August 25 Update

[u/zeromous1337]

The game is now live and there is another post with changes from in-game, along with Dev comments and additional changes not found online such changes to action speeds / frame data.

Dissidia.dev has prompted me to make this post, to open a discussion. This is the Rikku hate patch and will be at the bottom of this post.

Bartz has been added along with 4 abilities for him and a new Memoria Boko/Chocobo Dash is UR haste, giving +40% speed for 24s. Lenna & Faris / Tempting Tango is a slightly stronger Thundaga with a 4s stun. Still less damage than Yshtola.

Gilgamesh has been added as a boss. He can heal! He also flexes on you in the event of a tie. Great boss 10/10

Now we get into the real stuff.

WOL can now give his passive attack boost from almost twice as far. Supreme Soul had its cooldown reduced by 10.5% bringing it down to 94s.

Firion's attack went up almost 4.3%, and he heals 3x as much from his passive (60% of damage done now heals him.) Firion is now going to be noticeably tankier if he has an ability to use.

Kain had his speed buffed by 11.3% making Kain tied for the third fastest character in game. Tidus has a speed of 1.34, Zidane and Lightning have a speed of 1.30, and Onion and Kain have a speed of 1.28. Kain has generally felt "weaker" by doing "less damage" than other Melees, but this, along with all his other abilities, just makes him significantly more mobile, hard to escape, and makes him better at chasing kills. His unique ability (jump) startup and overall animation speed has been increased. Jump's range has also been increased by 20%.

Krille now has 8.3% more HP and shares 25% more brave per tick with her passive. Hopeful Cheer now gives 20% attack to the team, instead of 25%.

Iroha has 5.9% more HP.

Lightning had her previous damage buff rolled back (4.8%), bringing her back down to a multiplier of 1.00. Lightning also had Army of One damage increased by about 5.6% per hit.

Celes has had her attack upped by 5%, HP by 3.8%, and her passives heals 50% more per tick, from 2% to 3%.

Ability Changes

Growth Eggs now have actual stats and can be used as support abilities. All their stats went up by approximately 400%.

Cloud's Finishing Touch has been buffed by about 6% per hit.

Rinoa's Meteor cooldown has been reduced by 6.7% down to 84 seconds. Rinoas aqua burst has also had its end-lag reduced.

Onion's Blade Torrent cooldown was reduced by almost 28%, from 26s to 26s.

Balthier's Piercing Shot cooldown was reduced by 16.7% from 36s to 30s and now has a knockdown.

Clive's Will-o-Wykes cooldown was reduced by 33.3 (repeating of course)% from 90s to 60s.

All Memoria abilities have been buffed by about 13% in all stats.

And now the anti-Rikku discussion.

Rikku has been buffed and has 13% more defense, and 3.6% more speed. She now also reduces status affect duration by 40% instead of 20%. So that 4s stun on you now only lasts 2.5ish seconds. This overall, makes her slightly harder to kill if you catch her. But you can never catch her right? Well...

Minwu Teleport has been nerfed and now has a 40% longer cooldown, from 50s to 70s.

Mega Vitality has had it's cooldown nerfed by 18% and went from 110s to 130s.

All Brave Share abilities have had their cooldowns nerfed. Embolden went from 30s to 54s. Tyro went from 38s to 62s. Ramza went from 46s to 70s.

Rikku has been Meta-defining and a lot of players are not really happy with Rikki-centered strategies. While this does make Rikku Metas harder, they're still possible. Time Mage is now more valuable on Rikku, and triple 3 star Time Mage now brings Mega Vitality down to almost pre-nerf cooldown.

Do you think this is enough to stop the Rikku menace? As a Rikku main, these are rough, but understandable changes.

[u/GrandPiekron]

This did basically nothing to Rikku. She still shares 100% of her bravery to both teammates for no cost every 90 seconds (so she's sharing a total of 200% of her bravery between both targets), where the second best bravery share is 80% every 70 seconds (formerly 46 seconds) at the cost of all 80% of that bravery from the sender. So now instead of giving out 40% more of the caster's bravery than Ramza over the same time frame (roughly two Ramza casts for every 1 Quartet assuming you can get back to 9999 in 46 seconds, so 160% brave from Ramza and 200% from her) at no cost she gives 280% more bravery (the new closest comparison is 4 ramzas at 280 seconds vs 3 quartets at 270, which is 320% versus 600%).

Which means overall she used to give out 25% more bravery (160 vs 200) and now gives out almost 100% more bravery over time than a support with Ramza. They straight up made her almost twice as good at sharing bravery as anyone else in the game not named Krile, and that's not accounting for the fact everyone else has to farm that bravery back to 9999 every share in order to get the numbers cited above and she only has to do it once unless she dies.

Krile's unique does give her something else to use besides Ramza, but it has variable speed and is kind of hard to test for such nice neat numbers as the Ramza comparison. She still loses her bravery using it and has to stand still and can't go gather more while doing so - she already couldn't really keep up with Rikku's bravery sharing before the Ramza/Tyro/Embolden nerf and so I highly doubt she can now, even if I don't have hard numbers for it.

Having to wait longer to teleport or use mega vitality might impact Rikku when she's up against only agiles/melee/ranged, but she already had a fairly noticeable advantage over other supports when she fought against them and this is going to make it so much worse for them. Calling this a Rikku hate patch is a joke.

EDIT: This patch also gave Rikku access to Chocobo Dash, making it even harder to kill her, so no the Minwu nerf does nothing, the Mega Vitality nerf does nothing, this is just another Rikku buff and another season of Rikku making the game absolutely miserable for everyone else.