Update details!

[Okuza]

I don't have a problem that Genbu was Gravitied- the issue I have trouble accepting was that someone with 70 less skill than I have was able to land that spell. Against mobs of that level and defense our skill level should have an effect on the rate of success of our enfeebles- but they often don't and that is what I'd like to see adjusted even if only slightly.

I'd agree with this one -- it was one of my peeves about sub/thf's, too. Why should a sub/thf be able to steal gold coins at all, much less at a rate that is identical to what a main THF can do? Some subjob abilities seem to get their "effectiveness level" from the main job's level and not the sub's. Doesn't seem right.

What did they supposedly do to MNK?

It wasn't just MNK -- they nerfed all 1H weapons. What they did was greatly lower the cap for damage via a 1H weapon. It's instantly obvious when you fight weaker critters, less obvious versus IT and HNM. Basically, on weaker things, your gear literally has ZERO effect at all on your damage. You can be totally naked execpt for weapons and all your weapons will hit the damage cap. On IT/HNM, you'll probably need to be eating meet and may need minuet to see it.

It's a pretty damn serious nerf -- about 18% lower damage. It makes all the work people have done for nice gear totally pointless.

[Eviticus]

Pardon me, but this is simply what I heard. I'm no big expert, but I have heard alot of thing.

There is a factor in the damage formula called pDif, or something. Essentially, it multiplies your damage by a certain number. And this number is arrived at by calculating the ratio of your atk to the mob's def. High atk, low def, high constant damage numbers. High atk, high def, medium varying damage numbers. Low atk, high def, very low wildly varying numbers. We've all seen this before. I once heard that if your damage is consistent, you need to raise your str. And if it's inconsistent, you need to raise your Atk.

Now, I heard from a friend who's insane about min/maxing her stats and doing the best possible damage she can that this value that multiplies your damage was capped at 2.0 with a variable of +/- .4. Thats why even on ronfaure bunnies your damage would be close to consistant, but never the exact same value. There was a random multiplier in there.

SE in their patch took out that multiplier, and the cap is a flat 2.0. Sure, you can't hit 2.4 on that multiplier, but it also won't dick you over and drag you down to 1.6.

2.0 +/- .4 still averages out to 2.0, which is what the cap is at now. All they did was take away a little variable, and people call that a nerf? No one even regularly hits the damage cap on exp/merit mobs anyways. If you see a Monk punch something for the -exact- same number 20 times in a row on an exp mob, then yes, that's a nerf.

But who gives a flying f*ck about damage on giddeus bees or ronfaure bunnies? This is the Monks and other 1-handers complaining just to complain. Or because they simply do not know what this change actually did, and are just jumping on the band wagon.

[Sugami]

Leave the mnks alone!

Even though it happened without any wording and they are whining quite a lot about it actually.
They did not deserve this.

Like hell they didn't! Years of elite snobbery and trolling through other people's forums just to slap their epeens in their face has come 180 and bit them on the ass.

I'll repeat it again:

lolMNK

Cruel irony or poetic justice? You decide.

I did see it in the DRG forums, about the damage doodars not being implimented properly but I can't find that on POL... *sigh* The damage is spot on, the accuracy thing was a little OTT and SAM WS is way too high, really don't know why they buffed up the most powerful WSs in the game in the first place and didn't touch the weakest ones (Full Break, Impulse Drive).

[Leane]

I did see it in the DRG forums, about the damage doodars not being implimented properly but I can't find that on POL... *sigh* The damage is spot on, the accuracy thing was a little OTT and SAM WS is way too high, really don't know why they buffed up the most powerful WSs in the game in the first place and didn't touch the weakest ones (Full Break, Impulse Drive).

Aug. 30, 2007 08:00 [PDT] From: FINAL FANTASY XI
Current Known Issues (Aug. 30)

Since the implementation of the latest version update on Aug. 27, 2007, we have confirmed the following issues. Investigation and recovery work is currently underway.

- Amount of damage is not corrected properly when characters are equipped with two-handed weapons.

- TP of Beastmaster's pet continues to decrease while its not engaged in battle.

- Automaton's status is lower than it is supposed to be.

- Under certain combinations of Head and Frame, Automaton will try to cast spells continuously.

[Shirai]

Like hell they didn't! Years of elite snobbery and trolling through other people's forums just to slap their epeens in their face has come 180 and bit them on the ass.

The snobbery actually came from the huge lack of invites on MNKs pre-Aht uhrgan.
Most exp party never wanted mnks and Manaburn was also on the rise.
Those manaburn parties came when a lot of people jumped on the BLM bandwagon to get into an HNM/Endgame LS so there were more blms then parties needing them.
Manaburn proved that there could be good exp made without having a main tank in a party as long as you could keep taking damage to a minimum.
People also discovered that bones in KRT took extra damage from blunt/h2h damage and they invented the mnk burns in King ranperre's tomb to counter their extreme lack of invites.
People seeing how much and how fast exp could be made from that they all jumped on the MNK bandwagon.
Other people saw what kind of exp could be made of that and started to experiment themselves with similar burn parties with monks going krt only and blms going manaburn only.
And don't get me started about Ammoburns with rangers and sam/rng.
At one point these were the most powerful jobs in game.
(Sam still is imho.)
Only a short while later the dual wield burns started and the traditional Renkei -> Magic Burst parties became obsolete.
A whole lot of jobs got excluded because of this.
And with the TP burn hype MNK (also WAR, SAM, Dual Wield DRKs, and NIN) became very popular jobs in exp.
This is where we are now.

Now the 2 handed weapons are getting a workout (Long overdue I must add.)
SE however made the mistake of boosting 2 handed jobs a whee bit too much changing the game mechanics a bit too drasticly.
We've had a lot of different types of party systems in this game, we've all called a lot of jobs snobby and overpowered at some point.
SE has always tried to change those things to balance it out with other melee jobs by either boosting some abilities or nerving other.
They are going to fix this hopefully on a positive situation for all jobs.
But that's a tough job to do!

[Okuza]

The 2H-weapons definitely needed a fix, but they didn't need what they got. The reason that 2H weapons "sucked" prior to the patch was that attributes (str, dex, acc, atk) had TOO MUCH of an effect on the damage you did with a melee weapon. In general, the lower your delay on your weapons and the faster you hit, the more your overall damage-per-second went up.

The fix they put in was just DUMB. They went and made attributes have even more of an effect on 2H-weapons. They should have given the weapon's base damage more weight instead instead of screwing around with attribute effects. Attributes are so important for 2H weapons now, that I wonder just how much difference there really is between a "nice" 2H'er and a "cheap" one.

The really insane part of the "2H fix" was that they made 1 DEX = 1 ACC for 2H-weapons. That right there is just outrageous. It means you basically don't need +acc gear any more at all while using a 2H-weapon. It's like acc+40 for free at 75 -- having the effects of a sushi active when no food has been eaten.

I have a strong suspicion that the dex/acc change for 2H won't be removed. I doubt most people are complaining about it. I think all but a few are just whining about how the DD-pecking order got flipped upside down. That's a trivial aspect of the change compared to what will happen if the dex=acc for 2H is left in the game.

[Sugami]

Well it wasn't on the Euro POL site at least

According to a JP translated doodars it seems the way the top end damage is calculated is wrong, which is why critical hits are pretty identical to regular hits if you throw enough Attack into the mix and a SAM's WS isn't any better with SA.

They didn't say anything about accuracy so the DEX == Acc is probably here to stay.

Quite frankly, I don't care where the snobbery stems from. They acted like elite asshats and now it has turned around and kicked them in the nuts, kudos.
It is very well deserved, maybe next time they'll think twice about acting like a complete douche.

All those elitest WARs are just lucky they have Great Axe now. The elitest asshats probably never leveled it so bet they're having fun leveling it now.

For the record Dual Wielding DRKs was retarded and now obviously even more retarded. A B- or C+ skill isn't gonig to hold a candle to an A+. In fact I laugh at all those WAR-wannabe DRKs putting merits into Axe, now it's completely useless. Good job!

Still haven't a clue why they buffed the most powerful WS in the game, that really needs to be addressed.

[Alya Mizar (Tsybil)]

A report from the field:

My melee kitty is SAM 75. She and another SAM were compairing notes in Dynamis. He is well merited, she barely is. Yes they were both using the Axe Grip. (Is there any other one for SAM?)

At the high end he was doing 60%+ more WS damage, she was doing maybe 40% more. While he has better WS gear, it isn't all that much better. Conclusion? Must merit her more very soon.

They not only made the top three SAM WSs more powerful, they nerfed them at the same time. They used to have elemental attribuites, now they do elemental damage. And WSs with elemental damage do not stack with SA. If you need to dump all that hate on someone, well is is not going to be while using the SAM's three most damaging WSs.

[Kintrra]

A report from the field:

My melee kitty is SAM 75. She and another SAM were compairing notes in Dynamis. He is well merited, she barely is. Yes they were both using the Axe Grip. (Is there any other one for SAM?)

At the high end he was doing 60%+ more WS damage, she was doing maybe 40% more. While he has better WS gear, it isn't all that much better. Conclusion? Must merit her more very soon.

They not only made the top three SAM WSs more powerful, they nerfed them at the same time. They used to have elemental attribuites, now they do elemental damage. And WSs with elemental damage do not stack with SA. If you need to dump all that hate on someone, well is is not going to be while using the SAM's three most damaging WSs.

Um...I believe Trick Attack still works, even if Sneak Attack does not. ^^;;

[Sugami]

Yup it does.

Oh I guess that's why they buffed them then. It actually kinda makes it easier for them to close SC now, doesn't matter what way the mob is facing they can still plant hate on the tank.

lolMNK

[Alya Mizar (Tsybil)]

But SAMs always could seperate TA and SA.

The game was line up, meditate, TA WS, run behind, SA WS, or the other way around. WITH AF helm and AFv2 hands you get 140TP minimum for Meditate.

The SA first gave you hate to plant on the tank.

But with the new changes, I guess SAMs don't need to gain hate.

[ScarlettPheonix]

Never really did....

SAM/wars (and DRK/wars) have always been hate-stealers and MP sinks especially if they were getting Hasted in exp.

[Alya Mizar (Tsybil)]

SAM/wars (and DRK/wars) have always been hate-stealers and MP sinks especially if they were getting Hasted in exp.

Sneaky ways mages can slow parties down:

#1 Haste the MNK, SAM, or DRK.

I flat refused to Haste anyone but the Tank in EXP parties.

My melee kitty always said "No Haste please" in EXP parties and would cancel it if Hasted.

[ScarlettPheonix]

I'm the same way. I've had more than one pissed off party member because I refused to haste him because he was becoming an mp sink.

Tanks and DDs who needed it to be part of a SC or who shed it some way (DRG and THF especially) I would try to keep hasted, but the days of having to worry about SCs are long gone now /sigh

Same goes for BLMs- if they were taking way way too much hate or deliberately overwriting Dia to skill up Dark with Bio, they got to deal without Refresh. I'm so mean sometimes hehe

[Keavy]

I'm the same way. I've had more than one pissed off party member because I refused to haste him because he was becoming an mp sink.

Tanks and DDs who needed it to be part of a SC or who shed it some way (DRG and THF especially) I would try to keep hasted, but the days of having to worry about SCs are long gone now /sigh

Same goes for BLMs- if they were taking way way too much hate or deliberately overwriting Dia to skill up Dark with Bio, they got to deal without Refresh. I'm so mean sometimes hehe

Dear BLM using Bio for Dark skillups,

Drain says hello.

[Shirai]

There are a few jobs and job combos I flatly refuse to haste.
RNG for example has no benefit at all from haste.
If a MNK aint subbing nin he can cry all he want but he won't get haste from me.
SAM make TP fast enough by themselves without haste from us.
Usually I haste every other melee I can in exp, but when he/she becomes a Manasponge I stop hasting them.

[Sugami]

I get the occasional Haste on my COR and I tell them it's wasted on me the only thing it really helps is my Utsusemi timer when pulling and I can usually blink tank until my Sleep/Light Shot is ready okay without it