Dev Tracker - Discussion

Changing WSD to not affect extra hits of a WS was a rather heavy handed nerf, and that was even before Nyame Path B had its glow up.

“We let the WSD get out of control, its gotten to the point that mage jobs are doing nearly capped physical ws to endgame targets, we have to rein it in”

When was this? WSD always only applied to the first hit of a weaponskill. What nerf are you talking about?

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/54458

Late 2018 it seems
Bear in mind that there was only a handful of WSD available in 2018 (af, relic, ambu cape, oseem augs)


1hitters were pulling away
WSD was bugged and the field was evened
Bug was fixed and 1hitters pulled away again
Then WSD started showing en masse and pulled away even further.

So you're calling a bug fix a nerf? WSD always worked only on the first hit of a weaponskill since the lvl 75 days. There just wasn't very much of it around back then so nobody paid it much attention. Just because a bug (that was patched out within a couple days) overwrote that doesn't mean something was nerfed.

Do you want me to go back into the archives to find the patch that added the bug where sneak attack landed when facing the enemy in front? They patched that one out within a couple days too. Does that mean sneak attack only working from the back is a nerf?

Been hearing that since forever it seems.

Before that bug there was the multi-hit WS tp return nerf though, that one was a real nerf.

Hot take:
Not all bugs are bad

And theres no reason to believe it was changed unintentionally because 1hitters were pulling away from multihit WS

If it was intentional it would have been in the patch notes. Hot take or not, bugs are unintended consequences of code behaving in ways the developers never planned for. Nerfs are intentional power reductions to mechanics the developers feel are overperforming in a specific meta. They are not the same.

You think mages and light DD jobs taking path B nyame so they can routinely hit 99999 dmg ws on endgame bosses is a good thing?

Yeah, and in the current era we play in it feels like they could undo it and we'd still prefer the same weaponskills we use now. I've complained many times that the AoE multi target reduction on elemental magic is a relic of the past and should be abolished too. If blue mage can AoE 28k hits to 15 mobs why should black mage's -ajas be shackled with 70% damage reduction per target just because they hit 15 things? I can see why that would have been necessary back at level 75, but nowadays it's pointless. But there isn't really any content where AoE magic cleaving is relevant at the moment so it's kind of moot right now.


I think the current meta is a result of the developers feeding us silly levels of power creep because they want to appease us to keep our subscriptions. Whether their decisions are good or bad wasn't the point of my post. Just making the differentiation between intentional nerf versus unintended bug.

It's fun, I don't see the issue.

What WSD gear was there at 75? idr

You're right. It was the voidwatch era where we started seeing WSD pieces first show up, but they were few and far between. A few more started trickling in come the adoulin era, but it wasn't until post adoulin when they actually started to become a bit more commonplace. But they always worked on just the first hit since their inception.

And where do you go from there? How do you keep the players invested when theyve hit the pinnacle?
How do you balance content when 25% of the playerbase is roflstomping content doing 99999 dmg on mages and the other 75% is chugging along at 25-40k ws on their heavy DD jobs?

Offer players access to the secret mithra brothels hiden in the back alleys of Windurst where nobody was previously allowed to visit. That'll keep players engaged for decades.

that kind of player is already on ffxiv or horizon

75 cap you would sell your little sister for 1 STR.

I happened to walk near the Cerberus pop area the other day, remembered the times we camped and fought there - all for a few mil in drops and the slim chance of getting an Algol to wear in town.