Strengthening Fonewearl and Basic Tier Spells

[RoySilverblade]

Fonewearl really got the short end of the stick, and I feel like a super simple change could be implemented that would buff their viability significantly.

Foie, Zonde, and Barta could really use a boost in some way, this would be the most effective solution at making these techniques significantly more useful, plus allow fonewearl to have a strong identity as a single target mage (obviously bartas a bit weird for that but you have to aim it so eh?)

Ideally the buffs would be implemented in a way that could be utilized by other Forces but is generally targeted for the weakest force.

My main thought is cast rate, if she was able to shoot off these abilities at a faster rate, she could more easily compete as a competent damage dealer.

The cleanest way to do that would be to add a cast speed steroid that stacks with v801 to the weapons that boost these abilities:
Club of Laconium
Mace of Adamans
Club of Zumiuran
Twinkle Star
Summit Moon

I don't know how much steroid to offer (ex: ~20%) and which of these weapons to apply the boosts to. But I think this would be a great benefit in allowing fonewearls to not just look cute but to be a powerhouse like all the rest of our force friends.

 

[Ade]

Sorry to tow the line, but the server Admins have made it clear they will never change class balance. Bear in mind FOney has the highest ATA of the FOs...

 

[Wil]

Re-Balancing this game would be a shit show. FOnewearl has tons of perks, try to stop looking at the classes so two-dimensionally.

Every class can clear the game with moderate effort by casual players, if you've reached a point where you think a class needs to be tweaked then you're beyond this, and you should start looking into the Meta.

Plenty of great FOney players you can ask.

 

[Yuffie]

if i had one wish but this is not a real suggestion is more atp and a higher atp growth for fone but i have a lvl 200 foney yet and my 2nd is lvl 16x and i can live the way it is lol

 

[Mayn]

I think what we should really be doing is giving Humars freeze traps and megid level 30.

 

[Rune]

As far as unbalanced classes go I'd say Foney got the big stick when compared to Racaseal and for sure compared to poor Humar friends.

Racaseal gets the joy of being in a worse Racast role who is physically weaker than Ramar even. Trying to solo with her is pretty taxing time wise.

Humar can't even enjoy level 20 J/Z or other techs...which really wouldn't fix his issues but it would be a start to doing so. But fixing him is considering how the class(es) he is worse than happens to be hitting him far more than Racaseal. Racaseal has the issue of being worse than several other classes issue as well but just a few less rather than many. I mean in the end Racaseal's only issue is damage output. She can still para and freeze things very nicely. Humar has damage issues (I mean Racast can out damage him in a group easily) but Humar can't even support that well on top of that. Humar sadly brings almost nothing with a group. 3 s/d and 15 j/z is overall doing more damage and taking less damage than just 15 s/d but lol 15 s/d has to be only used 1-2 times per room where as 15 j/z is several more times per room with chances are not enough time to always do so while stacking your 3 s/d on top of that.

Foney's issue is what...damage output...on the type of class you aren't really expecting much damage output from when in a group. I mean yeah the damage output issue is far larger than the other 3 of the same type to the point where she can't be doing shit at all muscle wise where as the other 3 can at least swing a sword and throw a blade some but she has great defensive support at least with level 30 techs n all. And sof and demons s-rank mech guns are still awesome to have minus when in a boss chamber (granted she really only has issues with a few bosses I feel solo...shame they all aren't just linked to ep2...).

(well maybe just 1...Fomar and Fomarl can wreak some shit sometimes)

 

[equestriancitizen]

Sorry to tow the line, but the server Admins have made it clear they will never change class balance. Bear in mind FOney has the highest ATA of the FOs...

blizzard buff is an attempt at class balance

 

[Spuz]

blizzard buff is an attempt at class balance

Every post your making is mentioning blizzard lmao. I understand that this is the biggest gameplay change in Ephinea, well that and huney clio @Kyu777 but it's not really changing gameplay much... Arrest is still better** for the most part and Blizzard will only get used in the same/similar places anyways, well and mines, but the only enemy that isn't slow af in mines already is Sinows and then you have FT/FS/SQ/Rabarta. I don't really think using it as an excuse to say ''we should/can buff everything because blizzard was buffed''. Foney is already OP with SI damage IMO and changing/boosting would drastically change challenge mode for one thing.

**Blizzard is nice for Gorans because getting Paralyzed mid-warp is aids, and obviously has more EVP reduction but it doesn't last as long and is not stackable like Arrest. Plus Girta/Dorphon in E4. Mines has some uses since Arrest is unusable on machines. I think if any class got a buff its huney/humar and its main use will be for mobs that you already arresting and killing fast anyways. A nice cheap alternative.

 

[Aleron Ives]

changing/boosting would drastically change challenge mode for one thing.

Speaking of which, is there a chart anywhere of how many casts are required to kill various enemies in Challenge, so you can see on which enemies FOnewearl's 30% boost actually matters (-1 cast)?

 

[equestriancitizen]

Every post your making is mentioning blizzard lmao. I understand that this is the biggest gameplay change in Ephinea, well that and huney clio @Kyu777 but it's not really changing gameplay much... Arrest is still better** for the most part and Blizzard will only get used in the same/similar places anyways, well and mines, but the only enemy that isn't slow af in mines already is Sinows and then you have FT/FS/SQ/Rabarta. I don't really think using it as an excuse to say ''we should/can buff everything because blizzard was buffed''. Foney is already OP with SI damage IMO and changing/boosting would drastically change challenge mode for one thing.

**Blizzard is nice for Gorans because getting Paralyzed mid-warp is aids, and obviously has more EVP reduction but it doesn't last as long and is not stackable like Arrest. Plus Girta/Dorphon in E4. Mines has some uses since Arrest is unusable on machines. I think if any class got a buff its huney/humar and its main use will be for mobs that you already arresting and killing fast anyways. A nice cheap alternative.

at the end of the day i completely agree that blizzard was superfluous, i never said it wasn't: i only said it was an attempt at class balancing (which didn't work). wording is important here.

while we are on that, the biggest gameplay change is formally both allowing lua reading of whatever and integrating the reading of other statistics. the basic formula of "going up to p2 to tek random things" is no longer alive and viable, as is the age old "what attack do i use on the enemy given the amount of hp i think it has" is out the window. how every player plays the game has fundamentally changed with client-integrated hp reading.

 

[Spuz]

Speaking of which, is there a chart anywhere of how many casts are required to kill various enemies in Challenge, so you can see on which enemies FOnewearl's 30% boost actually matters (-1 cast)?

I don't know of any list but I guess I could make one at some point. Stages that are FO heavy like 1c2, 1c5, 1c7, 2c2, 2c3, 2c5 are definitely suited for FOnewearl. There is a lot of SI tech usage in most stages. FOnewm can be nice for some stages with GI/RA techs though.

 

[Ade]

blizzard buff is an attempt at class balance

Yes, but it's not a direct change on character parameters, which will not be done.

 

[Ade]

at the end of the day i completely agree that blizzard was superfluous, i never said it wasn't: i only said it was an attempt at class balancing (which didn't work). wording is important here.

while we are on that, the biggest gameplay change is formally both allowing lua reading of whatever and integrating the reading of other statistics. the basic formula of "going up to p2 to tek random things" is no longer alive and viable, as is the age old "what attack do i use on the enemy given the amount of hp i think it has" is out the window. how every player plays the game has fundamentally changed with client-integrated hp reading.

Assuming damage cancel wasn't severe, longtime veteran players could pretty accurately intuit which attack was needed to kill an enemy. The HP reader isn't a parameter enhancement. It's available to everyone.

Similarly, the "class tiers" are widely known at this point, so everyone either knows what they're getting themselves into when they choose a class, or they have the info at their fingertips.

 

[Ryan]

Every class can clear the game with moderate effort by casual players,

Best point in the thread so far.

As others have pointed out, a change like this isn't in Ephinea's scope. It differs from the Blizzard buff (and, by the same logic, the Blizzard buff is similar to the Clio change) in that further strengthening FOnewearl's techniques breaks consistency. FOmar has a +30% Gi buff, FOnewm has a +30% Ra buff, and... FOnewearl should have a +60% Si buff? It's a little silly when you look at it that way. Where's the justification for it?

Meanwhile, Blizzard is grouped in with three other special attack types - Chaos, Arrest, and Hell - all of which have similar progressions on their activation rates. Blizzard, meanwhile, was made useless for no apparent reason by a hard cap on its activation rate that prevented it from having anywhere near the power of Arrest or Hell, even with the boost Androids received. That's another difference between the Blizzard buff and the proposed FOnewearl buff, although it doesn't really apply here since it doesn't matter with respect to Ephinea's scope: Blizzard, as a special, was useless before it was buffed. FOnewearl isn't.

The "consistency" argument I made earlier applies to Blizzard the same way it applies to Clio. It's a weapon with an MST requirement, that's usable by RAmarl (and would be usable by RAmar if he had the MST for it) but gated off of HUnewearl, who has higher MST and equal Zalure level to RAmarl. With all of this information, it's more likely an oversight than anything else that bars HUnewearl from using Clio, rather than a calculated change on Sega's part.

If you want to use Clio and Blizzard as arguments toward any change on Ephinea, a better idea would be to fix the 82% untekked rate on items in Ruins 1, Seaside, and Desert 1, but that's not popular, so no one would suggest it.

 

[Ade]

Best point in the thread so far.

As others have pointed out, a change like this isn't in Ephinea's scope. It differs from the Blizzard buff (and, by the same logic, the Blizzard buff is similar to the Clio change) in that further strengthening FOnewearl's techniques breaks consistency. FOmar has a +30% Gi buff, FOnewm has a +30% Ra buff, and... FOnewearl should have a +60% Si buff? It's a little silly when you look at it that way. Where's the justification for it?

Meanwhile, Blizzard is grouped in with three other special attack types - Chaos, Arrest, and Hell - all of which have similar progressions on their activation rates. Blizzard, meanwhile, was made useless for no apparent reason by a hard cap on its activation rate that prevented it from having anywhere near the power of Arrest or Hell, even with the boost Androids received. That's another difference between the Blizzard buff and the proposed FOnewearl buff, although it doesn't really apply here since it doesn't matter with respect to Ephinea's scope: Blizzard, as a special, was useless before it was buffed. FOnewearl isn't.

The "consistency" argument I made earlier applies to Blizzard the same way it applies to Clio. It's a weapon with an MST requirement, that's usable by RAmarl (and would be usable by RAmar if he had the MST for it) but gated off of HUnewearl, who has higher MST and equal Zalure level to RAmarl. With all of this information, it's more likely an oversight than anything else that bars HUnewearl from using Clio, rather than a calculated change on Sega's part.

If you want to use Clio and Blizzard as arguments toward any change on Ephinea, a better idea would be to fix the 82% untekked rate on items in Ruins 1, Seaside, and Desert 1, but that's not popular, so no one would suggest it.

Or SNS xD

 

[StevieWonderDownUnder]

@Ryan Don't forget FOnewm has Gi-boost as well!

Please leave FOney alone, somebody is always gonna be the "worst" FO. Changing the balance will just make a new one the "worst." Since FOney doesn't have 800 ATP, can't really "fix" her by buffing Si spells.

You play FOney for style, not to be optimal.

 

[Rune]

In all fairness I think just giving Foney 800 atp to remove the 0 excal, s-ranks, ect. and the last few hp she is off to reach a 1401 hp cap would be enough to truly balance every FO. Like no fooling.

FOs aren't like HU and RA role wise.

She has auto pierce megid, the truly best si techs, the best resta power wise lol along with a boost for better or worse, 2nd best nukes, and very good gi damage as well. Factoring in this all she has some traits that let her jump out as an ok FO on her own like the other 3.

She doesn't have the best nukes and overall tech damage of Fonewn, some unique weapon quirks like Fomarl + ease of support, or just the damage + a bit of everything possible of Fomar. But it isn't like the other 3 have everything open to them FO wise as well. I mean I just pointed out some of the +s she has as a FO that are over the others.

Yet she has her own downsides as well after factoring in the basic fo downsides that throw her off more than the others (I mean FOmar/l not being able to use demons mechs sucks and having the worse overall ATA in the game sucks but those can be managed).

Worse damage output than Fonewn to the point where she can't use some well wanted weapons, which means she shares Fonewn's unique FO disadvantage of being worse than the average at just plain attacking but at a even worse level than him. And she ends up with the worse HP class wise. These are all things pretty hard to work around.

(of course this balance is assuming there aren't 8 other classes in this game. I'd give Rika's Class to Fomar/l as well as making it 30% gi boost and also open up DLS daggers to them as well if talking about balance...which would buff FOmarl's atp to 890 or so but meh.)