Make Auf DR Only Weapon DR

Currently the Auf fight features just one DR and that is the global DR that applies to all attacks. What I am suggesting is for this DR to instead just be a weapon DR, which for those not familiar, is already featured in fights such as Dunas 1.

At present, AMs are highly undesirable in Auf as they offer suboptimal damage with no other redeeming qualities. It is in fact the only class for which one is unable to make a case for bringing. While paladins may reign supreme, all other classes besides AMs still at least bring something to the table.

Now, mages being awful in a boss would ordinarily be a nothingburger as that is typically the default state of things for life as a mage, but I'd like to posit that Auf should be an exception to the rule like with PB. This situation is arguably problematic because the Auf helm is locked behind the boss and is best-in-slot for all classes, meaning that unless the intention is to force AMs into buying helm service, which is both very niche and very expensive (and unlikely to change in that regard unless Auf EV is significantly increased), AMs are at a significant gearing disadvantage relative to other classes.

To just briefly touch on some basic numbers to ground us, I'll go into some relative ballpark figures and use shad as a reference point as it is the next rung on the ladder. A cracked end game IL AM does roughly 5% less damage than a shad (FP will do marginally more than shad) if taking advantage of elemental weakness. If we assume Auf DR to have roughly 13.3% uptime (10 sec DR every ~65 seconds), then being able to ignore DRs would make AMs about 15.4% stronger, i.e. IL AM would be about 10% stronger than shad on body (~18% for FP). Both AMs and shads should theoretically have very similar damage efficiencies in this fight so I think it's reasonable enough to extrapolate from this.

Allowing mages to be unencumbered by DR in Auf would allow AMs to be very solid attackers at main body (in a fashion somewhat similar to PB body), which would then be tempered by a more lackluster performance during the clone phases (similarly to PB statues), which make up somewhere between 40 and 50% of the overall fight. That is to say, allowing AMs to bypass DR would significantly improve their viability in the fight without also making them too strong. I would also add as an aside that being able to ignore DRs would be rather fitting and thematic of NT given Dunas 1 and Nibergen, both being fights where mages have no downtime. Furthermore, this change would not only affect AMs but would also allow bishops to contribute more to the fight and allow them to be a more active participant.

This post has been sponsored by Nightz.

 

Yup, that's why I mentioned in previous discussions wanting to also lower Auf KB from 140k to something like 90k so that strong AMs could also fill the role of pinner. Wasn't sure if asking for both of those changes together would have been too over the top though or if it'd make AM too competitive...?

It'd also allow pallies to pin outside of DR I suppose, which could be construed as an unnecessary pally buff when they're already an auto-include, but even in this reduced KB scenario I'm not sure that you'd want to run with pally as sole pinner anyways and you'd likely want the SI so that may or may not be a moot point.

 

Yeah, the number I quoted previously was "80-90k" but I wasn't sure if 80k would be too lenient or not (without having crunched the numbers) and felt that having a higher number would have made gearing up on an AM feel more meaningful. But yeah, I wasn't expecting necessarily 100% hit rate but based on the figures you referenced, 90k does still seem to be too punishing for IL and would largely defeat the purpose of the change (FP mains where?).

It's kind of wild how massive of a difference there is between IL and FP for meeting thresholds. A threshold more suited for IL would be one that is relatively trivial for an FP to reach so I guess there's no way to arrive at a "meaningful" number for both.