2010-07-06, 08:28 PM
Takebacker Wrote:Why does it even matter? It's stronger at max and that's all that matters.
The only reason it would matter is if you intend to use Brave Slash to replace Brandish when you're actually using it. If it's literally not stronger than Brandish until it's actually maxed, that's 10 whole levels where you still have to use Brandish and you're not getting any stronger at all. Also, it means that when you do max it, you're not doing a significant change in damage since the first 29 levels were weaker and the scaling is so pomegranatety.
Prior to this change, Brave Slash was stronger than Brandish at level 9 @ 840ms. Now, it replaces Brandish at level 4. Had it stayed at 1020ms, it would require level 15 Brave Slash to replace Brandish.
This addressed half an issue, if this was what they were attempting to address at all; Fury is better DPS than Crusher, so Crusher should never be used. I believe that the damage modifiers for Spears and Polearms help balance the damage comparison to Crusaders and Knights, so it wasn't particularly too big of an issue at third job for balancing damage output, but rather the fourth job like they addressed later.
Crusher does approximately 542.4%/s @ 1050ms, including Judgement Dragon's bonus criticals and Final Attack
Fury used to do approximately 573.5%/s @ 810ms, including my estimate for criticals and including Final Attack
Fury now does 548.8%/s. It's still stronger than Crusher, just by a smaller margin, so there's no reason to use Crusher until 4th job, but apparently a valid reason to max it with the new changes to Berserk.
It just doesn't make sense that you have to get to Fourth Job to make a Third Job skill viable.
Given that Berserk does 1.6x damage (as opposed to +60% per hit which is significantly weaker than previous patches' 1.8x damage), Crusher now does 1123.0%/s compared to Fury's 878.1%/s, and Sacrifice's 1566.9%/s @ 750ms. Crusher is now viable on two and three mobs, and four or higher is used with Fury, but single target is still Sacrifice. I believe that Sacrifice's ability to completely ignore defense as well as Spear and Polearm's significantly higher modifier make Dark Knights very balanced compared to Heroes and Paladins in terms of single target damage, but Crusher and Fury's significantly lower damage compared to Brave Slash and Advanced Charge Blow make them less potent. What they really should be addressing is the low damage output of Crusher, either by boosting the damage even more, or by making it faster. I suppose what they felt was that Fury was a bit too powerful in Third Job but making it 5% weaker doesn't really change anything, and just leaves it weaker in Fourth Job.