Pet job problem

[Oddwaffle]

Lately, I haven't seen anyone playing any of the pet jobs in normal party or alliance with the exception of Smn for 1HR abilities. There has never been a demand for such jobs in party settings and you will only see them soloing or in 'special events' like pet only fights. This is particularly prevalent for high level and/or difficult/very difficult fights. Why is it? Why do nobody ever want a Pup in their Skirmish party? Have anyone ever asked for a Bst for normal or difficult AA fights? Why are these jobs the 2nd-class people compare to the other jobs?

All pet jobs have 3 major weaknesses that put them into the bench-warmer seats on pretty much everything people want to do as a group. First, pets become weaker as the monsters get higher level. The stronger the NMs, the weaker the pet gets. Second, pets die quickly to a lot of AOE stuff and once it does, the master is just another gimped member of the group until he can resummon the pet. Third, pets do not get the masters' buffs and equipments. This is more and more prevalent with the ilevel gear bonus. A lot of equipments now give haste, double attack, triple attack, critical damage, ability bonuses; whereas the pet aren't getting anything. Haste (spell+song+equipments) effect alone can effectively triple or quadruple the damage output of the masters while the pet will remain the same. Then there are songs, rolls, protect, shell, job abilities, traits, foods, dances...etc.

Specific pet jobs also have specific weaknesses other than the common major weaknesses with it.

Pup: Their largest quip is the fact that their pet can be unruly. They have to keep using maneuvers and pet JA to keep the pet effective. This effectively reduce their ability to deal damage in high haste situations. In fodder mobs, it's even worse as you have to engage the pet. A lot of times, it takes more time to engage the pet than just killing the fodders. It's like a Monk using Boost constantly; he keeps getting slower every time he uses it. If the Pup ignores the pet then he becomes a gimp Monk.

Bst: This job biggest weakness is the fact that the master is inherently weak. It is a War without the traits, job abilities, good equipments and the ability to use a good 2H weapon. It's the job that has to use a 1H weapon without its own Dual Wielding trait so it has to either sub Dnc or Nin instead of War. Also, Bst pets do not scale well with higher level NMs. In fact, bsts' pets are the weakest in terms of damage output in high level fights.

Drg: This job problem is a lot like Bsts but a lot milder. Its master is a lot stronger than Bst and its pet is decent enough in high level fights but not enough to make any difference. Its personal problem is the fact that it's hard to keep the pet alive and once it's dead, the master efficiency is reduced. Another problem is the fact that some NMs do not like wvyern breaths and the Drg himself has no control over his wyvern. A NM that reacts negatively to breaths or magic effect will effectively make the Drg the burden of the party.

Smn: This job is wanted mostly for its 1HR ability. In fact, outside of the need for Smn's 1HR abilities, there is almost no reason to get a Smn for anything other than pet parties. Even though this is a job that can give a lot of buffs to the party, none of those buffs are strong enough for make it mattered (Avatar's favor) or unique enough that you can not have another job to do it (Haste).

One of the requests that seem to keep coming back and forth is to allow the pet to get the same buffs as the masters. This should include but not limited to spells, songs, dances and rolls effects.This is the most basic and probably the minimum boost the pet jobs should be getting so they could at least scale better in a party. This is not overpowered because none of the pets are getting enough equipments, traits and job abilities bonus.

Yes, I also understand that this would effectively make all the pet songs and rolls ineffective. However, have anyone ever seen people use these rolls? In fact, these rolls have no effect on anyone else other than jobs with pets are alienating the pet jobs.

There are also specific buffs I'd love to see on particular jobs.

Pup: Maneuvers is too cumbersome. The pup has too spent too much time fiddling with their maneuvers in the middle of combat. This wouldn't be too much of a problem in the early levels or soloing but it's a huge problem in normal parties. An extension of maneuvers timing as well as reduction recast timer would be the 1st step. I'd also suggest making the puppet to be more effective at its job without the need to fiddle with it; similar to Trust NPC.

Bst: At the moment, this is the only 1H melee DD job without dual wielding. This job really needs a buff that will either make it extremely effective with 1H weapon or dual wielding abilities similar to Thf and Dnc. I would strongly suggest giving this job a much much stronger Fencer effect; at least enough to offset the high speed, bonus damage and equipment effect of dual wielding. It should also has additional TP when using only 1H weapon. This will open the possibility of Bst being a possible support job.

Drg: I believe a minor buff to the master would increase this job effectiveness greatly. However, it seems that the direction the dev is heading for this job is to rely more on the pet. I would strongly suggest Drg to have more control over his wyvern's breath as well as transfering wyvern's TP. The former would prevent accidents and the later would buff the Drg into something of an actual DD. It does not have to be a 1:1 TP transfer but it would help to allow the Drg to manage the extra TP.

Smn: This job really needs to be able to find its own place in a party. Either as a support or a damage dealer. As a support, it will need to carry at least 2+ unique buffs at once that would last 5-10min to be able to compete with Cors and Brds. As a damage dealer, it will need to be able to receive better support from other jobs other than just Refresh effect.

[Mitruya]

Yes to all of that, and it's basically what a lot of us have been saying in pages and pages of recent threads.
DRG *might* be seeing some nice changes in September ... dunno where that supposed pet jobs > DD buff is though.
I agree most especially about the maneuvers. Keeping your little mage buddy doing what it's supposed to do in a battlefield is really cumbersome.

[Janethetaru]

Yes, yes yes yes. A thousand times yes, to all of that.

[Louispv]

Been saying it for years and no one listens. At the VERY least change beast healer and repair merits to do the same thing as empathy, it's all we ask. Players have buffs, pets have none, in any event players need buffs to be effective (most events) the pets aren't. If every time we used reward/repair it transfered 5 buffs over to our pet, problem solved, now the pet has buffs!

Not that you have to, you just have to take the extra tag that exempts pets form buffs off them. We know it exists since sambas hit pets when they were added, until you specifically went in and added the "Not targetable by sambas" tag manually in an emergency maintenance. But since we know you won't do that, at least add Empathy for the other pet jobs. We have to constantly use the pet healing abilities to keep them alive anyway, since you also put in the "Not targetable by cures spells" tag on them as well....

Funny how Arcanist and SMN have none of these issues in FF14... It's almost as if you acknowledged it as a major game breaking problem and corrected it... in an entirely different game.