Rate the Dev-Team's progress with the Job Adjustmentｓ Manifesto

[Ophannus]

Meh it still lasts for a minute and takes 2 seconds to activate, it's still a positive net gain if you eat a TP move in those 3 minutes which is highly likely anyway unless you got PD on, which won't be the case for very long.

[Taint2]

Meh it still lasts for a minute and takes 2 seconds to activate, it's still a positive net gain if you eat a TP move in those 3 minutes which is highly likely anyway unless you got PD on, which won't be the case for very long.

The bigger problem is it does very little to actual damage. I have never seen much testing but its not attack like LR/Zerk. It seems like a base damage increase, even when I take 75% damage its hard to notice.

[SpankWustler]

No letter grades here, just my usual schizophrenic esoterica.

In most cases, I blame broad-sweeping game mechanics rather than anything specific to one job for various short-comings. Lots of the second-string melee jobs are demigods now compared to what they were at 75, which doesn't matter because there's still no place for second-string melee jobs to use their eccentricities to shine like crazy diamonds. Part of me wants to mention Dynamis as a place for these jobs, but the other part has done Dynamis and feels that using BOX STEP and BOX STEP and THAT FLOURISH WITH A LOW RECAST I FORGET THE NAME OF while having adequate evasion doesn't feel like shining.

Similarly, Paladin is more like a rock than ever but this doesn't mean it has a niche. Black Mage can do more damage than ever, by far, but this doesn't mean magic damage itself has a large enough niche. I feel like a lot of jobs could make an about-face similar to that performed by Ranger when people discovered it could be useful in all chambers of Legion, if an environment were created where they could prosper. The problem may not be the jobs themselves, since most jobs HAVE gotten better across the board.

In the case of Red Mage, though, I do feel like updates to the job itself have fallen short. The job has gained literally no new, unique spells (akin to Adloqium, Urine: Itchy, Meteor, etc.) and the Development Bros seem to have a distorted view of enfeebling magic's effects akin to a thirteen year old boy's distorted view of the female anatomy and psyche.

And here's the schizophrenic esoterica...

Right after you are done talking to SD about how he actually works.

Scarlet Delirium sits in a hard plastic chair with metal legs, with a large scar on his left temple, drooling from the right side of his mouth. Scarlet Delirium, his chair, and one identical chair, are the only things in the sanitized visiting room of the facility.

Someone sits in the identical chair. Scarlet Delirium stares at someone with insensate eyes, like a fish out of water for about two minutes.

"How do you work?" someone asks Scarlet Delirium.

"Sometimes like a bumblebee, but never in the Spring," he answers calmly.

"So...Any particular reason you're so similar to Afflatus Misery in how you function?" someone presses him.

"I TOOK THE PEACHES TO MR. COLONELCY LAST THURSDAY! THERE WAS A WORM IN ONE OF THEM! IT BIT ME!" Scarlet Delirium screams.

A middle-aged Japanese man enters the room, wearing a shirt and tie but nothing below the waist whatsoever, and states calmly, "We very nearly lost Scarlet Delirium while we where trying to code him. He lived to see implementation, but he's...like this."

[Teraniku]

Let's break it down by jobs with a grade for each:

WAR

Vision Grade: B

*WARs are great DD's and are fairly close to the team's vision, just not quite there yet*

MNK

Vision Grade: A-

*MNKs are almost perfect with the team's vision, but may be slightly overpowered*

WHM

Vision Grade: A+

*The one job they have perfectly right, and are finally attempting to add at least a resist charm spell (Charmna)*



BLM

Vision Grade: B-

*Great Magical DD's but the need a 5-10 min ability that allows them to overcome all Magical resistance on a mob for a single spell, since that's all the Dev team seems to know how to do anymore with new content mobs*

RDM

Vision Grade: F (@ lvl 99)

*RDM while a nice Jack of all trades character currently, Their enhancements are lacking, and when every mob resists every debuff even if the RDMs skill is capped and merited, something is wrong*

THF

Vision Grade: D

*While not as in the dog house as RDM currently is, nobody brings a THF along to do Hate control anymore, it's more for Treasure Hunter than anything else*

PLD

Vision Grade: D

*I would have given it an F but as far as PLDs problems are more on the Enmity system rather than the job itself. A PLD shouldn't have to have 2 Relics (Ochain or Aegis) (Almace / Excalibur / Burtgang) to be invited to any end game content*

DRK

Vision Grade: B

*DRKs are decent damage dealers, just need to up their survivability a bit.*

BST

Vision Grade: F

*If BSTs would be able to charm relevantly lvl equivalent monsters then my grade would be much higher, since a BST should be able to do this, even in Abyssea & Dynamis*

BRD

Vision Grade: B

*Too many levels of the same song, do the same adjustment that they did with the Cure spell line (tying potency to healing Skill) by making BRD song potency relevant to instrument skill and it would be appreciated*

RNG

Vision Grade: C

*Give them back the almost BLM levels of Damage and you'd see RNG be relevant again, most unnecessary nerf ever*

SAM

Vision Grade: A+

*The Devs most favored job*

NIN

Vision Grade C+

Hardly ever see NINs use tools other than Utsusemi anymore, granted the really good ones do, but it still suffers from the same problem that RDM does in that the debuffs are almost useless to use*

DRG

Vision Grade: B

*Decent DD's but Wyvern needs more survivability*

SMN

Vision Grade: C-

*SMNs need their Astral Flow Blood Pacts adjusted to be usable @ 99 (Which they say is going to happen). Promised new avatars and 2 years later still no Cait Sith or Atomos. BP timer is way too long. Our mp is our limiting factor to being an over powered DD, let us actually use our abilities and contribute to damage by either putting all the rage abilities on separate timers or lowering the BP timer in general*

BLU

Vision Grade: B+

*Plenty of abilities and configurations make BLU the most versatile job in the game, just keep adding more enemy skills to be usable*

COR

Vision Grade: C+

*COR needs something to make them more relevant on the Battlefield but I can't really think of an effective solution at the moment*

PUP

Vision Grade: B

*As the job that has received the most amount of love from the dev team, it's in a pretty good, though not perfect state*

DNC

Vision Grade: A-

*Great job all around, fills multiple roles very well*

SCH

Vision Grade: B

*make the use of the Element Storm spells relevant*

[Hayward]

Warrior: A. Everything's in order here for all Warriors, not just the Ukonvasara bandwagon-jumpers.

Monk: A. See above.

Thief: C. TH can't be the only draw for this job, guys.

White Mage: A. Does what it's designed to do in spades. No complaints here.

Red Mage: D. Pick up the slack on this job's fighting side, folks. Stop worrying about bruising other jobs' egos and make those weapon skills mean something to a Red Mage. Also, consider some new enfeebles and a Job Trait that can bypass immunities.


Black Mage: B. Good stuff here, but ease up on the Magic Defense of monsters.

Paladin: B. Decent additions, but the question of enmity maintenance remains. Also, Ochain/Aegis should never determine the usefulness of the job. That is absurd for any other job.

Bard: C. It still does what it does, but fewer and fewer people seem to notice. There need to be songs that stand out from the rest.

Dragoon: A. Good work here to address the wyvern issue. WS damage seems ordinary compared to the other 2-hand weapons.

Dark Knight: B. Good damage and some decent new tricks, but durability is still an issue.

Samurai: A. Good stuff all around without going too crazy.

Ninja: B. Good, but nothing much of note stands out. Universal tools were sorely needed.

Ranger: C. OK, new ammo is nice but how about making the materials more available to crafters? The expense to keep up just isn't worth it long-term.

Summoner: C. New avatars are nice, but irrelevant in my view. Avatar damage scaling is still an issue and melee damage is below par for the delay. The new support BPs are good, but there needs to be some final physical Rage pacts superior to their level 70 counterparts. Now that Perpetuation is no longer an issue at 99, these issues should be looked at more closely than ever.

Blue Mage: A. Very good and diverse selection of new spells and a nice array of traits added on.

Puppetmaster: B. This effort should be put into every job. WHM Automaton's AI is still a bit sketchy, but not much else to complain about/

Corsair: B. Not very much to complain about, but Armageddon shouldn't single-handedly define the job.

Scholar: B. I'm going to play devil's advocate and applaud S-E for dialing back Embrava some, but only as long as the job's other attributes are made to stand out more prominently.

Beastmaster: C. Better jugs are nice, but the job really should be able to charm higher-level monsters that aren't in Abyssea if they so choose. More offensive Job Traits would be welcome to boost the master's power.

[Calatilla]

Thief: C. TH can't be the only draw for this job, guys.

^^ This, especially since you seem to like to give TH to every other job in some form or another, IF all you deem THF worthy of is TH, stop giving it out to other jobs.

[FrankReynolds]

The following quote was written in July 2011.

Examine the quote above and give the Dev-Team a letter-grade from A to F on their performance thus far. Explain why and state what you think they should do to improve upon the manifesto. You can grade each job and it's progess individually if you like.

Be as clear as possible and try not to write a wall of text so that the community team can better direct your posts to the dev-team.

As a bonus, type your vision of your favorite job(s) if you don't agree with what was laid out in the manifesto.

I'm gonna go ahead and give them an F.

While a few jobs are real good right now, none of them really fit that vision very well. Most importantly though, the devs seem to be actively doing the opposite of what is expected / desired almost every chance they get. Occasionally they will start off by saying something like "oh, you don't like that idea? we'll go back and change it." which makes everyone happy for about 10 seconds, until we realize that they are about to follow it up by changing what we didn't like to something even worse.