[Auraeon]

VE only has one hate-making JA, and it is weaker than the real version (Provoke). It wont ever be a real tank, but it would be nice if it could at least survive more than few slaps by a relatively worthy enemy.

[Chocoburger]

I am speechless, literally fucking speechless that S-E actually did something for our job, but now this whole second world and level cap things. MY GOD! All I wanted was Activate to be at 5 minutes (or 10 I suppose), but I'll take an A skill with my 8 H2H merits, I'll be kicking some major ass.

[Auraeon]

My thoughts exactly. PUP was already great in merit parties. I can only imagine it after the update.

[Cruxus]

This stacked on the already insanely awesome fact that they raising the level limit and adding AF3 is great, maybe now pup will be considered for more shit in end game situations.

[Kintups]

pup/mnk ftw! i dunno chi blasting pup just looked badass

[ZahlSechs]

I thought the A H2H upgrade was coming in march, while the level 99 is something we won't see for a long time.
I'm betting it will be an A- (269), which is still pretty awesome. I'm more looking forward the Automaton tweaks, and I'm hoping they won't gimp Stringing Pummel now that they're rasing the skill.

[Auraeon]

Well, considering our H2H skill is already C (not C- or C+), I could see it being bumped up to a random A (not A- or A+). Otherwise it will be A- of course. SE wouldn't put our skill at the same level as MNK's A+.

And yeah, skill bump comes on March 11th. The first level cap increase is in June. The second one is in September, and the final one for level 99 cap is in December. That is what their chart says.

It'll be nice being able to play around with A skill on PUP at 75 in Greater Colibri camps before they bump the level cap up and make bird camps obsolete.

[Evenal]

*dies*

[Aleera]

Evenal, on 28 February 2010 - 11:51 PM, said:

*dies*

Pretty much every PUPs reaction.

[Sorai]

Well pup will officially be the job everyone will have at 75 now, I kinda liked pup for the fact not many played it, and it felt like an exclusive job.
Now be prepared to see gimp pups everywhere who care less about good gear/skill because they have A rating h2h, woooo.
Happy about this update, but I kinda liked pups getting creative in order to out DD jobs on big mobs/small mobs.

[Chocoburger]

Still would have preferred an Activate fix along the lines of something like:
(*Note: the following is assuming your Activate timer is not ready.)
If you deactivate when pet is not at 100% HP then you suffer a 1 minute penalty and can't re-activate until that 1 minute timer is over, and once you do, pet is brought back in exact same state as when you had deactivated, with bio, with low MP, low HP, or whatever it may be.

I guess this is S-E's way of saying, if you screw yourself when ADD-ing, you're not completely worthless anymore! Now I wonder what they are going to do to Harly, maybe let it attack twice per round, and it would do some nice damage on blunt-weak mobs.

[ZahlSechs]

Auraeon, on 28 February 2010 - 06:26 PM, said:

Well, considering our H2H skill is already C (not C- or C+), I could see it being bumped up to a random A (not A- or A+). Otherwise it will be A- of course. SE wouldn't put our skill at the same level as MNK's A+.

SE wouldn't even put us over other jobs who have A- as their main skill (BST, NIN, a few others). So, unless SE decided to update all of those jobs (even DNC doesn't have a lot of skill, C+ or B-? But they get +30ish Accuracy from traits I think) I doubt this will happen for PUP, and I also doubt SE would create an "A rank" just for us.
Must more likely be they'll just use what we've always called A-, which corresponds to 269 skill, which still seems like a dream if you ask me.

I wonder if they'll upgrade Automaton skills as well though. I don't remember the caps but I think, w/o merits, Valoredge's melee caps at 276? (A+) and Sharpshoot's ranged caps at... I forgot what, less than 276? Don't see them updating these skills, but it would be good if they did, especially for sharpshoot.
Now it's true you can merit skill in group 1, and you can merit accuracy in group 2, but that A+ is still waaaaaay less than the A+ of a job. Because:
1) They don't get 2H DEX:ACC ratio
2) They don't get +acc gear
3) They don't get +acc food
4) They don't get +acc rolls/songs (well, not like we get hunter's or madrigal either on top XP pts xD)

Sure they get the powerful Target marker and other +acc attachments, but they're not really the same thing of the above stuff I mentioned, and they're maneuvers dependant. Seeing I'd say... not much, 4 skill smore? Would make me happy. But hey! Guess this is not time to complain or to ask for things that aren't coming.
One thing they COULD do instead is releasing new ways to acquire the ashu talif attachments. They are expensive and they are pretty rare nowadays, they should really think about letting us get them in some other way.

Quote

The first level cap increase is in June. The second one is in September, and the final one for level 99 cap is in December. That is what their chart says.

The charter says first, second and third, not first second and last. Subtle difference you may say, but I say it's not that subtle.
It's because I'm betting they will release caps in tiers of 5.
So June will be 80, september will be 85, december will be 90, then 95 and then 99? Hmm, we'll see.
Anyway don't rely too much on that charter, we all remember the ToAU charter and some things got delayed more than 1 year over the timeline, while a couple completely disappeared.
And back then they had even more people than now working on the game.

Quote

It'll be nice being able to play around with A skill on PUP at 75 in Greater Colibri camps before they bump the level cap up and make bird camps obsolete.

Since they are not releasing new areas (well they are releasing some, just not a whole new pack of areas as it happened for major expansions) I'm betting that some of the mobs in old areas will get a level up, to make so they're useable as XP camps.
This won't of course happen for all areas, but I'm sure it will for a bunch. Who knows? Colibri camp might be one of those
As much as, honestly, I'm pretty sick of XPing at colibris :3

This post has been edited by ZahlSechs: 01 March 2010 - 02:07 AM

[spira]

lol what school do you guys go to?

just curious because don't most schools go by the standard 4 point scale where A is the cap and an A+ is essentially the same as an A?

ok.. that aside, you guys know FFXI only has 2 rank distinctions within the A tier right? A (or we can call it A+) and A-. so in other words, you're either getting 269 or 276. and since they said A instead of A-, we can probably just assume it to be a pure A (276) for now.

[ZahlSechs]

spira, on 01 March 2010 - 02:37 AM, said:

lol what school do you guys go to?

just curious because don't most schools go by the standard 4 point scale where A is the cap and an A+ is essentially the same as an A?

We used to have numeric values (from 1 to 10) at schools in my country. As for university we have grades from 1 to 30, where 18 is the minimum to be able to pass that exam and 30 cum laude is the same as 30 but... with a laude lol

Quote

ok.. that aside, you guys know FFXI only has 2 rank distinctions within the A tier right? A (or we can call it A+) and A-. so in other words, you're either getting 269 or 276. and since they said A instead of A-, we can probably just assume it to be a pure A (276) for now.

I always thought the categorization of +, -, ++ etc etc was all generated by players, not by SE themselves. They used a generic A, which doesn't help us to understand if it will be 269 or 276. In all honesty I doubt it will be 276 and I'm leaning for 269 because:
1) 276 would mean giving PUP the same skill as a MNK. Do you guys honestly see this happen?
2) 276 would mean giving PUP more skill in their main weapon than NIN or BST with theirs, some other jobs too if I recall (RNG with Archery/Markmanship I think, they cap at 269 too). Do you guys see this happen?

And it's not like we should complain, 269 is more fitting than 276 for a PUP, and it's still waaaay beyond my besterest expectations, so no way I'll complain As much as honestly I would have liked some other fix, like some solutions for Activate (without bringing ADD back again), or some fixes for the AI (for example splitting cooldowns in 2, like they did for blood pacts, with buffing/debuffing and damage/healing spells) and a cool idea would have been to have new heads (bodies?) for Sharpshoot and Valoredge. But they're enhancing the current frames, so we're probably getting that anyway.
I also hope they really will give us new ways to get The Ashu Talif attachments. Hardly anybody farms that BC anymore on several servers, and seeing how most of those attachments are a must, it's a shame that not all PUPs have them.



Edit:
Despite me being horny at this A skill tweak, I don't see how this alone can give PUPs a spot in end-game content. So let's cross our fingers for some cool stuff on automatons

[ryolen]

I think there's so much to do in endgame now that its hard to say a job doesn't really have a place. Even DNC rocks inna small salvage group. But yea pup has a lot to offer its just nothing that's really needed like pld or whm.

But yea now that we gettin this massive skill boost, will our top weapons list change some? Like now we wil have enough attack to use Gem sainti over wahgs mabe.

[ZahlSechs]

Even with the huge attack boost we're getting, it's not like gettin more would hurt. So I still think Wagh > Gem (coming from a Gem user )
Can't find a situation where Gem is better than Wagh, except for when u can't spam WS (Amnesia or other reasons).
Hades+1 > Gem anyway As much as I'm a bit concerned about the +9 enmity which, paired with +5 enmity from usu and +4 from merits, could bring up some unwanted situations. Sure we can swap hate with pet but there's a cooldown, and we might not want to do it when we have 18 mins left on Activation Timer D:

[Homunculus]

This vana fest has been like a fresh wind on my mind...gtfo aion and clones of clones, i'm coming back vana !

[Requim]

As far as "A" skill remember it's being translated from Japanese. I'm leaning towards A- and that it will be a ~25 difference from A+ at 99. Granted, even an A- is a huge leap from C so sweet for us regardless.

We can assume at least 269 skill, which is still going to be another 4-5 base damage, 44atk, and ~40acc, which bare minimum should be an increase of 25% from us alone.

As far as puppets (pre-lvl cap increase) it sounded like they were just increasing survivability as opposed to any damage increase, but dead puppets didn't add DD!

Definitely curious about their last attempt at augmenting gear and what options will be available and how large of bonuses, and whether or not haste will be available on gear. New 75+ gear with haste could definitely completely rework all the previous standards. PLUS! If the socketing system doesn't fail we might be able to double dip all our slots for pet stats, helping us close the gap.

I highly doubt PUP will become a bandwagon job since two handers deal a ton of damage far more mindlessly. We definitely could eclipse monks, but having less haste, less MA traits, and having to reapply maneuvers definitely makes us slower.

Either way it's refreshing to think of a 99 PUP being able to run around everywhere in game and solo things without any difficulty. Also curious about how the puppets will scale since they already destroy anything lower level than them.

Three ice maker mana channeler with fully socketed MAB gear while casting AM2 (or tier V? w/e) also sounds like total win.

[Auraeon]

Meh, I've suddenly lost almost all interest in the game again. Not going to waste more of my life getting all of my 75 jobs to 99, and getting the new "best armor" for said jobs, for level 99 instead of 75.

The only thing kind of making me want to keep playing is the PUP skill bump, but even then I know for a fact I'd get bored shortly after messing around with it, and that just makes it all pointless to me.

The game isn't fun anymore, especially now that level caps are eventually being increased to 99. It feels like a real job at this point. So I say, oh well. I'm officially done wasting my time with FFXI.

Bring on FFXIV? >_<;

[Saniiro]

Auraeon, on 01 March 2010 - 02:12 PM, said:

Meh, I've suddenly lost almost all interest in the game again. Not going to waste more of my life getting all of my 75 jobs to 99, and getting the new "best armor" for said jobs, for level 99 instead of 75.

The only thing kind of making me want to keep playing is the PUP skill bump, but even then I know for a fact I'd get bored shortly after messing around with it, and that just makes it all pointless to me.

The game isn't fun anymore, especially now that level caps are eventually being increased to 99. It feels like a real job at this point. So I say, oh well. I'm officially done wasting my time with FFXI.

Bring on FFXIV? >_<;

Welcome to the World of MMO's. Please check your bags at the door, we'll send someone to escort you to your room.

But seriously, it's like this with every MMO. I hated the end of RO, it felt like crap, but in the end the addition of new stuff and the raising of bars to allow more content and to pull people back in is just the way it works. This will be just enough stuff to tide me over until FFXIV comes out, methinks.