Force Discussion

[FantasyHeaven]

No need to get so touchy dude. I've played all classes (except summoner) in my time and they're all at least 75. I'm not shitting on anything, just saying how I see it.
And please do elaborate on those mobbing techs that completely decimate hero. Ilmegid and megid are great I give them that. I wish all the techs types had as good a selection as dark. I don't see how any of them can hold a candle to brightness spam in any setting, even if the PSE effects are as huge a deal as you're saying I don't remember anything bar maybe gigrants that has the range.

[Zephyrion]

No need to get so touchy dude. I've played all classes (except summoner) in my time and they're all at least 75. I'm not shitting on anything, just saying how I see it.
And please do elaborate on those mobbing techs that completely decimate hero. Ilmegid and megid are great I give them that. I wish all the techs types had as good a selection as dark. I don't see how any of them can hold a candle to brightness spam in any setting, even if the PSE effects are as huge a deal as you're saying I don't remember anything bar maybe gigrants that has the range.

I get touchy because of the hilarious statement that says you haven't played a class for a while, and yet judge its potential, which also is a very obvious double standard, because if I went and ran my mouth about Hero while spewing blatantly outdated stuff on Hero thread, I'd get told off. Don't see why I can't do the same here. That being said, I'm not doing it out of personal animosity or anything, please extensively try out the class before judging it
Also each element has its own mobbing techs. while Ice and Dark are not versatile for mobbing, all the other element are. some of them are still used in conjonction with zondeel, like ragrants. If we go Forest, which is Ice/Fire/Light
Fire : Foie/Gifoie /Rafoie/Safoie/Ilfoie all have their applications depending on the AoE you need, and can all be used with or without zondeel in Forest depending on mob configuration. Foie with manual aim can be fired above enemies' heads or on their side and "glaze" them (as in Foie actually hits but isn't cancelled because the center of the ball didn't hit them) so it acts as a laser of sorts
Light : Gigrants 0 and zondeel + ragrants are good old staple as you mentioned
Ice : Barta/Gibarta/Rabarta (Multi). Rabarta used to be lackluster but the little extra range it got recently makes it close to kanran AoE, so it's relatively okay, although rarely used because ice only spawns are rare and scattered in Forest. Its main use is freezing grouped Diamos while building your way to Barantsion asap. try to manual aim Barta to get the most efficient line if enemies are indeed lined up. Gibarta is your Ice Ghetto Brightness. Rabarta is overall better but if everything is in front of you..why not go for it

Keep in mind while the AoE may not be as big, the DPS is actually roughly similar/slightly inferior or superior to brightness for most techs (also Brightness DPS is a lie because first slash almost never hit all the mobs, despite being like 40% of the notation) , with vastly better DPP. If you manage your PP well, you won't have any downtime, unlike Brightness End. The plethora of available techs is what makes it hard for mobbing, because it requires you to know your charge timings, when or when not to use zondeel, when to actually choose gigrants 0 off element because the spawn configuration/zondeel resistance/PSE effect makes it the better choice compared to others.

[Zorak000]

it looks like simple compounds will always be available, judging by the fact that the end of the Ray Fomelgion animation had them enter their Just Attack frames with Ray Fomelgion still available to use

however, the trailers had the regular compound techs already charged; so there's still a question of if they might make these somehow not build your compound gauges. but if they do, would this mean we might just abandon regular techs outside of utility like ilzonde/safoie and nabarta 0?

These simple compounds have a channeled PP drain with a finishing blow, much like Gigrants 0, so I wonder if that means if we do abandon regular techs for them, it might be worth considering dumping flame S charge and bolt tech pp save just so we can finally tri-element force and get the most out of all compound techs

unless I'm missing something; oh right, they wouldnt benefit from talis tech bonus so if that's the case, then I guess that's 5 more skill points to put in other places too

EDIT: oh right, and if they work like gigrants 0, then that kind of means their charge times would be baked into the animation and you can't regenerate pp during them; which invalidates force's level 85 skill and Tech Charge PP Restorate to an extent.

Assuming all of this, a force tree could look like this once those come out: http://arks-layer.com/skillsim/skill...008dBIb0000008

I maxed Normal Tech Advance on the assumption that the channeled portion of the Ray Compounds will count as uncharged tech damage; but if ya'll think there's a better place for those 10 points then feel free to say so.

Either way, we'll need some more info on these before we can really finalize anything.

[DavidAG]

I dont think these new techs will change force's playstyle too much.

Iirc, they said Ray Barantsia lets you move at high speed while shooting some projectiles, This makes me think it will be a tech that will allow force to reposition while doing some damage, but not much. It might also grant some i.frames like parallel0 does.

Ray Zandia looks like a mix between damage and control, will probably be used for mobbing only, since it will have suction effect and stun.

And Ray Fomelgia looks like straight charge0 but in tech and with a finisher, so it will be useful for mobbing too if the damage is good.

With this said, bossing will probably stay the same, Ilgrants/Ilbarta/whatever. But now we will have barantsia in the mix i guess.

Come to think of it, yeah it will change force playstyle, it will become more fun and powerful, just what force needed! more power!

And about Zorak000 build, i think we might be able to go all elements forces now with little problem, unless we go to specific places like ult amduscia or something like that. I think i'd stay with a build like this http://arks-layer.com/skillsim/skill...008dBIb0000008

[Zorak000]

I mean, if you want to use any (pure) fire tech for damage, you're going to -need- flame s-charge, since at this point they've balanced fire techs around the assumption that you have that maxed; the only way we'd be getting away with skipping it is if our only fire damage was coming from either form of fomelgion

pscrew really needs to do a complete rework on the force and techer trees imo, the elemental masteries might have been a neat idea if they thought people might want to specialize in a few elements, but they've clearly moved away from that idea, but kept the incredibly inconvenient skill point dump aspect of it all. sure they reduced the mastery 2 skills, but it doesnt change the fact that you basically do need them all these days. Not to mention, half of techer's skills are still leftover from when they were trying to sell Fi/Gu/Te as "advanced classes"; so Techer being the "advanced" form of force got the other three elements and a bunch of passive pp regen related skills, all of which aren't terribly helpful when you are focusing more on bonking stuff generally.

the easiest solution I would be ok with them doing, is if they just consolidated all elements into a single pair of elemental mastery skills; with all the individual element utility skills branching from that, and it would still work like it already does for compound techs (behind the curtain, the two skills would functionally reference all twelve of the old elemental mastery skills), then also bringing pp convert and pp restorate over from the techer tree. then techer can be freed up to have a bunch of skills more focused around support, bonking, and maybe some more generically applicable skills like elemental weak hit to make it a better sub for other classes.

oh yeah and they should really get rid of flame s charge + ring, and boost fire tech damage to compensate, so fire is not really bad to use without that skill

[Shad0owdruid]

I dont think these new techs will change force's playstyle too much.

Iirc, they said Ray Barantsia lets you move at high speed while shooting some projectiles, This makes me think it will be a tech that will allow force to reposition while doing some damage, but not much. It might also grant some i.frames like parallel0 does.

Ray Zandia looks like a mix between damage and control, will probably be used for mobbing only, since it will have suction effect and stun.

And Ray Fomelgia looks like straight charge0 but in tech and with a finisher, so it will be useful for mobbing too if the damage is good.

With this said, bossing will probably stay the same, Ilgrants/Ilbarta/whatever. But now we will have barantsia in the mix i guess.

Come to think of it, yeah it will change force playstyle, it will become more fun and powerful, just what force needed! more power!

And about Zorak000 build, i think we might be able to go all elements forces now with little problem, unless we go to specific places like ult amduscia or something like that. I think i'd stay with a build like this http://arks-layer.com/skillsim/skill...008dBIb0000008

this tree seems fine to me escept Shifta advance is still uterly shit and is a wasted 5 point

[Zorak000]

right; I always forget those are usually better spent in a t-atk up

[Hysteria1987]

I almost hope they're not worth using. Almost.

With every update I have to get more and more 'creative' with subpalette use - and I do wish they'd let us have more than 6 main palettes. I find Xpadder almost mandatory for FO playing now, lol.

Still, keen to see what these bring to the table.

[Zorak000]

alright this was bothering me for a while, but here it is: a graph of where 5 skill points in Shifta Advance is better than raw t-atk ups

Spoiler!

here's a link to the graph: https://www.desmos.com/calculator/1b1ruo3ue7

in general, it looks like unless you are spending the five SP to level Technique Up 2 from level 5 to level 10, Shifta Advance would wind up giving you more T-atk than putting it into Technique Up 2. I use a male human with a 170 Tech mag and I still have over 1045 shifta-boostable T-atk even with 0 points in technique up 2, so even for me, I would need to be leveling Technique Up 2 from level 5 to 10 for it to give me more t-atk than shifta advance. with the added benefit that any other players also get the boost; and the drawback being that if there is a techer already in the party/MPA with max level shifta advance, it makes mine redundant.

of course, this would require me to make sure I always have shifta, which I will admit is something I've always been a little lazy about.

anyway I could have miscalculated something so feel free to correct me

EDIT: I did the "(19.7/100)+1" thing instead of just 1.197 to make the formulas look more visually similar to the shifta advance formula; for readability purposes

[Hysteria1987]

Righto, I've got two options here:
* Reaffix my Austere rear/arm and Astra leg.
* Affix Weila/Hang/Tag Bode.

For simplicity's sake, let's say I'd have the exact same affixes in both cases. In reality I'd probably do little tweaks here and there to try and cover weaknesses, but let's keep it simple.

If I were to switch to Bodes with these identical affixes, I would lose/gain the following (ignoring many stats for the moment as they're not important in my decision making):
* +27 SDEF
* +87 RDEF
* +51 TDEF
* +5% SRES
* +4% RRES
* +4% TRES
* -100 HP
* -10 PP

So, my question is - do you think the gains I would make in DEF would make up for the loss of 100 HP, which is kind of a big deal for a FO?
I can fix this with one affix swap on one unit, but I'm more interested as to how the two stat sets correlate.