8/21 Balance Update

[Dark Mits]

They could "move" PP Conversion to Force since PP Conversion loses value if you need to either not be doing anything or have Charge PP Revival to make the most out of it. It's weird that Techer has 4 different abilities to help with PP (PP Restore, PP Conversion, Super Treatment AND Territory Burst, on top of having the option of an extra 20PP on your bar) when Sega's design seems to want Techer to be a melee class with focus on Autoattack for Tech Explosions.

I think it's also time they consolidated PP Boost 1 and PP Boost 2 for both Fo and Te into 1 skill that gives the full 20 bonus for just 10 skill points.

[Ransu]

Really glad about these continued Bouncer buffs. But seriously, when is Sega going to quit mucking about with Force? It has more glaring issues at hand and is only getting extremely long overdue SP relaxation. They could really just make tech gameplay less monotonous and do something about the techs/elements that hardly have a reason to be used. That's not even accounting for other glaring problems the class itself has.

[Zephyrion]

They could "move" PP Conversion to Force since PP Conversion loses value if you need to either not be doing anything or have Charge PP Revival to make the most out of it. It's weird that Techer has 4 different abilities to help with PP (PP Restore, PP Conversion, Super Treatment AND Territory Burst, on top of having the option of an extra 20PP on your bar) when Sega's design seems to want Techer to be a melee class with focus on Autoattack for Tech Explosions.

I think it's also time they consolidated PP Boost 1 and PP Boost 2 for both Fo and Te into 1 skill that gives the full 20 bonus for just 10 skill points.

Except it clearly wasn't how TE was designed. TE started (and still is) a tech/melee hybrid, which also used to be a lot more heavy on techs. Then due to skill changes (addition and tweaks of Wand Lovers and Wand reactor) + gear (Lavis was a mistake that utterly dumbed down TE's playstyle since it simultaneously made melee brokeass and killed techs due to this wand's laughable damage output), along with balance changes (nerfs to compounds indirectly hitting TE), made tech playstyle completely obsolete for almost two years.

SEGA always tried to push both aspects of TE but on EP4-5 the melee side just got way more. Thing is late EP5- EP6 is finally seeing the tech side of TE get some love, with Atra EX finally dethroning Lavis and PH sub having the necessary multipliers and skills to play a less convoluted hybrid playstyle while also improving its supporting capabilites(something that BO and FI sub failed to achieve). Up to EP4, PP conversion was very useful for TE for recovering PP via step cancels, and it's only finally becoming a TE staple again after two episodes of being relegated to a "joke" playstyle

Giving the skill to FO would not only be a massive middle finger to hybrid TE but would also massively promote other subs. While it's a net plus on some ways, I think peole are heavily sleeping on how utterly ridiculous FO/FI and FO/PH can be, and that power is only held back by PP management issues. I'm not in favor of buffing FO indirectly by cucking TE as it creates very real issues for an underplayed class only to promote another class in a very boring way. FO should have its own unique ways of recovering PP that don't involve tranferring skills or straight leeching out of TE sub.

[Dark Mits]

@Zephyrion: While I agree that it would be sort of "giving the middle finger" to TE if a suggestion like mine went forth, I still believe that it would be a QoL for FO that would help it really escape the "play sub TE or be useless for 50% of quest's duration" curse. Also, the skill wouldn't come for free, FO would have to spend some skill points there (3 for +2 PPregen or 6 for +3 PPregen most likely), and take them from somewhere else (which means lower output in some cases).

The problems of TE are not really tied to its PP management. As far as I remember, the issues are that it has noticeably less output for the same effort compared to other classes in solo content, and having 2 TEs in the same MPA will have them cannibalise each other's utility.
(a) The output issue can be fixed by just giving better multipliers for TE which have to be Main Class only (a non-elegant but trivial solution).
(b) The utility issue may not be easily fixable due to technical reasons. My quick armchair-dev suggestion would be to give a Main Class skill that allows Zanverses from TE players to stack with those of other players (instead of having only the older one apply). Or there could be a new skill that acts as a party-wide S4: Raising Pursuit (with an appropriate modifier to not make it ovepowered).

[silo1991]

i agree with darkmits about PP convert should become a FO skill due to many PP passives TE have ,

also agree with zephyrion about TE being unable to play as propper offensive hybrid , i use the uransara for TE/HU combination and its crazy

IMO what magic offesive variant need its a passive that increase tech status chance with 1 point if tech element match the elemental weakness

[Zephyrion]

@Zephyrion: While I agree that it would be sort of "giving the middle finger" to TE if a suggestion like mine went forth, I still believe that it would be a QoL for FO that would help it really escape the "play sub TE or be useless for 50% of quest's duration" curse. Also, the skill wouldn't come for free, FO would have to spend some skill points there (3 for +2 PPregen or 6 for +3 PPregen most likely), and take them from somewhere else (which means lower output in some cases).

The problems of TE are not really tied to its PP management. As far as I remember, the issues are that it has noticeably less output for the same effort compared to other classes in solo content, and having 2 TEs in the same MPA will have them cannibalise each other's utility.
(a) The output issue can be fixed by just giving better multipliers for TE which have to be Main Class only (a non-elegant but trivial solution).
(b) The utility issue may not be easily fixable due to technical reasons. My quick armchair-dev suggestion would be to give a Main Class skill that allows Zanverses from TE players to stack with those of other players (instead of having only the older one apply). Or there could be a new skill that acts as a party-wide S4: Raising Pursuit (with an appropriate modifier to not make it ovepowered).

What I said is PP management would become an issue for hybrid TE without convert, so why solve a problem by making another ? I'd much rather make PP convert main-class only and promote a new skill that gives PP recovery to FO. The issue is not TE having PP convert but FO literally having no personal PP recovery contraption skill (mastery skills make the dependency on TE even worse but that's a whole other can of worms).

- as far as damage goes, I think TE is in a perfectly fine place. You have to remember that shifta + deband are actually insane buffs number-wise already, and those numbers inflate even more drastically with zanverse duty, not to mention the fact that TE's personal damage is still very decent (definitely not as dogshit as tales would lead you to believe).The actual contribution TE offers to any content that involves 4 people or more is downright insane, and should actually be taken into account when balancing the class. People do like to complain about it because only the numbers you see and the ability to solo everything fast are all what people see, but looking at the whole picture, you wouldn't want TE to be a personal damage beast on top, but hey, not like actual balance matters, give me free power-ups.

- Easiest way is close to what you said but just make all buffs applies a lower % would be more than enough (say shifta strike is +10% and 25% base stats for the first TE to cast it, then if another TE casts shifta on top, you get an additional 5% damage and 12.5% base stats). Zanverse shouldn't be touched as an area 20% damage replication that can be further enhanced on wind weak enemies is already a humonguous number, so straight stacking them would only lead us back to the EP4 days where TE was only considered to be a zanverse bot, because anything it could ever do didn't even being to compare to the sheer amount of BS numbers you could get from it

i agree with darkmits about PP convert should become a FO skill due to many PP passives TE have ,

also agree with zephyrion about TE being unable to play as propper offensive hybrid , i use the uransara for TE/HU combination and its crazy

IMO what magic offesive variant need its a passive that increase tech status chance with 1 point if tech element match the elemental weakness

As fun as Uransara is, it perfectly embodies the issue that TE hybrid used to have, being only "decent" at techs when you trigger the orbs, but ofc coming at the expense of melee, which feels very double standards considering how absurd Lavis melee was for the longest time (and still is with Ultimate Boosters)

TE hybrid is definitely viable nowadays thanks to skill tree fixes and overall buffs, going toe-to-toe and even beating pure melee on most content involving Light and/or Dark weaknesses (curse you masteries) but it's sadly more or less shoehorned on either getting Atra EX or using at least two wands (one for melee like Lavis and one statstick for techs like LS or Chaval).