Lots of Info...

There's a lot to get to, so I'll just get right to it.

SE's released a couple of bombshells (or at least what most consider to be bombshells) since my last post. I did a lot of job speculation in that post and SE confirmed a few of the things I speculated about. Doesn't mean it's good though.

Job Abilities (Part 1):

Divine Caress: (WHM Lv.83 Ability Delay: 1 min. Effect Duration: 1 min.) If the next spell you cast cures a status ailment, your target will gain enhanced resistance to that ailment.

Did WHM really need yet another buff? A one minute ability coupled with a one minute endurance makes this sound like yet one more thing for a WHM to keep up with. Might be handy in situations where a critter is known for spamming a certain enfeeble or two, but the effectiveness of this is definitely going to be called into question. Does it make you virtually immune? Is it basically casting Bar-whatever? Is it going to work in conjunction with an Accession removal thus making SCH a rather permasub? Who knows...

I do know this...time to shift your focus to other support jobs SE. WHM is a powerhouse now.

Saboteur : (RDM Lv.83 Ability Delay: 5 min. Effect Duration: 1 min.) If the next spell you cast is enfeeblement magic, its effect and duration will be enhanced.

I had semi-speculated about this before and I'll stand by my previous comments. If this doesn't do anything over the caps for enfeebles, it's pretty much pointless. On top of that, 5 min delay vs. 1 min duration...something seems off there.

Spur: (BST Lv.83 Ability Delay: 3 min. Effect Duration: 90 sec.) Grants "Store TP" effect to pets.

I don't know enough about BST to really make an educated comment on this, but I would venture to guess depending how much that Store TP value is will determine just how useful this ability turns out to be.

Tenuto: (BRD Lv.83 Ability Delay: 15 sec. Effect Duration: 1 min.) If the next song you cast affects yourself, it will not subsequently be overwritten by other songs.

This looks like something that was long overdue. Now give COR something like this and you're set.

Soul Jump: (DRG Lv.85 Effect Duration: 3 min.) Delivers a high jumping attack on a targeted enemy which suppresses enmity. Effect enhanced when wyvern is present. The recast timer for Soul Jump is shared with High Jump.

From previous comments, I'm still not particularly sure where SE was going with these jumps. The TP bonus from Spirit Jump is nice and it'd only follow the pattern for TP to be added to Soul Jump, but this pretty much rendered our Jump timers mostly useless if building TP is your thing. Given the extra damage from the VIT modifier on the regular jumps, I'll probably opt to just use Jump in conjunction with Soul Jump for the time being if things play out the way they did with Spirit Jump.

Blood Pact: Ward "Earthen Armor": (SMN Lv.82 Ability Delay: 1 min.) Mitigates the impact of severely damaging attacks for party members within area of effect.

Seems like something was lost in translation here. Is this basically a more potent stoneskin? Does it just reduce damage if you get crit. hit?

Blood Pact: Ward "Tidal Roar": (SMN Lv.84 Ability Delay: 1 min.) Lowers attack for enemies within area of effect.

This sounds rather useful if a critter isn't immune to it. Then again, I'm not sure I know of many things that are actually immune to this sort of enfeeble. SMN may have just found itself a more permanent spot in the tank party.

Efflux: (BLU Lv.83 Ability Delay: 3 min. Effect Duration: 1 min.) If the next spell you cast is a "physical" blue magic spell, a TP bonus will be granted.

Sekkanoki v2.0 for BLU?

Courser's Roll: (COR Lv.81) Enhances "Snapshot" effect for party members within area of effect. Lucky number: 3. Unlucky number: 9.

Haste for CORs and RNGs alike. Biggest question is...how much faster will this kill your Rangers?

Blitzer's Roll: (COR Lv.83) Reduces melee attack delay for party members within area of effect. Lucky number: 4. Unlucky number: 9.

Something long overdue for Corsair. Been some debate over whether it actually reduces the weapon delay (thereby screwing with your TP builds) or if it's just a form of haste. COR is already a valuable asset to have in most situations and, personally, I don't really care if it messes with my delay. I have other Store TP gear options I can pick up w/o sacrificing much of anything else. Swinging faster never really hurt anyone...

...mostly.

Feather Step: (DNC Lv.83 Ability Delay: 15 sec.) Lowers a target's critical hit evasion. If successful, will earn you a finishing move. The recast timer for Feather Step is shared with Steps.

This one has me intrigued a bit. DNC has really found a niche for itself thanks to haste samba, but if this gives them the ability to actually directly increase their party's damage output in a manner that's essentially equivalent to having Minuet or various Corsair rolls, holy shit. If it's something like a 5% increase in crit hits overall, look out.

Job Traits (Part 1)



This will essentially be a few quick blurbs about what each of the jobs listed will be getting.

MNK/NIN: Again, who does skillchains anymore and more importantly, who does skillchains with Monks and Ninjas? Thanks for the boost in damage SE, but unless these jobs are subbin' SAM and abusing Sekkanoki, I can't imagine this will change any perception about their overall impact on endgame in general.

WHM: This should have gone to RDM unless SE is positioning WHM to be a tank. Which is possible I guess...

RDM: See MNK/NIN. Also see, RDM nuking?

THF: DW1 = Hosed. Guess it's a nice option, but back to wielding 1H THF knife while soloing you go THFs...

DRK: Because DRKs didn't have enough ways to die fast. Can't wait to see the effect this has on Kreoss' Ragnarok though...

BRD: Useful I guess if a BRD wants to whip out a Joytoy and take a couple swipes at a bad guy while running through their song rotations. This is also another trait that should have gone to RDM.

COR: Ok, awesome. Now fix their Marksmanship skill.

PUP: Still LOL. Just 99.8% LOL now.

Spells



A number of interesting things in this category. I'll simply go down the list by jobs:

Red Mage: Getting a number of spells. Refresh II is obviously the huge one. Addle can be awesome as long as 99% of the things in this game aren't immune to it. Gain-VIT, Gain-MND will likely follow the same pattern as the Bar-spells and as long as they can be used with Accession, should be useful for RDMs overall. Aero IV also coming down the pipe as well, but that was to be expected.

White Mage: Cura II, Boost-VIT, Boost-MND. Cura could already go beyond Curaga II in terms of healing potency and made it the most efficient AoE curing spell available to WHM as long as Afflatus: Misery was active. Cura II likely continues that trend. I'd speculate it's probably going to be along the lines of Curaga IV potency. Boost-VIT and Boost-MND are like the AoE versions of what RDM is getting.

Paladin: Enlight. Probably screws over Excalibur and Hauteclaire owners a bit, but the bigger questions will be it's enmity generation, duration and MP cost. Seriously doubt this changes much of anything in regards to tanking though.

Black Mage: Likely got the lion's share of ZOMG spells. Aspir II, Aero V, Break, Stoneja, and Waterja. First, Aspir II will probably have the same effect on BLM as Refresh II has on RDM. My thoughts on Break are similar to Addle. Very useful if 99% of the bad guys in this game aren't immune to it. Personally, I thought RDM should have picked this spell up instead of BLM, but that's relatively minor. Aero V was to be expected. The use of -ja has me perplexed a bit though. Are they taking the Cura approach with BLM nukes now? More MP efficient? Damage potentially increased by how much you've dished out? AoE that doesn't draw that much hate? Extra magic burst damage? Time will tell, but as was stated at Vanafest.

BLMs are basically like a fly that just nukes and nukes until it gets swatted down. They apparently now have more tools at their disposal to draw the attention of the swatter.

Scholar: Animus Augeo, Animus Minuo, Water V, Regen III. Those enmity spells could be huge. The rest aren't a surprise at all.

Bard: Ballad III, Earth/Water Carol II, Foe Lullaby II, and Sentinel's Scherzo. Well Ballad III is def. huge. Foe Lullaby is right up there and likely means Horde Lullaby II is coming down the pipe. Lots of speculation on what Ballad III will actually do, but until someone actually sings the song and sees it, no one will know. It's safe to say Ballad III and Ballad II likely are replacing the standard Ballad II/I combo. The 2nd tiers of carols will come in handy against specific monsters (think Tiamat, Sarameya, Krabkatoa etc...). No telling what the hell Sentinel's Scherzo is, but the word "Sentinel" is associated with Monks quite a bit in this game but is actually defined as some form of guarding. Scherzo is a musical term that essentially means "fast".

My guess would be this song does something to one's counter rate.

Dark Knight: They get Aero III and EnDark. Endark is a little bit of a surprise, but not so much since this and it's counterpart have essentially been in the game for a while. Most recently on the Plaga Scythe. I'll still contend this is simply another way for a DRK to get themselves killed faster, but we'll see what happens with it.

Ninja: Myoshu: Ichi, Yurin: Ichi. Uh...what? More tools for Ninjas to carry around? Tons of speculation on what these will actually do. Drakus seems to think they'll follow the Aisha: Ichi mold and do something along the lines of Evasion and Defense Down. If that's the case, do they stack with the other things (like Gungnir's def. down proc or Angon) that are similar in nature? Aisha: Ichi actually turned out really good for NIN, so hopefully these follow the same mold.

Weapon Skills

SE released the a video (seen below) today of more new Weapon Skills. There's part of me that simply facepalmed at the notion of yet another weapon with a specific weapon skill tied to it.



Then there was another part of me that figured most people would never get these Weapon Skills if they tied them specifically to their Emp. Weapons. It's pretty obvious now that SE had no intention of people getting these weapons in a reasonable amount of time, which made me feel better about my (continued) time investment into Gungnir, but do these weapon skills really look like they're added incentive to get the Emp. Weapons? They're still unfinished yes, but I'm still a little baffled at how they're handling these things.

Anyway, screengrabs of each weapon skill and a quick blurb on what I think of them:


Cloud Splitter:


Looks thunder-based...

Chant du Cygne:


Name actually translates to "Swan Song", or last act. I guess you could say the Zorro Z was always his last act in a battle. Maybe fire-based like a number of other sword weapon skills.

Victory Smite:


Combo +1? Even the same sound effect...

Rudra's Storm:


A quick wiki search of "Rudra" shows a mythological wind god. Lines up with most of the rest of dagger's weapon skills and the animation supports this. Although part of me thinks that's an awfully dark tornado...


Torcleaver:


"Tor" is a rocky pinnacle. Cleaver is self-explanatory. The animation is a rocky cleave. Earth-based probably.

Myrkr:


AoE damage? Aside from being a named ripped out of Star Wars lore apparently...I can't really tell if this is a healing or damaging weapon skill. Leaning towards healing...

Jishnu's Radiance:


There's probably some sort of mythological reasoning behind the name of this weapon skill, but for humor's sake, I'm just going to say a developer at SE is a fan of this guy.

Ukko's Fury:


Two-hit? AoE? Hard to tell. They dipped into Finnish mythology for the name though.

Quietus:


I'LL GIVE YOU PRETTY PRETTY...demon wings? Does it do 0 damage if you've got this flowing through you?


Camlann's Torment:


Very cool reference to King Arthur's final battle. Half-hearted animation though. Looks like half a Geirskogul.

Tachi: Fudo:


Likely a reference to the Buddhist god Acala. Fudo is the Japanese version of him. I'll go with the destroyer version depicted in wiki for the inspiration behind this WS. Probably the 2nd coolest animation out of all of them presented in the video.

Dagan:


More flowers! Probably some sort of self-buffing weapon skill as it's club and that's generally what they do. Referencing possibly Dagon, a fish god or nature god in several different mythologies.

Wildfire:


Typical gun WS. Aim, point, blow shit up.


Blade: Hi:


Likely the best animation they've put in for this batch. I mean, who wouldn't get excited at the prospect of sending a dragon straight up the ass of a bad guy? I can't think of a better way to say "Hi" than that really...


Conclusion

I'm starting to get rather excited for the update. Mostly because it's either coming really soon or SE has some bigger stuff to tell us before it happens. We still have Job Adjustments Part 2 incoming (guessing Wednesday). I'm guessing the update will actually happen on Sept. 13th.

There's not much that's been shown so far that's really surprised me, but there are a lot of much needed additions being shown and that's a lot to get excited about.