Techer Skill Tree Conjecture thread

[Zipzo]

I can't recall where, but I know I've seen this executed somewhere to pretty nice degrees. The buff class would imbue other players' weapons with extra benefits that did extra things, instead of just making other players omgwtf everything in sight. And this was good, because it added an extra layer of teamwork and real reasons to bring a buff class, instead of making everyone feel incomplete without one.

If one class's "real reason" to bring them isn't as good as another though, they get passed up.

Having a reason to be brought and being required to me are nearly the same thing in this circumstance. Otherwise your "reason" just gets compared to all the other classes "reasons", which all justifiably have their own set of viable reasons.

Support types tend to avoid this dick measuring contest completely in other games by being a necessity. You just can't run a good/smooth group without at least one person healing or doing the support.

I think when we think of a time where PSO had good support it was probably PSO (DC/BB/GC). Why? Aside from the fact that the buffs were not only much more convenient to use (lasted longer and were much more effective while active), running an online party through a difficult mission or area like Seabed or Ruins without a Force was noticeably less efficient than with. Since PSO back then (and now) is all about getting things done quickly so you can get to the next run, Forces were sought after for parties because the undeniable "need" for them was there if you wanted to farm effectively.

As far as I see the situation that's really the only way. Tune content so that the buffs make a considerable difference or Techer will be like this forever. This means a combination of better tuned enemies and buffing up S/D's overall effectiveness (which could also be in the form of its application convenience, the tick system is just not working).

[gigawuts]

You're missing the forest for the trees. This is a game aimed at a more casual audience. Not everyone likes every playstyle. This game needs to bear in mind that everyone in a party might want to be the same class, and that shouldn't mean they're unable to access certain content.

Making buff classes mandatory is a bad plan. Giving them perks and bonuses? Sure. Required to compete? No. Since requirement to compete is a fine line to be skirting here, the alternatives are making them worthless or making having one being roughly equal to not having one. The former is obviously not the way to go, and the latter is redundant. Therefor, I feel buff classes should be about additional functionality and utility to expand a group's abilities, not to merely give them better damage.

edit: It's also worth noting that ALL forces had identical buff amounts, and there were four distinct kinds of force to be played that would all buff for identical bonus amounts. The only variation was the range they'd do it at. The meta there was significantly different. PSO1 doesn't compare well here. I understand what you're saying, but bringing a FO was a very different thing in PSO1 compared to bringing a techer in this game.

[Kondibon]

Well the biggest problem I can see with that is it takes time to buff. If there's a sense of urgency at all, there will be a WB on the weak point and everyone will be scrambling around with little order.

You can say "go where everyone is" and try to support as many players as you can, but only getting some people with some buffs that aren't even good really doesn't help very much. You'd all be much better off if, instead of trying to support, you simply attacked the boss as well!

There would have to be forced down time, positional requirements, and buffs that mattered. Like you're all on a teleporter or a button, sure let's Shifta because why not? The best place to dodge this attack is right here, so let's Shifta because why not? But you never see "I want to use Shifta because they want to have Shifta" or Deband for that matter.

Pretty much only the Elder Falz fight has interesting enough mechanics to allow for buffs between attacks, but that's only because nobody wants to attack him at those points, so Shifta is actually a bad thing to cast since you don't want to kill him too fast!

This is pretty much it. When bard skills came out in Mabi I pondered for a bit as to why I felt they were better than the buffs in PSO2 despite them only haveing 25-40 second durations, and then I realized that it's because they're so easy to apply. At the tap of a button, in less than a second you could buff your entire party even if members were on the other side of the room for a negligible cost, even mid combo. Mabinogi is a slower paced and smaller scaled game though so this is the equivalent of tap shifta buffing everyone in the same quadrant of the map. There's also the fact that one of the buffs increases stamina and mana regen rates on top of increasing defense and protection. Imagine if Deband caused Ketos Proi's effect on top of having deband cut being innate.

Now of course, I mentioned that the music buffs in Mabi don't stack, but to me that adds to the engagement. The player has to decide which is the best choice at the time.

And and interesting mention: You guys seem to be content with Zanverse as a party support tool for its 20-28% extra damage... doesn't shifta technically do the same thing for a longer period of time?

[Zipzo]

You're missing the forest for the trees. This is a game aimed at a more casual audience. Not everyone likes every playstyle. This game needs to bear in mind that everyone in a party might want to be the same class, and that shouldn't mean they're unable to access certain content.

Making buff classes mandatory is a bad plan. Giving them perks and bonuses? Sure. Required to compete? No. Since requirement to compete is a fine line to be skirting here, the alternatives are making them worthless or making having one being roughly equal to not having one. The former is obviously not the way to go, and the latter is redundant. Therefor, I feel buff classes should be about additional functionality and utility to expand a group's abilities, not to merely give them better damage.

Well that's sort of the beauty of PSO being my alluded example.

You could run a full Hunter party in PSO for any area and it would probably turn out fine. Same with full Forces or full Rangers. The content was even pretty much all solo-able. The clincher here is that having a Force always made things better or more smooth.

Being able to complete the content at all no matter what class you are is fine. Now if you're going to say that every party no matter the composition should be able to complete the content at the same potential pace and speed or efficiency...well then we are at a mighty hefty disagreement on that.

My postulation is simply that since support is the only role in this game that has this trouble of not having a place, that it being necessary for better runs would do it some good. This would entail Shifta and Deband being given some interesting buffs through Shifta/Deband Advance or something like that.

And and interesting mention: You guys seem to be content with Zanverse as a party support tool for its 20-28% extra damage... doesn't shifta technically do the same thing for a longer period of time?

Well you're talking like it's an either/or situation. When it comes down to it you can have both active when you want them to be.

[gigawuts]

Sure, I can get that, I just don't see the benefit of pigeonholing the class. I'd rather see techer excel as a utility buffer, providing a kind of combat support, as opposed to just dropping ordinary atk buffs.

Maybe a better example would be latents. You could spread your weapon's latent to everyone else on top of their own latent, if they have one. So you're in a party of hunter mains and subs? Bring a caves AQ weapon and buff up their fury stance. You're in any kind of mixed party? Spread around some Immediate Justice, or equip a double saber legacy and spread around some APPR bonuses, or maybe equip your Holy Ray and spread around some 5% chance to stun (lol).

[Magus_84]

Well that's sort of the beauty of PSO being my alluded example.

You could run a full Hunter party in PSO for any area and it would probably turn out fine. Same with full Forces or full Rangers. The content was even pretty much all solo-able. The clincher here is that having a Force always made things better or more smooth.

Being able to complete the content at all no matter what class you are is fine. Now if you're going to say that every party no matter the composition should be able to complete the content at the same potential pace and speed or efficiency...well then we are at a mighty hefty disagreement on that.

My postulation is simply that since support is the only role in this game that has this trouble of not having a place, that it being necessary for better runs would do it some good. This would entail Shifta and Deband being given some interesting buffs through Shifta/Deband Advance or something like that.

Make Shifta/Deband about as easy to apply as they were in PSU (so shorter range and less duration than PSO, but longer than here).

Make Jellen/Zalure the fiddly, hard-to-apply, need-to-eat-all-ticks one.

That way, if you want to sort of auto-pilot and cruise through making everyone better (like buff Forces used to do), you can just keep up Shifta/Deband as necessary and throw out attacks.

If you want to really amplify damage, you can spend your time micro-managing Zalure.

[Zipzo]

Sure, I can get that, I just don't see the benefit of pigeonholing the class. I'd rather see techer excel as a utility buffer, providing a kind of combat support, as opposed to just dropping ordinary atk buffs.

Maybe a better example would be latents. You could spread your weapon's latent to everyone else on top of their own latent, if they have one. So you're in a party of hunter mains and subs? Bring a caves AQ weapon and buff up their fury stance. You're in any kind of mixed party? Spread around some Immediate Justice, or equip a double saber legacy and spread around some APPR bonuses, or maybe equip your Holy Ray and spread around some 5% chance to stun (lol).

I feel you Mr. Wutts but you have to remember what company we're dealing with here, SEGA isn't known for that kind of imagination.

At the end of the day, any buff, no matter what kind of interesting mechanic it is, will be abused in one single, optimal way. What you're asking for is a kind of flexibility and diversity that only exists in real life, but not in games...things created by man under mechanics designed by man. Something like that in a video game is bound to have inconsistencies everywhere.

You're describing an ability that has a multitude of possibilities and an un-ending list of application, but like I initially said...it's just impractical in that sense. It's not that I don't share in your vision for such an ability to exist, but you might be asking for a lot is all I'm saying.

[Shiyo]

. The only real problem now is just how easy it is to faceroll content. If SEGA ever stop catering to the shittiest players in the universe I think the community will become very welcoming of TE, but as it stands there's absolutely 0 necessity for any support role. Too bad this will never change, since we're still seeing silly nerfs to mobs constantly.

This is what needs to be done. We need actually challenging content so having someone supporting you is incredibly nice to have and will increase your kill speed and survivability, making everything a ton safer. Will it be doable without a support? Of course, but having a techer with you when stuff is super hard will make things a lot easier and give you more leeway for fucking up. The same way having a 2nd player right now lets you fuck up and die and not instantly fail the mission(on a boss/extreme quest), someone there backing you up. Making support REQUIRED is a horrible idea in a Diablo2ish game where you're supposed to be able to solo if you're geared and very skilled, because forcing people to group in this game is pretty silly with how it's designed.

Techer already is starting to get tons of unique perks, zanverse is basically a +20%-28% damage increase for everyone, shifta is ~250 s/r/t attk for everyone if you max shifta advance, which is basically the difference between a 6 star 50 element +10 weapon and a +10 best 10 star of that weapon. That's fucking huge. Resta is nice if your techer is good at predicting damage and saves you lots of meseta, also always nice to have, territory burst allows buffing curing from much greater distances, megiverse is borderline overpowered when used properly with territory burst, and zondeel is one of the biggest clear time boosters/CC spells in the entire game. Having a techer with territory burst using zondeel properly can save everyone by CCing annoying enemies off them while they focus on a boss, and let you kill trash and scary mobs so much more easily and quickly.

They've added tons of unique spells, zondeel, zanverse and megiverse to this game, I hope they keep adding unique support spells like this. Techer is really an amazing and fantastic support. A cool thing would be if they somehow made deband and shifta into one single buff for techer, giving everyone 1-2 more weapon tiers of SATTK while providing 15% damage reduction(and I heard they want deband cut to work like iron will, making it even better) at essentially all times and the other buffs like megiverse, zanverse, zondeel, and resta would make techer even more incredible at it's role. Now if they could only stop making everytihng so simple, nerf the shit out of weak bullet so we get away from this WB - > kill bosses in 30 seconds meta and add actually challenging content. Extremes are going in the correct direction, but advanced quests were kinda meh, the level scaling is nice, but too much weak trash to kill, still good though. We need a boss rush mode that's like AQ's, with constant bosses thrown at you.

[Coatl]

Do wands still have that cast delay they've had since release?

[UnLucky]

Yeah.