[Ranylyn]

As with most balance fu threads, I expect a fair amount of discussion about this. I'd like to ask everyone participating to keep this civil. While it hasn't been particularly bad lately, history has made me wary of posting without a disclaimer, so here i is: Just a friendly reminder to keep the ad-hominems, name calling, and/or any other poop-tossing to PMs. Please keep the thread on-topic, thanks!


I'll be blunt and cut right to the chase: Elves suck. I mean REALLY suck. Despite having a passive specifically about boosting healing, numerous other races are more desirable healers, for multiple reasons. In this post, I plan to dissect, bit by bit, why elves are undeniably the worst race in the game, why this matters, and what could be done to change this.


1) Base Stats

This is the only category elves are not absolute garbage in, so I felt it appropriate to start here. Honestly, their bases are quite respectable. They come up to a solid 30 total, with the lowest stat (minus Faith and Luck at 0 - which is fairly standard) being 3 in both defenses. 4 Strength prevents them from being absolutely useless until they get enough FP/FP Mangement to rely on spells, while 6 will is a good baseline for a race intended to be more magically based. Honestly, there's nothing much really worth commenting on, but I included it for the sake of completion.


2) Racial Growths

I'll just come out and say it. Growth-wise, elves are absolutely garbage. I'd take an Imperial over an Elf, any day, just for the higher skill.

20% Strength: Fairly standard. Not good, not terrible.
20% Will: While this is standard, it's an absolute dealbreaker for the elf, for reasons I'll outline below.
15% Skill: On it's own, not too offensive. But much like will, this ends up being a massive issue. I'll elaborate below.
15% Cel: This is average/good, considering. Not terrible, but not great. Serviceable.
10% Def: Eh, what did you expect from elves? Not a colossal issue considering they're intended more as healers.
15% Res: Not amazing, but pretty high by most standards. Only Umbrals/Doriads/Liches/Cabals are higher.
40% Vit: Standard beyond standard. The vast majority of races have 40% Vit. Next!
0% Faith: This seems an odd design choice, but that's just my opinion. 0% is standard.
15% Luck: Much like Res, while it's not the highest, a lot of other races don't get this much.

The simple issue with Elves' Will is that even with LE and Talent/Trait bonuses, they cap out at 100% Will growth as an Evoker/Grand Summoner. This means that any race with 25% Will (Including Karatynn, Redtail, Cabal and Raid mechs, Zerans, Liches, Doriads, and Wyverntouched) has a fairly feasible time becoming a much better healer than an elf (which I'll go into further detail about when discussing heir racial skills.) Basically, the absolute highest an Elf can physically get their base Will is 65 + 3 from traits, while all the races mentioned above can reach a base of 80, granting them +12-+15 to all their heals compared to the elf. Again, I'll outline why this is preferable to their racial, later. You could argue that the odds of getting 80 Base Will with 105% is highly unlikely as it involves a 5% chance of double growth, and you'd be right. But even just a few points is a big difference. Again, please wait for the section on their racial passives.

When you factor in the above, suddenly, the lower skill starts to jump out. The true reason this begins to become an issue ties in to the nature of their healing passive, but basically, it amounts to "They'll be FP Guzzlers if you try to capitalize on that racial passive, and they'll have bad stats for hitting without burning FP."

Honestly? If it were up to me, I'd gladly shave some Vit off for more Will, and some Luc for more Ski. Even just 5% each.


3) Racial Passives

Let's get the big one out of the way. Healer's Legacy:

When healing an ally or themself with a healing spell, the base Power of that spell is doubled. In addition, when creating potion items with Alchemy, their Skill is increased by 1.

First off, it only affects healing SPELLS, meaning skills like Aid, Field Medic, or Repair are unaffected. You may wonder why this matters, until you realize that the only healing spells with a Base Power to increase are graft and Phoenix - and Phoenix never has worked with Healer's Legacy at all! So this leaves us with ONLY Graft being affected by this passive, and let's take a look at this screenshot of Graft's information from the Wiki...



Note the incorrect FP costs. 10/12/14/16/18. However, 18 is still darn close to double 10, so for simplicity I'll say "doubled" instead of "close to double" or "9/5" or any other method of comparing the costs.

... so... healer's legacy turns that +2-+12 into a +4-+24. which doesn't seem terrible. Until you consider the FP costs. If you have 50 will and a 20 power tome, for example, Rank 1 Graft does 72-74 based on Non Elf vs Elf, while rank 5 does 82-94. Okay, so this doesn't seem like absolute crap. But you could cast that 74 twice for the cost of that 94. Most people will elect to leave Graft at rank 1 for exactly this reason; it's so inefficient to upgrade simply due to that FP cost! If you try to double the FP cost of your Grafts just to keep up with another race's higher base will, you'll be burning double the FP. This compounds with their low skill, since they lack the stats to acually be accurate with tomes. Let's get real, here. Healer's Legacy currently exists for that Alchemy bonus. It's bad.

(I'm not saying it's totally useless. While a bad idea for BDPs, Healer's legacy could potentially help in PVP if you can withstand the FP costs of an improved graft. What I AM saying is that many other races can heal better even without the doubled FP costs and Healer's Legacy barely helps them catch up, which is downright bad for a race.)

But wait! That's not even all! Their other passive, Spotless, is just as bad, if not worse!

Having built up no tolerance for the dark magic in the outside world, Elves suffer 25% more Dark damage. However, they have a natural resistance against Water damage, reducing damage they take from it by 25%.

Okay, so from a purely logical standpoint, this looks like it makes sense. Water is pure and serene, while darkness is foreign and icky. But...uh... can we look at the presence of each damage type for a moment? Water is highly limited; Curate/Priest, Ensui, half of a Barghest's Demon Drool, half of a Hexer's Black Bubble, 3 different Youkai (Drowned Woman, Sazae-Oni, Asrai) A Spatial Corrupter's Red Sea, and on-hit effects from the Swordfish Sword and Coral Weapons. On the flip side, Darkness is absurdly common: Black Roar, Half of a Barghest's Demon Drool, everything a Spectre has, half of everything a Hexer has, the Kigal Replica (which is a major go-to item for mages unless they land 1 star rebelling tomes or amazing spellblade weapons) the Kirosh, numerous on-hit effects including the likes of the Evil Club, Spectre Sword, Carapace Weapons, Devilbark Weapons, etc. Honestly? That is just not a fair trade-off, in any way, shape, or form! If it was 15% or so, I wouldn't even bother bringing it up, but 25% is pretty massive.


Suggestions, random thoughts, general brain droppings, and other silliness.

Base Stats: They're perfectly fine as is.

Growths: No matter how you slice it, the Elf desperately needs at least a bonus 5% to Will. Take it off of Vit, lowering their 40% base to 35% base. This way, they won't be as easily outperformed as healers by Redtails and half of the Mech Types, among others. Shaving 5% off their Luc to add to Skill might also be a fine idea, since I honestly can't really think of reasons for them to be less dextrous than ordinary humans, who all have 20% (or higher, for Tannites) skill.

Racials: Healer's Legacy is way too limited as is. Either make it work on healing skills like Aid, or maybe lower the FP cost of healing spells by a significant percentage instead of giving them a power boost, or SOMETHING that isn't just "lol suffer R5 Graft's FP cost if you don't want to be outhealed by so many other races." As for Spotless? Why not make it a bit more interesting by throwing status into the mix; maybe something like a 15% Dark Weakness/Water Resist AND a 10% higher chance of being poisoned/ 10% lower chance of being blinded, or something like that?


If anything was awkwardly worded or needs clarification, please point it out so I can fix it. I admit to posting this a 4 AM after losing a long battle against insomnia, so perhaps my eloquence (and overall mental stability) isn't what it could be.

Anyways, I've said my piece. And please, do try to keep this civil.


EDIT: In re-reading this post upon waking up, I came back to correct some small errors. I caught a small error in forgetting to factor in the +1 Stat Traits, and also, in my sleep deprivaion, I was looking at level 60 as 60 levels worth of stat gains when the truth is actually 59 level ups. Both of these mistakes have been fixed, and now, instead of stating that an Elf cannot possibly surpass 66 Will, I've correctly stated that they can reach 65-68 with perfect gains depending on if they take those traits or not, and have corrected the difference in healing this causes.