I don't play Techter but I still found this all pretty insightful since weapons having feedback loops and reward structure like this is what makes the NGS combat engaging. If you're not being rewarded for playing the weapon to its strengths, then it doesn't feel good.
To go along side this, I think techniques themselves could also benefit from a blot buff (outside of Barta Blot and Megid Sphere) to incentivize using the same element vs any boss you're up against rather than swapping to the higher dps blot like Barta, which would further piggyback off of Weak Element Amplifier and Compound Tech Gauge Amplifier synergy with matching element. Fully charged Zonde Clad could build up to 3 while costing only half as much casts per blot tier, Zan Gale could act like Megid Sphere and build up to 3 blots, Grants Glitter could add an extra 2 tiers to increased the amount of extra damage dealt, and Foie Brand could build up these "meteor" like blots around the character every time you set off Foie Brand, which when you cast a charged Foie all 3 could hail down and do massive damage. (These are example cases but you get the idea)
The ideal solution would be that every tech class gets their own techniques. The issue with blots is that their techniques are "designed" to balance out their effects. For instance Zan with Rod or Gifoie are fairly tuned when you Rod is using them. But fall off a cliff when techter uses them. Hopefully crafted PAs understand this and start to work around the issue of blots so that we don't get into an arms race trying to balance each element against each other. Early in NGS there were slight suggestions that elements would respond differently to the weapon, but that didn't make the cut.
The same could be said also for Photon Blast, other classes can recharge certain skills after. Especially since it is Techter's passives fills it quicker.
One other suggestion that I see that could also help fix the whole technique and wand synergy problem is just allow wand element pursuit and even compound techniques to give an instant charge to techniques once used. combine that with the idea that wand element pursuit gives a blot and it allows alot more flexibility and comfortability to techter and maybe even forces rotation
Great breakdown! Fully agree about Revoke needing to set blots or alternatively providing us with buffs that Properly tell the player "you're now in the technique phase" if thats the design idea Sega wants for us. I know they've wanted Techter to have a "melee phase" and "tech phase" for eleven years, even the uransara 14* Wand tried to reinvigorate interest in that, but this Idea never seems to blossom correctly. I assume you're also going to talk about Wand Lovers at some point too?
I think I'd personally lean harder into reworking spellblade as it is now with uncharged techs to make them a proper intended thing (not that i have any specific ideas off the top of my head) but I think that if this was how the class changed in the future, I'd enjoy it just as much as that tbh, this sounds cool
The problem with spell blade is that Techter doesn't have PP abilities built into the kit and Varas. TRY FIGHTING Varas or even Nogleth with spell blade, it falls to pieces fast. Without an aggressive in your face enemy it forces you to choose between blots and element pursuit and ends up just burning your PP.
Would love revoke adding a “blot” would feel so much more rewarding instead of feeling like i just peaked and have to start ramping up all over again right now reapplying an element just feels like a “repositioning” phase
hopefully we see some of this implementation in the december patch update, which is most likely going to be the major one this year. techter is fun, but I really believe they are super cautious as to not make it *too* strong in a way that will drastically shift the meta. for the longest time there were lots of ppl who'd main techter and just use another weapon/class combo w/o engaging with wand at all, so I'm assuming they're trying to be careful to not do something that would further exacerbate this.
The problem right now is that Sega has failed. Thanks to DFS Jetboots has made a huge comeback in Techter's kit to where we are sing more JB abilities than we did prior.
@@Einhander oh dang I ain't even know lol. I've been taking a break from ngs for a bit, so I'm not up on all the "meta" stuff rn. although I do enjoy wand techter, I had a LOT of fun using te/bo with wand/jb multi and right as I was settling into that they basically was like "no, not like that lol" so it made me move away from it. I remember you made a vid about why it was happening (forces) and how techter would keep catching strays until they do something about it. I would like to see some clear identity for techter wand emerge, but it seems like it's always been a bit hazy. even in oracle, wand didn't really feel like it had a clear identity b/c bonking didn't seem as strong as the other options enabled by phantom and etoille. it's such a fun class and I really want it to be the best it can be. it's very possible that the 2nd tech versions they talked about may fix some of these issues, but as usual we'll have to wait and see what they cooking.
New NGS player here. Enjoying techter so far, but I'm wondering why there isnt any synergy between shifta and the various capstones? Having a small stacking buff that occurs any time you: consume a blot, use a compound, etc, is an easy-to-scale way to give Tech more damage, and in a way that buffs both weapons and single/multiplayer techters. Have it reset with each CD refresh so it isn't infinitely scaling. Again, i just dl the game 4 days ago for my son and i to play together, so apologies if this has come up before. Spent a long time as a WoW raider and game designer, and this just seemed really obvious on the surface.
Same problem with ds fighter. Sega has all the answers already, but for some reason doesn’t want to use them. And by answers I mean reward (which this video talks extensively) and not forcing players to spend resources/core abilities right away (compounds have it in a form of 2 charges).
The issue with compounds is that you effectively need to hold both stocks for very specific situations to do the appropriate damage and then are naked without them. So compounds aren't completely rewarding in their current state either.
The problem is that people think of Techter as some kind of priest class and therefor shouldn't do any damage. A techter bringing a 1% dps increase to a 4 man party is just not good enough in non-speedrunner settings. That 1% is easily lost to someone being retarded or the techter making mistakes with his rotation. The biggest offender with all this however is that a techter with perfect rotation can't get close to a Braver spamming parry and the one PA that does the most damage while not even using the special abilities. But if this were fixed, people would complain. While I think what you posted is a good idea which I would like to see implemented, this doesn't deal with enemies like DF, DFA and DFS which expose themselves for limited periods to the player. Where other classes have ways to either pre-charge sufficient damage or just have so much DPS it doesn't really matter, techter has neither. It also doesn't deal with grantz being an uptime-based gimmick. And I don't think the downtime part really needs fixing as that's where you get a massive DPS spike anyway. The associated issue with the DFs is that the amount of downs they get can be as little as 2, which means you get to unload twice. If you're the only technique caster you may not even get your elemental down (in an 8 man setting). And then those downs would only be functional implying that you have compounds to spend. If you get them all clumped together, like what tends to happen with DFA (who generally goes from break almost directly into elemental down or vice versa) you're pretty much stuck with nothing (or offclass burst damage). Basing techter's power around parry doesn't work in a social setting either. If you lose 30% of the class' output because some moron took aggro and is making sure you're looking at monster ass for the remainder of the fight, you're going to get frustrated really quickly. As such, I think techter needs fixing in his downtime period more than anything else right now. If we look at the base dps rotation, you're looking at element charge + followup, 6 swift smashes and elemental pursuit. All said and done these do less than 400 potency per second, which means they deal less than katana's one PA. If you're stuck in a moment where you couldn't count, didn't get a hit or get hit/parry by accident your potency per second drops below that 400. And while your solution partly addresses this issue, I don't think the gimmicks are going to salvage the problem here. Those are the core issues at play here and I think the way to resolve this is making sure that techter gets to preserve dps in downtime. Either by being able to overcharge swiftsmash to build elemental pursuit or by having photonic fury stacks that accumulate over time or can be charged up in some way. I also think that compounds should be designed in such a way that you use only one per knockdown instead of unloading 2 + your PB in one break and are stuck with nothing for the rest of it. But to be honest, we should all be able to agree that the effort techter has to put in to match even the most incompetent player on another class is just bullshit. SEGA should've dealt with this a lot earlier and shouldn't need a video like this to understand that. That and that wand lovers is so bad that pretty much everyone forgets about it.
One of the issues I see right now with Techter's downtime is that it is too consuming. Using upwards of two compound techniques and PB is required to actualize the massive DPS spike during down. WIth this method, you sustain (if not increase) DPS without having to bet the farm with every resource, allowing the use of additional burst windows outside of the down time. Like you said, we need a situation where only one compound if sufficient per knockdown. If you math out this proposed solution, this accomplishes this more or less from a potency/dps standpoint. If you saw my most recent Venogia Vera run, chaining two compounds during each down was the key to a faster time, which is not a good thing when other classes have things like Photon Flare or overload to avoid needing to consume everything. There are additional things that I did not get into into this video (but will in part 2) that gets at the other issues you have acknowledged. One of them being Swift Smash Overcharge if a crafted PA were to exist, but also looking at element pursuit and/or compound techniques to provide additional effects. With some tweaks, Wand Lovers could have a more impactful role. Another issue is the element-down mechanic system as well, as this needs to be de-emphasized as you pointed out, the game flips Te or Fo on its head when it can gate keep / dictate the degree of downs.
Heavy Hammer while it did big numbers it sucked DPS wise. It was one reason Techter was the bottom of the barrel class, as it didn't really give them options
I like the idea of Pursuit loading blots, and I've suggested it myself before, but now that you lay it out like this I think it's not the greatest idea with blots the way they are now. It works great for Ice and Dark, but it's not good for every other element because their blots aren't that strong, Foie Brand and Zan Gale aren't even worth consuming at all. And I would rather keep the gameplay feature of matching elements part of the class rather than using every element in a rotation like you're the Avatar. I don't think there's any chance they will change those, and I don't think the next round of techs will be made for Wand specifically (whenever that comes out in like 2030) , so this doesn't really work imo. I also think the current way the weapon works is engaging while being open ended enough to be versatile and I don't like the idea of linking every bit of the kit together into a set-in-stone rotation like it's FFXIV. I think Techter's issues are a lot simpler than this. The first is raw DPS on its skills. The second is weak spot uptime. When you look at something like SBs, Katana or Gunslash, they're strong because of those 2 factors. They don't have a lot of their DPS held back into a nuke skill (SB does have one but SEGA pretends they don't, which is why they do so much damage) and their key skills are either auto-tracking on the weakspot (Katana, Gunslash counters) or are precise and have enough movement to allow high weakspot uptime with a little finesse. Wand lacks on all these. The damage is low because of Shifta/Deband. I think SEGA values defensive stats and down factor way way higher than damage, so while Shifta/Deband exists that will never get fixed. On top of that, all of Wand's skills except Swift Smash have absolutely terrible tracking and many times actively prioritize hitting the body over a weakspot despite you being at point blank (Pursuit, Wave Crash). So, first order of business: Fix the tracking on Pursuit (not as bad as WC but needs way more travel distance to not end up hitting an arm or something), and either fix the tracking on Wave Crash which is absolutely terrible, or give Wand a single target PA that isn't bad, or reliant on charging like Swift Smash which unless you macro it will lose DPS to user error and travel time, guaranteed. Second: Buff Photon Fury, by a lot. A LOT. It is our auto-tracking DPS mechanic that is built into most of the weapon's kit and it tickles. Even if you multiparry Ams' aurasphere spam it's not worth it over just using Wave Crash. Even if they do something like "Element Pursuit causes your next 30 Photon Fury hits to do 300% damage" that'll basically fix the damage, because weak spot uptime is immensely important. Added bonus to buffing Photon Fury is that the Parry Counter would be more in line with the other weapons and that if you have to release a Swift Smash early because of an attack, or switch to a weapon action while charging, you're not losing as much DPS. Finally there's Wand Lovers. The issue with it is that I have too many things to do for damage already and I don't care to use it. It could buff all tech damage as well? But I don't really want more limited availability skills to bog down the normal damage, there's already too much of that in the class. I would honestly just remove it. If they really need to keep it, make Pursuit add 15s to it when it's in use. Or lower the CD by 15s, so the uptime is 100%. All in all I think the main issue is that SEGA thinks Shifta/Deband is way stronger than it actually is and it reflects in a lot of the choices they make. For example, in Limited quests, they thought Ranger needed to get a % of the points from people hitting Weak Bullet spots, but they didn't think Shifta/Deband deserved the same treatment. Or with Battle Power, HP and Damage Resist% will bloat your BP extremely high compared to damage. The issue with that, is that they're not even that wrong. In quests with death limits, Damage Reduction really isn't bad to have. Too valuable in a group of 8, not strong enough solo or in a group of 4. Maybe S/D should just scale with the number of people it affects, so that solo it gives 20% potency and another 20% on downs. idk
The counter-play to the blots being uneven is their overall use and the fact they are designed more for Force than anything. We all remember the days of Wind Retem where Rod slaughtered with Zan gale because it was up effectively 100% of the time. Potency wise the blots that suffer from what you called out are much of use for Techter anyway, so it becomes a QoL boost to cover our element reapplication. At least compared to what is it now, which is a mess to get any value out of Light/Fire. Wind is fairly straight-forward and Lightning might as well be brain dead thanks to Gizonde. WIth regards to linking rotation, thats basically the nature of the game now. Every top class or top performing weapon has a set pattern/rhythm that can change based on the situation, but establishes itself once the parameters are set. Its not surprising we are finally seeing Katana fall off given it didn't really have a pattern just a series of exploits, and Bow is meant to cover those weaknesses but its currently under tuned unlike SB/JB. +1 on photonic fury its been long overdue for a buff, at least 60>80 but really enough time has passed where 60-100 would be ideal as element bonuses and weak food would increase that even further. The auto-tracking issues is just a bullet we have to bite which I'm fine with as they aren't the make or break factor at the end of the day. The issue with Wand Lovers is that it does need tweaks to its damage, potentially add an additional attack similar to the mechanic in LC, but the fact it doesn't synergize with anything. I have thoughts and ideas on how to improve that, which revolve around potential effects you get from using Pursuit or Compound Techs (more in part 2 of this series).
@@Einhander I don't think the autotracking and general weakspot uptime can be waved away just like that. The problem is that, let's say you buff wand to the point where it performs exactly the same as Katana on Varas, it will now outperform Katana on Bujin because Katana's weakspot uptime advantage is gone on Bujin, while Wand still has that buffed damage which had to be pumped high enough to match Katana's damage with a weakspot that is available and hard to reach. Which still works to make Wand good, but then you're just playing balance wack-a-mole. Weakspot uptime I think is a bigger deal in this game than down factor, which is why I think mechanical fixes should take precedence over simply boosting the numbers or adding a new passive that adds damage. In other words, you have to fix the action side of the game before you can even start messing with the RPG side.
No Summoner, so all I had was Techter, but Techter feels unrewarding. Haven't played the game since the snow reason release, which I didn't even set foot in.
Kinda blows my mind how hard they slam the class with "shifta tax" when Ranger is out here giving 25% to the whole dang room while still beasting out their own damage
And now most of Techters problems go away just by using sword. So the support class argument falls on its face. There are players doing 9600 on the new Aegis as Te/Hu sword only.
I don't play Techter but I still found this all pretty insightful since weapons having feedback loops and reward structure like this is what makes the NGS combat engaging. If you're not being rewarded for playing the weapon to its strengths, then it doesn't feel good.
To go along side this, I think techniques themselves could also benefit from a blot buff (outside of Barta Blot and Megid Sphere) to incentivize using the same element vs any boss you're up against rather than swapping to the higher dps blot like Barta, which would further piggyback off of Weak Element Amplifier and Compound Tech Gauge Amplifier synergy with matching element. Fully charged Zonde Clad could build up to 3 while costing only half as much casts per blot tier, Zan Gale could act like Megid Sphere and build up to 3 blots, Grants Glitter could add an extra 2 tiers to increased the amount of extra damage dealt, and Foie Brand could build up these "meteor" like blots around the character every time you set off Foie Brand, which when you cast a charged Foie all 3 could hail down and do massive damage. (These are example cases but you get the idea)
The ideal solution would be that every tech class gets their own techniques. The issue with blots is that their techniques are "designed" to balance out their effects. For instance Zan with Rod or Gifoie are fairly tuned when you Rod is using them. But fall off a cliff when techter uses them.
Hopefully crafted PAs understand this and start to work around the issue of blots so that we don't get into an arms race trying to balance each element against each other.
Early in NGS there were slight suggestions that elements would respond differently to the weapon, but that didn't make the cut.
My brain hurts,but I love these videos.
The same could be said also for Photon Blast, other classes can recharge certain skills after.
Especially since it is Techter's passives fills it quicker.
Yes this has been my main issue with Talis Tricky Capacitor. I always believed PB should have charged it.
One other suggestion that I see that could also help fix the whole technique and wand synergy problem is just allow wand element pursuit and even compound techniques to give an instant charge to techniques once used. combine that with the idea that wand element pursuit gives a blot and it allows alot more flexibility and comfortability to techter and maybe even forces rotation
Great breakdown! Fully agree about Revoke needing to set blots or alternatively providing us with buffs that Properly tell the player "you're now in the technique phase" if thats the design idea Sega wants for us. I know they've wanted Techter to have a "melee phase" and "tech phase" for eleven years, even the uransara 14* Wand tried to reinvigorate interest in that, but this Idea never seems to blossom correctly.
I assume you're also going to talk about Wand Lovers at some point too?
Yeah I have thoughts about wand lovers, though they might be surprising.
Excellent video and totally agree.
I think I'd personally lean harder into reworking spellblade as it is now with uncharged techs to make them a proper intended thing (not that i have any specific ideas off the top of my head) but I think that if this was how the class changed in the future, I'd enjoy it just as much as that tbh, this sounds cool
The problem with spell blade is that Techter doesn't have PP abilities built into the kit and Varas. TRY FIGHTING Varas or even Nogleth with spell blade, it falls to pieces fast.
Without an aggressive in your face enemy it forces you to choose between blots and element pursuit and ends up just burning your PP.
100% agree, great video!
Would love revoke adding a “blot” would feel so much more rewarding instead of feeling like i just peaked and have to start ramping up all over again right now reapplying an element just feels like a “repositioning” phase
hopefully we see some of this implementation in the december patch update, which is most likely going to be the major one this year. techter is fun, but I really believe they are super cautious as to not make it *too* strong in a way that will drastically shift the meta. for the longest time there were lots of ppl who'd main techter and just use another weapon/class combo w/o engaging with wand at all, so I'm assuming they're trying to be careful to not do something that would further exacerbate this.
The problem right now is that Sega has failed. Thanks to DFS Jetboots has made a huge comeback in Techter's kit to where we are sing more JB abilities than we did prior.
@@Einhander oh dang I ain't even know lol. I've been taking a break from ngs for a bit, so I'm not up on all the "meta" stuff rn. although I do enjoy wand techter, I had a LOT of fun using te/bo with wand/jb multi and right as I was settling into that they basically was like "no, not like that lol" so it made me move away from it. I remember you made a vid about why it was happening (forces) and how techter would keep catching strays until they do something about it.
I would like to see some clear identity for techter wand emerge, but it seems like it's always been a bit hazy. even in oracle, wand didn't really feel like it had a clear identity b/c bonking didn't seem as strong as the other options enabled by phantom and etoille. it's such a fun class and I really want it to be the best it can be. it's very possible that the 2nd tech versions they talked about may fix some of these issues, but as usual we'll have to wait and see what they cooking.
You always know how to trigger my fighting game nostalgia xd
We couldn't solo things in vanilla PSO2 as well (like depth 100 Sodam). With wand, at least. So this is just par for the course!
You could solo Sodam if your were a masochist. But yes I fear NGS is returning back to base.
New NGS player here. Enjoying techter so far, but I'm wondering why there isnt any synergy between shifta and the various capstones? Having a small stacking buff that occurs any time you: consume a blot, use a compound, etc, is an easy-to-scale way to give Tech more damage, and in a way that buffs both weapons and single/multiplayer techters. Have it reset with each CD refresh so it isn't infinitely scaling.
Again, i just dl the game 4 days ago for my son and i to play together, so apologies if this has come up before. Spent a long time as a WoW raider and game designer, and this just seemed really obvious on the surface.
Same problem with ds fighter. Sega has all the answers already, but for some reason doesn’t want to use them. And by answers I mean reward (which this video talks extensively) and not forcing players to spend resources/core abilities right away (compounds have it in a form of 2 charges).
The issue with compounds is that you effectively need to hold both stocks for very specific situations to do the appropriate damage and then are naked without them.
So compounds aren't completely rewarding in their current state either.
The problem is that people think of Techter as some kind of priest class and therefor shouldn't do any damage. A techter bringing a 1% dps increase to a 4 man party is just not good enough in non-speedrunner settings. That 1% is easily lost to someone being retarded or the techter making mistakes with his rotation. The biggest offender with all this however is that a techter with perfect rotation can't get close to a Braver spamming parry and the one PA that does the most damage while not even using the special abilities. But if this were fixed, people would complain.
While I think what you posted is a good idea which I would like to see implemented, this doesn't deal with enemies like DF, DFA and DFS which expose themselves for limited periods to the player. Where other classes have ways to either pre-charge sufficient damage or just have so much DPS it doesn't really matter, techter has neither. It also doesn't deal with grantz being an uptime-based gimmick. And I don't think the downtime part really needs fixing as that's where you get a massive DPS spike anyway. The associated issue with the DFs is that the amount of downs they get can be as little as 2, which means you get to unload twice. If you're the only technique caster you may not even get your elemental down (in an 8 man setting). And then those downs would only be functional implying that you have compounds to spend. If you get them all clumped together, like what tends to happen with DFA (who generally goes from break almost directly into elemental down or vice versa) you're pretty much stuck with nothing (or offclass burst damage).
Basing techter's power around parry doesn't work in a social setting either. If you lose 30% of the class' output because some moron took aggro and is making sure you're looking at monster ass for the remainder of the fight, you're going to get frustrated really quickly. As such, I think techter needs fixing in his downtime period more than anything else right now.
If we look at the base dps rotation, you're looking at element charge + followup, 6 swift smashes and elemental pursuit. All said and done these do less than 400 potency per second, which means they deal less than katana's one PA. If you're stuck in a moment where you couldn't count, didn't get a hit or get hit/parry by accident your potency per second drops below that 400. And while your solution partly addresses this issue, I don't think the gimmicks are going to salvage the problem here.
Those are the core issues at play here and I think the way to resolve this is making sure that techter gets to preserve dps in downtime. Either by being able to overcharge swiftsmash to build elemental pursuit or by having photonic fury stacks that accumulate over time or can be charged up in some way.
I also think that compounds should be designed in such a way that you use only one per knockdown instead of unloading 2 + your PB in one break and are stuck with nothing for the rest of it.
But to be honest, we should all be able to agree that the effort techter has to put in to match even the most incompetent player on another class is just bullshit. SEGA should've dealt with this a lot earlier and shouldn't need a video like this to understand that.
That and that wand lovers is so bad that pretty much everyone forgets about it.
One of the issues I see right now with Techter's downtime is that it is too consuming. Using upwards of two compound techniques and PB is required to actualize the massive DPS spike during down. WIth this method, you sustain (if not increase) DPS without having to bet the farm with every resource, allowing the use of additional burst windows outside of the down time. Like you said, we need a situation where only one compound if sufficient per knockdown. If you math out this proposed solution, this accomplishes this more or less from a potency/dps standpoint.
If you saw my most recent Venogia Vera run, chaining two compounds during each down was the key to a faster time, which is not a good thing when other classes have things like Photon Flare or overload to avoid needing to consume everything.
There are additional things that I did not get into into this video (but will in part 2) that gets at the other issues you have acknowledged. One of them being Swift Smash Overcharge if a crafted PA were to exist, but also looking at element pursuit and/or compound techniques to provide additional effects. With some tweaks, Wand Lovers could have a more impactful role.
Another issue is the element-down mechanic system as well, as this needs to be de-emphasized as you pointed out, the game flips Te or Fo on its head when it can gate keep / dictate the degree of downs.
I remember doing 9999 damage per full wand charge (forgot the pa name) but Techer was fun In base pso2
Heavy Hammer while it did big numbers it sucked DPS wise. It was one reason Techter was the bottom of the barrel class, as it didn't really give them options
I like the idea of Pursuit loading blots, and I've suggested it myself before, but now that you lay it out like this I think it's not the greatest idea with blots the way they are now.
It works great for Ice and Dark, but it's not good for every other element because their blots aren't that strong, Foie Brand and Zan Gale aren't even worth consuming at all. And I would rather keep the gameplay feature of matching elements part of the class rather than using every element in a rotation like you're the Avatar.
I don't think there's any chance they will change those, and I don't think the next round of techs will be made for Wand specifically (whenever that comes out in like 2030) , so this doesn't really work imo.
I also think the current way the weapon works is engaging while being open ended enough to be versatile and I don't like the idea of linking every bit of the kit together into a set-in-stone rotation like it's FFXIV.
I think Techter's issues are a lot simpler than this.
The first is raw DPS on its skills.
The second is weak spot uptime.
When you look at something like SBs, Katana or Gunslash, they're strong because of those 2 factors.
They don't have a lot of their DPS held back into a nuke skill (SB does have one but SEGA pretends they don't, which is why they do so much damage) and their key skills are either auto-tracking on the weakspot (Katana, Gunslash counters) or are precise and have enough movement to allow high weakspot uptime with a little finesse.
Wand lacks on all these.
The damage is low because of Shifta/Deband. I think SEGA values defensive stats and down factor way way higher than damage, so while Shifta/Deband exists that will never get fixed.
On top of that, all of Wand's skills except Swift Smash have absolutely terrible tracking and many times actively prioritize hitting the body over a weakspot despite you being at point blank (Pursuit, Wave Crash).
So, first order of business:
Fix the tracking on Pursuit (not as bad as WC but needs way more travel distance to not end up hitting an arm or something), and either fix the tracking on Wave Crash which is absolutely terrible, or give Wand a single target PA that isn't bad, or reliant on charging like Swift Smash which unless you macro it will lose DPS to user error and travel time, guaranteed.
Second:
Buff Photon Fury, by a lot. A LOT.
It is our auto-tracking DPS mechanic that is built into most of the weapon's kit and it tickles. Even if you multiparry Ams' aurasphere spam it's not worth it over just using Wave Crash.
Even if they do something like "Element Pursuit causes your next 30 Photon Fury hits to do 300% damage" that'll basically fix the damage, because weak spot uptime is immensely important.
Added bonus to buffing Photon Fury is that the Parry Counter would be more in line with the other weapons and that if you have to release a Swift Smash early because of an attack, or switch to a weapon action while charging, you're not losing as much DPS.
Finally there's Wand Lovers. The issue with it is that I have too many things to do for damage already and I don't care to use it. It could buff all tech damage as well? But I don't really want more limited availability skills to bog down the normal damage, there's already too much of that in the class. I would honestly just remove it.
If they really need to keep it, make Pursuit add 15s to it when it's in use. Or lower the CD by 15s, so the uptime is 100%.
All in all I think the main issue is that SEGA thinks Shifta/Deband is way stronger than it actually is and it reflects in a lot of the choices they make.
For example, in Limited quests, they thought Ranger needed to get a % of the points from people hitting Weak Bullet spots, but they didn't think Shifta/Deband deserved the same treatment.
Or with Battle Power, HP and Damage Resist% will bloat your BP extremely high compared to damage.
The issue with that, is that they're not even that wrong. In quests with death limits, Damage Reduction really isn't bad to have.
Too valuable in a group of 8, not strong enough solo or in a group of 4.
Maybe S/D should just scale with the number of people it affects, so that solo it gives 20% potency and another 20% on downs. idk
The counter-play to the blots being uneven is their overall use and the fact they are designed more for Force than anything. We all remember the days of Wind Retem where Rod slaughtered with Zan gale because it was up effectively 100% of the time. Potency wise the blots that suffer from what you called out are much of use for Techter anyway, so it becomes a QoL boost to cover our element reapplication. At least compared to what is it now, which is a mess to get any value out of Light/Fire. Wind is fairly straight-forward and Lightning might as well be brain dead thanks to Gizonde.
WIth regards to linking rotation, thats basically the nature of the game now. Every top class or top performing weapon has a set pattern/rhythm that can change based on the situation, but establishes itself once the parameters are set. Its not surprising we are finally seeing Katana fall off given it didn't really have a pattern just a series of exploits, and Bow is meant to cover those weaknesses but its currently under tuned unlike SB/JB.
+1 on photonic fury its been long overdue for a buff, at least 60>80 but really enough time has passed where 60-100 would be ideal as element bonuses and weak food would increase that even further.
The auto-tracking issues is just a bullet we have to bite which I'm fine with as they aren't the make or break factor at the end of the day.
The issue with Wand Lovers is that it does need tweaks to its damage, potentially add an additional attack similar to the mechanic in LC, but the fact it doesn't synergize with anything. I have thoughts and ideas on how to improve that, which revolve around potential effects you get from using Pursuit or Compound Techs (more in part 2 of this series).
@@Einhander I don't think the autotracking and general weakspot uptime can be waved away just like that.
The problem is that, let's say you buff wand to the point where it performs exactly the same as Katana on Varas, it will now outperform Katana on Bujin because Katana's weakspot uptime advantage is gone on Bujin, while Wand still has that buffed damage which had to be pumped high enough to match Katana's damage with a weakspot that is available and hard to reach.
Which still works to make Wand good, but then you're just playing balance wack-a-mole.
Weakspot uptime I think is a bigger deal in this game than down factor, which is why I think mechanical fixes should take precedence over simply boosting the numbers or adding a new passive that adds damage.
In other words, you have to fix the action side of the game before you can even start messing with the RPG side.
No Summoner, so all I had was Techter, but Techter feels unrewarding. Haven't played the game since the snow reason release, which I didn't even set foot in.
Kinda blows my mind how hard they slam the class with "shifta tax" when Ranger is out here giving 25% to the whole dang room while still beasting out their own damage
And now most of Techters problems go away just by using sword. So the support class argument falls on its face. There are players doing 9600 on the new Aegis as Te/Hu sword only.
Im honestly just in the mindset that SEGA just hates techters
I don't think anyone at SEGA actually plays the class. It's designed based on design documents more than anything.