Job balancing?

[Ulth]

What like a song that guarantees a partial resist?

[OmnysValefor]

Yeah, absolutely guarantees a partial resist. It should stack with any other resistance that would have occurred without the BRD.

Say an NM's unresisted sleep lasts 2 minutes, but my PLD partially resisted and only sleeping for 1:30, but the bard has this song on me which reduces duration by half (I feel like half would be a good cap) and so I'm alseep for 45 seconds.

[Shyles]

This was a a new thread I was planning to post today, but I saw this thread was already active. Here are my thoughts on certain issues regarding job balance - specifically related to melee vs magic dd - that I wanted to mention. The TLDR version is that I think that particularly enmity needs to be adjusted again, as well as better innate survivability for front line jobs.

With the wealth of powerful armor and the recent RME III update, melee jobs are becoming very strong but we are still largely undesired for serious end-game encounters. The current state of the game still favors safer ranged jobs for damage, particularly from scholars and black mages who are currently dominating the DD role in end game events. The major problems that I see causing this is enmity and survivability.

Damage Output vs Enmity

The problem that I am running into frequently is pulling hate from the tank. Even extremely well geared and experienced tanks are having difficulty holding hate from my Dancer. Melee jobs are now able to get enough Haste, multi-hit, Store TP to have a "hundred fist-like" attack speed, while also getting enough raw stats and weapon skill damage to regularly skillchain for 50k-99k damage. As a result, we're hate magnets just like we were at the beginning of SoA. Meanwhile the Mage-only parties are doing the same damage with virtually no risk of pulling hate and can also stay out of range of the heavy damage rather than swapping out of their DD gear to mitigate it. So it's easy to understand why they are favored in parties.

In terms of damage output, I would agree that Mages and Melee jobs are very close when properly geared. However, Hate management is extremely imbalanced between the two schools. If I start self-skillchaining, or closing big skillchains with my dancer, there is a good chance I will pull hate. Meanwhile the Black mage bursting 80K+ is untouched.. To avoid pulling hate, I literally have to hold back, thus lowering my damage output. How is that fair to melee jobs?

Damage risk is FAR higher to Melees than to Mages

As far as survivability, getting hit occasionally comes with being a melee job, and we all understand that.. But even at the highest difficulties, it doesn't make sense that a melee in full 119 gear could take 100% or more of their HP in damage from a nearly instant radial AoE move. The healer should at least be given a chance to heal us. It doesn't seem right to me that a melee job would have to sacrifice their damage output by swapping into a tank-like –DT set just to withstand the heavy damage. That is a necessity that isn't really present for other job roles. Also ranged jobs do not have to deal with spike damage, and there are very few boss mechanics that provide the same kind of threat to ranged DD. So while I agree that melee jobs should be exposed to more damage than ranged jobs, I think the survivability gap shouldn't be as drastic as it is now, and that healers should have a larger role in the party.

[Pixela]

Nobody wants to take melee because if you take a pld a scholar and some black mages you can skip the healer completely and just use a trust.

Quite why they allowed scholar to skillchain is beyond me, that was melee jobs claim to fame. I know they are trying to make all jobs useful but the scholar thing just made all melee useless.

Even extremely well geared and experienced tanks are having difficulty holding hate from my Dancer.

Fandancer!

[Voidstorm]

Several minor adjustments could fix many issues.
1 issue: Enemies hit melee with powerful WSs on a regular basis for a lot of damage.
_A: Give enemies tactical parry/block and remove the current 'any action on target' = TP mechanic.
_B: Make 'Damage Taken -%' just a part of 119 equipment across the board. 15~25% on a 5 piece armor set depending on it's real ilvl.

~Minor reduction in the required # of armor sets many jobs currently require.
~Physical damage dealers worry less about 'feeding TP' unless they stand in the front.
~Support and healers at low levels can more easily fight right along side the other characters~trusts.


2 issue: several support jobs are needed to make a group capable of hitting the target, and are required for both the mages and the physical attackers.
_A: Adjust the Magic Burst modifier.
___a: Currently, that step in the magic damage equation is apparently 1+0.05*(X+11) Where X is the # of times skillchain has been closed without a break.
___b: A change to 1+0.1*(X+3) would make scholar skillchains either very infrequent or much weaker than what DD can chain together.
_B: Lower the minimum delay between weaponskills to skillchain and cap the maximum delay to continue a skillchain at a higher number of seconds.
___a: The minimum delay as players know it is 3seconds. The maximum delay starts at 10seconds @ first close and goes down 1second for every close after, until it is also 3seconds making further chain impossible.
___b: Reduce the minimum delay to 1second, and raise the cap at how low the maximum delay between weaponskills, so it cannot fall below 4seconds.
_C: Make Magic Burst decrease magic resistance much further.
___a: If it isn't in place, make a mechanic that increases the reduction of magic evasion on the target based on the number of weaponskills.
_D: Increase the effective magic accuracy of enfeebling magics so mage support is not required for a Red Mage to even be considered for a support role.
___a: The same can be said for Bard enfeebling songs.

~Those changes should allow less support used to boost mage damage/accuracy and more focus to be put on the people creating skillchains, both offensively and defensively.
~More frequent weaponskills that still skillchain means more DD can participate in skillchain before their collective output starts running into a wall.


I could continue, but this post is already plenty long already...

[Urthdigger]

Hello everyone,

I'd like to inform you that adjustments will be made to two-handed weapons soon!

I appreciate the feedback you guys are giving and encourage you to keep giving us your thoughts.

So... will this include h2h?

[Psion]

Some issues i've noticed on pup (long post warning):

Weaponskills- Currently, hand-to-hand weaponskills are pretty lackluster. When my sparks of eminence geared blu can pull off a 5000-6000+ chant du cygne and my i119 pup does stringing pummel for only 2500-3000ish on the same monsters, and hits for less per fist than my blu does on it's sword swings, something feels off. Yes, I realize my automaton can also weaponskill, and also does about 3000 damage. the problem is however, this is an 119 pup with far better gear than my blu. A i119 geared blu on the other hand, can easily pull off 10-15k+ Chant du cygne or higher, while better gear for pup has a far smaller gain, and at the cost of either gearing for the master, or losing master damage and accuracy in exchange for strengthening our automaton.

Our automatons weaponskills are also rather lackluster these days. And with the non-viability of hybrid sets for master and automaton for anything challenging, we essentially lose half our damage dealing potential, because either the master is going to be out of range, being in pet augmenting gear (because the hybrid sets do not provide enough accuracy even with shiromochi for both the master and pet to hit on higher end content), or the automaton is going to have floored accuracy and be essentially useless. Do not get me wrong, if we can't have hybrid sets, that's fine... but make our weaponskills and our automatons both have a much higher potential, increasing more dramatically with stat boosts like strength, attack, critical hit rate, etc. Monk would also benefit from this change, as they are in an even sorrier state than pup is.

Speaking of automatons, I have a suggestion for four new attachments, with tentative names:

Concentrater- enhances the potency of "ability" type attachments. (suggested elemental slot- light or earth) The idea behind this one is to "strengthen" the abilities of our automatons. abs-attribute would gain more magic accuracy and absorb more. flashbulb and strobes I and II would generate more emnity. (please be generous with this, as those good CdC spamming blus are quite literally impossible to hold hate against, even with dual strobes, opening with a triple fire provoke, and maintaining dual fire, one light for flashbulb, dual strobes, and optic fiber. Despite all this, my automaton starts loses hate within half a minute to a minute and it's a losing battle from there, and this is on the harder stuff like escha- Ru'ann NMs.) economizer would restore more mp, disruptor would gain more magic accuracy and perhaps dispel multiple buffs, shock absorber would absorb more hp, and so on. If something would be too powerful with just a straight boost, that attachment could always be "augmented" in a different way than just increased potency.

Diffuser- Changes "ability" type attachments and spells to an area of effect. (suggested slot- light or water) Either this one would have a full effect just by being equipped, or increasing area of effect radius with more maneuvers. if it has a full effect by simply being equipped, i'd recommend a lesser used element than light or water, such as dark or wind. This would make things like strobe and flashbulb work on the target the automaton is deployed on and any nearby targets as well (i'd recommend a generous AoE range for this), while spells like thunder V would hit all nearby foes, and spells like cure VI would cure the ally the automaton targets and anyone in the AoE range of them. If this requires spells to cost more MP to cast for balancing reasons, this is fine. This would be a boon for automaton tanking, nuking, and healing. One of pup tanks biggest weaknesses is we simply cannot hold hate against multiple mobs, so any boss with adds, or any fight that starts off with multiple mobs renders a pup tank useless. One of pup healer's biggest weaknesses is we have no AoE heals, and this attachment would make pup healer viable for content that's not too serious. We'd still be limited to our spell recasts, unlike a real whm, so I doubt pup as healer would replace whm as superior, but with the ability to AoE heals and status heals, it would serve in a lot of content as a back up healer, or one that heals non tank parties in an alliance. And giving our blm automaton access to AoE lets pup not be completely useless in content like vagary where AoE reigns supreme.

Crystal Resonator- Enhances magic damage (suggested element- ice or water or light) This attachment would increase the base damage of spells, just like magic damage + on gear and weapons does. Right now our automatons simply cannot compete with a blm in nukes. back in the old 75 cap days the balance was near perfect, with pups providing ridiculously overpowered spells and unlimited mp, with low hate issues...but at a much slower recast than blms. In the end, the two would parse practically equal on a tough fight, which made pup as desired as blm for content like proto-ultima. Now however, we have blms spamming magic bursts for 99,999 damage, casting stone I for damage in the thousands, and yet our automaton is bound to the long nuke recast, and casts blizzard V (with ice maker, loudspeaker IV, loudspeaker II, mana channeler, and optic fiber in my case) for 8756 damage to an unwilling marid. now, this isn't bad, it's quite better than it used to be... but it comes nowhere near the potential of a real blm. Keep in mind, this is with PURE damage boosting attachments. In a real fight, even with full magic accuracy attachments and triple ice, i'm not sure my automaton could land a nuke with more than 5% accuracy, even with a geomancer and pet rolls helping, even on a magic burst that my automaton fails at doing because our magic burst attachments seem to be terrible at doing their job. A black mage, on the other hand, can do over 13k to the same mob with the same spell, and they do not suffer the magic accuracy issues our automatons do. Right now, there is literally no use for our black mage puppet, which this attachment would hopefully rectify, along with:

Crystal Foci- Changes automaton spellcasting behavior (suggested element wind, dark, or fire) A passive attachment that alters automaton spellcasting. for black mage automaton, this would make it focus almost entirely on nuking, constantly casting tier I or II spells (depending on how tough the monster is... tier II spells for more magic accuracy on higher end monsters), and using it's highest tier nukes on skillchains to magic burst. Perhaps also enhancing tier V spells magic casting speed greatly, so that they can actually land a magic burst. (or you could add this as an effect to amplifiers.)
For whm bot, this would have it stick mostly to healing and status cures, constantly casting low tier cure I and II/status cures and regens on non tanks, with the normal cure recast left in place for it's highest tier cure. For red mage automaton, this would cause it to focus mostly on maintaining enfeebling magic, with the occasional cure or nuke. This would give an added purpose to the three mage automatons, and also let them combine with the crystal resonator and diffuser for different purposes. want to take on a tough boss? use the ice maker with crystal resonator, or crystal foci instead of ice maker if the boss has fairly low magic evasion. want to fight in vagary against the hordes of monsters? crystal foci and crystal resonator and diffuser to constantly fling low level but fairly potent AoE spells and assist the black mages. Monster has a lot of powerful AoE spells? diffuser and whm head to soften the blows. Monster spams enfeebling effects? crystal focii and diffuser to keep the party clean and take some pressure off the poor white mage.


As far as specific automatons go-

Harlequin- Oh dear. what is there to say...this frame is utterly useless, EXCEPT for magic heavy monsters, where it's only purpose is to provide ::some:: damage reduction and hp combined with white mage head for shellra V for more magic protection. That is entirely it. It's weaponskills are terrible. magic mortar does 300 damage. 300. damage. not 3,000, not 30,000... 300. and when you have your typical tanking maneuvers up of light fire, and maybe earth or water, this is the only weaponskill you're going to get unless you have inhibitors equipped. Harlequin and mage frames NEED a better weaponskill. at the very least, harlequin does. perhaps this frame could be changed to have still have less damage taken than valoredge, but also have an innate magic damage taken boost as well, making it the official frame of choice for tanking magic heavy mobs?

valoredge-This one is our current frame of choice. it has an A+ melee combat skill, giving it the best shot of hitting tougher monsters in endgame content, it's got the best survivability, and bone crusher does pretty decent damage. all in all, it's fairly solid, especially as a tank... but it does have some flaws. The first, being that our automaton is incredibly susceptible to doom, and any monster that spams hate reset moves makes it useless. a paladin can simply spam flash, a rune fencer can use runes to quickly reestablish hate, but we're bound to our 30 second strobe and 1 minute flashbulb, and we can't practically get our automaton to hold a provoke or flash in reserve. (partly because we need them to hold hate in the first place, partly because we need those maneuvers up full time for them to survive!) One suggestion is to have hate reset moves only have a lesser effect on an automaton than a player- a full hate reset would only remove some of the automatons emnity instead of all of it, allowing for a bit of leniency for a non player tank. Secondly, our automaton is laughably weak to doom. unlike a player, we cannot cursna an automaton, our repair ability won't remove it even with puppetry babouches enhancing it, and maintenance also won't touch it. Couple this with our automatons horrendous magic evasion (even with dual resistors) and the instant any NM uses doom on the automaton, its a dead tank walking. there is no second chance, there is no saving grace, it's DEAD. Give valoredge and harlequin frames a break- make them able to receive status cures from players, even if not actual heals. that or make them resist doom, or at the least make maintenence and repair remove doom 100% of the time. (though with their long recast timers, this isn't an ideal solution when the party depends on you for tanking.) Finally, valoredge could use a bit of a weaponskill damage boost. That or make valoredge's weaponskills have an added enmity boost to it, helping solidify its position as a tank frame.

Stormwaker- This one's doing fairly well. it's useful for low end content where you want phalanx, stoneskin, and some heals, but don't need a lot of healing power. Perhaps a magic accuracy boost to help land enfeebles.

Spiritreaver- This one's failing utterly. It's magic accuracy is terrible, it's magical damage is amazing...by 2010 standards. Nowadays, it's pretty lackluster. I'm pretty sure an actual red mage can nuke harder, never mind a black mage magic bursting death for 99,999 damage. I kind of feel like it should have gotten tier VI spells as a job point gift, but barring that... it really needs a LOT more magic damage and accuracy. Don't forget, it's bound by a very long recast on it's nukes, whereas an actual black mage can happily cast nonstop as long as it's MP and hate are fine. Seriously, don't go conservative on boosting this one. Don't even go wild on boosting this one. Boost this thing as wildy as you dare, then quintuple that boost, and it might finally be on par with black mage again.

Soulsoother- This one's main weakness is the very long recast on heals and status heals. See the suggested attachments above, which are really what this frame could use.

Sharpshot- Poor neglected sharpshot. it used to be the king of physical damage, but now, valoredge does it better. Unlike poor sharpshot, valoredge has an A+ skill on all it's hits, not like sharpshot and it's (very long recast) ranged shots. Granted, triple wind or two wind and a light (combined with drum magazine) helps this a lot, but it's still going to have lower accuracy on it's melee swings, it takes hits like a piece of wet tissue, and it's weaponskills don't do any more than valoredge. You can fix the damage taken issue by putting it out of melee range, but then it does less damage than valoredge by far, generates TP far slower, and it's weaponskills still hit no harder. Sharpshot needs a survivability boost, a major attack boost, and a serious weaponskill power boost.

I apologize for the rather long post, but this is just my cumulative observations of where pup stands and where it feels lackluster. Even though we occasionally get invited to parties to tank, even this niche use is unknown by far too many players, simply because there are so many NMs we cannot tank due to hate reset, doom, or crowd control issues. (or an amnesia aura, which renders our automaton incapable of using provoke or flashbulb, and therefore, incapable of holding hate.) it's an amazing tank on mobs it can work on, but unlike a rune fencer or paladin, there's no "suboptimal" NMs to tank. either a pup tank works beautifully, or it fails so utterly that everyone is dead within the first 30 seconds. With other tanks you can sort of make it work even if a pld or run would suit a particular NM better. And we are never invited for the other roles we are capable of playing, simply because our other roles are far far inferior in potential to a blue mage.

I realize some people will say "but Psion, pup is a hybrid job! it's supposed to be a jack of all trades, master of none!" To which i'd like to point out BLU is also a hybrid job, and yet it's highly desired because it's a master of all, but a master in it's own unique ways. instead of subverting other jobs, it's able to work alongside and augment them with it's own unique buffs and spells. PUP used to have more versatility, being able to fill in when the party needed more magical damage, another physical fighter, or a back up healer. Now it's only as useful as a superior tank (on some monsters) or an inferior DD, healer, or nuker. A simple jack of all trades, invited by none.

[Jile]

Psion, so many good points, hoping SE read's what you said.

[Dale]

The problem is right now that melee jobs don't excel more in *any* content. I can't think of a single event where a DRG or a WAR or a DRK is desirable over other options. I am fine with each job not being *equally* good in all content but the content design needs to be varied enough that all jobs get an opportunity to shine.

So you are saying there are no fights on this game where magic damage is less effective than melee damage is?

I find that hard to believe Olor.

[Dale]

Nobody wants to take melee because if you take a pld a scholar and some black mages you can skip the healer completely and just use a trust.

Quite why they allowed scholar to skillchain is beyond me, that was melee jobs claim to fame. I know they are trying to make all jobs useful but the scholar thing just made all melee useless.


Fandancer!

I think you're over-stating it.

Just because there is another job that might be better at something that doesn't make melee useless.

When I go out to kill NMs I certainly prefer to have a dragoon come along with me than to be solo. He's not useless, helps me kill faster (especially if we can get a good SC going) and can even help heal.

I rarely (if ever) play with scholars so I can't really comment directly on how good they are. But I do play with my fair share of melee jobs. And I can attest that a well-played well-geared melee is not useless. They can be very useful.