[dev1186] Delve Additions

Weakness halts your DPS as does all the others. Any of those ailments applied to one person isn't a problem, it's when it's constantly applied to everyone that it gets bad. Shark is a prime example because it's melee hits do defense down along with multiple erase status ailments on it's TP moves. This makes removing the HP down and magic defense down random and nearly impossible without a yagrush. If those aren't removed before Tidal Guillotine then DD's will start dropping as their HP simply isn't high enough to get the damage above the 50% cut line. It's a stun-or-die situation.

Tojil is by far the easiest, weakness and full dispel are the only two you have to worry about. Terror is annoying but unless it follows a Lahar then your ok. His aura provides a BIG problem for WHM's. Attack down and burn are both eraseable but are instantly reapplied. This means if he gets off slowga then your pretty much f*cked without a yagrush. You'll have to do Sacrifice rotations but the absorbed slow is potent and will inhibit your WHM's /recast for Sacrifice, and that's without considering they need to be curing while they are fighting with the slow and Sacrifice rotation.

None of it is "hard", it's just cheap battle tactics by the boss's to create fake difficulty.

A bit random but kinda on topic. Despite what people say about Tanaka vs Matsui era, the battle designer has always been Matsui since the start of the game. This or that director might say where they want the game to go, but the one who designed all of the fights has always been Matsui himself.

You can do shark w/o stun and a lot of panacea; I cannot do tojil w/o stun.

noop always going to be jobs like that. It was rdm and brd, still brd but also sch.

The game isnt going to change, its the people that have this dd onry idea.

I really like Provenance Watcher concept with the fetters. Even though voidwatch was for the most part all inclusive of jobs, the fetter mechanic of provenance watcher ensured that the magic dps jobs had a place, and could actually dps rather than just be there for procs. Something like this in the new content would be great.

To be honest I think formless strikes is a huge problem at the moment. Sorry mnks, but formless strikes needs to be nerfed, or new NMs need to be changed that when magic damage is required to exploit a weakness formless strikes doesn't count. MNKs auto attacks is a very large part of their damage and the fact that they can turn all of that damage into magical damage, without any fear of doing physical damage to mess up a mechanic is rediculous. Heck, you don't even need to nerf it that hard, but it should not be at a point where blm/smn/geo/sch/rdm nuking is not even considered because you can just use mnk...

Insert shameless run fencer should get formless strikes instead plug here. (yes still the nerfed version)

Edit: Or you know what, instead of nerfing formless strikes just buff magic damage. I like what SE did for the lower tier nukes with the magic damage stat, but it leaves the higher tier spells a little lack luster for their mp and casting time imo.

Do you know how expensive panacea's are to make? 250K per stack due to them needing a Philosophers Stone for each synth and that synth's NQ only producing one Panacea. It's a 98 skill synth so really low HQ rates vs other medicines.

Honestly at this point in time I'd just think to give magic nukes a severe reduction in enmity. Enmity is a huge problem with this game's damage mechanics. Typical melee's can just turtle up and usually the NM will remain where the melee's are, but ranged damage jobs suffer because once they cap hate the boss will wander towards them which can be catastrophic for the backline support. Decoy shot has allowed RNG's to deal damage while still keeping their hate low and some of their super weapons even have static enmity generation. Giving nukers a similiar mechanic would provide them a place in the damage hierarchy. They will still do less damage then a buffed melee but that damage would have obscenely low enmity (not on a f*cking 10m JA) generation and they could therefor keep it up without endangering themselves or the support crew standing next to them.

We used them when we killed it at 99 it was over 1m a stack on asura at some point lol

My personal opinion about the mages comment.
Blm can provide enough dps, comparable to melees or ranged dds. But it faces a lot of prejudice from playerbase, that really dont have intention of making othes jobs viable to endgame content, aside those they are already familiar with.
People who argue that nukers have low dmg, make a mistake of comparing a melee/ranged dd fully buffed (songs, rolls, geo magics, debuffs) with a mage in sub optimal condition. Mages, like ranged, dont fit in same party as others dds, they require a whole party specializated just for him, so proper buffs can be applied, and its real dmg can be showed. A proper mages party would require geo, cor, brd, nukesx3. Geo using mdb down, mab up, cors using wizard rolls and refresh, using obi and twilight cape with proper weather, and proper day if well planned, brd spamming threnodies and ballad, i can see blms hitting a tier ii magic for 3k each 6 secs, averaging 30k/min, what is a great damage.
Ofc any mage setup would require, mandatory, a pld, so a feasible mage setup would be pld brd cor geo blmx2. Maybe replacing a blm for a sch to help pld if needed.
Currently, i think the major issue of nukers is the hate. Though blm have the greatest hate mitigation tools (enmity douse and subtle sorcery), their recast pretty much kills that. Subtle could be fixed to be similar to decoy shot, in duration and recast times.
Just my 2 cents to tell nukes in general, blm i particular as i like them most, can still acomplish stuffs if people really give it a REAL try, not just sitting in the same old format. I prefer to believe every job can shine in any content, but it require a proper preparation to maximize its potential, a thing normally the average playbase who keep whining their blu/pup/nin/thf isnt relevant to endgame dont do, just want to win with formations specific designed to others setups.
Im finishing my shield, soon i plan to make some tries in delve with the mentioned setup.

I miss 100k philo stones and 1m+ a stack for panacea for legion.
wait no i dont.

Theirs not a lot of good BLMS anymore anyways, at least on Fenrir. I'd feel comfortable saying at least 90% of them don't even know what a magic burst is.

Would rather not see nerfs, and just see jobs like nin,thf,dnc given higher sword skill rank, access to an iLevel sword, and be allowed use of requiescat so they are another option to bypass physical or magic shield mechanics.

I try to, even though I'm still a rookie!

I do! we were making about 5-10m each on mul day!

Some things that may improve the outlook for mages.

I'd like to see the global cooldown for casting reduced a bit. No matter if you have chainspell up or instacast a spell, you're gunna wait 3 seconds to cast again. Period. I'd be okay with a sliding scale of haste being the key here. 0% haste will leave you with 3 sec cool down while capped (gear/magical/ja) haste will reduce it down to near 0.

I'd like to see more fastcast gear with haste as well as potency so mages can toss their spells faster with reduced timers. Heck, a reduction to many spell's base recast wouldn't be a bad thing. Obviously many jobs can get capped fastcast, but it isn't always easy and can be excessively hard on inventory.

Stoneskin II, phalanx III and Blink II. Make them within sub job level. Add more gear that enhances these spells and preferably make it multipurpose so it doesn't completely rape your inventory. Being a bit tougher, even if it requires some buffing can go far to make mages more useful. Perhaps a variant of manashield. I know blm has mana wall but that is more likely to suck your mp pool dry in 2 hits and then leave you with 0 mp and you'll probably still die. So that's only really a solution if they significantly change the way it works.

Add some abilities, spells, mechanics for mages so they can reduce, transfer or eliminate hate. The recent change to enmity may help some but there hasn't been a ton of testing on it so I'm not sure how good it is and you'd have to get hit, so unless they add significant amounts of gear with DT and enmity - then I don't see it being terribly useful aside from taking the occasional hit. Could make a stance of some form perhaps?

And can we please get some decent iLVL refresh/fastcast gear?

30k/min is pretty weak, that's only 500 dps. Most DD are way over 1k dps. Good luck with trying blm, should be fun at least.

I wonder if a blm set uo would work for divine might. Didn't they give AM IIs static enmity like coronach? My set up would be:

PLD PLD WHM BRD SCH WHM
BLM BLM BLM GEO COR BRD
BLM BLM BLM GEO COR BRD

GEO keeps up mab indi, and one geo does mdef- and the other does magic evasion-. Brd is double ballad + double int etudes + thernodies or enmity- song. 4 roll cor rotation = mab, macc, fast cast, and refresh. They key here would be for blms to use AM IIs which have static enmity now, and giving them enough buffs/refresh that the damage lands consistantly. Perhaps replacing a brd and cor with rngs to make constant darkness skillchains to magic burst might be something to consider. And just have the brd and cor rotate both parties.

The problem is that there is no current way to significantly buff magic damage. A single BRD can give two songs and haste which will typically increase a melee's DPS by 300%. That's before adding a COR or a third + fourth song which can further increase that DPS value. That would be the equivalent of a single job making your Stone's go from 1500 per cast to 4500 per cast. Yeah that's the kind of increase melee's get from buffs. A unsupported nuker is better damage then an unsupported melee, that is why you see hordes of nukers are WKR's. A supported melee wipes the floor with a supported nuker, that is why you see melee's in group events.

The only way to get away from that is to provide some benefit other then raw DPS, which is why I brought up the enmity argument. If nukers were able to deal damage without worrying about pulling much hate, even if it's weaker damage then buffed melee's it would still be a viable strategy.

So the new delve is going to be easier when entering with less than 18. At least SE is learning from their mistakes. Looks like melee strat for lesser NMs then and rng + pld strat for bosses.