~First And Final Line Of Defense V2.0~

I'm just going to half-*** feedback this, assuming they even read this, otherwise I'm just ranting.

Point 1: If it has high resistances, you throw a RUN at it and laugh all day long, not a PLD. Buff our Atonement damage, making it damageless would be even better to bypass those resistances, but the neat breath damage mechanic might be okay, need further input on that.

Point 2: No comment, I don't use Iron Will, does anyone else?

Point 3: Devs, how many times do we have to say this; Aegis and Ochain are not even close to being overpowered, as they were before SoA. There is absolutely no excuse to not give them ILv status, and make them the powerhouses they were before, and you know what, you should give Sirvatsa improved offensive strength, let it be our DD shield so that if we can at least sub-tank and still be contributing. If you somehow mess up Aegis and Ochain when making them ILv, I'll probably end up quitting this game for good.

Final note: Devs, actually fix PLD, don't just bandage it, and don't just claim some excuse because you don't think it goes in line with what you want, and honestly this goes for all the jobs. I'm not starting to think, the 20th year will be the last for this game. At one point I was hoping to play until the very end for the game I loved, now, I don't even *** know.

Link to original dev post. Just for reference.

The only part of that post that doesn't piss me off is the Srivatsa bit, cause who gives a ***about Srivatsa. And even then it still kinda pissed me off cause they basically said screw PLD dps, again.

The Iron will bit is just... Just change it to work like inspiration. You have an exact template for the fast cast behavior already. Copy, paste.

The ilvl shield bit is kinda weird, cause they're basically saying "no ilvl for you", but then saying that it's a future task for the battle team. So no, but sorta yes, eventually? <,<;

For Atonement... honestly, it would probably be more useful as a self targeted WS like moonlight now. Give it a minor restorative or buff effect of some sort, and have it build hate on every mob in range. Way more useful than ~2k dmg that interrupts good WS's SC/MB.

Although it would kinda suck to lose PLD's only Fusion option(aside from relic WS.) EDIT: oh, and losing Atonement as an enmity testing tool would really suck. I guess the alternative there would be to just make it AoE, lol. Crap dmg on all the things.

One day we will get empy armor +2 and +3

And on that day

Srivatsa will make its rise to glory

And nearly 10% chance to not take damage memes

(or more, depending on if the empy armor set effect ends up being more than 1%/slot)

It will remain 5%, otherwise, "It will be overpowered!11! We can't do that!!111 PLD can't have anything nice1111."

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if they are thinking to just remove the set bonus and make it something pointless.

That part pisses me off a bit because we're seeing non-tank jobs able to well be tanks thanks to all the hybrid gear we've been getting and RDM being able to give full potency phalanx 2 without moving merits around.

PLD stay in your tiny little box. Everyone else have enough gear to be DT capped, gear haste capped, and have acceptable offensive stats at the same time! SE hasn't put a cost on encroaching on PLD's domain.

I suspect they're still working from the O.G. scale of iLv. I'm talking back when THIS was "119":
Cause in that context, Aegis and Ochain (defense aside) are already on par or exceed 119.
Buuuuut. They've restructured what it means to be 119, and Srivatsa proves that Aegis with iLv isn't something substantial on the physical side of damage mitigation.
Ochain with 129 skill would be a pretty huge buff... but would be more like a ungimping it against CL150 stuff than a real buffing.

I don't understand why anyone would ever bother even looking at Srivatsa anymore. Let alone how SE thinks it's the "damage dealing" shield when Aegis has +250 Shield Bash damage... and Blurred Shield +1 has WSdmg and Fencer+1.
And that doesn't even touch the fact that Priwen is the status resist Ultimate* Shield.
I have no idea what they were thinking with Srivatsa.

We could alternatively unlock campaign WSs so that PLD can continue to be one of the only Fusion sources consistently available. (iirc Uriel's Blade's flash isn't just the acc down debuff, but actually like if you cast the spell. e.g. +180/1280 CE/VE)

Hmm. That's definitely something I would want to test. I do recall Uriel being unusually good at pissing things off back in the day, but dmg was also good enmity back then.

That said, I don't think I'm curious enough to test it while it remains campaign and weapon locked. If they ever unlock it I'll test the ***outta it though.

Enmity factors aside, I would be beyond delighted to have a AoE magic dmg sword WS. Do all my cleaving wearing Burtgang. lol.

It occurs to me though, that unlocking Uriel blade would break the ***outta RDM. Crocea Mors+Daybreak, Aoe light ele magic WS? o.o;

I hadn't even considered that.... and now I need it.

I was reading the original thread that dev post was from, and it looks like the PLD dev post was actually a direct point by point response to a post in that thread.
EN player post.

And then the dev post
This kinda blew my mind a bit. They actually read an English post, then replied to it. And addressed everything except for the reprisal enmity bit. I always felt like they only looked at the JP posts, and most of the english dev posts were translations of semi randomly selected dev posts on the JP side.

I can't say I like their answers, but it was nice to see signs that EN concerns are actually being seen by the devs.

I did notice that it was an actual developer that replied when I checked it last night. I was surprised, but it also made me more angry that this came from a dev themselves. Not mentioning the reprisal enmity makes me think that there is a chance, that they are considering it, which if done correctly can be a huge step in the right direction.

As for Sirvatsa, I think it would be good to make it into a DD shield, add additional offensive stats to it like fencer or WSD+, it would give it a new role, and we would have a better shield that also has some defensive stats on it, or those could be removed to favor more offense, I actually would prefer that. Then we would have magical, physical/blockrate, offensive, and status.

UB does indeed inflict flash, I played around with it some time ago and it says so in the toolbar, checking BG also says the same thing.

Yeah, and private servers have gotten UB to work outside campaign, so its not something that would be impossible for the SE team to do in a relatively quick manner.

I think the only real concern they had about them was their absurd ratios on release... which are kinda just standard or slightly weak now anyway.

Not to mention you can make them all quests to unlock after getting the weapons, which at least adds incentive to farm campaigns again, content that already exists. Id like to one day be able to do fiat lux just for lockstyle, but given no one grinds campaign, its difficult to get the nation control needed.

I would think this can be done solo, but it's certainly easier with a few friends. Pick a nation that does well already, example for Fenrir is Windy, and then camp the towers and kill any campaign mob without getting tags. Once allied units assault a stronghold join them to assist / clear out any joining enemy units. It's not uncommon to see northlands zones and even beastmen strongholds to fall under Windurst during the campaign.

*One last tidbit, if memory serves, do this starting on Friday night or Saturday morning, I guess it doesn't take much to flip a zone, but if you do it early in the week the beastmen can take it back, but if you do it before the weekly update, then you can claim zones with less effort.

I tried. I mentioned Srivatsa because I was going to mention the other shields and was like yeah, it should be more useful. I was surprised as well to see them give a maybe in the future to 119 shields.

I've noticed they seem to reply to English posts if it's easy to read and reply to. It helps tremendously if it gets a lot of likes. I suggested they add the description to food on the OF (Link) and right after they started doing it.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if instead of sifting through all of it they just filter by likes.

That it inflicts flash was never in question. But inflicting the flash status effect doesn't mean that it necessarily has the same enmity values as the flash spell. The enmity aspect is what would need testing.

Ever since they started doing the Directs they've been using them as a way to increase ENG feedback.

Which is kinda a shame because those responses tend to be the worst parts of 4chan level of discourse. アシュラはアシュラとトラッシュはトラッシュ.

Whoops, I misread what you were saying then. While we are on the subject of UB, what about Glory Slash, as that does stun. If you test UB, can you test GS also?

As I said. And you may apply this to Glory slash as well:

I know, I meant in the future if you do ever do the testing. I completely agree that right now, it's a waste of time to do it.

Does the Flash effect from Flash Nova have similar enmity?

I really doubt anyone has ever tested that. Personally, I really doubt it does.

My guess would be that both flash nova and Uriel blade are simple dmg enmity.

The basis of this thought being that I've never seen any additional effect on anything that had its own separate enmity properties.

Think of all the add effect: Stun WS in the game. Does anyone actually think those have the enmity of the stun spell in addition to the dmg enmity? I see no reason why add effect flash would be any different.

That said, Flash Nova testing would not require me to test in a campaign zone during campaign like Uriel, so a test should be pretty easy. I might test it after I get home.

inb4 club pld new meta

I don't expect Flash Nova should. But Uriel Blade was suspected to be en-the spell due to Campaign memory (like you, Martel, alluded to earlier) and Valaineral being the best tank trust enmity-wise before they added Amchuchu and August.

So grain of salt, but it wouldn't surprise me if campaign WSs carried the enmity of the spells for NPC balance issues, and that just carried over to when they eventually gave us 3... like 4 months before the level cap increased and Campaign became useless...

It would have to have some pretty hefty enmity to beat Atonement. especially R15 Burtgang Atonement. lol

But I doubt it has any enmity beyond the DMG enmity in any case. And being a magical WS, it gets the gimp dmg enmity.

https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Enmity#Enmity_from_Damage_Dealt

If I think of it as Uriel just having either static, or bonus, enmity then it seems a bit less outlandish to me. It's the idea that added effect flash is somehow responsible for the enmity that seemed outlandish to me.

There are precedents for both static enmity ws(Namas Arrow, Coronach), and ws with bonus enmity mods. Atonement is both now. lol. So I can see that as being possible.

But I think it will still need to be verified. Which will happen as soon as SE unlocks it from campagin/wep. So never. -_-;

Well, About Flash nova.

I did a test on a 119 mob. No MAB, no enmity+/-.

1542 Flash Nova
After 30~ seconds delay
13 dmg atonement.
This would be about 79 CE.

This clearly does not have the enmity of the flash spell. I also don't think it has any sort of enmity bonus. The dmg/CE ratio is actually a bit worse than other types of dmg on the same level mob.

This makes sense as magic WS enmity is based on the ws dmg before MAB/dSTAT/weather. I didn't have any MAB, but the dSTAT was unavoidable. So some amount of the dmg dealt did not contribute to enmity gain.

If flash nova had any significant enmity bonus, I think it would have been able to overcome this and shown a better ratio than regular dmg.

What would be *** hilarious (and why I needs me that anywhere key) is if they wondered why people keep asking for campaign WS unlocks from time to time...
Looked at Uriel Blade/Glory Slash's extra enmity... (assuming they do have it like we vaguely think they might cause our memory.)
And that's where they got the idea to do the same for Atonement.

We got reforged artifact stuff because we bitched about RME iLv upgrades... so I can easily see a similar inspiration chain.

Yeah. Poor wording on my end, I suppose. The "added enmity from the spell" would just be the flavor reason for the mechanic of the additional/static enmity of the WS.

So it's not strictly a PLD-related question, but I'm trying to get Founder's Hose for my SIRD set. I've done about 40 Sinister Reign runs so far and haven't seen August once yet. Is there some trick to this I don't know about, or any other way to get these pants? Is my luck just brutal? lol

It's random, although once you've fought him, and cleared every other fight, you can select him as a solo fight which in itself has low drop rates. I stick with Carmine just for this reason.

It's not just you, there's some issue with him spawning for sure. I've not seen him at all this month and I've been spamming it hoping for his trust and gathering capped aug gear I can use at same time. I've ran out of useful drops from the other bosses now and not seen him once. Someone else mentioned it a couple weeks ago here too iirc.

I've had this thought for awhile now, and I haven't really fleshed it out, but I'd like to bring it up for discussion and input. As PLD is suppose to be the take the damage, and migrate it in some form, instead of evading it, as an alternative answer to increasing meva and I don't see them giving us a all status resistance either, an AoE JA that reverses alignments.

As an example, say you are hit with a dot, the ability procs, it becomes a short term low regen instead of inflicting a dot. For debilitating status effects, such as doom, it procs and gives you a bar effect based on the element. Like I said I haven't really fleshed it out, I just thought it was an interesting concept I haven't seen before.