November 2019 FINAL FANTASY XI Digest

[Beastorizer]

To Seish's point about instances were they felt people may have, a Master three star BST can use Unleash on a 15min recast, and the damage can be boosted by 40%. Ready can be boosted to do an extra 20% fully maxed. I assume those stack, so that is 60% extra damage while under unleash which is on a 15 min recast. So, I see what he is saying.

I feel like this can be an opportunity for BST to throw out suggestions. They implied this discussion was open for suggestions. Perhaps we should simply suggest.....

My Suggestion....

Fill out the bestiary; No more repeats, ever.......We are capped at 119...We are not going any higher....Unless you are doing things like the Hippo, Raptor, Turtle, or the Red lynx.

(& stop taking moves like frenzied rage & pounce away.....)

These repeats are an easy out to recolor the Homunculus & call it an update. If this was never a thing, we would have gotten a real update last month. Easy to do......Not going to fix everything, but it gives off the impression that "We are trying." These repeats gives off the impression "We are not trying."

It is more than looking cool, powerful pets, having a neat looking pets, etc, it is about the perception of effort imo.

Combine the repeats

Combine the distance nerf

Combine removing many moves from jugs

Combine the lack of "front line" oriented JA/JT, it seems like you are doing everything in your power to nerf BST, instead of improve it. I can't name one thing the devs did to BST & say, "Wow, they really improved us." Ready damage, maybe...

[Seish]

@^ Finally someone said it.

As far as the suggestions are concerned; some have suggested and that's what the Devs need to respond to. Then there are those that are insisting that BST was a backline job and later got angry at the reply SE gave showing why they were wrong and threw their gear and said they quit. That kind of behavior, and those that just complain without a solution--though understandable--doesn't solve anything. It's coming up with a solution through suggesting how to fix the problem that will remedy the issue at hand.

To those that are suggesting, please keep it up. It's the only way to get some change you want.

[Gwydion]

@^ Finally someone said it.

As far as the suggestions are concerned; some have suggested and that's what the Devs need to respond to. Then there are those that are insisting that BST was a backline job and later got angry at the reply SE gave showing why they were wrong and threw their gear and said they quit. That kind of behavior, and those that just complain without a solution--though understandable--doesn't solve anything. It's coming up with a solution through suggesting how to fix the problem that will remedy the issue at hand.

To those that are suggesting, please keep it up. It's the only way to get some change you want.

I have a lengthy post history of saying what Beastorizer said. See my post on page 8.

Regardless, we're all on the same page. SE has done little to improve beastmaster. I don't think equipment or food counts as the director stated in his reply either.

I hope they do something tangible for Beastmaster.

[Seish]

We are. And I am glad we are all on the same page. Now we came with suggestions and all we can do is wait. If more ideas come feel free to post. But to those that already came with them, all I have to say to the @Devs, please take the time to look over the suggestions and let us know what you think.

[Rwolf]

I don't want to derail the thread further. If anyone chooses to call BST or its original distance for over 15 years as OP, I can't stop you. Just know it will only validate the inaccurate stigma and cause any further development to be based on it.

Per your request and hopefully I don't get banned, I will explain which parts were not accurate.

we made major changes in the very first version update in 2015... ...the changes allowed beastmaster to easily catch up and deal high damage more effectively than any other job.

It was true that BST was dealing high damage more effective than most jobs at the time, but not all. Magic Burst parties were more effective especially with Death MB but it required more work. BST didn't have any major thresholds on JP or gear so it attracted the masses.

The comment leaves out an important reason why it felt very strong. Monsters have higher native stats than players. It was easier to cap a jug pets acc/atk than a player on content in 2015.

As mentioned previously there was a lot of adjustments made to monsters, bard songs, accessible gear and even JP acquisition when Apex became easier to fight as a result. Now other DD easily surpass pet damage and the only decent MB nuke is a water one you can only do every 30 sec with max ready recast.

Pets also had decent survivability, and even if they were defeated, they could be called out again at full power after a five minute cooldown.
At this point, beastmaster was capable of battling with almost no risk to themselves.

Player skill was not involved in this version of beastmaster, since no matter what attacks enemies had, they could be defeated by endlessly sending out powerful pets.
This was even more effective in parties with multiple beastmasters, which created some extreme cases where pets did all the fighting and players didn’t battle at all.
Battles were streamlined into a monotonous process, and enemy mechanics became meaningless.

Even after the distance nerf, players ran in range between attacks to issue commands with Utsusemi shadows so the risk was minimal to none. It didn't encourage melee either.

5 minute recast ≠ endless pets. SMN and PUP do what is described honestly not to throw them under the bus. MB strategies have no risk at all. Not to mention unlike the other pet jobs, your jug pet is lost when zoning and most battlefields.

Players stood back and didn't melee because:

• It was too dangerous.
• Master damage was worse than other DD with even less gear choices and no traits.
• Charmer's Merlin causing TP issues and being more valuable than master damage.

To address this, we kept beastmaster’s strength while making sure its equipment and traits were used to fulfill a frontline role, and shortened the range of commands to bring back a sense of risk to the job.

Equipment? Traits? Fencer and Damage Limit II isn't enough melee traits. Relic+3 doesn't have anything unique. Fencer but no great shields so it practically forces subjob for Dual Wield.

While these adjustments lowered beastmaster’s capabilities

Sure did, greatly.

it was compensated for with the continued implementation of various meals and equipment, and that brings us to today.

I disagree. Relic+3 that has no unique additions. Pet food and armor really should be equally beneficial for master and pet. Inventory restrictions don't help non-career BSTs want to carry TP and WS sets.

we don’t have plans to alter the job’s design as a frontline role

Then there are those that are insisting that BST was a backline job

Who is saying BST is supposed to be a backline job? Absolutely no one. Players are frustrated with the distance because it doesn't work well even in melee range.

Instead of approaching it as how should be punish players for not doing what we want. Approach how can we encourage players to stay in range. Because they aren't, even with the nerf.

To Seish's point about instances were they felt people may have, a Master three star BST can use Unleash on a 15min recast, and the damage can be boosted by 40%. Ready can be boosted to do an extra 20% fully maxed. I assume those stack, so that is 60% extra damage while under unleash which is on a 15 min recast. So, I see what he is saying.

I just wanted to point out that Unleash is BST's SP ability and it's a 45 minute recast. You might be referring to Run Wild which is 15 minutes and nowhere near as strong. Run Wild also makes the pet disappear after 5 minutes.

When you throw out a bunch of percents, it sounds menacing but BST doesn't hit the numbers that heavy DD or other pet classes are doing. I won't explain in detail why because players have gotten banned here doing that.

I would suggest looking at the BST sticky in FFXIAH. Falkirk has done some great work with showing just how much damage a jug pet can do with maxed pDIF. It pales in comparison to the other pet and a lot of DD jobs.

[Rwolf]

Gwydion, what you did and said has my admiration and respect. I think it's more impactful and the 22 likes shows the support it has from the community. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise that you haven't contributed simply because they don't agree with your decision to drop Aymur.

[Zehira]

If we made scales shareable account-wide, there will be players who want them for secondary characters, or those who don’t need them right now but want more for later.
This may result in a situation where those who actually want them right now would be unable to obtain them.
It would also allow players to simply create one powerful character with the necessary equipment to make scales easier to obtain for the rest of their characters.
Since this is relevant to the final stage of artifact enhancement, and we’d like to maintain a difficulty appropriate for capabilities, we currently aren’t considering making scales shareable account-wide.

Don't worry about that. Please think of SCH in the future. Thank you.

I wish it didn't come with BST at a time. (laughs)

[Seish]

Who is saying BST is supposed to be a backline job? Absolutely no one. Players are frustrated with the distance because it doesn't work well even in melee range.

Gwydion in another thread did call it a back line job. That is why SE had to stress the history of BST and I felt that Yoji did a good job about it. But as Gwydion said, we all are on the same team. But I disagree with you thinking it wasn't OP as outlined by Beast's post found on the very top. I see that you went point by point, which is healthful and I think constructive. But the point SE was making is being able to resummon after you do a massive spike dmg is in their mind is OP with the pet's survivability and the massive dmg spike you can have--regardless if their time being summoned is shortened or not as you can easily resummon them. One could say that takes away from them having to feel any risk involved in tight situations where other jobs would have because of their wide range to give commands. And while you say that they front lined, you clearly mentioned the following:

Players stood back and didn't melee because:

• It was too dangerous.
• Master damage was worse than other DD with even less gear choices and no traits.
• Charmer's Merlin causing TP issues and being more valuable than master damage.

What you said aligned with what I quoted earlier, stating they did not want BSTS to stand back when times got difficult. And if a party were to wipe, they would want them as one of the first players to feel the wipe. That is not hard to understand and makes sense from their perspective. For convenience, I shall include that quote here with a bold lettering to assist the point they are making:

...As stronger enemies were introduced over time, it became apparent that beastmaster and their pets weren’t keeping up.
Unlike other jobs, pet-based jobs had to be balanced around both the player character and pet, which in turn made it difficult to implement powerful new equipment or pets.

In order to resolve this situation, we made major changes in the very first version update in 2015.
Monsters were now able to participate in skillchains and magic burst, making them an overwhelmingly powerful source of damage.
While this method required some preparation, the changes allowed beastmaster to easily catch up and deal high damage more effectively than any other job.

Ultimately, this allowed beastmaster to issue commands from a safe distance, while pets that were far stronger than the beastmaster themselves would continuously fire off powerful abilities.
Pets also had decent survivability, and even if they were defeated, they could be called out again at full power after a five minute cooldown.
At this point, beastmaster was capable of battling with almost no risk to themselves.

Player skill was not involved in this version of beastmaster, since no matter what attacks enemies had, they could be defeated by endlessly sending out powerful pets.
This was even more effective in parties with multiple beastmasters, which created some extreme cases where pets did all the fighting and players didn’t battle at all.
Battles were streamlined into a monotonous process, and enemy mechanics became meaningless.

▼ Corrective Measures and the Future
To address this, we kept beastmaster’s strength while making sure its equipment and traits were used to fulfill a frontline role, and shortened the range of commands to bring back a sense of risk to the job.
While these adjustments lowered beastmaster’s capabilities, it was compensated for with the continued implementation of various meals and equipment, and that brings us to today.

With this history in mind, we don’t have plans to alter the job’s design as a frontline role and would like this source of damage to be accompanied by some risk.

As we’ve often mentioned, these job adjustments aren’t final, and we’ll continue making adjustments to improve its frontline capabilities.

But that aside, I think that you raise good points. Moreso, it echos what we all have been saying. They didn't do it the best way and they should figure out a better way to remedy it. Ergo why I keep pointing to us coming with solutions.

[Alhanelem]

Tell me, what did they say wrong about any of this? And is this an example of overpowered?

I mean, SMN has been kiting monsters as long as it has existed, and more easily than BST and it wasn't consdiered overpowered (I suppose because it is very slow compared to doing things the normal way and some enemies were strong enough that you couldn't get enough distance to recast). BST has a lengthy cooldown on call beast, and while its pets do have more HP it's not so much more that they could kill 5 minutes to resummon every time. SMN was *always* better at pet kiting, although PUP can (sort of) do it too with deus ex automata.

I also honestly don't know whch monster attacks do so much damage that BST could be seen as overpowered in general. I rarely ever had a BST in a party, but I don't remember the damage from their pet's special attacks being remarkable.

What you said aligned with what I quoted earlier, stating they did not want BSTS to stand back when times got difficult.

If you're trying to refute something here, I don't think it's working. He listed off multiple reasons why many BST players didn't find fighting alongside pet to be attractive or worthwhile (limited gear options, more dangerous for them than other melee jobs, having to sacrifice TP to get the most out of pet attacks). SE's solution didn't address any of that. All it did was tell people you have to melee whether it's actually any good or not."

They had a problem that needed careful sculpting and tweaking to address and instead of doing that, they just slammed a sledgehammer over it and called it a day.

[Seish]

I think I did the moment I cited what SE said in BOLD. If you have a problem with it. Take it with them but they are very clear. They want to bring risk to a job that doesn't front line when things get bad. And they want to end BST burns.

He can cite what he wants, but the moment he said they distince themselves form the mobs because things get rough, that is exactally why SE did what they did. I maintain that they didn't do it right. But their reasoning with what he said is clear.