Scythes - What Does SE Need To Do?

add a 100% char mod to guillotine and call it a fix.

Liberator not good enough?

It's hard to compete with formidable 1 hander DPS that have A+ skill with a multi-hit critical-hit weaponskill modified by dex in a time where accuracy actually matters in the game again. Did I mention critical-hit WS modified by dex?

Then there's the ****** strength job that 90% of players seemed to have resorted to in doing anyything and some how manage to feel it is worth bragging about any progress they make... Yeah I get it, you and everyone else were actually one of the very few people who loved BST way back when everyone hated it.

SE really does need to show DRK and WAR some love and fix 2 hander accuracy.

As of right now the only use for those jobs is putting bad players capitalizing on broken jobs in their place and my purpose.. novelty. Something just feels right about spamming reso as a Warrior, and I don't care if it's not the best option caussse... I'm playing WAR to begin with.

Edit: Oh I forgot to mention what was implied. To fix Scythe it needs something to compete with CDC. That's pretty tough, CDC is like the born beautiful and rich weaponskill and BLU has always been a spoiled child.

Ehh BLU is fairly balanced due to skill requirements to capitalize on it's potential. BLU, RDM and SCH are the jobs with a good skill gradient. You can hand a poor player a godly BLU with a guide and they would still suck badly. Do the same thing to a BST, SAM or MNK and they would be sufficient. WAR or DRK would be semi-sufficient.

It's one of the things I never really liked about this game, most jobs had their "good" stuff baked in. The player rarely had to learn mechanics, timings or other minutia to exploit a job, just read a guide or ask friends what gear to wear then mash the same 3 or 4 buttons. Most of the "difficulty" is knowing which gear set to use.

Give the big Scyth WS's an attack boost / ignore defense and a larger fTP . That would greatly enhance the usage of Scythe on DRK because you can then multi-step a double darkness and close with a powerful WS.

*raises hand* Question:

I've never really liked it and I've been playing it forever because of its occasional HUGE utility boosts, such as now.

Can I still complain?

DRG and DRK need the most help atm.

They need to, at minimum, make it so the same WS cannot skillchain with itself.

...no?

This has been a thing since Relic weapons were first introduced and has never been a major problem. Doing this would only hurt classic DDs more. -.-;

Lol why are people crying about BLU being too good at dd? Maybe it's just my server, but I haven't seen a shout asking for a BLU to join something that wasn't named Alluvion Yorcia for a LOOOOOONG time.

I don't think the problem is that BLU is better than the other DD jobs, but more that parties just aren't looking for DD's unless you're BST or RNG (if you consider that a problem)

BLU always been the spoiled child? Clearly you weren't here for the pre-abyssea days...

Warrior is in a worse position than either of these jobs by far.

Blu is just by far the best melee DD currently, even Sam cannot hope to compete especially in events like Sinister Reign where the accuracy requirements are literally too high for 2 handers to reach without sacrificing crucial buffs. I mean Bst is definitly the most in demand DD for current pug strategies but I see way more shouts for Blu than I do for Rng.

Yeah I have no clue what he's on about, Blu hasn't really been good before this. The skill argument is also kind of silly as once you find a list on this website of spells you need to equip you really just need to keep 2 buffs up and spam CDC to do good damage in melee events. Sure there is some niche spell swapping by event that helps but that does not make or break a DD.

Don't know what you are on about with 2-handers with acc issues in sinister reign. Aside from the obvious flash or shadows, have no issues maintaining 88%+ accuracy on sam. More than enough to let you six step or on the stun/terror ones do four step sc.

They really don't. That's not even how you skillchain right. If people want to do less damage by doing something like fudo spam they should be able to. I'm going to stick to the actual good way of dealing skillchain damage by working in tandem with the other DDs in the party.

To be fair, I can't think of any time BLU has ever been bad. It always kind of flew under the radar. It might not have always been desired, but it wasn't useless or downright laughed at like some 2handers are right now. Obviously we were never where we are right now, but we were never a joke (at least that I can remember).

As much as I love BLU, I can't really say it has a steep skill requirement. What it does require, however, is knowledge. You need to know your traits, your spells, your enemies, and what will be necessary of you in each event. But, once the fight starts, it basically boils down to a LOT of meleeing and spamming CDC. Then again, knowledge is required for any player in general to excel at the game, so it's not too much of a point. What separates the good BLUs from the great BLUs are our JTB gifts. That, combined with the strength of CDC, is what has escalated BLU so far ahead of others.

The melee DD with the highest skill requirement IMO would be DNC. Proper maintenance of buffs/debuffs and timing of abilities is crucial, whereas BLU just kind of whacks things after setting the proper spells.

Anyways, I'm sorry to derail the discussion about DRK. I don't know enough about the class to offer informed suggestions, but perhaps better stat modifiers on WS and higher fTP would be a good first step.

You just said you don't have capped accuracy...including Zanshin procs. 1 handers have very little issue having capped accuracy in that event due to DWing items that are generally augmented for DEX/Accuracy, having better gear options for accuracy, having better WSes for accuracy, and having things like JTII (40 bonus accuracy) or feint. They don't even have to worry about STP.

Weapons/JTs alone the difference between a Blu (Nibirux2) and Sam (Koga) is going to be 30 DEX and 70 Accuracy accounting for Hasso.

Which would be great if you were relying on a dd doing all the dmg and not simply sc'ing to allow for mb. I'd concede if the fights were actually longer than 5-8 minutes that break in acc would tip the scales more in a traditional melee burn though instead of looking at JA to JA.

Now imagine every other 2 hander that would have problems even reliably doing something like Torcleaver->Torcleaver or Ukkos->Ukkos. Even Non-Koga Sam I have found is just really hard to play in that event.

Personally I don't do SC+MB for that event and if I was I'd probably just use a Scholar to set up SCs. I use a melee centric setup such as Geo Brd Cor Whm Pld + whatever DD. Which even on Blu, which has good but not perfect gear by any means, I require Hunters+Madrigalx2 at the very least to cap while using Sushi and full Acc gear.

Yeah. I can tell you second-grade DDs can be problematic even with decent gear/buffs in there.

I lack much escha gear, but my corsair is otherwise pretty top-notch and I had some serious acc problems without a GEO involved in there.

Edit: Which is yet another reason I'm so *** off with SE re: NONE of the new daggers from SR are useable by corsair. SE has really been working pirates over recently, and it's bigger kick in the genitals with them constant buffing those blasted Imperial ***.

As for dark knight, one way or another, drk/war/drg need some love, and even sam could use a little these days. Two handers are gettin' the shaft. Then again, is that really unexpected? That happened when the game went easy-mode in Abyssea, too.

To an experienced player who knows game mechanics, stuff like the physical damage formula, how WS mods work, how attack works, how magic damage works, so on and so forth, the job seems fairly straight forward. To the vast majority of players who have no *** clue, it's complex as hell. Mostly it's players making really stupid mistakes about what weapons to use, what gear to use when, when to cast a spell and when not to. Again it's not hard but it does require knowledge, and in FFXI knowledge = skill. That is why you rarely see mediocre BLU's. They are either really good, or absolute trash. They either have the knowledge or don't, and most players don't. When I would talk with other experienced blue's about various traits, gear and load outs and when to use them, most non-blue's would be clueless on WTF we were on about. It's also why the jobs popular among experienced players.

Other jobs have significantly less knowledge requirements. Having the knowledge is good, it lets you push the extra 10% out of your job, it lets you build your own sets without having to go to job guide or use your friends gearswap, but it's rarely the difference between "Jesus OMG that's awesome" and "holy *** this guy sucks".

And yeah I forgot about DNC, they up there with BLU / RDM / SCH in skill requirements.

I would love for jobs like WAR / DRK / DRG to have a greater skill curve. Have more JA's that when used tactically can amplify the job. But first SE would have to remove that silly post JA 2s lockout and 3s magic lockout because those really *** stuff up.

Maybe there is a skill curve to WAR / DRK / DRG and that's just why most people think they suck. Because I'm hearing a lot of people say DRG is bad in this thread when I have seen some pretty god tier level DRGs on my server. They are few and far between for sure. Every time I see one it's like spotting a unicorn, but they do exist.

If you need a Mythic and extreme top-end gear to be even remotely competitive with a merely well-geared player of another job, the job probably needs some serious help.

Doing this as SAM WHM BRD GEO GEO BLM, sch is going to be ruled by cooldowns on strats but should be doable. Probably safer to have two at that point.

Skill in FFXI is generally "Do you know that QA/TA/DA/STP are good things, do you know what WS to use, and do you know not to cast random spells/JAs that will slow your TP gain". Sadly the large majority of players have no clue on any of these.

I believe he is trolling people.

Like I said it's mostly knowledge. For BLU it gets more complicated because not only do you have to know melee DD knowledge / experience but also magic DD and even tanking / support stuff. Then tack on when and where to use the different spell load outs, when to drop a rank of trait A in order to pickup a useful utility or defense trait B and so forth. Other DD jobs have that stuff built into the job such that handing a new player a character, gearswap file and saying "press A, B and C" and they will be semi-decent and quickly catch on.

Skill gradients are about how well does a particular job / class's performance scale with player skill vs acquired equipment. This is important because equipment can be made outdated or even given to a newb, but skill has to be earned through repetition and knowledge acquisition.

Pretty sure people know that QA/TA/DA/STP are good things. Knowing how much they do in relative to each other is what trips people up. Knowing what ws to use might be a problem, also what to wear when using that weaponskill.

Since you bring it up I play THF, and after every update I take the new gear that thf can use and I add it into my copy of Motenten's spreadsheet. That's how I get a pretty good idea of what to wear. Are there anyone who does the same for WAR and DRK? I'm honestly curious to what their average weaponskill damage is for something like tojil.

Warrior average Tojil Ukkos with capped attack and full JPs on Tojil according to my spreadsheet is around 7500 pre-Escha gear. While I would still say this is pretty low, the main problem of Warrior is the TP gain phase since uncapped haste and slower TP gain than a job like Sam.

Uhh, what? When Relic weapons were first introduced you did not have DD's that could regularly TP in 3s to spam the same WS over and over and skillchain with itself.

I'm just waking up and confused though, what classic DD's would be hurt by this?

You can complain about w.e you want, even if I say otherwise you would and should do what you want. I am pretty confident you know this lol.

Composing a party of all BSTs to ignore most of any strategy and clear content with ease is just sad. BST has it's uses it's just annoying how players typically resort to the easiest strategies in order to clear content. Another example would be PLD/RNG setups, use to be treated like the one and only way to form groups in AA VD and Marjami Delve even though(now) buried deep in in the threads of BG forums very early on, those events were cleared in different ways, even Marjami. Obviously there is countless examples.

I was talking to someone about a month ago about changes in the game and my dislike of it. They spit out outrage and how SE is trying to bring FFXI to it's former glory but yet allowing this BST nonsense(among other things) makes no sense. There is no turning back FFXI to what it was and the answer is very simple. The game changed and MMO's and what is expected are beyond FFXI's limitations. However focusing on it's novelties like gear sets, skillchains, magic bursts, making better structure in job balance and really giving us a nice plate of content before the big end is something entirely in their power and that they have not fully honored and we are now already 2/3 of their big end all.

I haven't been doing the most recent content, I do not know about these particular things. Nyruul and my alt are banned and I'm lazily raising two new characters. But I am far from surprised that BLU is standing in the lime light. BLU has always had a lot going for it, it just was not used or capitalized by the majority. BLU is a latter introduced job that fundamentally is better structured than a lot of older jobs. Same case with SCH and DNC. Just because the community didn't recognize it doesn't mean it never was, BLU is very solid and has a lot of utility going for it that can effectively cover many bases that most jobs can only focus on a few of.

This thread has been getting derailed from Scythe and DRK(and it's cousins.) However the problem isn't exactly in the lime light of the topic. Either way scythe needs WS buffs and obviously ignore defense and attack boosts will help. One thing I said DRK/scythe need in the past are strong effective pure magic DMG WS's and that would not at all be unfitting. Actual strong and accurate enfeebling effects from WSs(that would not easily get overwriten by other forms) like defense down from Scythe WSs would also be fitting and useful.

The big novelty in FFXI compared to other MMORPG's is how it more resembles classic JRPGs and the SE should have focused, emphasized, and expanded on that nature of FFXI. It is slower pace, there are a lot of statistical options, gear swapping for certain abilities/WSs/Magic. I'm not going to go into huge detail we all know.

SE really should work a lot more into stagger systems and involve global staggers that are only triggered by certain weapon/spell/ja combinations in a balanced way that incorporates all jobs to the table. Staggers that do more than disable ability or stun, doing things like enfeebling effects. Also should further extend to SC's and magic bursts. But a lot of players seem to have enough trouble comprehending SC and magic bursts . If SE never has, they really should map out and consolidate every job and it's strengths and weaknesses, how to balance it and after a strong, thorough, and tested revamp they should release some sort of charts of it for players in order to(from the very start) shine light on all the possibilities and hopefully just prevent very bias narrow minded party structuring.

But yeah this is SE and their second half *** FFXI team, they have given up with a totally BS excuse and the end is nigh, yada yada.

Almost all of them, but some more then others. When your doing a multi-part SC, the final WS is frequently used to close a double light or double dark from a previous WS that was the same WS.

Big two

WAR
Ukko's Fury -> Steel Cyclone -> Upheaval -> Ukko's Fury -> Ukko's Fury

DRK Scythe
Quietus / Cross Reaper -> Insurgency -> Entropy -> Quietus -> Quietus

Strangely enough, SAM multi-step wouldn't be effected by this.

Then all the jobs that do self Light / Dark by chaining an Emp WS to itself.

Sword
CDC -> CDC = Light

Dagger
RS -> RS = Darkness

Axe
Cloudsplitter -> Cloudsplitter = Darkness

H2H
VS -> VS = Light

And so forth.

With SC / MB's doing so much silly damage, the damage from self SCing is needed to make melee's remotely relevant.