Job balancing?

[Olor]

I love the productive discussion being had here. I hope the devs pay attention to these comments.

[Ulth]

Dual wield jobs really don't benefit accuracy once you get to the point of having R/M/E/A weapons since they only give skill instead of accuracy, so each of your weapons only apply to that hand. It just seems like that because the two dual wield jobs people think of are dnc and blu. Dnc has accuracy bonus trait and gets more accuracy from gifts than other jobs, only tied with drg. And blu can set Accuracy bonus VI with spells. Thf and nin don't have anything like that. When they added distract they kind of nerfed thf hard. Feint now conflicts with a common spell, and the gravity effect from rudra's is pointless. Nin has it even worst since their extra hit dakken needs them to have huge amounts of ranged accuracy as well to make full use of their abilities.

[dmuller30]

I love the productive discussion being had here. I hope the devs pay attention to these comments.

I hope so too because these issues are from the players who have been playing for years so they know what is wrong with the jobs. I really hope they take these players feedback to heart.

[OmnysValefor]

[...]

everything wipes shadows

Yeah, it used to be that /nin was generally the tradeoff people made when personal survivability was a factor. Nin offers nothing to most jobs but survivability (except bst and war, which gain dual wield).

everything hits for high damage combined with multiple status ailments, etc. Even many NMs these days have AoE basic attacks.

Yeah, there's a lot of bosses (some of them very trival bosses) where I don't want the THF behind me even to TA. He eats an auto-attack cleave and he's dead or near it.

Amnesia (or: ugh, I can't do anythinggggg); Amnesia, as stated, is one of the worst threats in the game, comparable to a mute effect on the mages. But the problem is that mute is nearly nonexistent and non-viable because it locks out your healers instead of just your nukers, leading to a complete party catastrophe, while amnesia is so commonplace that it's easy to see why most melee are hanging up their weapons. If you're constantly stuck in auto-attack, unable to use your JA or WS, you're literally just sitting there swinging and waiting with minimal contribution.

At that point, your "contribution" is worse than the cost. You're feeding the boss TP, you're costing the healer MP. You're creating more enmity for the healer which can be a factor in prolonged fights.

The thing is, I can think of a few Amnesia-level debuffs that could exist (think nyzul lockout-floors), but I don't want to see mages going through the same crap. Hey, once in a while it's a fine mechanic but it's used too much. Way too much.

Just like Silence as Silena, I think it's time for Amnesia to have its own spell. If it balances it a bit more, make it something like Cursna, where it's not a 100%, but do make it something of a higher proc rate than non-gear Cursna.

I really don't want to see "Amnesna" behave like cursna, but if it did, I'd like it to provide protection for a duration based on healing magic skill. "JoeMage casts Amnesna on Kensagaku. Kensagaku is immune to Amnesia for 30s.".

If it gets to the point that you have to exclude to get a minimal number of people, it's a good sign that HP scaling has gone too far.

I've said before that I think HP scaling stops people from being carried, so I want it to stick around. This is another case where the problem is in the game mechanics, as you point out in your untruncated post:

More than the people necessary to create a skillchain, scholars included, are wasted slots, but here's something that people don't usually know: NMs gain a short buff to reduce magic damage taken after being nuked. While cumulative, the buff wears quickly. This means that while the gains from additional nukers is not as punitive as additional melee, it still exists (source). It's also interesting to read threads from that era, rather than relying on people's memory.

Perhaps addressing some of the problems with content and combat design will fix this.

I'm going to shamelessly plug a post I made, but I believe melee need a way to ws without interfering with or contributing to skillchains.

Until something is done about this, too many melee is just a really big problem.

[dmuller30]

I don't think survivablility will be fixed, it seems like SE has more important things going on like upgrading elemental siphon don't even get me started on that one lol. Think that was the last straw for me think I will be retiring SMN. I honestly think although someone said on here earlier it would be a good idea to up resistance on melee jobs against status ailments maybe an implemented trait or give them more resistance on gear. I mean just playing the game one time through on a job would let them know what the problems are, and if they are already then they should be well aware of what updates are needed, but because none of the major problems with balancing have been addressed it seems like none of the devs/programmers play them game at all and just provide us with random un-needed updates.

[Gankfest]

THF/NIN is still the best job... -_-

[Dale]

I believe this thread misses the real issue here. Because I have seen countless MMORPGs ruined by this notion of job balance.

Jobs should not be balanced. They need to have individual strengths that set them apart from other jobs. That's what makes the game play interesting to begin with. Otherwise in theory the developers should just copy and paste the same jobs for everyone to play - as that would be perfectly balanced yet would it be fun? I seriously doubt it.

Back in the early days many jobs on this game simply sucked. I hate to be so blunt - but that is the truth. They were downright miserable to play. SE has gone a long way to improving their jobs and making them more effective and enjoyable to play. So I find this idea that things were so much better in the old days floating around on this thread to be misleading. None of the jobs I play were better in the old days. That is for sure. In fact, they were a gazillion times worst.

I agree all jobs should be useful in all content. I do not agree that all jobs should be equally useful in all content.

I am not saying there aren't some legitimate complaints here. There is. But they are often exaggerated by job stereotypes and LS leaders who are stuck in their own ways. So instead of finding ways to make jobs more balanced I believe the correct way to address this issue is to ask how can we make certain jobs more useful in certain kinds of content.

[Dale]

Until something is done about this, too many melee is just a really big problem.

I agree with you that having a party filled with melee is not ideal.

But that is probably as intended - as there has to be some incentive to create a balanced party else support jobs would be left out of the mix.

[OmnysValefor]

I agree with you that having a party filled with melee is not ideal.

But that is probably as intended - as there has to be some incentive to create a balanced party else support jobs would be left out of the mix.

A balanced party like PLD, WHM, GEO, SCH, SCH or BLM, BLM?

The pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. Two to three (edit: said one to two) melee, including the tank can SC faster than 2 SCH but the baggage melee bring far outweighs this benefit.

And some melee can solo SC pretty darn fast if they can wear offense-oriented gear and have proper support.

That's the other thing mages don't really need. They don't terribly need Geo-Haste.

[xiozen]

So instead of finding ways to make jobs more balanced I believe the correct way to address this issue is to ask how can we make certain jobs more useful in certain kinds of content.

Well I believe you are saying the same thing here--regarding balance vs making jobs more useful in certain kinds of content... although i would caution "certain kinds of content" seems to lean towards job exclusivity in that there could be made the argument that, depending on the job, it may not be useful because of the type of content being introduced/attempted by the person playing the job.

I think the OP position of job balancing seems to stem from avoiding this type of distinction, so that regardless of the job, all jobs can enjoy all content equally... I don't think this should be viewed as an unrealistic objective.