The Embrava and Perfect Defense AdjustmentsFollow

Job Ability Adjustments: Tabula Rasa & Perfect Defense

Hello!

Prior to reducing the recast time of the existing SP abilities and introducing new SP abilities, we believe that we must revise the effects of Tabula Rasa and Perfect Defense. The adjustment is planned to be introduced in this week's test server update, but we want to convey the changes ahead of that so that we can begin gathering your feedback.

Perfect Defense

**Duration: The duration will be reduced from 90 seconds to 30 seconds +1 second for each 20 summoning magic skill. For example, at 600 summoning magic skill, the duration would be 60 seconds (30 + 30 seconds).
**Effect: No change

Tabula Rasa

The effects of the white magic "Embrava" will be adjusted as follows:

**Duration: Reduced from 5 minutes to 90 seconds.
**Haste Effect: Reduced to 15% + 1% for each 20 enhancing skill. Maximum of +25% at 500 enhancing skill.
**Regain Effect: Changed to Refresh effect (the #/tick is the same as before, based on skill).

Since utilizing the above abilities has become mainstream in order to progress through certain battle content, we have planned to lower the difficulty of that content in accordance with this update.

Nyzul Isle

**The required number of astraria to replace with the next higher floor equipment will be reduced from 25 to 5. The number in possession will be divided by 5 and rounded down. The premise that floor 100 will only be reached through a combination of great skill and luck does not change. Since the reliance on the effect of Embrava will be reduced, we will relieve this by reducing the number of required astraria for floors below.

Legion

**Monster HP will be reduced by approximately 10%. All monsters will be included in this change. Since the progress as a whole will be faster but the support effects will be suppressed, we will maintain the 30 minute time limit, or keep it close.

Einherjar

**Odin's HP (Odin's Chamber II) will be reduced by approximately 10~15%. Since the battle with Odin is more than with just the monster itself, Legion is slightly different, so we will reduce Odin's HP by slightly more.

We believe that Embrava and Perfect Defense have been used very significantly in other situations as well, such as with Provenance Watcher and Arch Dynamis Lord, but since these are very short battles, we want to see how the difficulty of these fights changes with the ability adjustments above before we make any adjustments to the fight difficulty.

These adjustments have been made in order to reduce performance of certain abilities that were too strong, with a reliance moreso now than ever on certain jobs and abilities in battle strategies. The purpose of the content adjustment along with these ability adjustments is to allow other strategies to be formed so that these events are not impossible. While reflecting on the adjustments in the test server this week, please recognize that balancing the adjustments will continue, and we would appreciate any comments you may have.

These adjustments have been made in order to reduce performance of certain abilities that were too strong, with a reliance moreso now than ever on certain jobs and abilities in battle strategies. The purpose of the content adjustment along with these ability adjustments is to allow other strategies to be formed so that these events are not impossible. While reflecting on the adjustments in the test server this week, please recognize that balancing the adjustments will continue, and we would appreciate any comments you may have.

Except you can still overshoot floor 80, which was the major stopping-block (or lack of one, actually) in hitting floor 100 for the longest time.

That's why you use the stopper feature to prevent your group from going higher than floor 80. Sure your run will end after the floor 80 boss, but with the embrava nerf you won't be making it to floor 100 anyway.

The way the game has always worked is that players find an optimal solution to the problem and the sheeple copy them. Penta Spam > MNK burns > Mana & Arrow Burns > TP Burns > Throw more BLMs at it > etc. This imaginary field full of butterflies when you used to walk uphill in the snow 20 miles to get to your exp party never existed.

The only thing nerfs show is that the developer did not properly think about their content before implementing it.

The only thing nerfs accomplish is that they have a high chance of pissing off your loyal customers, thus driving away profits, thus possibly killing (not reviving) the game. I know I'm much more likely to tell potential subscribers that are my friends that this game is now headed the wrong direction rather than the right one.



Edited, Oct 24th 2012 8:49am by TheBarrister

You can't hit 600 summoning magic skill right now. In fact not even close. I wonder if they are considering another level cap raise for Adoulin...

Hello!

As this topic has generated quite a large amount of feedback already, we will be doing our best to collect it all and deliver it to the development team.

I would like to, however, follow-up on a couple of things.

First, there is a question about the cap on summoning skill being 600 being a mistake; however, this is the correct number. While it might not be currently possible to reach this number, the development team set the cap to 600, so consider that there may be room to increase this in the future.

Next, keep in mind that these adjustments to Perfect Defense and Embrava were made with the idea that all special abilities’ cool down timers will be shortened. With that said, during this week’s Test Server update we are also planning on making adjustments so that the cool down timer on current and new special abilities will be halved. (We are also planning to make it possible to cut this time even further via equipment and merit points.)

We understand that these adjustments will change the usage of these abilities and may cause inconvenience to some, and we apologize for this. We would like to proceed with these adjustments carefully, so we will be looking closely at the feedback we receive. Also, we realize that there are a good amount of people who oppose these changes, but we would appreciate it if you could post specific feedback about what would be the preferred method for going about these changes.