Type balance

I was thinking about something said in chat about how there are twice as many sword subtypes as other subtypes, and I noticed that the sword subtype is the only one that gives an 'actual' free action...

normal, cursor and break can enhance an attack's strength, accuracy and break capabilities once per turn, respectivly.

wind can move objects or raise of lower the success of an attack, but it can't actually be it's own dodge (EG, you can use the wind to make a jump go further, but you can't use a gust of wind to 'jet' or microburst yourself in the direction you want to go.)

heal does that conversion thing, which you use an action to cause it's effect(I agree with this, I'm just noting it here)...

sword, if you use 2 melee attacks in a row, lets you gain an extra action for dodging. I know that melee weapons are notorious for being brittle and breaking after 2-8 swings, but as we've seen in the tournament, one extra dodge can really turn the flow of battle.

I can see how it works, but it does give an advantage over other subtypes by being the only one that adds actions, while the other ones just add to existing actions, except for healing.

perhaps for balancing we could change that extra dodge to a 'haste' effect for one tactical movement/dodge while using a melee weapon/attack?

Swordplay. Once per turn, can add a free dodge to two consecutive melee attacks. (This dodge is used as a free action, which does not count toward your limit of actions for the turn.)

...could be changed to...

Parry. Once per turn, a Sword-type Navi can add "Haste" to a tactical movement when using a melee attack. (This ability costs no actions to use.)
I'm going to respectfully ignore this for reasons that will shortly become apparent. I like the way you're thinking, though.
I agree. I hate to nerf myself, but Healing navis get a giganto-advantage if they have a powerful chip. My Bighammer means I can heal for 80 in one action with no real drawback.
As I said, please wait, it will all become clear.
Variable:

Capable of using its level as an attack bonus once per turn, works like the attack + chips. Potentially very powerful because of the way multi-hit chips work. Terrible early on.

Debuff: The ability to use an attack bonus chip as a negative for the next attack performed by the target. A few things to note about this.

1: The target will have knowledge about this before choosing the attack.
2: This does function on multi-hit attacks like a support chip.
3: The range of possible chips in this category is +10-50 damage.
4: Better chips rapidly become very rare and expensive.

During a turn you have the choices of dodging, using an attack chip, using a defense chip, using a support chip, or using this ability.

Dodging: Highly variable success rates, avoids all damage. It usually succeeds. This is 'better' the more damage being done. The average damage avoided is very simply the success% times the total damage of the attack. If one only had a 50% chance of success, it would be better on attacks that did 20 damage or more(per hit), rather than using the debuff ability. Generally, there is a significantly higher than 50% success rate, meaning that you are better off using dodge even more often. With more powerful debuffs, which are quite rare and would need to be sought out by the Variable navi, this would affect attacks of 40 damage per hit or 60 damage per hit better than the debuff ability. Note though that this is only using the 50% success rate. The ability is only always better than dodging if the attack is doing damage less than or equal to the damage prevented by the chip, 10-50. This does not take a chip.

Using an attack chip: Most virii that do damage in the 10-20 range can be killed by a single attack chip of reasonable equivalent power. A cannon for example can kill most virii that would do 10 damage and a proper elemental weapon can kill most enemies that do 20 damage. Attacking enemies also ends their threat forever, unlike the other options and you will have to do it sooner or later anyway.

Using a defense chip: Generally the opposite of what is useful for the debuff ability, they usually cover single powerful hits very well. They are sufficiently different that they really don't cover the same situations at all. If you have an aura, that is nice but they are incredibly rare.

Buffing an Attack: This does damage equal to the bonus of the attack times the number of hits you can produce. Buffable attacks generally do between 3 and 9 hits to targets, and have their own variable damage they do on their own. When multiplied out this means you can output anywhere between 30 and 450 additional damage from use of the chip. Realistically if the chip was used properly it will be around 100 additional damage. This is situationally highly variable and requires the use of rare chips.

Debuffing an attack: This prevents 10-50 damage per hit of the next attack from a single chosen target. If the target is attacking with a single attack this is almost always an inappropriate choice, as you could do significantly better in this category just by destroying the target or dodging as it will likely deal more damage than you are preventing. If the attack is multi-hit this is only a positive choice if you could not destroy the target, you can reliably determine that they are going to attack before death, and you can prevent more damage than you could by dodging(you can prevent over 50% of the damage from each hit).


This means that the only valid situations where this ability is useful are when.
1: You cannot instead kill the target (high health)
2: The target has a multi-hit attack which you can prevent more than half-the damage from.
3: and you had no status effects that would be more effective, such as stun, which would prevent the attack from occurring in its entirety rather than simply preventing some damage from it.


Additionally it is the only passive ability that requires a very small list of very rare chips to be functional at all, making it tactically a poor choice and inconvenient to ever make a choice period.


Team is a little lack-luster because of the mindsets involved. It is only useful if you expect to be weaker than at least one of your teammates. For this reason people would only get it for their SPs or if they expect to be assistants to powerful allies and don't want to heal. It is also mostly useless to have a team forged entirely from team subtype navis, which seems a bit counter-intuitive.
I had the exact same issues with Team and Variable.

In particular, Team assumes that you want to take damage for an ally, or that you're going to be moving around with someone who's a lot tougher than you.
Also note how you have to be in physical contact for dmg sharing. This means that you are more vulnerable to AoE which it doesn't do anything against (example: shotgun from 50/50 goes to 25+25/25+25). So holding hands isn't the best survival strategy against AoE weapons...

All in all, Team is quite underpowered for anything but SPs (in which case it's quite powerful). You'd be probably better off with recover if you want to support people, or maybe Shield (though shield is ALSO better for SPs, on account that they can't move around much without upgrades anyway...).
I was hoping custom was choosing one passive and one action from any of the other sub types...

Quote (Niax)

I was hoping custom was choosing one passive and one action from any of the other sub types...

Then everyone would choose Custom...
On the subject of variable, the main ability is pathetically weak at low levels. The secondary ability also requires a very specific subset of chips.

Possible solutions to quality:
Make the debuff last a turn.

Make debuff the 'active' ability and based upon level and have them able to sacrifice chips to add their damage to attacks (does not stack with multi-hit).

Make their buff ability just be 10+Level/2. It will balance out at 20 but actually be useful for the first 10 levels. Subtypes(theoretically) are chosen by people who expect to be starting from scratch with this character. Giving them completely useless abilities at level 0 is not a good way to encourage diversity.



For team the set is a bit different.

Realistically what would be desired for this, rather than being someone else's secretary would be away to be supported by others and a way to support others. Supporting others seems like an active thing to do, while passively they would be better off with the assistance of others. So you could have:

Passive: Passively improves success rate of all group maneuvers

Active: Once per turn may reduce the cooldown of a teammates sig by 1.

This isn't the best example, but gives an idea for what would be useful. Personally, I believe the sig-cooldown example to be slightly (yes only slightly) too powerful, it would not be too bad if you considered SPs part of the owner(therefore you are the same person, not teammates).
In reverse order:

Variable = Untapped Power without a +10 as a hand holder at low levels. 10+lvl/2 is actually decently weaker at high levels (ex: 10+50/2=35, as opposed to 50). If it's really such a bother for people to get a few levels (seriously, how hard is it to get to level 5?), then suggested change would be to make it a minimum of 10 damage. That way from 0-10 you add 10, and then from 11 on you add your actual level.

Team is made for people who want to "take one for the team." Go figure on the naming there eh? And last time I checked if I fire a shotgun it travels farther backwards, not suddenly changing its direction to the left or right. If you dislike the idea behind team, simply don't use it and chose another one that you feel will help your allies more effectively. Some minor changes to wording and effect may help, but until someone actually uses if and sees how it fares over a while, don't expect much.

@Hiko: Or you could just use an 80 point sig and still have a bighammer. Or You could just use a recov80 (we have recov80's, right? whatever, use a 100 if we don't.) I personally think losing 160 points of offensive damage is a big enough drawback.

I always hated sword.

*Note: Personal opinions.
You CAN shoot from the side you know. But fine, if you don't like shotgun, how about widesword then? Boomerang? Other than that, unless I'm missing something, having to touch eachother gotta decrease the dodge chances as well... Really, the more I think about it, the dumber that ability feels.
You know what, I've about had it with your attitude Knight. It's a damn good thing I'm stepping down, because I'm done with this bullcrap.

If you're going to play a support character, and you don't have any chips or sigs to facilitate that play style, you deserve to suck. If you're not going to have any healing, defenses, or other damage negating skills, and you choose to play as a subtype that you know damn well is going to be taking damage and in harms way, you deserve to suck. If you have no friends to play with who can support your style choice, you deserve to suck. And lastly, if you're going to be tagging along and always grabbing someone's sleeve, without any thought given to when you're grabbing it, you deserve to suck. And die. A lot. You're making a mountain out of a molehill. You're not supposed to be riding on someone's back all day and split every attack. That's stupid, unoriginal, boring to RP, and just a bad idea all around.

We've heard your BAWWing in the cave about it with the exact same arguments. Either find something new to say, or kindly shut up until we actually see how well it works in some actual combat.
I think being at eachother's throats is unneeded, but I believe we should see the subtypes used in combat before criticizing/changing them. Since we didn't really have the time/resources to go through "beta testing" with these subtypes with actual trial combat, this will have to do for now.
I really don't is what with everyone else's attitude. There is for some reason the attitude that if I disagree with your ideas you should become violently angry. I have never seen someone attempt to deal with the problems logicly. That is a lie, it is just rare, but you get my point.

On to the actual topic, the main reason I brought this up is because not one person took either of these subtypes, and while I thought I might be interested I did not have the heart to take something that actively sucked in my eyes. If I campaign for them being better from outside the subtype, I might have some minor level of success, but if I actually choose them and realize for certain that they suck, I will just been seen as someone whining because he wants to be more powerful. The community has grown defensive about things that the mods came up with to an extreme extent.

Normally Grim, I might agree with you. That said, nobody has taken either because they are sufficiently poor or uninteresting. If you continue keeping team as (screwed over by) your team, I suggest changing the name to secretary or support.

Quote (Leon)

You know what, I've about had it with your attitude Knight. It's a damn good thing I'm stepping down, because I'm done with this bullcrap.

I know I should be sad that you leave the dev team (to be honest, I am, since that means one less people working on stuff..), but on the other hand, I'd be lying if I said that I wont enjoy having a... discussion where everyone can see.

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If you're going to play a support character, and you don't have any chips or sigs to facilitate that play style, you deserve to suck.


A new player won't have any. Then again, new players are supposed to suck I guess. Alright, getting past new players and their intense suckery, could you give me a list of what works better with Team subtype than anyone else? The abilities offer no synergy with anything, at all, as far as I could find.

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If you're not going to have any healing, defenses, or other damage negating skills, and you choose to play as a subtype that you know damn well is going to be taking damage and in harms way, you deserve to suck.


I thought we are talking about Team here? The ones supposed to support their team not "stand in harms way", as far as I know... For them, you can get healing, but it won't be more effective. Maybe if the healing spread as well as the dmg, then you wouldn't have to spread the healing chips out, but that's not the case. Damage negating skills mean that you aren't taking dmg, so your skills aren't working... This last one is a common trait they share with Guts BTW.

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If you have no friends to play with who can support your style choice, you deserve to suck.


Agreed on this. You wanna play team? You'll need friends. This is self explanatory and I can't remember ever saying otherwise. Except, you know, if you are forced to play in teams (which is considering that you'll need a partner who doesn't suck and drag you both down to hell by getting hit too much, or just simply "forgetting" to post for a month), I'd expect a bit more... usefulness.

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And lastly, if you're going to be tagging along and always grabbing someone's sleeve, without any thought given to when you're grabbing it, you deserve to suck. And die. A lot. You're making a mountain out of a molehill. You're not supposed to be riding on someone's back all day and split every attack. That's stupid, unoriginal, boring to RP, and just a bad idea all around.


Oh, so "One for all" is an ability I'm not supposed to use! That makes everything clear! Although even when I DO use it it sucks, because I'm making myself more vulnerable when I'm trying to make myself take less dmg, but whatever.

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We've heard your BAWWing in the cave about it with the exact same arguments. Either find something new to say, or kindly shut up until we actually see how well it works in some actual combat.


Yeah, it was in the cave, and you responded with the same shitty argument. Thought I'd share my concerns with others, maybe some other members giving their opinions, that kind of stuff. Yet you come again, use an argument that can be summed up as "LRN 2 PL4Y U N00B!!!!! GET SUM 3P1C G34R AND A GUILD!!!!11111ONEONEONEELVEN"

I'd also like to point it out to you how no one even fucking took Team (for the possible exception of SPs... cause as said, it's marvelous on those), so we can't really "see how it works out in play".

But alright, let me say something new:

I would like to propose a Change to "One for All" so it doesn't suck. Make it possible to form a link at the beginning of a battle with 1 ally for every 10 levels of the Team navi (starting at 0), no distance restriction (aside from of course, escaping battle, or willfully turning it off). I think that is probably enough to at least make it viable and fixes its retardation, but you could also make it spread healing (evenly split) as well.
Leon, that was unwarranted. Knight, it probably would've been better to not respond.

And yes, I agree, Team seems pretty weird to me.
I was wondering...can we make the Guts type's active ability somewhat buster oriented? It makes sense since it was like that in the games, but it could go out of hand with the buster chips. If taunt doesn't turn out as effective as we thought it would (even though I could think of some useful tactics), could we keep this in mind?
I don't think we want to go that way. Right now, each subtype either has a specialization with an effect (sword/break/melee/object, etc...)or a "role" (Team/shield/recover). Guts is supposed to be the "tanky"; taking hits and enduring taking hits. Adding a buster boost would not make it better at his role (though it might make it a better subtype in general).

Not saying I'm against such changes, but it probably goes against the design of the subtypes.

Now, if you also gave it a buster based passive instead of the DR, and changed his theme from "tank" to "dude with buster", that's a different story...