Hey dev team, we dont all wanna be mages...

[MicahZerrshia]

Ok, nearly everything we have now you can just throw a group of mages at and be done. AV...send in mages, CC...send in mages, TTR...send in mages, Ifrit...send in mages, Garuda...send in mages.

I hate playing mage. I want to play brd or mnk or drg once and awhile but when you need a pt of 6 mages, 1 healer and a tank its kindda hard to do. Even with rotation that means 85% of my time is spent on mage. Luckily garuda is in dire need of brds so I can brd most runs. But I dont want to mage anything anymore.

We need to not be so mage dependent so we all dont have to play mage. Seriously, mages need a good nerf or mobs needs some magic resistance so we cant just send in 6 mages and be done. For the love of all thats good let me play a job I actually like to play

[Gilraen]

The core problem isn't the jobs. Square doesn't test the different instances with just mages, they use a mixed party as evidenced by the different testing screenshots. The problem is player opinion and preference. And manaburn used to be the end-all player preference often on XI, with maybe a tank or two to keep hate off the mages. Still is to a certain degree. The only way to genuinely balance things is to either beef up melee classes or nerf mages. I believe they will be doing the former over the next few patches. Just be patient, you're still beta testing.

[TheFatHousecat]

Ok, nearly everything we have now you can just throw a group of mages at and be done. AV...send in mages, CC...send in mages, TTR...send in mages, Ifrit...send in mages, Garuda...send in mages.

I hate playing mage. I want to play brd or mnk or drg once and awhile but when you need a pt of 6 mages, 1 healer and a tank its kindda hard to do. Even with rotation that means 85% of my time is spent on mage. Luckily garuda is in dire need of brds so I can brd most runs. But I dont want to mage anything anymore.

We need to not be so mage dependent so we all dont have to play mage. Seriously, mages need a good nerf or mobs needs some magic resistance so we cant just send in 6 mages and be done. For the love of all thats good let me play a job I actually like to play

You don't actually have to play BLM on any of your mentioned instances.

AV: MNKs do extremely well on Mistress and really the only reason you'd want a BLM is to sleep adds.

CC: Princess is easier with melee classes (DRG, MNK, WAR), and as long as you have a good tank and have DRG to incap. the tail you can use melee on Chimera too.

TTR: MNKs are actually one of the best classes to use here, BLMs don't have much survivability.

Ifrit: even though BLMs are the preferred class for Ifrit now, DRGs (LNCs) were originally preferred and youc an still use them over BLMs.

Garuda: you only really need BLMs at Garuda because Chirada has extremely high physical defense. But, what you can do is just bring 2-3 of your really good BLMs and then have WARs or DRGs or BRDs and it should be fine.

Anyways, I hope you get the point. Right now you can basically bring any class you want to any fight in the game and still win, it's that easy. Perhaps you've just been running with groups that prefer BLMs, or your LS uses that class over others in their strategies. It's easy to fall back on BLM because if you have Ballad, a good WHM, and decent gear for your BLM, it's (imo) the easiest class to play; so, since the skill ceiling is a lot lower than say, MNK, people can pick it up and play it really well without much effort. Trying to bring in 5 MNKs, DRGs, and WARs is a higher risk for a lot of groups because not everyone is going to have their button-pushing skills practiced enough to play as well on those classes.

The game isn't as incredibly imbalanced as you'd think it is. It's not perfect, no, but it's not terrible. You should try looking around at different strategies for different fights, and maybe try to play with people who will allow you to play melee. Try to study rotations and class guides and practice on mobs like beastmen, so that if you do get the chance to play as a melee in a group despite how popular BLM is these days, you don't let the leader regret their decision; and maybe they'll let you do it again in the future ;D

[Kerwin]

Yeah I leveled Bard, PLD, and WHM. I'm saving BLM for last for this very reason. I don't mind BLM just rather play something else, and if I had it leveled everyone would tell me to switch to it anyways.

[KoujiGeki]

nerf mages? how could you nerf mages?