Job balancing?

[Kensagaku]

"If I see a guy on a job that I could tell was once well-geared, and he's returned to make it glorious again, I'll tell him the hard truth. It's not a coincidence that you don't see SAMs and BRDs and WARs around."
REALLY? My ls uses all 3 frequently and with much success.
"To the newbie players who want to make their sparks-thieves glorious, I'll tell them the truth too. Not only is the job not really desirable and not usually relevant"
REALLY? We also use THF quite frequently. The ones we use normally top the parse.
As you can see, the real problem isnt the balancing of the jobs, but the unwillingness of the player base to accept anything other than a set of strategies developed by other players. Every job has a use, with a very few lacking in the ability to greatly contribute (SMN being one). We dont use DRK, DRG or PUP either, but probably would if any of our members cared enough about them to pimp them out.

I'm sorry, but while I am happy to see that other people are making attempts to be inclusive, you're an outlier, not a constant. In the majority of pickup groups, you won't see a melee because it's not the "safe" strategy. And in all honesty, on anything modestly reasonable, they're not 100% wrong, as sad as it is, and I say that as an AG Mythic DRG.

Let's just pick a few Reisenjima t2s; the Harpeia Strophadia spams AoE Sleep + unremovable Paralyze, AoE Silence and unremovable Plague, AoE Encumberance and Muddle (both unremovable), and high-damage AoE that can wipe out anyone not wearing proper DT gear, especially since the same mob can wipe buffs and it's risky to run your WHM in there to re-cast Shellra/Protectra. But this is one example, let's move to another; ol' Ironside. Every attack is AoE and comes with Bind, Stun, or Amnesia. Has moves like Arm Cannon (AoE damage + HP/MP down, meaning next attack may be your last), Seismic Impact (AoE damage + Slow/Terror), and Eradicator (AoE Weakness), all of which are easily avoided simply by being out of range, which is why people prefer this strategy.

And this isn't even getting to the harder content, where acc requirements become more and more strenuous for melee to keep up with, where you have to have many more support than mage strategies just to ensure they hit. And then when HP scaling comes into play, that means that all that extra support is a detriment that is going to drag you down in the end because they're adding more HP that you're not meeting by adding these extra people. This is why the idea of melee is undesirable; mobs do massive AoE damage and spam multiple enfeebles, their evasion is through the roof, and to even assure you have a fighting chance due to the disparity between mages standing safe and only needing macc on cast while you need to have all the acc in the world, you need extra support to buff up your accuracy along with the monster's HP.

Do I wish we could bring back more melee strategies? Of course. DRG is my favorite job by a long shot, and I'd love to see it in more content. I even AG'd my Ryunohige, so I definitely want to use it. Do I want to see more job inclusion? Definitely! I played BST and PUP and BLU back before they were bandwagoned (thankfully PUP not nearly as much) and enjoyed the chances I got included into a party, and loved it more when they were more accepted. But right now, in a system where mages are highly favored due to magic burst potential and safe positioning as opposed to melee buffing the enemy's HP by getting enough support to be viable on them, it's just not plausible.

[OmnysValefor]

It's baffling to me that people can't observe the lopsided nature to the synergy of effective strategies in endgame. I've explained it before, several times, but whatever.

Noone needed to "tell me" that GEO, being a gimpy blm with super buffs, works its best magic (lol) in a party with other elemental magic users, especially when another one of those jobs can create the skillchains that all 4 (counting RDM) of those jobs can work with.

You can bring melee and leave them buffless, or try to split buffs between the two, or bring two support jobs (two geomancers usually). You can have one geo riding vex/attune, or you can bring a third GEO. You can wait out their amnesia, inconveniently timed stuns, terrors, poorly timed paralyzes (or just slow-reacting WHMs). You can deal with the fact that sometimes they'll die and nothing could have saved them, and you can wait on their weakness. You can wait for the melee to struggle with what-frequently-feels like impossible-to-meet accuracy demands as well, especially in a lowman setting especially if you have a guy that doesn't have that many clears (which again, clears don't seem as vital to mages).

While you're waiting on these things, you can come to the forums and be mad at players like me for being honest, or you can admit that the imbalance is severely in favor of mages, on many fronts, and that maybe something needs to be done about it.

Here you go SecondPlanet, here's a few Darknesses. They work either way, hence the <>

Geirskogul <> Eclipse Bite
Geirskogul <> Mountain Buster
Impulse Drive <> Rush
Impulse Drive <> Spinning Dive
Stardiver <> Rush
Stardiver <> Spinning Dive

[Helldemon]

You can wait for the melee to struggle with what-frequently-feels like impossible-to-meet accuracy demands as well, especially in a lowman setting especially if you have a guy that doesn't have that many clears (which again, clears don't seem as vital to mages).

One of the NM's, I think in reisen needs 1900 acc to cap according to bg-wiki... That's what, possibly several hundred million spent in acc gear, job master, and 3 or maybe even 4 support jobs throwing acc buffs on one melee job just to have decent acc.

[Secondplanet]

Here you go SecondPlanet, here's a few Darknesses. They work either way, hence the <>

Thanks for the awesome list but my biggest issue is that we have the timing for light down its just darks timing for the weaponskill seems a little off for the animation cues i've often used.

[Ketaru]

It's baffling to me that people can't observe the lopsided nature to the synergy of effective strategies in endgame. I've explained it before, several times, but whatever.

It's from lack of clarity by what we mean by relevant content. When I'm talking about what ought to be considered the benchmark, I'm using examples a little higher, like Escha Zi'tah T3, Escha Ru'Aun T3, Reisenjima T2+, the third battle of Sinister Reign, just to name a few. Regular Ambuscade, even on Very Difficult, seems deliberately scaled compared to some to examples and are generally not what I'm talking about. In fact, I'd say Ambuscade is generally very lenient with respect to what jobs are viable.

Melee, for example, might be very viable against most T1 Escha mobs. But that seems like a bit of a weightless consideration when you consider that these are soloable by several jobs.

[OmnysValefor]

Ambuscade--the dragon and the taurus/demon--seem like a pity-gift to melee. Due to rotating weakness on dragon and pretty high m.eva on taurus/demon especially once they leveled up after the other died, they're best suited for melee.

I never liked that people try to seperate from what the community considers hard from what your static group considers hard. If it's hard for your group, you're just as valid bringing the ideal jobs as the first people to kill it were. You might have spattering of higher-tier gear which the first kills didn't have, but that doesn't invalidate your right to strategize.

[Helldemon]

Ambuscade--the dragon and the taurus/demon--seem like a pity-gift to melee. Due to rotating weakness on dragon and pretty high m.eva on taurus/demon especially once they leveled up after the other died, they're best suited for melee.

Are they that bad? I knew groups that did VD for both with MB setups in under 5 minutes.

[OmnysValefor]

Are they that bad? I knew groups that did VD for both with MB setups in under 5 minutes.

I've never tried with stellar mages, but I've have several melee groups killing demon + taurus in 3 minutes. One, notably, was geo, geo, geo (lol, it's honestly what was online) pld, sam, whm. We were actually doing atk+/def-/acc+/eva-/def+/haste and taking turns entrusting the tank (Never been a fan of stacking geos, especially in a single party. Run out of useful things to cast).

Dragon had some rotating weakness thing or so I heard (that I never bothered to figure out) and that's why people preferred melee there.

In this month, when one dies, the others' magic evasion increases, but I can see how that can be overcome with good gear and the magic acc bonus from skillchaining.

Like I said, I feel like this was designed as a token fight for melee, even if mages do work^^.

[Urthdigger]

Ambuscade--the dragon and the taurus/demon--seem like a pity-gift to melee. Due to rotating weakness on dragon and pretty high m.eva on taurus/demon especially once they leveled up after the other died, they're best suited for melee.

I never liked that people try to seperate from what the community considers hard from what your static group considers hard. If it's hard for your group, you're just as valid bringing the ideal jobs as the first people to kill it were. You might have spattering of higher-tier gear which the first kills didn't have, but that doesn't invalidate your right to strategize.

Speaking as someone trying to gear up a melee, I wouldn't really call it a "gift to melee". The m.eva may go up when one dies, but the common strategy was to leave one at ~5% and kill the other anyhow so there's not much hp to take care of... and the taurus had some pretty high eva to begin with. Even with 1100+ acc it was a royal pain to hit the bastard, so the only real effective way to do so was already be better geared than the gear it's giving out.

[dmuller30]

Speaking as someone trying to gear up a melee, I wouldn't really call it a "gift to melee". The m.eva may go up when one dies, but the common strategy was to leave one at ~5% and kill the other anyhow so there's not much hp to take care of... and the taurus had some pretty high eva to begin with. Even with 1100+ acc it was a royal pain to hit the bastard, so the only real effective way to do so was already be better geared than the gear it's giving out.

You hit the nail right on the head with this comment. For new comers that need gear this would be a great starter set to get into end game content. My gear far exceeds the gear that ambuscade has to offer which baffles me because I feel I need to be as geared as I am to even beat it to get that gear. What if someone lvled MNK as their first job? There is no way they could beat this with just their sparks gear I feel as if even the Zitah stuff is better so why would you try to get worse gear to fight in? And why do you have to be better geared than the gear offered as a reward?