Implications from the Level Cap raise.Follow

So, in case you still haven't heard, SE announced at Vanafest that they would be raising the level cap, as far as 99 possibly. I believe they said the first cap raise would happen in the June update, and if they're going to do it in parts like before, then this one might just bring us to 80 for now. Most of us have probably dismissed the cap ever raising in the first place and discarded what abilities or spells would do for us on subs beyond 37, since there was no point in thinking about it.

With that said, obviously I've been thinking of the implications this will have, both for using WAR as a subjob, and also for what the current subjobs that we use for WAR, will additionally be able to add to our arsenal. There's always the possibility that SE would restrict subjob levels or certain job abilities (Call Wyvern, for example), and so this whole thing may still be pointless to talk about, but it couldn't hurt! (Lets ignore that I haven't slept yet, its almost 7 AM my time, and I've had a few beers. Yay beer!)

Things I can see that would be interesting, if allowed:

NIN sub:

-At level 80, Innin and Yonin. Scratch this. SE said that NIN sub will not allow the use of Innin or Yonin.
-At level 90, Dual Wield III and Subtle Blow III.

I can see Yonin being very useful for soloing and tanking, but Innin would be lacking considering most of its bonuses only work if you're behind the mob, and its easy to take hate. Having Dual Wield III at 90 is obviously going to open up the debate between Dual Wield vs 2-Handed weapons, again. I suppose depending on which weapons we can modify with those new Magian trials or whatever they're called, that will decide the difference. The subtle blow at 90 would help too.

SAM sub:

Won't really change anything at all. The only possible plus is if SE decides to lower the level of Sekkanoki so it could be used with SAM sub, like they said they were considering.

-At level 80, Sekkanoki.

Hurray! Now we can self-skillchain! Although for weapons like Perdu Voulge where the bonus only applies when under 100% tp or on weaponskills, we'll have to see whether the added skillchain damage outweighs the loss of the hidden effects of acc and attack +. On the other hand, Sekkanoki can help cut down on times where we go over 100% due to double attack, or the occasional triple attack from things like sea weapons, by letting us just use 100% tp, which means we can do another weaponskill in less time.

MNK sub:

-At level 82, Chi Blast.
-At level 90, Counterstance and Subtle Blow III.
-At level 92, Martial Arts IV.

Aside from using Chi Blast to claim, I don't see it being used/useful at all for us. Counterstance, on the other hand, is more useful, but probably not worth it. Stacking it with Retaliation would be the thing to do, and we'd also get that horribly decreased defense as well. I'd think that sticking with Seigan and Third Eye would be infinitely better than using Counterstance. We'd also get subtle blow III at 90, but NIN sub would give us that too, and NIN overall would provide more benefit than /MNK I'd think. Martial Arts IV would only be useful in Salvage I'd think, and that's only if they don't keep that under a level cap.

DRG sub:

Nassing. Super Jump and Accuracy Bonus II are both level 50 DRG ;__;.
-At 90, Conserve TP.

Being able to occasionally conserve some TP after performing a weaponskill can only help, but I'm not so sure it outweighs the benefits that other subs will give unless the conservation is potent, and my gut tells me that it most likely will not be.

DRK sub:

-At level 80, Resist Paralyze II, Bio II.
-At level 82, Absorb-Dex.
-At level 86, Absorb-Str.
-At level 90, Absorb-TP, Occult Acumen.

Pretty useless considering our Dark Magic skill would be capped at the level of our DRK sub. I doubt even the newly introduced Occult Acumen would save this sub, unless you can spam low cost spells at a rate where the TP gain is higher than just plain meleeing. Gets less useful the faster you attack.

THF sub:

-At level 80, Resist Gravity II.
-At level 90, Hide, Treasure Hunter II.

Aside from added TH and the potential to lose aggro from Hide, THF sub wouldn't give us anything else that's useful.


RNG sub:

-At level 80, Shadowbind, Resist Poison II, Wide Scan IV.
-At level 90, Velocity Shot.

This sub would provide an interesting bonus for WARs who like to use ranged attacks, thanks to Velocity Shot. People who would get the most out of this would be those who have 5 merits in Aggressive Aim :lol:. Shadowbind is no longer guaranteed to land, however, and can now miss when RNG is subbed, which limits its usefulness.

DNC sub:

-At 40, Dual Wield.
-At level 80, Stutter Step, Reverse Flourish.
-At level 90, Haste Samba, Violent Flourish, Skillchain Bonus.
-At ??, Possibly another tier of Dual Wield.

Definitely a very useful sub even post-75 main. I can see SE possibly nerfing/adjusting the TP return from Reverse Flourish, or the Haste effect from Haste Samba, however, when DNC is subbed. Now that DNC sub is getting Dual Wield natively, that frees WAR up to attack with two one-handed weapons, both of which can be multi-hit now that we have Magian weapons to add to our arsenal. Again, this only makes DNC sub potentially even more useful than before. Skillchain Bonus is even more icing on the cake that is DNC sub.

The only thing we have to offer, ability-wise, for jobs that would sub WAR post-75, would be Aggressor, obviously.Aside from Aggressor, we now offer the Fencer job trait to level 90 jobs that use us as a sub. For those who don't know, Fencer is a new Job Trait us Warriors are getting in the June update that "Increases rate of critical hits when wielding with the main hand only. Grants a TP bonus to weapon skills." This makes WAR sub even more useful for PLD at that level than before.

The only thing I'm unsure of is if "wielding with the main hand only" means using a one handed weapon, or if it means any weapon that only goes in the main slot, so jobs that can dual wield like NIN or DNC would not benefit. It's most likely the former rather than the latter, but if for some reason it turns out to be the latter, then /WAR would be very nice for a slew of 2 handed jobs as well. MNK, however, makes me wonder still, since hand-to-hand works differently than other weapons. When attempting to equip a grip in the sub slot, the game says "this grip is not compatable with the two-handed weapon you currently have equipped," yet it does not follow the same formula as two-handed weapons. Only time will tell what works and what doesn't.

So... what do you guys think? In before potential sh*t-storms and/or rage.

P.S. Again, its possible SE might choose to nerf/adjust any JAs or traits from subs, and possibly even lock them out for main jobs only, so anything in this thread for now is purely speculation. See above for what was nerfed/locked.

Edit: I added the newly announced job abilities/traits and adjustments that were announced on June 17th, 2010. New stuff is in yellow. Negative adjustments/limitations are in red.

Edited, Jun 17th 2010 7:46am by Metakaiser

what about triple attack from thief sub @90...double attack bonus+triple attack bonus with a fotitude axe or rune chopper might be kinda fun

Dnc sub would encompass all of dnc's steps and encroach further on flourishes with such a high cap... I hope they add more steps/JAs in the future to offset this rather than restrict them. Reverse flourish doesn't really have to be changed since /dnc steps only give 1FM - you'd barely gain anything using RF. The bigger thing would be violent flourish, a stun that can sometimes work through both physical and magical barriers, and counts as a tp-gaining hit if there's dmg.

Nin's innin would be pretty powerful in the hands of other jobs, especially those that can take advantage of the big crit+ - war, drg, pup, bst, dnc|thf evis, pld|blu vorpal off the top of my head. Yonin would just enhance pld/nin tanking even more, but also help any other /nin tanker with the enmity/eva+ (thf and dnc solo/low man tanks come to mind). Nin would definitely need new JAs for them to retain some uniqueness, or restrict innin/yonin like they'll probably end up doing...

So much potential to think about.

i dont know if they changed it over the years but i guess it is 55 now(according to wiki) i could have sworn it was lvl 45 but then again if it is not war or rng i am years behind on the other jobs. but it was a nice pipe dream for a moment

Martial Arts VII, and possibly VIII as well (at 99, if it happens), plus at least one more tier of Kick Attacks, plus god knows what in the way of JAs post-75?

MNK didn't get made useless - but it's probably going to be effectively the blunt-damage equivalent of either THF or NIN post-75 (very, very fast DoT).

Hope for a good post-75 camp on pots. I'll be waiting for you there with my hammer(s).

Elemental Staves and Haubergeon.

With those examples, I feel fairly confident that gear isn't going to be as obsoleted as people are thinking it will be. Haste still has it's hard caps, so I doubt they'll add more haste. Considering Square, I doubt they'll add any new gear that is initially better than Relic base stats, maybe the equivalent to Ridill if we're lucky ... but I don't think gear will be that drastically altered.

I sorry about semi-necro bumping this, but it seems to me that SE will probably make the skill levels change from 75 to 76.

As it stands the first 50 levels skills go up by 3's. Then from 50 to 51 it goes up by 5's.

My bet is that SE changes the gap to 7 or something for the next 24 levels. It would make sense as new, higher level mobs are going to be introduced. It has the added effect of basically making melee burning NM, HNM and ZNM's useless if said mob(s) scale with the new level cap. A DRK with Kraken won't be able to hit for crap on the new higher level mobs. BAM! That takes a major thorn in SE's side right out of the equation. Plus, it makes the A+ weapons incredibly important, this especially means 2 handed weapons.

This might well be conjecture but I seriously see something like this happening. I doubt they want to see PW or AV zerged by a lone DRK with Kraken and it makes zerging with this method assuredly useless on new higher level mobs and NM to be introduced.

Fire

If the difference betwen ranks keep increasing, they will make *many* classes useless.

The difference between A+ and A- today is 9. At 99, keeping the same progression will be 20. THis is the difference between A+ and B- today ( IE: Greataxe to Sword)

The difference from A+ to B+ will be close to 40 (Ie: Axe to dagger on warrior)

It will mean that anything that is not A+ or at minimum A- is completely worthless.

Also, the fact that your atributes will raise is very important. 2 handers gain more from atributes than 1 handers. Today, 80 DEX means 60 acc to 2 handers and 40 acc to 1 handers. If that 80 DEX raises to 120, the difference only grows bigger.


In short: Its going to be a really big mess.

I agree. But I think we're already there. You said:



Doesn't that already make some classes useless?