Does Stamina do too much?

I feel like Stamina has become a real catch-all stat. It affects some magic damage, it changes how much poison/regen ticks do, your chance to be hit by statuses, it's a kind of magic defense, and now for 1.9 it will apparently influence both cover and counter rates? That seems like a lot, especially when stats like Vigor are just physical damage and defense-kinda, and speed is just speed.

Should cover be determined by speed? After all, you have to get out in front of our ally, right? Counter maybe could be vigor (I could see why stamina also fits, though).

Vigor impacts all physical attacks. Stamina only boosts very specific abilities that you have to specifically build your characters towards, ie. Dragon/Eclipse, Chakra/Mantra, Cephalid/Mantodea, etc. 

If anything I'd like to see Stamina have a more significant effect on damage mitigation to make it a more definitive tank stat, as opposed to how it's primarily used to boost offensive abilities.

Really hoping the Cover change in 1.9 makes Stamina-built characters feel more like the party's tank. I'm looking forward to it, since 99% of single player RPGs don't do the tank character role very well and you're just left praying that your glass cannons don't get one-shotted all the time.

Speed might make more sense but the problem is that the characters you want to fill this role (like Cyan and Umaro) have terrible Speed and no way to boost it. The speedy characters are generally the ones you want to be protecting, not doing the protecting.

I kind of agree with the sentiment of stamina becoming a bit of a catch all stat.  What if cover is determined by vigor instead?   It pairs well with vigor mitigating physical damage as a character 'knowing' they'll take less damage would be more willing to jump in front of an ally.

Counter being based on stamina seems logical though, as higher stamina indicates better recovery in responding to an enemy attack; it also provides a smidge of balance because either you'll counter more often, but with lower damage, or vice versa.

Furthermore, having cover and counter key off different stats means that countering off covered hits isn't as likely.

IMO, from a balance perspective, stamina needs to be catch-all in order to keep up with the other stats (vigor, magic, speed). For Cover specifically, that's a defensive strategy, so it's logical for the defensive stamina builds to be better at covering the party. I'm apathetic to counter keying off of stamina though.

I wouldn't mind stamina affecting both magical damage variance and physical damage variance. It seems more intuitive than "stamina for magical damage, vigor for physical damage."

Stamina also mitigating physical damage would be fine with me too, and then stamina affecting cover fits with my rationale above (higher cover->counter rate is a nice bonus of this).  However, I think the problem arising is that if stamina is meant to be viewed as the 'defensive' stat, then it shouldn't influence offensive attacks that strongly (if at all).

Maybe the attacks currently using stamina should instead use some combination of stamina and magic so their power doesn't escalate quite as quickly (and would give stam Cyan additional incentive to equip Kirin for the magic boost).  This could also make Sabin's non-physical blitzes more consistent if they all followed this approach.  

Another big loophole to the stamina=defense concept is the Omega weapon.  Maybe this is just the exception, though, as trying to use some combination of stamina and vigor could make Ramuh Locke pretty powerful.

Separate idea (not sure how hard to code): What if attacks that have a chance of setting statuses are dependent on the caster's stamina when determining if the status is set?  Then Bad Breath essentially becomes the stamina based attack that some want for Strago (maybe all Lores that have associated statuses could work this way).  This might also give stam Gau a few more legitimate rage options, particularly if the current stamina rages are nerfed as described above.

Vigor being physical defense was a deliberate choice I made as a key balance point for heavy vigor builds (i.e. Cyan) to make them a little better suited to being in the front row.

If I recall right Stamina actually was a full tank stat covering both physical and magical damage back in version 1.6 making it more of the catch all resist stat.

But I have to agree overall it is better to have Vigor be the physical stat for both attack and defense so Vigor builds can stand up better in the front, keeping Stamina as more of the utility stat.

Stamina has always been magic damage only.

Like I said, I'm fine with physical damage mitigation keying off either vigor or stamina, it just seems like whichever one it is should be the driver for cover, especially since covered hits will always be front row damage.

Tying stamina to both cover and counter was another very deliberate balance decision so as to provide meaningful synergy with stamina and vigor since the two often come from the same source (i.e. Phantom, Genji equipment).

Just me, but I feel that Stamina should have about as much impact on the game as Vigor, Speed, or Magic do.

With stamina affecting several unique character mechanics, Cover/Counter, and status evade, I'd say that stamina does have as much an impact on the game as vigor, magic, and speed. It's mostly Strago & Relm who don't make good use of stamina. They are poor candidates for Cover/Counter. They also either lack unique mechanics for stamina (Strago) or said mechanics aren't of major importance (Relm). Characters like Sabin or Mog may or may not make the best use of stamina, but that's less of a "stamina is a useless stat" problem and more of a "individual character balance" problem.

Does stamina affect sketch success?  That's a pretty simple way to pigeonhole more stamina applicabilty to Relm.  It could also change the rate to increase the likelihood of the rare sketch.

Strago is trickier, though my proposal to have status setting attacks check the caster's stamina has gone unaddressed.

Stamina Sketch has been discussed many times before, and has been rejected each time. Main problem is that, come the WoR, Sketch doesn't do too much that Flare & Meteor can't do, except save on MP. And even that one is questionable, since a lot of enemies have bad Sketches.

I pitched having caster's magic/stamina affect the strength of buffs/debuffs before. It was rejected because it would be impossible to code. Dunno if "check user's stamina for accuracy" is impossible to code, but I'm betting it probably is.

On 10/2/2017 at 8:13 PM, thzfunnymzn said:

Stamina Sketch has been discussed many times before, and has been rejected each time. Main problem is that, come the WoR, Sketch doesn't do too much that Flare & Meteor can't do, except save on MP. And even that one is questionable, since a lot of enemies have bad Sketches.

Honestly that sounds more like Sketch being kind of a bad ability, rather then having anything to do with Stamina Sketch. 

4 hours ago, artemi said:

Honestly that sounds more like Sketch being kind of a bad ability, rather then having anything to do with Stamina Sketch. 

You wouldn't be the first to argue that. Nakar has said that many, many times before. I'm inclined to agree.

Sketch is useful in some places, like vs Atma Weapon on the Floating Continent, vs Inferno in Kefka's Tower, or vs some randoms like Succubus/Lilith. Unfortunately, many times, it's useless, or even downright counterproductive, like vs the Dragons. Also, like Rage, it's unpredictable and enemy dependent, but unlike Rage, has no documentation. Also, unlike rage, it's completely different for each battle, making it further unpredictable.

Ideally, both Sketch & Rods would be useful tools that Relm would rely upon to stretch her MP further. Realistically, Sketch is unpredictable & bad, most of Relm's magic isn't really that expensive compared to the MP pool she can attain (only really expensive ones are Meteor, Bahamut, ?and Starlet?), Relm has Osmose, and Tincture/Ether/Chakra/Battery is easy enough come the WoR.

Osmose has been nerfed recently, which is good. Still partially think that Flare still should cost more MP. After that, make Sketch more useful, and then maybe stamina affecting Sketch's success rate might be useful. Though I still also like the idea of Brush Cover as well.

What was the old functionality of Control? An idea for Sketch might be to simply mix the two abilities, and give you a couple options to choose from? So you aren't healing the Dragons or whatever. 

That idea I'm thinking is some status-like check with Stamina included vs MEvade or whatever monsters use to not die. Probably with a long delay since it takes her a little bit to draw an actual picture, and to push Spd Relm to stick with casting spells or swinging rods. When she succeeds, you get access to a Control-like list that you pick one attack, use it, then the whole thing resets. No psudo Confuse or whatever that the original Control had to make it so wonky. Heck, maybe even just have it access that monster's species Rage list, to make things easier to program, with the small change that bosses would have a list too, at a lower % chance of succeeding then normal monsters. She'd be an interesting mix of Gau and Strago but still have her own flavor then. 

2 hours ago, artemi said:

What was the old functionality of Control? An idea for Sketch might be to simply mix the two abilities, and give you a couple options to choose from? So you aren't healing the Dragons or whatever. 

That idea I'm thinking is some status-like check with Stamina included vs MEvade or whatever monsters use to not die. Probably with a long delay since it takes her a little bit to draw an actual picture, and to push Spd Relm to stick with casting spells or swinging rods. When she succeeds, you get access to a Control-like list that you pick one attack, use it, then the whole thing resets. No psudo Confuse or whatever that the original Control had to make it so wonky. Heck, maybe even just have it access that monster's species Rage list, to make things easier to program, with the small change that bosses would have a list too, at a lower % chance of succeeding then normal monsters. She'd be an interesting mix of Gau and Strago but still have her own flavor then. 

I'm all for having more control over what attack I get from Sketch.

A long delay on Sketch would actually favor spd Relm, since she'd have the spd to use it in any decent amount of time (like she currently can with summons). Since Sketch is desirable to conserve MP in randoms, you don't want a long delay on Sketch. Just stick with stamina affecting the accuracy. Granted, spd Relm can still throw turns at Sketch until she Sketches, but that's only likely to be useful for boss fights with interesting Sketches (like Inferno).

Currently, I think the Sketch formula just checks Relm's level vs the enemy's level. Dunno what exactly what a new formula would look like. I imagine this change would be more interesting with more interesting Sketches like Inferno's Sketch. Stuff like "free magic attack," while nice, isn't terribly much different from what mag Relm can all ready do with her magic + Osmose.

What I'd ultimately like to see from Sketch is the same stuff we see from Lore and Rage; limited player access to cool enemy only abilities. I'm not looking to use Fallen One on Kefka for ez killz, but just being able to taste some of the cool attacks and specials in the game is a really cool thing. I remember when I got the Sage in FFT 1.3 and being able to play with all those enemy spells seemed really awesome, even if a lot of them were really too unweildy to use in the end. 

Essentially I see this lore wise as Relm sorta gaining access to more of her magical bloodline. She's making an inferior copy of the monsters, almost like a summon, so it only gets 1 attack before it fades away.