more
Puppetmaster - FFXIclopedia, the Final Fantasy XI wiki - Characters, items, jobs, and more

[Malacite]

The game hasn't changed that much at 99 from 95, I've been keeping up.

Self-sufficient doesn't just mean soloing, either. The example I feel is best would be comparing WAR in both games.

WAR does far more damage and has good crowd control in XIV, and can actually tank on its own extremely well even without using GLA/PUG subskills. Crowd control too (God I love XIV's version of Steel Cyclone) Contrast this to XI where you're basically dead without /NIN (or possibly /SAM for Seigan). Not every job, but too many rely on Utsusemi or Blink and/or Stoneskin, whereas every class in XIV has built-in survival and other tools. I'm not hating on XI, just saying that XIV has corrected several of XI's mistakes and it's not too late to fix some of that.

[Armando]

I'm not hating on XI, just saying that XIV has corrected several of XI's mistakes and it's not too late to fix some of that.

I think Square has clearly shown themselves unwilling to make backwards-incompatible changes to jobs. They'd rather introduce new jobs than properly redo the old ones.

[Malacite]

Or at least that's Tanaka's feeling. Matsui may be in charge now, but the bulk of the stuff coming was started/approved by Tanaka so it'll be a while I think before (if any) real changes happen.

But I have faith in Matsui, since he was responsible for Abyssea, which I enjoyed tremendously. I'm gonna miss having him working on XIV.

[Yellow Mage]

I think Square has clearly shown themselves unwilling to make backwards-incompatible changes to jobs. They'd rather introduce new jobs than properly redo the old ones.

Speaking as a Red Mage . . . this is clearly 99.5% true, with a 0.5% margin of error.

[Raydeus]

I'm surprised no one posted this update. o_O

[dev1135] New Special Job Abilities

• New special job abilities will be introduced.
  * These special abilities will not share the same recast time as previous ones.
  * The recast time will be decreased from two hours to one.
  * The abilities displayed with a gray background have not been included in the Octber 26 test server update.
  

Job	Ability Name	Effect
Warrior	WAR SP2	Grants a 100% chance of activating Double Attack.
Monk	-	-
White Mage	Asylum	Grants a powerful resistance to enfeebling magic and Dispel.
Black Mage	Subtle Sorcery	Decreases enmity generated by magic and increases magic accuracy.
Red Mage	-	-
Thief	-	-
Paladin	-	-
Dark Knight	Soul Enslavement	Auto-attacks absorb target's TP.
Beastmaster	-	-
Bard	-	-
Ranger	-	-
Samurai	Yaegasumi	Evades all special attacks that deal physical or magic damage. Enhances the potency of your next weapon skill every time you evade a special attack.
Ninja	-	-
Dragoon	-	-
Summoner	Astral Conduit	Eliminates recast times for Blood Pacts and fully restores MP upon activation.
Blue Mage	Unbridled Wisdom	Allows unlimited casting of blue magic spells that use Unbridled Learning. Additionally, Unbridled Learning will have no recast time.
Corsair	-	-
Puppetmaster	Heady Artifice	Allows automatons to use a special ability that varies by head. Harlequin Head: Mighty Strikes Valoredge Head: Invisible Sharpshot Head: Eagle Eye Shot Stormwaker Head: Chainspell Soulsoother Head: Benediction (will only affect the automaton and members of its master's party) Spiritreaver Head: Manafont
Dancer	Grand Pas	Gives five finishing moves, resets flourish recast timers, and eliminates the cost of finishing moves. Effect ends either when its duration expires or is used three times.
Scholar	Caper Emissarius	Transfers the whole party's enmity to a party member of your choice.

* Abilities implemented on the test server have provisional names, help text, and graphical effects. Actual effects of these abilities may be changed or adjusted.


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It looks relatively interesting, but I can't help but fear for the useless 2nd 2HR, I mean 1HR RDM may get. <_<;

[Yygdrasil]

They did. It has its own thread.

- - - Updated - - -

Complete with the ones that your post is missing.

[Raydeus]

That's odd, I searched for it but only found this thread.

As for the ones that are missing in this version of the table it is because they were not implemented in the Oct. 26 update of the test server. Just like it says in the first part of the post.

[Raydeus]

Whoah, WTF.

Red Mage

RDM SP 2: Increases the accuracy of your next enfeebling magic spell cast. Effect expires when either 60 seconds pass or an enfeebling magic spell is cast successfully.
Duration : 60 sec
(Added November 16, 2012)

/facepalm

And Elemental seal that only works for 1 (one) Enf. spell with a 60 mins recast. Keep on trolling Squeenix.