The balance of damage-dealing jobs.

[Ulth]

I would argue that quick deaths zerg strategies are more of a ffxi staple at this point, only difference now is thfs are the ones doing it instead of drks.

[Traxus]

The only job that competes with thf on those quick fights (aka everything now) is dnc, and they are both doing that much damage/trivializing content for the same reason: rudras. Maybe other jobs could match thf|dnc dps if the fights lasted several minutes (and by other jobs we really just mean sam), but if everything dies in less than one, that dps is irrelevant.

Yeah, you could multiply monsters HP a few times over so fights last longer, but that would accomplish nothing besides making those monsters disproportionately harder to kill for setups that don't involve thf|dnc|sam. Than you could also buff every other DD job to make up for it, but that's a whole lot of hoops to go through when simply nerfing skillchains and dagger WS accomplishes the same thing.

[Ulth]

No seriously Frank is right, even if they nerf thf, dnc, and sam into oblivion the community would come up with some other cheap tactic for a zerg fight for unity. It's how the game works, since it's not a battle field there is ample time to prepare for zergs too. The next best zerg would probably involve geos, and either cor or rngs using some combination of trueflight, leaden salute, and wildfire.

[Kylos]

How can anyone say Dark Knight, Warrior and Dragoon (without Mythic Weapons) do just as much damage than a good THF or DNC? I ain't seeing that, all I see is SAM THF and DNC.

My Dark Knight and Thief has 119 gear. Aside from a lack of a RME weapon on my THF, the gear progression is about equal. I do better damage on my THF/DNC than I do on my DRK/SAM ... unless my DRK receives zero debuffs and has full support, while my THF struggles to use SA for whatever reason. THF/NIN beats DRK/NIN as well, especially when you skillchain with the other Rudras Storm users. I need to be exceptionally fast on Dark Knight to keep up with a good THF if we both have buffs.

I just can't see any DRK WAR or DRG doing more damage. Please point me to a player who is not part of an endgame LS and sporting a Mythic, then have them jump server and I will see how they fair against my THF.

Like I have said many times now, SE should not nerf Rudras or Samurai (and I have disliked the power of Samurai much longer than Rudras), they should balance the DD jobs for a change. I know this seems to be an impossible task, but it would be nice if it was attempted. Diversity makes the game more fun to play. I don't want to see a standard party of SAM THF DNC GEO BRD WHM (or something similiar) every single time.

SE shouldn't be nerfing everything at this point. Just learn how to boost other jobs to be competitive. Is that really so hard to do? I have lived with the fact that Dark Knight has been neglected for many years in favour of other DD. I could accept the fact that Samurai was supremely broken with a Mythic. I was hoping it would be fixed at some point, to bring WAR DRK and DRG back into the game, but it never happpened. At this point you might as well delete WAR DRK and DRG from the game because no one needs them for anything, except to mess around on in their spare time.

Sad, but true.

I wanted to add one final example. Did Tenzen on Difficult the other day. A Warrior with Conqueror decided to come /sam. Even with /sam, he was still unable to do more damage than me. How does a WAR/SAM with a mythic and buffs not beat a THF/NIN with Izhiikoh and Sabebus? Baring in mind that I was tanking most of the time and unable to utilize Sneak Attack.

[FrankReynolds]

How can anyone say Dark Knight, Warrior and Dragoon (without Mythic Weapons) do just as much damage (or more) than a good THF or DNC? I ain't seeing that, all I see is SAM THF and DNC.

My Dark Knight and Thief has 119 gear. Aside from a lack of a RME weapon on my THF, the gear progression is about equal. I do better damage on my THF/DNC than I do on my DRK/SAM ... unless my DRK receives zero debuffs and has full support, while my THF struggles to use SA for whatever reason. THF/NIN beats DRK/NIN as well, especially when you skillchain with the other Rudras Storm users. I need to be exceptionally fast on Dark Knight to keep up with a good THF if we both have buffs.

I just can't see any DRK WAR or DRG doing more damage. Please point me to a player who is not part of an endgame LS and sporting a Mythic, then have them jump server and I will see how they fair against my THF.

Like I have said many times now, SE should not nerf Rudras or Samurai (and I have disliked the power of Samurai much longer than Rudras), they should balance the DD jobs for a change. I know this seems to be an impossible task, but it would be nice if it was attempted. Diversity makes the game more fun to play. I don't want to see a standard party of SAM THF DNC GEO BRD WHM (or something similiar) every single time.

SE shouldn't be nerfing everything at this point. Just learn how to boost other jobs to be competitive. Is that really so hard to do? I have lived with the fact that Dark Knight has been neglected for many years in favour of other DD. I could accept the fact that Samurai was supremely broken with a Mythic. I was hoping it would be fixed at some point, to bring WAR DRK and DRG back into the game, but it never happpened. At this point you might as well delete WAR DRK and DRG from the game because no one needs them for anything, except to mess around on in their spare time.

Sad, but true.

Honestly, thf isn't as far ahead as you think. I think your're spending most of your thf time on things that thf is already naturally good at. And let's be honest. those three jobs could use some love, but THF and DNC have had a pretty crap run over the last 10 or so years. I think people need to just let them have their moment. I for one spent way too many years being told to tag the mob once and then drop party lol. At least DRK, WAR and DRG get to stay in the whole fight.

They could probably solve this whole problem by just nerfing skillchain damage and applying a bonus to the jobs that should have it appropriately instead of nerfing the weapon skills themselves and ruining solo damage and entire jobs in the process.

I wanted to add one final example. Did Tenzen on Difficult the other day. A Warrior with Conqueror decided to come /sam. Even with /sam, he was still unable to do more damage than me. How does a WAR/SAM with a mythic and buffs not beat a THF/NIN with Izhiikoh and Sabebus? Baring in mind that I was tanking most of the time and unable to utilize Sneak Attack.

I tried that once. He spams weapon skills with debuffs on you. If you don't have shadows, you get paralyzed, slowed and stunned a lot. That fight really leans in favor of jobs that can make use of /nin well. AKA anything that uses a single hand weapon and evades fairly well so that they don't spend all their time putting up shadows or being debuffed. I think thf and monk were pretty much the best for that even before the update.

[Ulth]

Aside from a lack of a RME weapon on my THF, the gear progression is about equal.

I'm getting really tired of hearing this. With the exception of ghorn, aegis, and annihilator there really aren't relic weapons that stand the test of time. Unless you have vajra, your next best option for thf is Izhiikoh. The one you are using. I don't know what relic you are using for drk, but chances are you are better off using one of the Alluvion Weapons if you aren't going to make a mythic. I honestly don't know though I haven't done the math, but generally the Alluvion 2h Weapons are good because of their high delay, and high base damage, which gets even higher with good augments. A drg with Olyndicus is pretty damn fierce. However again I have not done the math for the others. Really if you plan on redoing the drk guide it might be something to look into. Another thing is party support that cater to the needs of drk, war, and drg. For example, An 11 on miser's roll with the +5 ring gives save tp +325. That and fighter's roll should have those jobs pumping out weapon skills like a tsuru sam.

[Jassik]

lol, blu isn't harder to gear you just need to spend more time on it, more gil on it, and devote more inventory to it. What is harder about that?

Hard indicates that there is some skill or rarity restriction in getting the equipment, this couldn't be farther from the truth. There is very little current BLU equipment that requires clearing difficult content or is very rare. The rarest of the ideal gear for BLU involves random augments (which every job has to deal with), optional dynamis torques for some spells, optional movement speed and refresh pieces. I wouldn't say there is anything hard about AF quests or trading augment stones. The hardest part of gearing BLU is knowing what gear to get.

[Kylos]

I'm getting really tired of hearing this. With the exception of ghorn, aegis, and annihilator there really aren't relic weapons that stand the test of time. Unless you have vajra, your next best option for thf is Izhiikoh. The one you are using. I don't know what relic you are using for drk, but chances are you are better off using one of the Alluvion Weapons if you aren't going to make a mythic. I honestly don't know though I haven't done the math, but generally the Alluvion 2h Weapons are good because of their high delay, and high base damage, which gets even higher with good augments. A drg with Olyndicus is pretty damn fierce. However again I have not done the math for the others. Really if you plan on redoing the drk guide it might be something to look into. Another thing is party support that cater to the needs of drk, war, and drg. For example, An 11 on miser's roll with the +5 ring gives save tp +325. That and fighter's roll should have those jobs pumping out weapon skills like a tsuru sam.

Well I tried augmenting the Macbain but have yet to get decent augments. Also I prefer using my Ragnarok .. my first and only relic weapon .. so I decided to save gil to augment the equipment instead. It's possible to get some pretty nice weapons out of it, but only if you are lucky or have the gil to back it up. Thief also gets Ipetam, which is amazing with the right augments. Like I said before, I don't want to gimp THF and DNC, I just want the other DD jobs to have more of an even playing field. If those DD jobs are not going to get more ways to skillchain, their normal damage should be boosted instead to compensate. A Mythic SAM could still be the best DD. THF and DNC could still be used for high tier fights and unity.

All it would do is change a leaders /yell (Looking for members) SAM to /yell (Looking for members) DD. SAM gets invited because it can reliably skillchain on all content, and some content requires certain skillchains in quick succession. This is very convenient for SAM, but not so convenient for the DD jobs without Rudras.

At this point in the game, if someone asked me which DD I wanted them on, SAM THF or DNC would be the first three, just because of the skillchain abuse. They need little support to do great damage.

[Ulth]

Ipetam is more of a tricky weapon to know if it's better overall for thf or not. Because of it's high delay for a dagger you are trading tp rate for ws damage. You need some solid augments on it to make it better than Izhiikoh. On the other hand I'm pretty sure even an unaugmented Macbain is better than Ragnarok.

[saevel]

Hard indicates that there is some skill or rarity restriction in getting the equipment, this couldn't be farther from the truth. There is very little current BLU equipment that requires clearing difficult content or is very rare. The rarest of the ideal gear for BLU involves random augments (which every job has to deal with), optional dynamis torques for some spells, optional movement speed and refresh pieces. I wouldn't say there is anything hard about AF quests or trading augment stones. The hardest part of gearing BLU is knowing what gear to get.

This is something a lot of people don't get. BLU is an incredibly complex job that can be amazing or completely suck depending largely on the player. Because BLU's JT's are configurable along with it's assortment of other abilities, it's possible to construct it to be virtually any job. It can be as offensive or defensive as you need, a laser focused DD or a generalist self-supporter, but it can't do all these things at once. The player needs to carefully chose the right subjob matched with the right spell load out matched with the appropriate gear selection and macros then they need to employ all this in combat whilst making snap judgements that can have a large effect on the usefulness of that BLU. It's got a very high skill - power curve unlike SAM, MNK or THF (after RS buff). It's the reason I love playing BLU and it's the reason it's virtually impossible for BLU to ever become a bandwagon job. A hundred people suddenly gearing BLU according to proth's guide will still produce a hundred sh!tty BLU's who will be unable to actually do well. It takes time a lot of experience to learn to play effectively.