[Abeox]

With the new lvl cap of 99 to be implimented in June, I did a bit of thinking with regards to the implications towards Job dynamics.
I'm sure we've all had a role to play in the "what if" conversations that have taken place in LS chats when we're bored. It seems that many of those worthless "what if" conversations might actually have some value now.

Talk about the new possibilities for MNK with the new lvl cap.
What does MNK already have going for it as a role in FFXI and how will the lvl cap inrease further enhance this.
What are likely to be the new most beneficial subs for MNK?
What can we expect in terms of solo or low man situations with regards to MNK and the role it will play in the new 99 world?


As OP of this topic, I'm going to take the cheap shot and point at MNK99/RDM49
MNK's natural survivablity, ability to dish out dmg regardless of sub, paired with the spells and abilities of RDM49 might make MNK a one man army in pretty much any situation bar tanking tiamat, Jourm and Vrtra.
MNK is already more than capable of tanking and dishing out dmg to Cerb, Khim, Nid,Aspid and I have even seen a MNK tank Dark Ixion for more than 20 minutes when needed. It wasn't pretty, but he saved us from a steal/wipe.

I can think of:

1. Loss of /nin means loss of shadows. But MNK already has above decent DMG mitigation in gear and abilities. Dodge will scale up. As will counterstance. Attributes such as MND and VIT will also scale up.
A bit of creativity in gear swaps (take your MNK seriously) will help with managing the loss of Ichi and Ni.
*I'm sure Pathwriter would appreciate an actual number right now with regards different races as LVL99 MNKs with different SJ's. I'll leave that to the pathwriters, Details vex me*
2.How more potent will Stoneskin/Phalanx be? As a person who often messes around with Nidhogg and Faf by showing up as PLD/RDM, I can say that blood tanking isn't such a big deal in most situations. The only HNM I actually get raped by is Tiamat on the ground, and there are some PLDs that are capable of blood tanking even that, and many Amano SAMS that find it a laughable experience.
3. Hate - lots of it. MNK would have access to all the important hate generating spells
4. More importantly - Decent MP and MP perpetuation with self casted refresh and access to convert (remember we're talking about solo-low man situations)
5. HP Increase - I can see Galka MNKs hitting the 4.5k mark (remember MNK af2 is % based, not fixed value)
6. Another Martial Arts and Counter trait?

Feel free to post any other sub combos you can think of, and their benefits, or to further enhance or tear apart my expectations on MNK/RDM, or MNK all together.

[Sakka_Valefor]

MNK/pup.

ohwai-

[pathwriter]

Point by point:

1.) Where does it say that JAs are going to scale with level? Barring the addition of augments from gear (e.g., Temple Gaiters and Melee Gaiters), the JA you get the moment you learn it is the one you have forever. Dodge is 20 Evasion at 15 and 75 unless you throw on your Temple Gaiters. The scaling of defensive stats is largely irrelevant as monsters are not going to remain statically in the 75-80 level range while players outpace them.

2.) The reason that Paladin/Red Mage works is a combination of high Defense (yes, it actually matters), a shield, and native Enhancing skill. Even accounting for capping Stoneskin via MND rather than Enhancing Magic Skill, we're talking about having the defensive capabilities of a level 48 Red Mage at best while you go toe-to-toe with a face-eating monster. Counter and Evasion help a little bit, but Monks wear heavy cloth armor and simply cannot match the mitigation of a shield and over 100 points of Enhancing Magic skill.

3.) Monk needs enmity-generating spells about as badly as Hell needs lighter fluid. Monks are enmity machines, the only meaningful thing they lack is a solid snap-hate tool like Provoke, Flash, or Stun.

4.) MP is a joke. We're talking about a non-MP job getting its MP exclusively from its support job. At present, the only way I can even cast Reraise as 75 Monk/White Mage is to have merits and/or equip MP gear. I think Tarutaru might just barely be able to do it. 11 more levels of support job means that at 99, I might finally no longer need merits or MP equipment to cast a simple 150 MP spell. Self-cast Refresh is a mocker, it wouldn't be doing much anything for you. And as for Convert? Don't be absurd. You do know how Convert works, right? You have 2500 HP and 200 MP, your MP is down to 13 and you hit Convert, then you die instantly because there's no practical way you're going to live with 13/2500 HP. And that's 2300 MP you'll never get to use because your MP pool is a joke.

5.) Numbers could be anything. SE is doing something unprecedented (and fucking stupid) with all this garbage. There's no guarantee that the scaling will remain the same. Reference how scaling changes with each new expansion Blizzard releases for World of Warcraft (it's an exponential growth curve). SE might stick with the same curve that they currently use, but trying to predict what they'll do is irrelevant. For all we know, they may lock stats at level 75 value and the next 24 levels happen in name only, which would be fitting with their "Punish the player" design philosophy.

6.) Sure, why not. Hopefully a unicorn and two balloons, too.



Let us pretend that SE intentionally kills blink-tanking. Without that, the best defensive options for Monk are Dancer, Paladin, Warrior, and Dark Knight, in roughly that order. Dancer is already almost on par with Ninja except in situations of extremely high incoming damage. The remaining three are pathetic shadows. Paladin would actually be a brilliant sub were it not so dependent on being able to equip a shield. I've used it to good effect as a sub for Bard and White Mage, two jobs that can use a rather decent shield and the latter even has respectable skill in it.

This is all assuming that something fundamental is not changed in these nonsensical additions, but it's entirely possible that SE completely rewrites the slate and Monk gets turned into, say, a White Monk as from some of the Tactics games and recovers some of its healer abilities. If I expect to see anything become seriously viable, it'd be something like Monk/Scholar, which is already surprisingly workable. With Accession, it'd give you a rather strong defensive healer/supporter like what Summoner is now only with the ability to take a hit. You'd have less of a working MP pool, but Sublimation does sick things and a Monk is rarely in danger of killing himself by having a 2 HP/tick DOT active.

In the long run, though, it's all wank. Until we see what becomes available and, far more importantly, see if the players will tolerate this, we may as well be speculating about what plants on other planets taste like. I'm expecting the game to shrink dramatically if SE doesn't handle this idiocy well because the changes they're proposing not only overturn almost a decade of design philosophy but they come at a time when player interest is at an all-time low, player patience is worn to tissue thinness, and when most sane people are really not in the mood to go back to square one. Level all our 75 jobs up to 99, level up any support jobs that we need, and then fight through another instanced battlefield for years to collect AF3 and relic weapons and god only knows what else? You may as well start a new game fresh than accept that slap to the face. As for me, how SE handles this nonsense will directly inform whether I even glance at FFXIV.

[Appie]

Tbh Path, point 6 I could actually see happening. Considering it would be dumb to have mages with their lv75 clear mind at lv99, I would expect more job trait boosts between lv75 and 99. Another Kick Attacks and Martial Arts would fit into that aswell. Counter I don't know, that shit hasn't gone up since lv10? XD

[Cream Soda]

Yay for everyone who got divisor ring drops instead of me

[Appie]

^As divisor ring owner, am I being wooshed? I don't get it. Was it sarcasm? XD

[Cream Soda]

lv 99, ect. Shit will be worthless.

[Terrous]

I think your last statement is right on path. If people have the choice for starting over or choosing another game, they are choosing another game. I think even SE knows this, why else would they all of a sudden merge servers, servers pops have been down for a while now and then when they announce that they are blowing the game up, they also announce the reduction in servers. If they actually thought changing the game would bring old players back to lvl their 75s to 99, why reduce the servers before it happens, they could have waited until after the cap is 99.

The only way i see them being able to save all the work they have done to balance the jobs, and all the time and work people have put into creating their 75's, would be caping all the old areas at lvl75. Leaving the new 1 party dynamis run world the only place where being lvl99 would matter.
But who in the right mind is going to even bother leveling from 75 to 99 for new abilities or gear that is only use able in one area.

Anyways this is SE's way of saying we give up, this is the end, here go blow shit up while we test FFIV.

I just wish if they were going to end it they would of said here the game is done at this date, you can buy this poseable figure of your character, thanks for your time.

This post has been edited by Terrous: 01 March 2010 - 11:10 AM

[Katchoo]

Quote

The only way i see them being able to save all the work they have done to balance the jobs, and all the time and work people have put into creating their 75's, would be caping all the old areas at lvl75.

Exactly! I would put good money on all old areas being 75 Cap.

Overpowered jobs? Na, the reason is we are going to have to fight even HARDER mobs and we are gonna need the extra JA etc. Too many people spazzing out on how broken everything is.

[Appie]

Cream Soda, on 01 March 2010 - 10:25 AM, said:

lv 99, ect. Shit will be worthless.

Ah then you did say what I thought you did. Ya, but then again Toreador/Mars/Rajas might become useless too. Unless SE wants to to take all that shit into Trial of Magians...

[pathwriter]

Appie, I wonder if you are not understanding? Divisor Ring only activates when your level is a multiple of 5.

And I wasn't strictly disagreeing that new JTs and JAs are likely. I mean, that's pretty much the only thing I consider to be likely.

[Terrous]

So now that pup can break the 300 H2H barrier at 75,
269 + 16(merits) + 7 (faith) + 10 (fay weapon).
This will increase their base damage.
Is that correct?

[Appie]

pathwriter, on 01 March 2010 - 12:54 PM, said:

Appie, I wonder if you are not understanding? Divisor Ring only activates when your level is a multiple of 5.

I know how the fucking thing works, I had one for decades lol. I did not understand Cream Soda's sentence, that's all.

[Alisha]

Terrous, on 01 March 2010 - 01:40 PM, said:

So now that pup can break the 300 H2H barrier at 75,
269 + 16(merits) + 7 (faith) + 10 (fay weapon).
This will increase their base damage.
Is that correct?

i think the hth formula for damage is roughly skill * 0.11+3

frankly i'd be curious about the possibility of having triple attack as mnk/thf also the higher level cap would make aggressor available. mnk/dnc would open up haste samba,violent flourish,and reverse flourush.

This post has been edited by Alisha: 01 March 2010 - 04:50 PM

[Terrous]

Alisha, on 01 March 2010 - 04:42 PM, said:

i think the hth formula for damage is roughly skill * 0.11+3

I thought there was some increase to base dmg or is it the pdif or something when the skill broke 300. Not sure what it was as I have never really gotten into the number crunching of it all. So was just wondering what the barrier at 300 hundred effected and what kind of impact that will have on their dmg. If it is just straight skill*0.11+3 then it isn't as big of a deal as I was lead to believe.

This post has been edited by Terrous: 01 March 2010 - 04:50 PM

[Abeox]

I'm pretty sure there are going to be new areas where lvl 75 is going to be too gimp to be effective. However, with regards to older areas and HNMs, such RoZ and the 3 kings, if SE do not introduce a lvl cap within the areas, we're going to see 2-3 man Nids and Tiamats.
I'd agree with everyone that this is indeed the true start of the end of FFXI. That goes without saying. However, I think FFXI is actually going to be a lot of fun now. There's never been an update like this. I am really looking forward to attempting a 2-3 man tiamat, or solo attempts at faf and Cerb. That is of course, if these areas do not become lvl75 capped.

If in the case that they do cap all old areas at 75, I can see this totally failing. Like someone already posted; who's going to spend god knows how many weeks getting to lvl 99 and re-exploring sub job dynamics just for one new instanced area? Not I. In the case that it turns out that way, I will just wait for 14.

[TresDuendes]

triple attack is 55

[Alisha]

TresDuendes, on 01 March 2010 - 05:24 PM, said:

triple attack is 55

my bad for some reason i thought it was 45.

[GotMilk?]

Terrous, on 01 March 2010 - 01:40 PM, said:

So now that pup can break the 300 H2H barrier at 75,
269 + 16(merits) + 7 (faith) + 10 (fay weapon).
This will increase their base damage.
Is that correct?

This may be true, but they still won't parse compared to other jobs with full equip.

Also seeing as how their martial arts trait caps at 3 + the equipment that enhances it makes it 4. and monks can go up to 6 with a delay of 300, im hoping because they are going to up pups dmg they will also lower mnks delay to at least 280. ( i know this sounds rediculous with mnks already fast attack rate and high dmg rating) but it wouldn't break the game.


In any case I think people are worrying too much, you guys have been playing a game for anywhere from 1~7 years, figured everything out about it and thought you knew everything there was to know, but now SE is throwing a thorn in our sides and saying hey guess what? everything you thought you knew, you don't. welcome back to valkurm dunes you subjobless level 10 warrior who doesn't know how to throw his party flag up.

and tbh im fucking psyched, this game was getting boring because i was running out of new things to do or old things to master!
im ready for this change and ready to see how this game was originally meant to turn out. ready to experience the final fantasy of 11.

[Terrous]

What is there new to do though? Go solo everything? What made FFXi unique was the group cooperation to get anything done. If they don't introduce lvl caps on the old stuff, how long will trying to solo everything last, Or lets go duo the Warden, Sorry did that yesterday.

It makes everything that was accomplished before had meaningless. And yes it is just a game and meaningless anyways, but look how much time people wasted on the game to have it turned upside down.
Look how much time SE put into the game to balance the jobs, and now, all of a sudden lets just screw all that, Pup is the new god because we like jester outfits, until November and then every body is a god, doesn't matter what job you are, you will be able to do the same thing if you sub the right job.
I guess in a way that is balance, there is no uniqueness to jobs anymore, but everybody will be able to do anything.

All it is going to do is create the mass exodus of all the loyalist who are still playing the game because they can't give it up.

Whatever I guess, I'm just going to keep doing what I have been and try and enjoy the time that is left.

At least we know when the end is now, might have to create a bucket list of the things I want to do before November.

This post has been edited by Terrous: 01 March 2010 - 05:43 PM