Long awaited post- GET RID OF CANCEL WA/MA

FWIW WC/MC is precisely what makes HT so interesting.

Outside of that fight I think there's very few arguments for it but I think removing it from HT main body would be a huge loss for player skill expression.

 

Replace them all with their respective reflects for less duration!

 

I would LOVE to see adding/updating class abilities such that there's a strategy in dispelling these effects. Imagine if certain warrior classes could break down a weapon cancel, or dealing X amount of magic damage would dispel a weapon cancel. It could be a very interesting way of giving under-appreciated classes their own unique spot in the meta (and thus, a spot in raiding parties), without having to change their damage or otherwise balance their class abilities.

 

The biggest concern with changes like this is turning the class into something that's mule-able. Not that I'm saying there aren't ways of addressing this, but I have my doubts seeing as how the change directed at Bucc TL muling (energy charge) only further incentivized muling Buccs (and still hasn't been reverted).

 

Great point! That would be a side effect for sure, though not inherently a bad thing.

 

one thing I thought about would be if there was a way to let the weapon/magic cancel not block all the hits, let about 10-30% of hits pass, or increase the def/mdef a lot to the point of reducing 70-90% of the dmg

 

on other servers there are skills that pass and that's exactly what blen said: they turn into mules

 

buccs would laugh all the way to the next balance change

 

oh lol, I forgot this detail that would have to be balanced too kekw,

focus on not blocking all hits

 

I'm speculating here, but WC is a balancing mechanic that lowers the EV of single target attackers. If a boss WCs 50% of the time, then your gear/class advantage is only 50% as powerful. Otherwise strong attackers would just nuke the content twice as fast as plebs and make twice the money.

I would agree though that WC is almost always a pretty lazy design, HT might be the coolest application of it. There are way more interesting ways to cut down EV that are at least somewhat influenced by player actions, the entire section leading up to the boss fight in CWKPQ is a good example. It's mostly a time sink but because players have agency over it, it's more engaging.

 

Im not following how we claim that weapon cancel either favors strong attackers or balances strong attackers. For a given ratio of uptime (rng not withstanding), a squad that could clear 30% faster than another with 0 cancels will also clear 30% faster for any value of uptime.

Unless there's a way to directly alter a monster's average uptime, or a way to line up high impact attacks with cancels ending (like shad), then weapon cancels will amplify run time proportionally, regardless of strength.

Cancels with nothing to do during the downtime but rebuff and check on our "cornians on the side" client(s) are still unfun design tho, and is why HT seemingly gets the only pass.

 

LOL oh god

 

I tossed around this idea with Zak to make it more engaging instead of afk as hell. Remove wc, add sed? Dispel? Reflect would be a bit much considering its a entry level boss. Would make player skill/active bishops much more viable and less muled.

 

Yeah wait nevermind you're right, doing twice the damage will clear twice as fast regardless of WC. I probably formed the misconception from people not wanting to Apple on a boss with frequent WC but in hindsight it's because apple only lasts 10 minutes. So I guess there's not really a gear balancing aspect to WC

 

The only time i find this somewhat true, is during Preheads. But I'd much rather see a HP reduction on preheads than WC since It's still part of the boss design mechanics. Almost similar to ToT's mini-bosses different teaching mechanics leading up to the big fight, tho some could argue why these mini-bosses don't use the same animation IF the goal here was to teach.

 

I made a post about this a while back suggesting to change it from 99.99% damage mitigation to 75%.
People were relatively split about the idea. I'm still in favor of it, but it would be hard to make any changes when people have such differing opinions about it.

 

Just to offer a counter perspective, one thing people might be taking for granted are the pockets of opportunity or rest that cancels provide. I'm not arguing that it's a good design, but I don't think people understand how much more draining a long, unengaging fight is.

I noticed this first when I felt significantly more drained by Toad than 2 full runs of Zakum. Toad doesn't have any fight mechanics - it's just 45+ minutes of pure braindead content - yet for some reason, it felt unbearably more draining because there's absolutely nothing to look out for. At least in Zakum, you're constantly looking for cues that trigger a series of actions or force you to make decisions in order to maximize windows of opportunity and improve. IMO, that's what makes the fight more engaging as a whole and I haven't gotten bored of it. I tapped out of my Toad after only 25 runs, whereas I have over 900 runs recorded for Zakum.

Cancels aren't the most fun, but at least it does SOMETHING to keep you engaged - whether it's rebuffing, going to kill mobs, or just resting and chatting with your buddies.
If cancels do get redesigned, I think there should be some sort of counterplay involved. Completely removing it would just make fights more draining, imo.

My thought was perhaps implementing a cancel piercing mechanic in certain 2nd and 3rd job skills. It would provide staff with a huge new lever to rebalance some underrepresented classes in different bosses.

 

I think this speaks less towards the pros of Cancels and more on how mind-numbingly long Toad is

 

Sure, but it made me appreciate weapon cancels a bit more.

Edit: Also, my Toad run times were about the same length as 2x Zakum runs, so length of time is less relevant here.