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Post by Ilium on Apr 24, 2013 21:40:21 GMT -6
Devil's advocate: If the stat-inflicting abilities are so lousy, why are they in the game? >.>; They have a relatively low chance of inflicting the status ability, yes. We could raise damage a bit, but lousy? Not at all. Thats a gross generalization of what we have been discussing about those specific abilities this evening.
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Schwerpunkt
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Post by Schwerpunkt on Apr 24, 2013 22:14:18 GMT -6
The operative word was "like," implying the Archer would use whichever CC ability he had on hand that was most damaging.
Because the Archer in FFTA is "we couldn't figure out where to put these status effects, so we'll put them on the archer." We don't have that problem.
The first indication that you're not looking at how the Archer will function in an organic environment is the fact that you're obsessing over the fact that you have 6 "CC" and 6 "DPS" abilities instead of actually trying to determine where and when they will be used.
Focus, for starters, will probably never be used once you have something better. You trade an entire turn for an increase of 50% damage on your next action -- unless you can stack this with other abilities (in which case we run into the problem of other abusively stacking it), you're reducing your potential damage output by 25% for no reason whatsoever. If you plot out potential attacks and assume that accuracy isn't 100%, you're actually better off in the long haul by simply using regular attacks (because you're more likely to get knockbacks, crits, and weapon-specific procs in the relatively short duration of a given battle).
Beyond that, the bread and butter of Archer "DPS" is spamming Piercing Arrow. Trading 15% of your accuracy for a 50% damage boost (and probably, what, an extra 10% to your chance to crit, with crits spiking your damage up to 225%?) is a trade I'd make every turn. It doesn't matter if I miss 15% more shots -- I hit for 50% more damage. The laws of probability say I'm going to come out much further ahead than I would have otherwise.
The only times I wouldn't use this are pretty limited. If the other guy has Oil (which probably isn't that common), I'd use Flaming Arrow. If the other guy is getting close and nobody can tank him, I'd use Snap Shot to get away faster. If the other guy has high P-Ev, I'd use Take Aim -- Marker if he happens to be standing near another high P-Ev goon. Barrage is literally not worth it; trading 25% accuracy for a 10% damage increase is a losing proposition unless both of those guys happen to be low on health and/or channeling spells (or some combination), in which case it'd be marginally more useful.
Basically, the physical skills as presented are weighted horribly in favor of Piercing Arrow. If I were an Archer primary, I'd pick up Snap Shot (probably on sign up) and then sit on my thumbs for a level or two until I could afford Piercing Arrow. And then I'd pick pick up Agility, High Ground (which has wtfhuge synergy with Piercing Arrow), Arm Aim, and probably hoarde JP until I got my next class. At which point I'd probably dump it all on vastly more useful support abilities. I can only imagine how obscene an Archer/Time Mage spamming Piercing Arrow would be.
You previously said, "[t]he problem is at 16.5% chance of inflicting the status effect that essentially makes the move useless in our combat environment."
We can go back and forth on this, but here's the bottom line: you're advocating giving the Archer extremely powerful CC abilities. In order to balance this, you either need to make the chance to apply so low that it's the FFT equivalent of a Hail Mary (which is what a 12% Doom is) or you buff the status effect to the point where it's reliably impacting battle. In the case of the former, most players are probably just going to spam Piercing Arrow. In the case of the latter, the Archer becomes a CC-driven class.
I just don't see a way to balance high-level CC abilities with a class like the Archer. It's much easier to integrate more mild on-hit status effects (like poison and blind) than it is to work out how to hit the sweet spot between Disable being overpowered and spammable and Disable being terrible.
I was under the impression that your figures were representative of the desired chance to proc, not multiplicative modifiers. After all, saying "accuracy 85%" is quite literally meaningless without knowing the average P-Ev of the targets you're likely to be shooting at. If the Ninja dodges half of all attacks coming his way, your "accuracy 85%" becomes "accuracy 42.5%," which then completely skews our discussion. When we start talking about "accuracy 50%" against guys who probably have 20-30 P-Ev (which is entirely doable with early-mid gear as a Knight), we don't come out much better.
So let me demonstrate. The Knight has a base P-Ev of 10%. Except for the Longsword at 10% and Mithril Sword at 8%, most early and mid Knight swords have a P-Ev of 5% -- I'm going to split the difference and stick with the Mithril Sword (we're taking Parry so he can use the bonus). The Mithril Shield confers another 22% P-Ev (and 5% M-Ev). The Leather Cloak confers an additional 15% of each. The Knight, therefore, gets 10% P-Ev from his class, 15% from his accessory, and 30% from his weapons/armor. He has, in total, 55% P-Ev from items.. This means the default chance to hit him is 45%. Death Sickle now has a 22.5% chance to hit him. Since we're now quartering this, we're looking at a 5.625% chance to apply Doom.
We return, again, to my previous point: the chance of success is just abysmal. We're looking a slightly over one in every 20 attacks applying the effect.
Given those conditions, I'm pretty sure I'd rather spam Take Aim. Even assuming comparable levels and gear (so, Mithril Bow has 7 WP and the Archer at that time probably has around 6 PA, we're looking at 42 damage base and 27 after the damage penalty. Statistically, every proc of Doom is going to come at the cost of 540 damage which, at this level, is probably enough to kill the Knight twice over.
I've touched on this, but I really want to go over it again: there is simply no reason whatsoever a class should ever have a "sacrifice this turn, nuke them next turn for 50% more damage" ability. It makes the opening blow of high-impact classes (like the Holy Knight) wtfhuge. Lightning Stab hits for PA * (WP + 4). Assuming the same 6 PA as the Archer (unlikely; Knights trend towards very high PA growth) and the Mithril Sword (also 7 WP), we're looking at a base opening nuke of 99 damage after Focus. To put that figure into perspective, Mithril Armor gives +50 HP and Mithril Helm gives the same. In a single attack you've negated the entire benefit of armor which, at this level, is a huge portion of a character's health. When you talk about the comparable clothing tiers (40 from Wizard's Hat, 36 from Adamant Vest), you naturally see an even larger percentage of pain.
Note, of course, that WP and PA tend to scale up very fast in later levels. Faster than HP, even.
Focus is just not an ability that should ever stack with special skills.
Edit: Alright. We've been over this in every possible direction and we've looked at most plausible permutations. I have no doubt that we can both keep doing this for a long while yet -- your argument obviously has merit and it's pretty clear you're sticking to it.
So, in the interests of not fencing over the Archer class any further, I have a few proposed changes that should give us an all-around balanced Archer.
1. Piercing Arrow gets nerfed. Either the accuracy penalty increases or the raw damage bonus decreases. Something like -15%/+25% is fair, I think. And it can keep the +crit%. 2. Focus gets axed entirely or otherwise is restricted to regular ranged attacks... in which case it's not that useful. 3. Cupid is replaced by something that causes poison. I maintain that Beso Toxico sounds childish and suggest Pestilent Shot instead. 4. Quelling Strike gets replaced with something more useful. I liked my Rapid Fire ability; it has the potential for big damage, and it also has the chance of simply failing spectacularly. 5. Barrage is dropped in favor of an ability that isn't almost silly in how conditional it is. I like Snipe -- it's good for really long-range openings and knocking out guys who try to run or just an ability to open with. 6. Scavenger (5% health regen and cure poison if you end on a 'green' tile) is added to Movement. It encourages the Archer to stick to forests without needing weird bonuses to do so. Thus it's similar in spirit to the Ranger class, which we seem to be borrowing some trappings from. 7. Arrow Guard is dropped in favor of something less uber-specific. I like Concealment (basically, +33% M-Ev to magic attacks that don't directly target you). 8. Aim Leg and Aim Arm are kept with the following caveats: neither effect persists for more than 3 of the affected unit's turns. With ~37.5% application rate, you can theoretically keep someone perpetually Disabled if the effect lasts 3 turns. That basically results in the Archer trading all of his utility in favor of locking down a single enemy. I think that's fair CC for a basic class. 9. Marker is renamed Flare because Flare is cooler. 10. We keep Death Sickle on the condition that it's renamed (I like 'Black Arrow') and remains a low probability Hail Mary. 11. Flaming Arrow's damage coefficient is tuned down. I'm in favor of 120% damage with an additional 30% damage burn over 3 turns, with the fire element doubling if the enemy has Oil (giving us a potential damage output of 180% over three turns).
We do that and I think we'll have fairly well-balanced Archer that has your auxiliary CC role while also having a number of useful sources of damage.
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Post by kablizzy on Apr 25, 2013 4:06:17 GMT -6
I'll be responding to all this shortly, gotta catch up.
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Post by kablizzy on Apr 25, 2013 4:49:18 GMT -6
So, Re: Archer's Bane. Not that great, but I think I would still want it as an option. Probably as a cheaper option, since it's not that great. In the right circumstance, though, it gives the archer an advantage over longer-range gun-wielding classes (Of which we may only have 1-3, but still), and in the worst-case scenario, over another archer. Just because it won't get used much is no reason to not allow the option for players.
Insofar as Doom, especially if you equip a move+3, you can do some damage with that. I think Schwer is right in that a basic class having access to doom is at best an awful ability and at worst, a lucky one-shot that we could certainly do without. But, I want to err on the side of "Too powerful," rather than not, so I'ma keep it for now. We can always cut it later if need be.
Not sure how I feel about Don't Move / Don't Act. They seem like Prestige abilities to me, and I wouldn't mind shipping them off to Sniper / Sharpshooter / Machinst / Corsair. I was planning on building Machinist from the ground-up anyway, but you do make a good point about Don't Move / Don't Act. I vote to cut.
And risk /reward is an integral part of the game - The choice of "Do I do 80 damage or Hail Mary and try to end it now?" is a valid choice. Whether or not you'd actually waste 6-8 turns trying to inflict doom on a dude who's going to kill you in that time? Well, that's your choice, I guess.
I'm also in heavy disagreement with the "We don't know what to do with these Status effects, so they go on Archer." The Archer as a physical, ranged, status-effect class is prevalent in what I saw to be no less than twelve FF games. Not that this means anything, but it does point to the thought that they didn't do it on a whim, and rather saw FFT and went, "Charge +20? What were we thinking?" and figured out a better direction to go.
Now, on barrage - Rapid Fire and Barrage are the same thing, in essence. I had the idea in mind that it wasn't just a static damage-for-accuracy trade. I envisioned it being like the classic Barrage, where you have a lessened chance to hit 3-4 shots in the same turn, for lessened damage. For instance, let's call Barrage 3-shots. You'd basically perform three attacks, at half strength, at, say, 40, 50, or 60% reduced accuracy. So, the average comes out to be hitting around 100% damage, with a few spikes up into the 140%-150% damage range, and a few either doing 0% damage or half damage, depending on how many of your arrows hit. It's also useful for higher P-ev classes, since you're not just wasting an entire turn shooting once, you can maybe hit two of those shots whereas the third roll may have missed entirely. This can also be edited as we wish.
The cool thing about Focus on archer is that hopefully, a Holy Knight isn't in range to get that opening strike. The archer focuses and the Holy Knight moves in, and gets shot in the jaw. There are uses for these skills. I also want focus to be more akin to Charge, in that it should be its own ability, and not effect others.
I'm including Snipe / Long Shot in my build, because it's awesome.
I'm of the camp that Flare stays the Final Fantasy spell. I also don't like Flare or Marker as an ability, since we have stuff in-class that does the same thing.
I also don't necessarily like Death Sickle much. I'd rather see Seal Evil in. Not only is it cooler than Death Sickle, but it also gives Necromancer pets fits (Which is one reason I may want to make Necromancer not undead, but his pets undead).
In either case, I'll be posting a build here in a couple minutes, and hopefully, it'll mitigate the things we've discussed.
Edit: Also, I'm going to err on the side of stuff being overpowered, since we're developing for the Beta, where we can test stuff like this. Any permanent nerfs can happen thereafter.
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Post by kablizzy on Apr 25, 2013 6:09:09 GMT -6
AimAbility | Description | Range | Effect | Speed | JP | Focus
| Calculate your next plan of attack. Success: 100% System: 1.5x Attack Command.
| As Weapon
| -
| 100
| 100
| Take Aim
| The archer takes time to pinpoint his target. Success: 100% System: .65x Attack Command, 100% Accuracy. Disregard evade.
| As Weapon | 1 | N/A | 150 | Snapshot | Strike swiftly without hesitation. Success: 75% System: Attack command. If successful, CT resets at 15.
| As Weapon | 1 | N/A | 200 | Seal Evil | Petrify the cursed beings known as the Undead. Success: 50% (Petrify) System: 50% chance to Petrify target. Only usable vs. Undead.
| As Weapon | 1 | N/A | 250 | Blackout
| Plunge the foe into darkness. Success: 75% (Hit Rate) 50% (Immobilize) System: Attack Command. 50% chance to Blind target.
| As Weapon | 1 | N/A | 300 | Barrage | Fire off four arrows quickly in succession. Success: 75% System: 35% Damage.
| As Weapon | 2 | N/A | 375 | Marker | Illuminate an area. Success: 100% System: AoE status effect. -50% P-Ev to all units in range. Lasts two turns.
| 4 | 3 v 2 | N/A | 400 | Quelling Strike
| Try to slow the enemy's advance. Success: 50% (Hit Rate) 10% (Slow) System: Attack command. If successful, enemy loses 15 CT. 10% chance to inflict Slow.
| As Weapon | 1 | N/A | 450 | Snipe | The Archer lets loose a shot to the winds. Success: -15% (Hit Rate) System: -15% Damage. | As Weapon +3 | 1 | N/A | 500 | Flaming Arrow | Set afire the arrow before sending it off. Success: 75% Element: Fire System: 1.25x Attack command. If target is affected by Oil, 2x damage.
| As Weapon | 1 | N/A | 550 | Death Sickle
| Strike an artery or major organ. Success: 50% (Hit Rate) 25% (Doom) System: 25% Damage, 25% chance of inflicting Doom.
| As Weapon | 1 | N/A | 600 | Pierce
| Use an advanced arrow with a wider, sharper tip. Success: 85% System: 1.25x Attack Command. Higher critical hit rate than normal.
| As Weapon
| 1
| N/A
| 700
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ReactionName | Description | JP | Concealment | 33% chance to avoid an area of effect attack.
| 300 | Archer's Bane
| Completely avoid all ranged attacks. Magick attacks do not apply.
| 500 | Speed Save | Increase Speed. | 900 | |
SupportName | Description | JP | Equip Bows | Equip longbows, crossbows regardless of Job. | 250 | High Ground
| 1.2x damage when at an elevation higher than your target.
| 250 | Hawkeye / Concentrate | Decreases enemy P-EV when using ranged weapons
| 400 | |
MovementName | Description | JP | Scavenger | Recover health and cures Poison when ending your turn on a 'Green' tile.
| 350 | Agility | Increase Jump and Move both by 1 | 500 |
Okay, few notes on what I did. - Death Sickle is canonical, but I'm not married to the name, we can rename that if need be.
- Scavenger added to movement.
- Provisionally added Hawkeye / Concentrate to Support.
- Changed Equip Bows to both Long and Crossbows, lemme know how this sits with you guys.
- Removed Arm / Leg aim in favor of Machinist.
- Threw Speed Save back in 'cause I like it, and it's a cool expensive ability.
- Also threw in both Concealment and Archer's Bane, 'cause I like reaction abilities, no matter how narrow.
- Changed Flaming Arrow and Pierce damage.
- Changed damage formula to xAttack, we had two different ways of putting it, so I standardized it.
- Added Snipe, 'cause that shit is cool.
- Merged a few abilities with Barrage, 'cause that shit is wicked cool. Loved Schwer's version so, I made it that.
- Kept Quelling strike since Leg / Arm aim are gone, I think that's a decent trade-off with Death Sickle and Poison-arrow-thingy still in.
- Provisionally added Seal Evil on the concept that Necromancers will either not be undead or will have Immune: Petrify.
- Changed a few JP prices, 8025 total. But beyond that, we should be good. Lemme know what ya'll think!
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Post by Ilium on Apr 25, 2013 14:48:06 GMT -6
I will speak on all points now after already reflecting on Kablizzy's post. The first indication that you're not looking at how the Archer will function in an organic environment is the fact that you're obsessing over the fact that you have 6 "CC" and 6 "DPS" abilities instead of actually trying to determine where and when they will be used. I wasn't obsessing over it at all, in fact, I found out by accident that I had done that when I went back through the skillset. I was really trying to see if I had loaded it down with too many Status effect abilities. How I envisioned Focus being applied in combat, would be in that first round when you are sometimes still out of range of the opponent Use Focus, next round move into range use Take Aim, Flaming Arrow, whatever. At which point you enter range of the opponent usually for the rest of combat so then it would become more economical to use instant abilities. Or in the occurrence that you have been sitting on the edge and all of the opponents have moved out of range, use Focus again. And Piercing Arrow was one of the abilities I named in my first post as being one that I didn't like. Along with Cupid, I was more open to these abilities being replace than any other. So I appreciate you editing in a constructive alternative to the ability. I understood the problems with it in its original form, from the get go. You have to weigh the power of the abilities. Doom, yeah 12% success rate is fine. Disable and Immobilize at 16.5%? There would be no point to attempting it. At 37%, I thought that was a reasonable gamble players could make when deciding to use those abilities or not. Powerful CC abilities? Yes, but once again we come back to how successful these will be to pull off in combat. I do not agree with your criticism of how they were set up in my list, as somehow being successfully spammable in any form. However I do understand your opinion of Disable and Immobilize being available to a base class in the first place. There would no doubt become available prestige classes that would be able to perform Disable and Immobilize better, at higher success rates. We disagree on the fundamental point that you believe that the archer should be a DPS driven class, where I believe it should have a good mix of DPS/CC, which the Archer has traditionally had in multiple Final Fantasy games (this is a Final Fantasy game). Disable and Immobilize being two of the most common effects associated with Archer, is the reason why I added them to my list. Although I still like keeping them as part of the Archer, I will surrender to popular opinion on these two abilities. Not only do we not know the average P-Ev, we do not know PA, MA, Speed, Jump, HP, MP, etc. So we are going to have to have a little bit of creativity when discussing which abilities "we think might work", which is really all that we are doing. Once we have more in depth discussions on what the rest of the stats will look like and when we are in agreement on how stat growth shall be handled is when we will be able to return to the abilities and make final judgements on Success Rates with all variables understood. So for the time being, just entertain the though that "accuracy" 85% is what I envision right now as being the final average success rate of the ability, when picturing the average evasion rates I expect. And I also already understand the (insignificant, at this point) issues with assuming an 'average evasion rate', so I do not need to be explained the issues on that. If its easier to read if I just say 100% or 90% success on every ability, then assume on your own how evasion percentages will affect that ability, I will write it out that way. So, Re: Archer's Bane. Not that great, but I think I would still want it as an option. Probably as a cheaper option, since it's not that great. In the right circumstance, though, it gives the archer an advantage over longer-range gun-wielding classes (Of which we may only have 1-3, but still), and in the worst-case scenario, over another archer. Just because it won't get used much is no reason to not allow the option for players. That's what I'm trying to accomplish with my lists, give players multiple options to choose from. Just different avenues to choose depending on how you want to play the class. Just because there is not necessarily a general application to an ability, does not mean there is no room for it. Specific, niche abilities help bring character and variety. We could absolutely cut it, yeah. Though I would recommend strongly it is replaced with another status-effect ability. How I had initially wrote up Archer, Disable and Immobilize were provided as relatively low-success rate abilities. In more advanced classes, Disable and Immobilize would have comparatively better success rates. So like your Sniper or Machinist, in comparison to the Archer's 37% general success rate of infliction, could have a 65% general success rate. And so on and so forth. However as I stated earlier I will yield to popular opinion here. This is exactly my thought process when incorporating Death Sickle, and is why I like that as an option. Not every class will have a Hail Mary option, but when there is a canonical chance of including such an ability, we need to discuss its pros and cons. I've also had this experience with the Final Fantasy representation of the Archer. Status effects are a major part of the canonical Archer's strategy, so this is how I tried to represent it. Yeah, we can totally do this. Much more variables than the two attacks I included in the ability. So now focus is its own attack command, do I understand that right? What would be the incentive for the typical player to employ any other ability other than Focus at 1.5x damage, which is an issue Schwerpunkt brought up about Piercing Arrow? Naming conventions, I like Long Shot. I also do like that ability, and it just barely missed the cut on the list I provided. We can add it. Flare/Marker - I though that was an interesting ability that Schwerpunkt had introduced, but perhaps you are right when we have other variables that take care of the same issue. I don't necessarily like Seal Evil, however as another niche ability for Archer it will have its uses. I think the 50% rate of Petrify could probably be higher, as the relative percent chance of encountering undead in battle I envision will be small. Edit: I will be adding more critique here soon, I would like to get my interpretations of Samurai posted as well. Let me get a chunk of my homework out of the way and I will be back.
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Post by kablizzy on Apr 25, 2013 19:12:38 GMT -6
Oh, sorry. I did some other editing as well. So, you'll notice Focus is one of the few abilities with a Charge Time, and I did change it to its own ability, but that's how I initially envisioned it. Schwer's analysis of pairing it with other skills was just kind of icing on the cake.
And take your time, I'll be responding either late tonight or early tomorrow anyway.
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Schwerpunkt
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Post by Schwerpunkt on Apr 26, 2013 8:46:24 GMT -6
Well, I think it's safe to say we've gotten most of this stuff hammered out.
Assuming we're working off 12 active skills, 2 reactions, 1 support (not counting Equip Bow), and 2 movements, and aiming for a mastery cost of around 6,000 (plus whatever Equip Bow is), we should be looking at an average cost of 200, 350, and 500 JP per active skill (broadly divided into three tiers, each of which has four abilities, for a grand total of 4,200 JP). Additionally, something like 750 JP for the two reaction skills, 300 JP for the support, and 750 for the two movement skills will give us 6,000 JP (plus whatever Equip Bow costs) for the class. That puts it on par with the Knight.
And again, Speed Save is game-breaking. It should not be in the game -- it's "Yell on Hit." If any high-survivability class gets it, they become runaway freight trains. There really isn't much of anything that's going to stop a Lancer/Archer from pounding your face in. It's obviously going to be crazy unbalanced down the road, so we might as well toss it out now.
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Post by kablizzy on Apr 26, 2013 9:29:47 GMT -6
That was my first thing to consider cutting, especially sitting at 900 JP. If we're over on cost at all, that's what would get the axe.
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Schwerpunkt
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Post by Schwerpunkt on Apr 26, 2013 9:42:02 GMT -6
I was working on the assumption it was going to get cut simply because it so obviously needs to go. The math is based on the notion that it did.
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Post by kablizzy on May 1, 2013 21:29:59 GMT -6
Okay, so, we're over three abilities in the primary. The three cuttable ones as I see it are Death Sickle (Kinda already on its way out), Marker, and Seal Evil. With cutting those three, we drop 1250 JP, bringing us down to ~6700 or so. I like the synergy between Agility and High Ground, so if we need to cut s'more JP, my votes would be to cut Scavenger and Archer's Bane (Even though I like the ability and its marginal effect, at the end of the day, Schwer's right, it's a marginal effect). That'd put us at just under 6k and pretty much finish the class. Thoughts?
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Schwerpunkt
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Post by Schwerpunkt on May 2, 2013 7:14:45 GMT -6
Scavenger really does seem like it would be better off with the Geomancer, doesn't it?
And I guess we may as cut Arrow Guard, too, since that doesn't seem hugely useful. Or just trim some fat off Arrow Guard and Pierce and we'll probably fall within the 6k range.
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Post by kablizzy on May 2, 2013 11:58:37 GMT -6
Sounds good to me. Gonna wait for Ilium's input before finalizing here.
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Post by Ilium on May 3, 2013 16:37:13 GMT -6
Looks good to me. Any more changes will be made reflecting the development of the other jobs, and also whatever blatant pops out at us during the Beta.
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Schwerpunkt
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Post by Schwerpunkt on May 3, 2013 21:13:23 GMT -6
As an addendum: if we're going to start adding free skills to each class (since that's what we're apparently doing with Ninja and Lancer we ought to try to be consistent), we should probably move Focus to 'free' and keep one of those abilities we're going to cut. Accordingly, I'd like to see Pestilent Shot (chance to cause poison on hit) return. Maybe something like 80% damage plus 40% over four turns.
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