Job Adjustments for the Next Version Update

[Camate]

Greetings!

Below is a comment from Producer Akihiko Matsui in regards to adjustments to take place in the next version update.



In the next version update we will be making the job adjustments outlined below.

There are still aspects that have not been finalized, but please look it over as an outline of things to come. Once I have more concrete details I will be sure to share them with you all.


Elemental magic adjustments
We will be making the adjustments outlined here (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/29831-Overall-Battle-System-Adjustments-for-the-Future?p=392863&viewfull=1#post392863).


One-handed weapon status modifier adjustments
During the version update on March 27th, we performed adjustments so that "The maximum amount of damage dealt based upon the attack-to-defense ratio is now the same for both one-handed and two-handed weapons." As a next step to this, we will be adjusting the way in which status modifiers are applied.


Pet job adjustments
As long as characters are not increasing in level (fundamentally), pet job levels as well will not increase, so we are making it possible to further enhance pets through the equipment players wear. Below are the different plans we have for each of the pet jobs:


Beastmaster
Addition of new familiar pets


Dragoon
Addition of polearms that have stats to increase the parameters of wyverns.


Summoner
Addition of grips that have stats to increase the parameters of avatars.


Puppetmaster
Addition of animators that have stats to increase the parameters of automatons.



Geomancer and rune fencer adjustments
Addition of artifact equipment, merit points, and limit break quests.

[Zhronne]

That's a very very bad idea.
You can't force jobs to equip certain items to receive marginal boosts to their pets. What if Dragoons what to use another better Polearm? What if SMNs want to use another different grip?
What if BSTs want to use another pet and boost that instead of using one of the new ones?

Guess this doesn't apply to PUP since Animator is an unique equipment that they're forced to equip anyway.


In my opinion the only possible way to have a fair and balanced improvement of pets conditions is to have what we could call SCALING. Which is exactely the same as pet jobs are handled in 99% of the other MMOs.
You can't have the scaling be too big in a game like FFXI of course, it should be small, a small additional bonus that is calculated according to the master stats.
This way the stronger the stats of the master, the stronger the bonus the pets will receive.
Of course this bonus has to be small, so that "Pet: ..." gear will still be interesting to some extent, at least in certain slots, but that's where trial&error and a good balancement shows.
Imho it's the only possible solution, otherwise you'll be forced to develop more and more and more gear with every patch.

I mean... I like additional "Pet: ..." gear, I LOVE it, but you can't build the balancement of pet jobs around that. It should be a nice specific option, not the "key" to the balance of pet jobs.

[Sapphire]

Sooooooooo, RUN/GEO jobemotes? Y/Y?

I mean, this is crucial!!!

[Alhanelem]

Puppetmaster
Addition of animators that have stats to increase the parameters of automatons.We already have an animator that gives +70 to all automaton stats- please take your adjustments in a different direction, thanks! Gear in *other slots* that gives haste to both master and pet would go a long way to closing the remaining power gap between PUP and other DDs.



Summoner
Addition of grips that have stats to increase the parameters of avatars.Nice and all, but it doesn't address one single fundamental issue summoner has right now- most of which are not really stat-related at all.


Dragoon
Addition of polearms that have stats to increase the parameters of wyverns.most DRG use their wyvern as a support tool. I doubt any weapon you could create will buff the wyvern enough for anyone to care.


Geomancer and rune fencer adjustments
Addition of artifact equipment, merit points, and limit break quests.How about nerfing the ridiculous MP costs and casting times of geocolure spells? If you're not able to convince your party to pull monsters into your aura radius, you end up constantly having to cast and recast your luopoan in different locations, and this both burns your MP like fire burns gasoline and wastes your time since they take so long to cast.


As long as characters are not increasing in level (fundamentally), pet job levels as well will not increase ...Camate, can you please explain to the dev team how fundamentally flawed their logic is here? Yes, we won't be increasing in level, but with the massive power jump in gear recently, we sure will be getting a lot stronger. Pardon my language here, but with a DMG:150 staff available, you'd need to release some pretty *#&^$ amazing grips to make up for the difference in player vs pet stats. I mean, I can cast a cure or two or take 2-3 swings from a DMG:93 staff and pull hate from the pet doing like 1500 damage, so giving me an even better weapon means the gap that the pet would have to make up is even more massive.

Pets need a NATURAL POWER INCREASE- not gear-based stat boosts. Summoners and Puppetmasters both need ABILITY ajustments to reduce the job ability delay burden and line up their pets ability to do damage with the current pace of battle in the game (e.g. cut BP timer and BP delay- items at least in half)

Honestly, I know people think I'm a white knight for SE all the time, but as a big fan of the game's pet jobs, I certainly have a lot to be frustrated about here, so I hope people agree with this.

[Kojo]

Geomancer and rune fencer adjustments
Addition of artifact equipment, merit points, and limit break quests.

It is....it is so beautiful...

[Tannlore]

Pardon my language here, but with a DMG:150 staff available, you'd need to release some pretty *#&^$ amazing grips to make up for the difference in player vs pet stats. I mean, I can cast a cure or two or take 2-3 swings from a DMG:93 staff and pull hate from the pet doing like 1500 damage, so giving me an even better weapon means the gap that the pet would have to make up is even more massive.


Well Tahn... You and I are in full agreement here. These grips better be mini-R/E/Ms for avatars in their own right so to speak. I am very dissapointed and hope this isn't the extent of their "adjustments" for smn.

[Prothscar]

Are there any plans to address the fact that blue magic is so anemic that it now has the same or less base damage than a Dagger while simultaneously not being able to go above 1.0 ratio on most targets?

Not even going to mention magical ones, those are just a joke from the Dev Team I feel.

[Zuidar]

Are there any plans to address the fact that blue magic is so anemic that it now has the same or less base damage than a Dagger while simultaneously not being able to go above 1.0 ratio on most targets?

Not even going to mention magical ones, those are just a joke from the Dev Team I feel.

I've also wanted to ask in addition that for the Dev team regarding if will we be learning any new blue magic spells soon?

[Merton9999]

Geomancer and rune fencer adjustments
Addition of artifact equipment, merit points, and limit break quests.

Excellent, thanks! This is what I hoping for the most.

[Emitremmus]

I think polearms for buffing/enhancing the wyvern is alright, but I have a better suggestion.

Suppose there is a way to create "Collars" for wyverns that can be equipped in the DRG ammo or ranged slots. These collars could have different effects to use on the wyvern, while keeping DRG from having to give up DPS in the weapon slot.

...or depending on difficulty implementing it...how about making the Wyvern function similar to an Automaton so that you can equip items to him much like attachments? Say up to 3-4 "attachments" for the wyvern would grant the boost to wyvern power that DRG has always requested.

I've always felt the lack of interactivity with your wyvern is a drawback. It doesn't have to be gamebreaking stuff to enhance them, but maybe just cure potency + items or items to make Haste Breath? I dunno. Anything other than require polearms.

[Jerbob]

While I greatly appreciate any efforts made into improving the gear selection available for pet jobs, seeing as we are so woefully under-represented in the currently used equipment, the implication that these changes are going to somehow "fix" us really, really worries me. As has already been said here, pets need to be enhanced intrinsically before they will be even remotely effective. Equipment is not the way forward in this regard; proper pet-related gear should merely be part of the standard progression that pet jobs should enjoy as any other job does.

Unless the grips for summoners are obscenely powerful, they will do nothing to balance out the hilarious ineffectiveness of avatars, and quite frankly I don't have the inventory space to sacrifice for something that should just be built into the avatar in the first place. Please take on board the overwhelming sentiment among the playerbase that pets need to be fixed first before the (admittedly welcome) idea of adding more pet gear is even considered. Yes, it will probably take a bit more work, but an overhaul is needed. I can't emphasise this enough. Things are more broken than a grip can fix.

I am, however, very much looking forward to the Elemental Magic adjustment. I hope that it helps to make magical damage more competitive and effective.

[Sargent]

Summoner
Addition of grips that have stats to increase the parameters of avatars.

Will it compare to this (http://wiki.bluegartr.com/bg/Alternator)? If not, go back to the drawing board.

Seriously, Equipment is not the thing holding Summoner back. They are, in a nutshell;

Global Blood Pact timer that caps at 45 seconds
Pathetic melee damage, which we can hardly enhance (only though Pet:Haste and Pet:Critical hit gear)


I hardly see the grips they mention having Blood Pact delay that bypasses the cap.

[sweetidealism]

Beastmaster
Addition of new familiar pets

This is exciting, but it needs to be implemented in such a way that requires effort to get. I don't want to see newly-99 BSTs buy these new jug pets off the auction house and suddenly be on par with other players who have put far more effort toward improving their jobs. Please consider making these new jugs rare/ex drops from new content bosses with rechargeable uses.


Dragoon
Addition of polearms that have stats to increase the parameters of wyverns.
I feel like there must be a better way to improve wyverns. Dragoon is far more focused on the player's damage than it is on the wyvern's, so very few Dragoons will opt to use new polearms just for the sake of improving their wyvern unless the new weapon is also an improvement over their current weapon's damage.

I think the "Hurch'lan Sash" is a good example of a better adjustment-- for PUP and BST, it is comparable to the best other options for the player, but better because it just happens to also improve their pets.

I'd instead like to see something like Ganesha's Mala (a powerful item, yet not R/M/E/C/Delve, used for both getting TP and using weaponskills, so it's seldom if ever unequipped) that ALSO has "Increases wyverns parameters" written on it. Make it a drop from new content and then problem solved, you made the effort to get a stronger wyvern and you yourself got a little stronger too!


Summoner
Addition of grips that have stats to increase the parameters of avatars.
Although this is less of a problem than forcing you to equip a main weapon (such as the suggested dragoon adjustment) I again feel that it needs to have stats that augment the player as well. Given that grips are typically minor bonuses, I think this could be easily achieved by also adding something relevant to the player, maybe such as enmity down, and/or perpetuation cost down?


Puppetmaster
Addition of animators that have stats to increase the parameters of automatons.

Hasn't this already happened with the addition of the Alternator? As an avid Puppetmaster fan, I'm both terrified and thrilled by the notion of getting more animators of similar or even greater caliber. Since animators are essential to playing Puppetmaster anyway, this is the adjustment I can actually agree upon. Still, I think more can be done.

Keeping in line with my theme of "make it drop from new content," I would like to see new rare/ex items that can be redeemed for new and improved puppet frames and heads. Similar to the old addition of the Spiritreaver and Soulsoother heads, these new options could simply be reskins of existing models. I think it would be awesome to delve into fractures alongside my VISUALLY NOTABLY improved, bestest robot buddy Nadeshiko! Camouflage themed Sharpshot, an even shinier Valoredge, and more ornate Stormwakers! Please make it happen! :D

In short, if you're going to make these improvements come through gear, then please ensure that they are good for the PLAYER too, not just their pet!

I can also imagine another alternative though... and that is, don't make the improvements require gear at all! Perhaps there could be key items that permanently improve pets so long as you're on the respective main job?

[HimuraKenshyn]

Are there any plans to address the fact that blue magic is so anemic that it now has the same or less base damage than a Dagger while simultaneously not being able to go above 1.0 ratio on most targets?

Not even going to mention magical ones, those are just a joke from the Dev Team I feel.

If they keep adding these sick 1 hnd weapons any spell casting is just a huge dps loss at this rate. Welcome to the drks world....

[Quetzacoatl]

It is....it is so beautiful...

I'm preparing to be disappointed, I'm still skeptical of SE's ability to make GEO and RUN relevant for endgame of course.

With all of my love for GEO, if we can't expand our enhancing Geomancy beyond two spells as well as a single party, i'm not sure where else it would even be useful other than a mage party buffer and as an occasional debuffer. We're not really seeing a trend in All-Mage Parties anytime soon, and all the complaining about the Sphere animations already giving GEO enough scorn. :(

RUN is kind of a lost cause for stuff like Delve, since just about all the NMs deal mostly physical damage with tons of TP moves to go on. Maybe defense against debuffs, but that's kind of a stretch to allow them a spot at all. They would need a stance like Issekigan that parries like crazy, or an Empyrean Great Sword on par with Ochain's block rate to make RUN sufficient. Which is why I fear the only way RUN would be useful at all is if they have to build their Mythic Weapon to even qualify for endgame. I thought those days were over :\

For Geomancer I'd like to post a thread on suggestions to improve GEO for endgame use, but I also want to be able to translate it into Japanese for the JP forums so that it reaches out further.

[Alhanelem]

Seriously, Equipment is not the thing holding Summoner back. They are, in a nutshell;

Global Blood Pact timer that caps at 45 seconds

The game is much faster paced than when SMN was created with the 60 second timer. My proposal would be to set the BP timer to 30 seconds, reduce-able to 15~20 seconds, and decrease the amount of BP delay - on each item that has more than 1 second for balance.

The perfect solution would be to change the new SMN SP ability and remove the BP timers entirely allowing SMN to use their MP as fast or as slow as they want.


I'm preparing to be disappointed, I'm still skeptical of SE's ability to make GEO and RUN relevant for endgame of course.I can't speak too much for RUN but GEO is already relevant for endgame. Continuously reapplied and unresistable debuffs are very powerful for endgame- especially when some of the NMs are immune or highly resistant to almost every normal debuff.

[Quetzacoatl]

I can't speak too much for RUN but GEO is already relevant for endgame. Continuously reapplied and unresistable debuffs are very powerful for endgame- especially when some of the NMs are immune or highly resistant to almost every normal debuff.

Debuffs will take you so far as up to a spot in the mage party for alliances though. Not once have I currently seen a GEO for anything like Delve, and Reives I don't get invites on for them. I would go GEO if there was anything to use them against, once i've set up the proper gear sets for it. But, DRK is usually my strongest job to take to high-content events (not that I mind DRK either, I love both jobs).

So in the issue of being able to provide for the party, what if you need a COR, for example, but can't find one? Why shouldn't a GEO be the perfect candidate as an alternate solution, if not just as good as COR, considering their mechanics are just as similar? The only thing GEO can't do is swap parties and keep Geomancy buffs on each party. Even if GEO's only specialty is unresisted debuffs...well, look at where RDM is.

[SpankWustler]

Addition of new familiar pets

I wonder if this is referring specifically to something that will be summoned up with the "Familiar" SP somehow, or just using that as a general term for Beastmaster pets. I'm guessing the latter.

...

Also, I hope one is named Pokey Pete.

[Quetzacoatl]

I wonder if this is referring specifically to something that will be summoned up with the "Familiar" SP somehow, or just using that as a general term for Beastmaster pets. I'm guessing the latter.

...

Also, I hope one is named Pokey Pete.

And a Chapuli pet named Jumping Jackson, kthx

Seriously though, Chapuli look like something out of Guyver :cool:

[Theytak]

Elemental magic adjustments
We will be making the adjustments outlined here.

From what I recall, and after skimming that over, that won't change anything at all in regards to magical damage not keeping up with new weapons, it just lets the earlier elemental nukes compete better with the later level ones.


One-handed weapon status modifier adjustments
During the version update on March 27th, we performed adjustments so that "The maximum amount of damage dealt based upon the attack-to-defense ratio is now the same for both one-handed and two-handed weapons." As a next step to this, we will be adjusting the way in which status modifiers are applied.

I'm assuming you mean adjusting the str:atk and dex:acc ratios for 1h weapons (presently 2:1 for both) to either match 2h weapons' 4:3 ratios, or to be a bit closer? That's definitely a start, though whether or not it ends up not being enough (due to the huge difference in base damage, and the lack of reasonable offhand choices to match up with the new weapons), or ends up being too much (once said reasonable offhand choices become available) and throws us back to the era where 2h weapons simply could not keep up with 1h weapons at all... We'll have to wait and see.


Pet job adjustments
As long as characters are not increasing in level (fundamentally), pet job levels as well will not increase, so we are making it possible to further enhance pets through the equipment players wear. Below are the different plans we have for each of the pet jobs:
That is absolutely the worst possible way you could go about this. It's one thing for smns, whose gear has always focused on the pet, but for the other pet jobs, forcing them to wear gear that lets their pet be at all useful will also mean the player doesn't get to use that slot for their own benefit.

Whenever you guys suggested fixing the automaton's AI by giving us a new attachment, I yelled at you. This is the exact same issue. We should not have to find a piece of gear, or make some sort of sacrifice on our part, in order to fix something that is fundamentally wrong with our job, whether it be poorly designed or poorly thought out. Forcing the players to fix the fact that pets in FFXI simply are not well designed and are held back by poor foresight on the hands of the dev team is incredibly lazy on your parts. You're offering us a used band-aid as the solution to a problem that clearly needs surgery.


Beastmaster
Addition of new familiar pets

As a chef who will be able to profit off of these new jugs, I'm happy, but as a player who understand that this doesn't solve the problem, I'm disappointed. Also, for the love of all things holy, do not give any of them ingredients like ^$@#ing ziz meat.


Dragoon
Addition of polearms that have stats to increase the parameters of wyverns.
Are said polearms going to be at all competitive with standard DD weapons? No? I thought not.


Summoner
Addition of grips that have stats to increase the parameters of avatars.
Because smn needs MORE gear to make their avatars do what they should be able to do innately?


Puppetmaster
Addition of animators that have stats to increase the parameters of automatons.
While it is nice to see animators that will actually have a damn use other than allowing us to use maneuvers at the cost of our ammo slot, I'd like to point out that you're essentially owning up to the fact that presently, animators (save alternator) do a fat lot of nothing.


Geomancer and rune fencer adjustments
Addition of artifact equipment, merit points, and limit break quests.
This, however, is pleasant news. Will you also be buffing the jobs a bit more and fixing their other major issues, such as run's glass jaw, or geo's low power buffs?

[Darkdragongers]

what about Corsair new rolls a Rune Fencer's roll and Geomancer's Roll?

[RAIST]

if they do go forward with grips for avatars...please, please, please do NOT bind them to elemental affinity like you did with the elemental grips. ONE grip that affects ALL avatars please....not 8 @#$@#$ grips that have to be swapped to match the pet's affinity.

Just the same though, like others here, I think the focus should still be on directly adjusting the pets FIRST. Adding gears to tweak them further could be a SECOND option--but only work on and add those AFTER fixing the pets native attributes first (or at least have player stats influence them somehow...be that a factor of skill or something like INT--however it's done, they need innate tweaks first and foremost).

[Alhanelem]

if you couldn't read the long posts on the first page... really, pets just need to be innately better at higher levels rather than compensating for their inferiority with macro gear. At low levels, pet jobs are very strong in general but as you reach the new levels the master very quickly outstrips the pet in power- and this is true of all pet jobs, including SMN. the pet should be able to keep up to some degree without having to use special gear.

At a bare minimum, if SE intends to solve this problem with gear, said gear needs to include stats for the master as well, otherwise it wont be worth using because you're just trading your power for the pet's power, and not getting stronger as a whole.

[Glamdring]

I didn't see anything in there to address pet's current hate issues. seriously, we REALLY need that fixed. I can't-well won't-gear to melee with my pet at SoA levels without a fix to my pet being able to hold hate on bst. The damage output needs to be fixed as well. Throughout the decade I've mained beast my pet has been able to consistently "tank" unless I geared myself "balls to the wall" to outdamage it, just not the case now. And I don't think gear is the way to address it. A 99 jug should hit as well as a 99 natural critter, they don't. I mean seriously, there are only 2 reasons to use a jug when you can charm that are non-situational: a. to use a pet with a certain trait when not available from the ambient pets and b. to control it's use of TP abilities. Just giving us new jugs doesn't solve those issues when the pet is still going to be understrength.

[Quetzacoatl]

what about Corsair new rolls a Rune Fencer's roll and Geomancer's Roll?

Rune Fencer's roll I would predict to be Magic Evasion Bonus (makes sense right?), and Geomancer's Roll...either probably Magic Crit Hit Bonus or Elemental Celerity+%

[Kristal]

Puppetmaster
Addition of animators that have stats to increase the parameters of automatons.

Such animators would have to compete with the (literal) godslayer of animators: the Alternator. Unless they are meant for lower levels, any new animators would have grant stats not found on the Alternator and with sufficient power.
Equipment for the Sub and Ammo slots might be a better suggestion. Grips that only work with H2H, or new kinds of oils to use with the Repair ability. Or perhaps even a non-consumable type of Animator Ammo that grants automaton stats as long as it's equipped.

[Chimerawizard]

I didn't see anything in there to address pet's current hate issues. seriously, we REALLY need that fixed. I can't-well won't-gear to melee with my pet at SoA levels without a fix to my pet being able to hold hate on bst. The damage output needs to be fixed as well. Throughout the decade I've mained beast my pet has been able to consistently "tank" unless I geared myself "balls to the wall" to outdamage it, just not the case now. And I don't think gear is the way to address it. A 99 jug should hit as well as a 99 natural critter, they don't. I mean seriously, there are only 2 reasons to use a jug when you can charm that are non-situational: a. to use a pet with a certain trait when not available from the ambient pets and b. to control it's use of TP abilities. Just giving us new jugs doesn't solve those issues when the pet is still going to be understrength.

That has always been the case for me. Either wait 15-20 seconds before I start to fight & do NOT weapon skill til I know said WS will kill it, or plan on tanking most of the fight. Was true at level 30-75: abyssea with jug pets after that. Yay snarl!

I fear this method of 'fixing' pet jobs for the same reason as all other posts...pets need to scale in some way with master's stats. Why does summoner from the get go have gear with lots of int and mind and lots of chr down?...getting off topic

Theytak's post x1,000,000!

EDIT: What is the formula that will govern magic damage from here on out? Be as detailed as possible.

[Umisame]

Camate,
1- Could you give us more info about grips for summoner?
2- Is SE working to fix summoner job or only grips?
3- When will we get new avatars and new special JA?

[Theytak]

Ok, I think the best way to do this is to get people who truly understand the core mechanics of the pet jobs to explain to the devs slowly and clearly what is wrong with said job, and how best to fix it. Thus, I have no place to speak for bst, smn, or drg, but pup? I live and breathe pup. That said, I can tell you right now that "we'll give you new gear that fixes it" is not the correct answer for any of the pet jobs.

So, as an example, let's look at pup.

Pup has come a long way from the completely unfinished job it was when it was released. It's strong in various areas, and in certain respects, it does have advantages over the other jobs. However, these advantages rarely ever come into play, because of the content the dev team has decided to focus on. Essentially, pup has four major problem areas: the devs, the other players, job abilities, and the automaton. Please note that equipment is not included. Our equipment issues are relatively minor these days, so they're not worth talking about atm.

Basically, what it works out to is that the dev team's understanding of what they think pup should be, what the players want pup to be , and what pup actually is are three very different things.

Now, let's look at these major problems in detail.

The Devs:

It's pretty clear from the way the puppet is designed, as well as pup's gear selection, that the devs seemed to intend for it to be a sort of hybrid job that can adjust to fill different party roles as the situation demands. Need someone to melee? Pup can melee. Need some magic damage? Pup can nuke. Need someone to heal the party? Pup can do that too. Pup is incredibly self-sufficient in design, and that has allowed it to become the soloing powerhouse it is today, but there is a major issue here:

Pup, by design, cannot fulfill any of the roles it's designed for as well as the other jobs focused on those roles. At a basic level, that makes sense, because if pup could nuke as well as a blm, melee as well as a mnk, and heal as well as whm, it would be incredibly OP. However, the issue is the scale of the difference.

To play any of pup's potential roles well, the player needs to be a lot more intelligent and aware of the job and its mechanics than other jobs, and even if they manage to achieve the best the job can hope for in a given role, it's not even remotely as helpful as another job designed solely for that role.

Basically, pup was designed with intentional limiters to keep it from overshadowing the jobs it can mimic, which is absolutely fine, but these limiters are far, far too effective, and thus leave pup as "Not even worth considering" in the eyes of most players. This leads in to our next issue.

The Other Players:

The fundamental flaw with SE's "Give the players a half finished job and see what they use it for" is that the players never forget that job's half-finished state, and it becomes stuck with that stigma for years. Pup, Dnc, Sch, and for a long time Blu and Cor all suffered from this, and though things have eased up some for blus and cors, pups, dncs, and schs are still feeiling the effects of ther initial horrible releases.

On top of that, SE still doesn't seem to grasp their players. Almost all FFXI players min/max to a noticeable degree, and they do so religiously, even if they don't realize it. If a job combination has been deemed useless by the playerbase, that job combination is not done, end of story. Anyone that does it, is laughed at and excluded. If one method of play is more efficient than another, the less efficient of the two falls out of favor and is left to rot by the players. SE doesn't get this.

Pup was designed to function in an old style of play, specifically the 6-man exp parties and lowman events where not having a certain role filled could completely screw you over. However, the very expansion that introduced pup also hammered the final nail in that play style's coffin, and buried it in favor of DDx4+BRD+healer steamrolling through everything, which favored efficiency, and the better a DD performed, the more likely they were to succeed. Pup does not shine in such events...

...yet that's the sort of event that all endgame has effectively become. Every new endgame event released quickly devolves into some variation of the same old "Buff the DDs to all hell and just let them murder the thing before it murders us." tactic, because SE refuses to, or simply can't, design events where such a tactic will result in failure absolutely 100% of the time. Because of this, how well a job performs in this one particular scenario is the only measure by which the players use to gauge a jobs worth anymore. Why is it that pup can't perform well in these scenarios? Well, that leads us to our other two issues.

The Job Abilities:

The single most universal trait of these Heavy-DD-Zerg events is that they emphasize Haste, or rather, melee delay reduction. The more haste you have, the more damage you deal, and the faster the NM dies. The longer this takes, the more the damage adds up, and thus, the more apparent the difference in potential damage output pup has relative to other melee DDs becomes readily apparent.

The core issue is a game function the players refer to as Job ability delay. This is the short 2-second period of time following the use of any job ability during which melee attacks are delayed. At first, 2 seconds doesn't seem like it should even be worth thinking about, but that's the fatal issue. 2 seconds when you're in a high-haste environment is a HUGE amount of time.

Player weapon delay is floored at 20% of it's original delay. This includes delay reductions from both haste itself, and from job traits like martial arts and dual wield. Delay translates into ~1 second between attacks for every 60 delay. Thus, if we take a standard pup h2h weapon (+51) and tack it on to the base h2h delay (480), we get a delay of 531, or one attack round every ~8.85 seconds. Now, of course, pup has martial arts, which significantly lowers their base delay (320 at 99), so that would actually be 371 delay, or one attack round every ~6.18 seconds. In this situation, JA delay is basically a non-issue.

However, when you get down to high-haste delays, the problem appears. With a +51 delay weapon, pup's delay cannot go lower than 106, but reaching that 106 delay is incredibly common in a high buff situation (Dual March, Haste spell, capped gear haste, and merited haste samba will do it for pup, due to the delay already reduced from martial arts). At 106 delay, we're looking at one attack round every 1.76 seconds.

This means that each time you use a job ability (in pup's case, the issue is caused by our need to use maneuvers every ~20 seconds if we want to maintain three of them at all times), you lose ~1.5-2 attack rounds, depending on timing. For pup, that number is doubled due to always attacking at least twice per round, and then further increased through the use of double attack, triple attack, quadruple attack, and kick attacks. Every attack you lose is TP you don't get, and with a low quality gear set, you're looking at losing about 1 WS every minute from using 3 maneuvers. This equates out to anywhere from 1000 to 4000 damage (depending on what you're fighting) every minute that you lose simply by using maneuvers, and that doesn't even account for the already large difference born solely from pup's lower stats, higher base delay, and higher gear quality requirements to achieve the same results.

Because of that, just the use of three maneuvers every minute ends up completely removing any value pup could add to the group as a melee damage dealer. However, the other roles it can play suffer just as badly for similar reasons. I would also like to emphasize that even if you gave pup's maneuvers a 2 hour duration, pup would still be behind other melees, but it would not be so drastic a gap. However, maneuvers are hardly our biggest issue. They're a significant one, don't get me wrong, but the core issue stems from the reason we need to use them.

The Automaton:

So, at the end of it all, our single great issue is the puppet itself. However, unlike the other issues, the automaton has several problems. Now, I don't mean to sound ungrateful. The automaton has come a long way from its initial stages, but it still isn't where it needs to be. For the puppet, the major issues are as follows: Stats, survivability, and most importantly AI & player control.

As far as stats go, you've definitely done some major improvements with the new delve animator, Alternator, and the be perfectly honest, I don't have a huge issue with animators being the fix for this particular issue. However, you should really at least allow us to equip non-throwable ammo items alongside the animator. It's really obnoxious that we can't, despite how you keep giving us ammo items with nice stats.

With survivability, the fundamental issue is that the devs seem to think the only puppet that should be at all durable is Valoredge. Valoredge is incredibly durable, but it can't hold a candle to Sharpshot in terms of damage, and using valoredge instead is basically like coming to a gun fight with a pair of underwear tied to a stick as your weapon. Either Valoredge needs some serious melee buffing, or sharpshot needs some serious defensive love.

Now, the main issue here is the AI, and the needlessly clunky player interface. Can you please explain to me why I have less fine control over my professionally built, artificially intelligent, programmable robot sidekick than a bst does over some wild animal they lured in with some yummy smelling broth, or smn has over a bemused god/dess that is lending the player their power for shits and giggles? I mean, sure, we have more control over our puppet than drgs do over their wyverns, but is that really the way it should be?

Bloodpacts as a system have not aged well at all, and neither did sic, which is why both of them have gotten updates and overhauls. On the other hand, I'm still forced to use maneuvers to suggest to my puppet what I want it to do, and even then, if I'm not careful, the puppet may just ignore me and do something else, and I have no way of specifying "I'm about to die! CURE ME NOW!" or "WS RIGHT NOW!", while both smn and bst, and even drg, CAN. The job that, logically, should have the most control over their pet, has the least.

What's worse, the "suggestion" system is clunky and forces us to choose between things we shouldn't have to choose between. If I want my puppet to use a particular ws, I have to make sure that ws's triggering maneuver is active, and for many of the ws, that means sacrificing the effectiveness of attachments linked to other maneuvers. There is absolutely no reason pup should not just be given our pets' WS as a pet command, and giving that to us would not make anything unbalanced in anyway.

It's not limited to WS, though. Spells suffer a lot, too. I should need to use an attachment for my puppet to know that a mob that doesn't cast any spells doesn't need to be silenced or addled. The puppet should just know that. I shouldn't need to use a maneuver for soulsoother to do a whm's job and prioritize cures and keeping people alive over status removal and enfeebling, and I shouldn't need a maneuver for it to be able to cast on party members. In fact, it shouldn't be unable to cast regen unless the monster engaged is DC+, given that regen is far more valuable to a pup against weaker monsters anyway, and it shouldn't cast buffs solely on whoever has hate, because that's a convoluted system. I shouldn't need to constantly deactivate spiritreaver to keep it from wasting precious casting time spamming aspir or drain when I don't want it to cast aspir or drain, and neither aspir nor drain should EVER take priority over nukes, especially when I have 3 Ice maneuvers up.

I should be able to tell stormwaker not to nuke at all without needing maneuvers; If I want it to focus on buffing me and keeping me alive, and save its MP solely for that, I shouldn't have to constantly deploy and retrieve it to do this, otherwise I'm forced to watch as the puppet burns 70% of its MP on nukes I didn't want it to cast but had no practical way to prevent.

For that matter, my puppet should not stop casting beneficial spells if the target it's deployed on dies. For nukes, sure, but if the target of the spell is a player, why would losing a the monster target suddenly interrupt casting?

Of course, aside from all this, there's also the fundamental issue that buffs do not apply to pets, which is absolutely absurd in many cases. Why can't pets benefit from sambas? That wouldn't unbalance anything. Why can't pets benefit from Geo's buffs even if they're standing in the right spot? Why should I, as a player, be forced to choose buffs for my puppet over buffs for myself if I'm getting buffs from a corsair, when it's obvious that the answer is "buff the players because pets suck." What is so wrong about giving pets access to buffs?

How to Fix it:

I don't know how you can fix the issues that stem from the dev team not understanding the job, or the players opinion of it, but I can tell you how to fix the issues with the puppet and with job abilities.

To fix abilities, it's simple. Make maneuvers last significantly longer than they do. You don't need to change anything about attachments that consume maneuvers, but aside from those, maneuvers should be treated as a sort of gambit/tactic system. "We're focusing on this method of play for the time being." This makes them a lot easier to use, and also makes overloading a bit more logical (repeatedly changing ones commands leading to the puppet becoming confused and overloading). Even if you significantly increased the frequency with which overloads occur.

I think the easiest method for this would be to simply introduce a second set of maneuvers, that function the same way as the original ones do relative to most attachments, but have much longer durations (and individual recasts), but are more likely to cause overload if used in succession, cannot be consumed by attachments, and still count towards the 3 maneuver cap. If you wanted to be a bit more forgiving, you could make these double-element maneuvers (a la the tier 2 skill chains; fire/light, wind/thunder, water/ice, earth/darkness).

As far as the AI goes, there are two basic things we need. First, better control over pet WS, through a pet command that allows us to choose a specific ws, or, hell, maybe an option in the automaton's menu that lets us pick its default WS.

Secondly, a lot of the issues with the AI can be cleaned up through one or two simple pet commands. Specifically, we need a means to force our puppet to stay in one place (the current ranging AI is unreliable), a "Stay" analogue, if you will, and we need a means to force the puppet to cast only defensive/supporting spells. Ideally, the latter could be used to, effectively, "deploy" our puppet on a player, rather than a monster, on whom the puppet would focus their attention.

Thus, we could have our puppet "deployed" on our tank, and the puppet would focus on curing and buffing the tank, then the master, then the puppet itself, then everyone else. However, we could also switch the target at will, thus allowing us far better control over who our puppet casts on than having to rely on the individual pulling hate. Ideally, we'd also get some degree over which spells the puppet casts. ie: if we have a wind maneuver, it'll prioritize haste, but earth maneuvers prioritize stoneskin/phalanx, and water maneuvers prioritize status removal. However, in such a system, stormwaker should still only be able to cast phalanx/stoneskin on a single target (ie: if stormwaker is deployed at another player, the puppet won't cast on the master at all), while soulsoother should always prioritize cures, no matter what maneuver is active.

Wow, this post was a lot longer than I really intended it to be...

[Motenten]

I would suggest grips for drg wyverns, rather than weapons. That could be useful without (potentially) crippling the main job just to boost the little bit of wyvern damage. There's not anything particularly 'wrong' with wyverns right now (except maybe magic accuracy for breaths), so that should allow a sufficient amount of flexibility.

Pup animators: This should have been done years ago. Unfortunately, now, no matter what you add, it will only be compared to the Alternator. Still, if they're relatively easy to get, it could allow some nice low- to mid-range options. Also: increase the duration of maneuvers.

Smn avatars: As said above, avatars and how they work need a ground-up rethink. There is way too much wrong with the job right now, and any new gear additions would only lock things in further. Fix the job first, then add new gear.

[Kojo]

Only thing that I don't like is that Camate didn't capitalize "Rune Fencer". Geomancer got capitalized. The RUNs of Vana'diel demand an apology or we're gonna complain for 750 pages. =(

[Duelle]

That's a very very bad idea.
You can't force jobs to equip certain items to receive marginal boosts to their pets. What if Dragoons what to use another better Polearm? What if SMNs want to use another different grip?
What if BSTs want to use another pet and boost that instead of using one of the new ones?

Guess this doesn't apply to PUP since Animator is an unique equipment that they're forced to equip anyway.


In my opinion the only possible way to have a fair and balanced improvement of pets conditions is to have what we could call SCALING. Which is exactely the same as pet jobs are handled in 99% of the other MMOs.
You can't have the scaling be too big in a game like FFXI of course, it should be small, a small additional bonus that is calculated according to the master stats.
This way the stronger the stats of the master, the stronger the bonus the pets will receive.This.

I was hoping pet job changes could come along the lines of scaling rather than even more gear with "Pet: Stat".

[Alhanelem]

dear SE, to put it blunt and simple: you can not solve the pet jobs' current problems with gear. You have to fix fundamental technical issues with pets.

[Chimerawizard]

@Theytak of course was long. You spelled out exactly what is wrong with PUP and gave your opinion of what would fix it. (I happen to agree with you)

SMN has a few issues that need reviewed. Bloodpacts being at the forefront of the job and the issues. Spirits are just an issue.

I am not nearly as good at listing my points and solutions so I'll keep it brief and let the mountains of threads in the smn subforum do the rest.

Bloodpacts:
45sec floor on recast when that is the only thing a smn can do that isn't something from our subjob.
Rage does really well when they are first available but scale horribly as level increases.
Ward only affect 5 other players (except during certain events)
Effect is almost always lower than what another job can output, except enfire.

Spirits:
Have been useless since the job was introduced.
Abysmal magic accuracy and magic atk.
Absolutely impossible to control actions.
AI, is there even one for this pet?
Were given a reason to purchase but only to gain more BP before running out of MP.

Aside from that are a few other issues:
Abysmal melee damage from all pets.
Inability to make light or dark skillchain with pets (no tier 2 element BPs)
Incapable of making full use of Avatars Favor since that makes a pet far weaker on melee & to maintain a good bonus, one cannot use BPs.

A more permanent fix would include

Removing BP timers in general or making them charges similar to SCH.
Make all avatar AoE true so any player/pet within range gains the benefits unless under certain effects preventing outside help.
Increase weapon DMG rating on all pets to variable level based on SMN skill when summoned.
Add BPs with dual element skillchain properties, one per avatar would be fine.
Allow players to control spirits casts, giving the spirit a set general recast regardless of spell based on smn skill when summoned in addition to individual recast timers. (no general recast floor)
Give spirits m.acc equal to smn skill when summoned & MAB on some raio of same.
Avatar's favor starts out at 90% max and does not reset until avatar dies.
Avatar's favor does not incur negative effects. (aside from pet feeding TP in order to be close to DDs)
Adjust rage formulas to make DMG rating a major factor in BP dmg. (thus smoothing rage dmg as pet gets stronger)

Still came out kinda long and I didn't even cover everything.

[Leonardus]

I wish they would just try and have a go with the pet scaling idea. Forcing every bst to use the same 1-2 new jugpets while the rest fall behind is a really boring, cheap idea. Let's not even go into what kinda items will be needed to synth them. And whatever they make, I pray to Altana it will last 2 hours and not 30/60/90 minutes (which is highly annoying).

Fingers crossed.

[Hawklaser]

Giving Dragoons new lances to improve their wyverns is not going to work well, unless the lances are going to be very competitive with current end-game lances. Or that option is going to have to end up being on a vast majority of lances to end up being used.

Really, the best options with current systems in the game would either be opening up something like a Puppetmaster's attachment inventory system, or adding a new merit category just to enhance the pets that does not share with other merit categories.

[Xerius]

Summoner
Addition of grips that have stats to increase the parameters of avatars.

Can hardly wait for my "Avatar: Attack +10 M. Attack +10" grip. Should be ground-shattering. >_>

[sweetidealism]

Giving Dragoons new lances to improve their wyverns is not going to work well, unless the lances are going to be very competitive with current end-game lances. Or that option is going to have to end up being on a vast majority of lances to end up being used.

Really, the best options with current systems in the game would either be opening up something like a Puppetmaster's attachment inventory system, or adding a new merit category just to enhance the pets that does not share with other merit categories.

Oooh! I like that idea. Something like~

Merit Category: Pets (individual 5/max 10)
Jug pets X/5
Avatars X/5
Wyverns X/5
Automatons X/5

and maybe Luopans X/5?

[Theytak]

Oooh! I like that idea. Something like~

Merit Category: Pets (individual 5/max 10)
Jug pets X/5
Avatars X/5
Wyverns X/5
Automatons X/5

and maybe Luopans X/5?

I would honestly be interested in seeing a concept like that fleshed out, though I'd say it would definitely need to be a bit more well thought out than just one blanket buff per job, because drg aside, I don't think smns, bsts, or pups could have one single merit that would be able to functionally improve their pets across the board.

I would suggest something more along the lines of a category that would coincide with the weapon skill and magic skill categories. A pet skill category, if you will. Thus, the merits could look something like this:
Pet: Physical Damage x/8 - Either (R)atk/(R)acc, or straight up base damage increase
Pet: Magical Damage x/8 - Either MAB/Macc, or just plain magical affinity (ie: Magian staves, but for all elements)
Pet: Endurance x/8 - Either defense/MDB or DT-
Pet: Vigor x/8 - Improved HP/MP
Pet: Physical Potency x/4 - Crit Hit Rate/Damage
Pet: Magical Potency x/4 - Magic Crit Hit Rate/Damage
The category cap would be either /20 or /24. This is just a spitball, though.

[Teraniku]

As a SMN, this really sucks. Oh yay! I got me a new grip that enhances avatar Physical attack by +30! SMN is saved! NOT!

-Look if you all would just base avatar attack / Blood pact power on summoning skill and allow us to do Skill break quests (Quests that allow us to raise our skill cap every once in a while so we can keep up with the new gear tiers you keep adding) then I might think you were on to something.

[Duelle]

Spirits:
Have been useless since the job was introduced.
Abysmal magic accuracy and magic atk.
Absolutely impossible to control actions.
AI, is there even one for this pet?
Were given a reason to purchase but only to gain more BP before running out of MP.This is a long shot of ridiculous proportions, but here goes:


Redesigning Spirits

Instead of being placed in the same category as avatars, spirits could be summoned to the player's side alongside avatars. Player characters would be limited to one Avatar and one Spirit at the same time.

Entirely remove Spirit AI and perpetuation. In addition, make Spirits not targetable and scale their model down and treat them as "attachments" to the player character (have Spirits move with the player instead of /following them like avatars).

Have spirits grant the summoner a list of abilities and spells based on the spirit the summoner has called to their side. Potency of abilities/spells gained through spirits scale with Summoning Magic Skill. Abilities/spells gained through Spirits scale up to their appropriate ranks depending on the level of the Summoner. An example would be that fire spirit could give the SMN access to Fire. At lv13 that fire spell is Fire I. If a 75 SMN were to summon their fire spirit, the spell would instead be Fire IV (so no, SMNs would not be able to downrank spells the way other mages can).

Samples:

Fire Spirit
- Fire I-IV
- Addle
- Trait: Fire Affinity

Water Spirit
- Aquaveil
- Water I-IV
- Poison
- Trait: Water Affinity

Light Spirit
- Dia I-II
- Cure I-V
- Trait: Light Affinity

The balancing aspect of spirits is that spells gained through them cost more than their BLM/WHM counterparts (ideally it could be something like baseline spell cost + half of the summoner's current level). They would also gain less potency per point of Summoning Skill compared to what they'd get from Elemental/Healing Skill. As an example, if Fire were to gain 1.00 potency per point of Elemental Magic Skill, Fire would gain 0.85 potency per point of Summoning Skill.

[sweetidealism]

Oooh! I like that idea. Something like~

Merit Category: Pets (individual 5/max 10)
Jug pets X/5
Avatars X/5
Wyverns X/5
Automatons X/5

and maybe Luopans X/5?


I would honestly be interested in seeing a concept like that fleshed out, though I'd say it would definitely need to be a bit more well thought out than just one blanket buff per job, because drg aside, I don't think smns, bsts, or pups could have one single merit that would be able to functionally improve their pets across the board.

I would suggest something more along the lines of a category that would coincide with the weapon skill and magic skill categories. A pet skill category, if you will. Thus, the merits could look something like this:
Pet: Physical Damage x/8 - Either (R)atk/(R)acc, or straight up base damage increase
Pet: Magical Damage x/8 - Either MAB/Macc, or just plain magical affinity (ie: Magian staves, but for all elements)
Pet: Endurance x/8 - Either defense/MDB or DT-
Pet: Vigor x/8 - Improved HP/MP
Pet: Physical Potency x/4 - Crit Hit Rate/Damage
Pet: Magical Potency x/4 - Magic Crit Hit Rate/Damage
The category cap would be either /20 or /24. This is just a spitball, though.

I don't see why a blanket buff wouldn't work.

Let's say that I merit Automatons and Luopans 5/5 each; it would be like meriting each of your categories 8/8 but JUST for automatons and luopans.

In your idea, I have to choose between individual parameters; what's the point? I can either have a glass cannon that will die at first sight of AoE, or I can have something sturdy that won't actually contribute anything. I don't want to fix just one aspect of my pets, I want to fix ALL aspects of them.

[Hawklaser]

I don't see why a blanket buff wouldn't work.

Let's say that I merit Automatons and Luopans 5/5 each; it would be like meriting each of your categories 8/8 but JUST for automatons and luopans.

In your idea, I have to choose between individual parameters; what's the point? I can either have a glass cannon that will die at first sight of AoE, or I can have something sturdy that won't actually contribute anything. I don't want to fix just one aspect of my pets, I want to fix ALL aspects of them.

Could maybe do both? Kinda like how jobs have two categories of merits in each menu. One for getting your preferred pet jobs pets improved to a nice baseline, and the others so can customize pet more to fit how you like using them?

[sweetidealism]

Could maybe do both? Kinda like how jobs have two categories of merits in each menu. One for getting your preferred pet jobs pets improved to a nice baseline, and the others so can customize pet more to fit how you like using them?

You know, I like that even better!

[Zhronne]

To further add on my previous post (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/33461-Job-Adjustments-for-the-Next-Version-Update?p=432154&viewfull=1#post432154), it is a bad game-design idea to fix the problems of a certain class through certain specific items for three main basic reasons:

You will have to obtain that item (and possibly it could be even hard, and until you do your class will remain "broken")
You will limit the freedom of the player which will be "bound" to equip certain items to "fix" their class
As game proceeds and stats are raised even further, SE will need to release even better fixing items

This cannot work on the long run.
The problem of pet jobs are different and reach a very different scale for different jobs, but I think they could be generalized in two different issues:


Pet Survivability
You cannot directly heal pets, but are limited by specific abilities that only the master can use and that have certain cooldowns. Also pets do not have their own gear, and "Pet: ..." gear the master can equip is obviously (and rightfully) limited.
This makes survivability of pets particularly hard in certain fights.


Pet scaling
Unlike other classes, the damage of pet classes is split between master and pet.
When another class receives a buff that boosts its ouput, this boost affects the 100% of that class' possible damage output.
When a pet class receives the same buff, only a smaller % of its overall damage is boosted (the master's).
The same happens with gear.
As new gear is released, 100% of another class' damage is boosted, while only a % of a pet job class damage is boosted (the master's), making the gap between master and pet even stronger and making the previous issue even more influent.


Possible Solutions:

Pet Survivability: Cannot make pets too resistant to overall damage, or it could create some annoying situations (especially for BST). They should instead add a job trait that makes so pets receive reduced damage from AoE moves that do hit them, but that didn't directly target them or their master.
The amount of reduction should be balanced, not too minimal, not too strong of course, and could be furtherly enhanced by specific equipment.

Pet Scaling: This probably isn't a big issue for SMN (they have other issues), and it's a minimal factor for DRG, but it is very crucial for BST and PUP. It's also the "norm" in practically almost every other MMO.
This scaling should be balanced as well. Cannot make it too big or you would make "Pet: ..." gear useless.
It has to be a small bonus that scales with some of the master's stats and according to a specific formula, grats specific dynamic bonuses to the pet.
This way "Pet: ..." gear will still be relevant/interesting, but it would be an additional option for specific builds to suit specific situations or player's tastes and styles. It would not be something "required" to fix your class.


If a class has issues and needs a fix, you need to do it through job traits or job abilities, not through specific equipment that forces the player to gather such item and binds them to use it.
Gear should be something to be looking at to make your class stronger or more "special", not something to "fix" your class.

[Zhronne]

And to add to the pet merit category:

That's a very cool idea and I like it a lot, hope they'll think about implementing it! But it still wouldn't solve the Pet Scaling issue, and I doubt it would have a big impact on the Pet Survivability either.

As I mentioned before, I don't think a direct "Pet: damage taken -X%" (wether you get it through gear or merits) is the right solution to go, if anything it's potentially "dangerous" because it might make certain pet jobs too strong (especially BST) and require SE to nerf the class afterwise, and I don't really want a nerf >.>
Damage taken is currently fine imho, altough a few more gear options wouldn't hurt.
The thing they need to address is not the direct damage the pet gets, but the "indirect" damage, i.e. that from AoE that target your tank but end up hitting your pet too and yourself.
You can be healed by the party healer, but your pet has cooldowns to be healed/debuffed, so it's only right they take a certain % of reduced damage from these attacks, if they're not directly targeting the master or the pet.

A wide range of monster abilities are AoE around a certain target, easy to make a job trait for Pets that takes this into account.
Other abilities are instead AoE centered around the monster itself. For these abilities they could make so the Pet receives lower damage if he is below a certain threshold in the enmity list.

[Sasaraixx]

Adding grips is now considered a job adjustment? I can't take this seriously. Unless these items are beyond broken and easy to obtain, nothing will change. Why not listen to the players? There are TONS of great ideas in this thread alone.

Also, there is no follow up to the enmity concerns we've voiced AND no discussion about the fundamental issues hurting pet jobs. On the same day we get a lengthy post about R/M/E weapons and changes to 1-handed damage calculations, they tell us that these are our adjustments? I'm just about ready to give up.

[Kojo]

When are RUN and GEO Mythics and Mythic WSs coming?

[Hawklaser]

That's a very cool idea and I like it a lot, hope they'll think about implementing it! But it still wouldn't solve the Pet Scaling issue, and I doubt it would have a big impact on the Pet Survivability either.

Well as to the scaling issue, I know certain merit categories have had their max amounts of adjustments increased over time, and different categories have different limitations. They can at least go up to 15 improvements to a single merit, as shown by hp/mp merits, they can also break a category into two groups as shown by job merit categories. So unless 15 is as high as a single meritable choice can go, that could take care of a good amount of the scaling.

How I would likely do is would have generic boost portion for a specific jobs pets be a flat increase to pet stats, essentially to get the pet a little below the baseline raw stats for certain content levels, and as content levels go up the amount spendable in this section could go up, or values adjusted if a cap is hit. While the second grouping of merits could be more percent based improvements, with a more strict max per/combo limit on these ones.

Unfortunately, BST and possibly PUP would be the more difficult ones to balance with a system like this. BST mostly because of the all the variability they get with pets currently. PUP would be more due to attachment interactions.

[Zhronne]

Well as to the scaling issue, I know certain merit categories have had their max amounts of adjustments increased over time
Don't think this would be a solution.
"Scaling" means that the stats of your pets (or at least a small part of them) receive a dynamic bonus according to the stats of the master.
This means that if your master receives a buff that increase its stats, the pet will receive a small % of increase to.
This means that if your master upgrades his gear then the pet's stats too will see a small jump forward.

Can't abuse of this like other games do, wouldn't work in FFXI, and we don't want to make pet-specific buffs/gear useless.
At least I don't.
That's why I suggested that this scaling should be very small and only applied to a certain number of stats.
For instance Attack, 10:1. For every 10 points of attack the master has, the pet will gain one.
Master has 800 attack? Pet will have +80 attack bonus.
They could apply this to Defense too and other stats, with different ratios of course.
Only some very basic stats like basic attributes maybe and Att/ratt/mab/acc/racc/macc/def/eva.

For everything else and much more, you'll still have "Pet: ..." gear.
I'm not against the new "Pets" merit category btw. I would warmly welcome that! I'm just staying that they should do "only" that but both things, because while the merit category would be an awesome addition, it probably wouldn't solve the issues I mentioned (scaling and survivability)

[Losie]

Greetings!

Below is a comment from Producer Akihiko Matsui in regards to adjustments to take place in the next version update.

Mr. Matsui makes an extremely good point in regards to development about the progression of jobs once progression becomes equipment based.

Because of that, I'd like to ask that the dev team consider Rune Fencer's Lunge - it's based 100% on MAB and your current weapon's skill. Due to it not being based on the weapon's damage in any way, Rune Fencers are stuck collecting and macro'ing in tons of MAB for just one single ability. It'd be rather nice to not have to carry, much less spend tons of plasm/bayld/etc., as much MAB gear in lieu for a skill that scales much better at higher levels.

Second, does "artifact equipment" include any af2/relic/relic2/etc. gear? Or will is JUST be the 50-60 stuff mostly for fun and the few lower level folks/macroing in and out of constantly? Extremely glad to see merits done.

[Losie]

That's a very very bad idea.
You can't force jobs to equip certain items to receive marginal boosts to their pets. What if Dragoons what to use another better Polearm? What if SMNs want to use another different grip?
What if BSTs want to use another pet and boost that instead of using one of the new ones?

Guess this doesn't apply to PUP since Animator is an unique equipment that they're forced to equip anyway.


In my opinion the only possible way to have a fair and balanced improvement of pets conditions is to have what we could call SCALING. Which is exactely the same as pet jobs are handled in 99% of the other MMOs.
You can't have the scaling be too big in a game like FFXI of course, it should be small, a small additional bonus that is calculated according to the master stats.
This way the stronger the stats of the master, the stronger the bonus the pets will receive.
Of course this bonus has to be small, so that "Pet: ..." gear will still be interesting to some extent, at least in certain slots, but that's where trial&error and a good balancement shows.
Imho it's the only possible solution, otherwise you'll be forced to develop more and more and more gear with every patch.

I mean... I like additional "Pet: ..." gear, I LOVE it, but you can't build the balancement of pet jobs around that. It should be a nice specific option, not the "key" to the balance of pet jobs.

You're jumping to conclusions. First off, they can balance it off that, because you're misthinking it. The wording implies that EVERY POLEARM henceforth will increase the petmoreso. So the drg won't have to give up a newer, better one, because it will improve their pet better. That's how the pet will improve via gear as well as the master. It's really that simple.

As for SMN, well.. Most grips, for 2h jobs and casters, aren't really superb anyway (far from as good as the stats you can get offhanding a dual-wielded one hander, to say the least) so it'll probably not be a hard slot to swap.

[jake3614]

Well Tahn... You and I are in full agreement here. These grips better be mini-R/E/Ms for avatars in their own right so to speak. I am very disappointed and hope this isn't the extent of their "adjustments" for smn.

I could see them adding a grip for each individual avatar, similar to the Elemental Macc Grips. So get ready for INV+9! I only hope the stats are beneficial, and without latents like "if player's weapon isn't drawn, Garuda MACC/MAB/ACC/ATTK+50." I could see that happening, actually.

[Duelle]

You're jumping to conclusions. First off, they can balance it off that, because you're misthinking it. The wording implies that EVERY POLEARM henceforth will increase the petmoreso. So the drg won't have to give up a newer, better one, because it will improve their pet better. That's how the pet will improve via gear as well as the master. It's really that simple.The limitation is the item budget and the fact the last thing we need is even more Pet: Stat gear. It's a band-aid that should really be sparsely used and ideally vanish altogether. Then again, design for DRG should focus on the DRG themselves as the Wyvern has always been supplemental.

The real risk is that polearms moving forward (if you're correct) will be relatively weaker to accommodate DRG and Wyvern stats. Especially for a pet that has paper defense and dies ridiculously easy.

[Calysto]

Dragoon
Addition of polearms that have stats to increase the parameters of wyverns.

Summoner
Addition of grips that have stats to increase the parameters of avatars.

polearm that boost the pet ? congratulation on wasting every drg effort in getting a good weapon. sure theses can be good. that's going to be another reason for me to toss my empyrean i guess.
well, good to know that you know the job. we'll probably get another version of the magian "pet mab" lance. good job on that one btw.
if an equipement is even needed to boost the pet(aka making it not obsolete), why not use something like ranged or ammo, or even earing ?

as for smn and grips, you mean more stuff that take inventory ? i'm sure some of my friends will be happy to need another slots for 8/9 grips to go with their 9 staffs collection. don't forget to make it as situationnal as possible of course, it'd be a shame if it was to be useful.

[Camate]

Greetings everyone (and happy Friday!),

I'd like to follow up a bit about the planned wyvern enhancements for dragoon.

To give a simpler idea of what we have planned, by equipping a high content level weapon, we are envisioning that the stats of your wyvern also increase along with you. It's somewhat close to what a player mentioned about making it so your wyverns damage value, delay, attack, and defense increase based on your own values.

Currently there are pieces of equipment that have pet enhancing stats and by equipping them they influence your pet's strength (for example, there are already polearms in existence that enhance wyverns); however, this is not what we will be doing this time with polearms. With that said, it'll help a lot if you think of this as the polearms that are to be introduced from here on out will allow you enhance your wyvern, and the enhancements will not only increase specific stats. (We will be making it possible to enhance your wyverns after we implement the RME revamps.)

Also, the reason we didn't choose grips was because there are varieties of strong pieces of equipment that can be selected based on the situation, and if we were to make these enhance wyverns, it would be difficult to choose other options.

With that said, we felt it would be best for dragoons to be able to enhance their wyverns with their weapons.

[Babekeke]

Greetings everyone (and happy Friday!),

I'd like to follow up a bit about the planned wyvern enhancements for dragoon.

To give a simpler idea of what we have planned, by equipping a high content level weapon, we are envisioning that the stats of your wyvern also increase along with you. It's somewhat close to what a player mentioned about making it so your wyverns damage value, delay, attack, and defense increase based on your own values.

Currently there are pieces of equipment that have pet enhancing stats and by equipping them they influence your pet's strength (for example, there are already polearms in existence that enhance wyverns); however, this is not what we will be doing this time with polearms. With that said, it'll help a lot if you think of this as the polearms that are to be introduced from here on out will allow you enhance your wyvern, and the enhancements will not only increase specific stats. (We will be making it possible to enhance your wyverns after we implement the RME revamps.)

Also, the reason we didn't choose grips was because there are varieties of strong pieces of equipment that can be selected based on the situation, and if we were to make these enhance wyverns, it would be difficult to choose other options.

With that said, we felt it would be best for dragoons to be able to enhance their wyverns with their weapons.

I'd like to see an element of this in every weapon that is worth equipping for DRG. This includes all Magian weapons at their level 99 stage. Obviously the increase won't be as much for a 99 magian weapon as it is for a delve weapon, but there should still be some sort of boost.

The magian weapons are, by design, situational weapons. The other pet jobs can equip their situational weapons and still receive boosts for the pets, but if a DRG needs to use their -PDT or MDB polearms for a specific monster, they have to gimp their wyvern too? How is that fair?

[Kojo]

Greetings everyone (and happy Friday!),

I'd like to follow up a bit about the planned wyvern enhancements for dragoon.

To give a simpler idea of what we have planned, by equipping a high content level weapon, we are envisioning that the stats of your wyvern also increase along with you. It's somewhat close to what a player mentioned about making it so your wyverns damage value, delay, attack, and defense increase based on your own values.

Currently there are pieces of equipment that have pet enhancing stats and by equipping them they influence your pet's strength (for example, there are already polearms in existence that enhance wyverns); however, this is not what we will be doing this time with polearms. With that said, it'll help a lot if you think of this as the polearms that are to be introduced from here on out will allow you enhance your wyvern, and the enhancements will not only increase specific stats. (We will be making it possible to enhance your wyverns after we implement the RME revamps.)

Also, the reason we didn't choose grips was because there are varieties of strong pieces of equipment that can be selected based on the situation, and if we were to make these enhance wyverns, it would be difficult to choose other options.

With that said, we felt it would be best for dragoons to be able to enhance their wyverns with their weapons.

But what about RUN?

[SpankWustler]

The TL;DR version that my deranged mind put together is:

"Tons of Wyvern parameters will increase based on more-or-less weapon base damage."

[Keyln]

But what about RUN?


Addition of artifact equipment, merit points, and limit break quests.

There ya go.

[detlef]

DRG needs other adjustments that shouldn't be tied to gear. Especially weapons.

-Some sort of native melee buff to help stay competitive with other DD classes.
-The ability to toggle wyvern breaths on and off (too often the wyvern blows its tp on a worthless breath). It would be much more useful if the wyvern could be used as a tp battery.

Any further adjustments to wyverns should really focus on survivability or to give them more support abilities.

[Kojo]

There ya go.

There were more questions, such as whether "artifact equipment" was used as a term for the lv 50-60 equipment or as an umbrella term for AF/AF2/Emp armor. Also when RUN's Mythic and Mythic WS will be released, as well as the /jobemote.

There was also a suggestion for Lunge, to be based on, or atleast factor in weapon base damage to relieve us of the need for MAB gear.

[Fusionx]

Any further adjustments to wyverns should really focus on survivability or to give them more support abilities.
I've had enough with survivability abilities. They need to just give in and reduce the recast timer for Call Wyvern. 20 minutes is too long.

[Areayea]

I've had enough with survivability abilities. They need to just give in and reduce the recast timer for Call Wyvern. 20 minutes is too long.

uh......... how is a 2hr wait >.>

[Kojo]

uh......... how is a 2hr wait >.>

For those young'uns that don't get his point, Call Wyvern used to be DRG's 2hour, which is one very big reason /DRG doesn't get a Wyvern.

[Areayea]

For those young'uns that don't get his point, Call Wyvern used to be DRG's 2hour, which is one very big reason /DRG doesn't get a Wyvern.

TY Kojo <3 ILU, let's go to my mog house next time I'm on ^^

[detlef]

Still, can't say I wouldn't like to see it be reduced to 10 minutes or less. I've done a lot of stupid and reckless things right after using call wyvern. Plus it sucks that you can lose it after getting charmed.

[Duelle]

The TL;DR version that my deranged mind put together is:

"Tons of Wyvern parameters will increase based on more-or-less weapon base damage."That's what I got out of it. they could have just said "Wyverns will scale with the DRG's weapon damage" and it would have saved the CMs two pages worth of reading.

[RAIST]

Greetings everyone (and happy Friday!),

I'd like to follow up a bit about the planned wyvern enhancements for dragoon.

To give a simpler idea of what we have planned, by equipping a high content level weapon, we are envisioning that the stats of your wyvern also increase along with you. It's somewhat close to what a player mentioned about making it so your wyverns damage value, delay, attack, and defense increase based on your own values.

Currently there are pieces of equipment that have pet enhancing stats and by equipping them they influence your pet's strength (for example, there are already polearms in existence that enhance wyverns); however, this is not what we will be doing this time with polearms. With that said, it'll help a lot if you think of this as the polearms that are to be introduced from here on out will allow you enhance your wyvern, and the enhancements will not only increase specific stats. (We will be making it possible to enhance your wyverns after we implement the RME revamps.)

Also, the reason we didn't choose grips was because there are varieties of strong pieces of equipment that can be selected based on the situation, and if we were to make these enhance wyverns, it would be difficult to choose other options.

With that said, we felt it would be best for dragoons to be able to enhance their wyverns with their weapons.

now I'm a bit puzzled. Why is this approach not being applied to SMN, PUP, BST as well? Especially that line about the grips....I know things like a spot of skill or MP and such in a grip slot may not be considered as powerful as what is commonly used on other jobs, but some might like to keep the grip they've been using (for whatever reason it may be, the same principle should not apply to JUST DRG gear selection).

If they aren't going to focus on the real root of the problem (inherent issues with the pets themselves) but are going to instead look into gear, and have decided to link it somehow to the power of the weapon equipped....why can't this same approach be applied equally across the board for all pet jobs? I'm pretty sure BST, SMN, PUP have some top end weapons they are using....so this should potentially be applicable to all pets in the same fashion. Granted, I know it can be a bit overwhelming if you are looking at RME and Avatarite level Magian weapons....but if it is possible with DRG, it should be possible with ALL pet jobs as well.

[Losie]

That's what I got out of it. they could have just said "Wyverns will scale with the DRG's weapon damage" and it would have saved the CMs two pages worth of reading.

Alternatively people could not flip out by assuming the worst and post pages of why it won't work despite misunderstanding and making wild assumptions, but hey..

[Duelle]

Alternatively people could not flip out by assuming the worstYou must be new here... >.>

Translation: The Tanaka Era has conditioned pretty much everyone that has played this game since RotZ to expect the worst when the developers make a change, as while promising and pretty-sounding, there would tend to always be some boneheaded implementation that would ruin the whole thing.

[Glamdring]

not gonna quote Theytak, too long. I agree with most everything you said, EXCEPT the part about pup being designed with the 6-man party playstyle in mind. I think the vision from the get go was as another soloer job, using a different mechanism than bst. It was just poorly executed which is why we are only overcoming-to an extent-"lolpup" after all these years.

But you hit the nail on the head about the long memory of 1st impressions. To this day there are people still trying to claim an XP reduction if a beast has a pet. Seriously, that hasn't been the case since what, 2004 or so? So yeah, lolpup still exists in some people's minds. Drg, smn, same issues, their flaws are still in the forefront of players minds (if you want to call them that). the obvious example, any pet job's damage output, most can't seem to grasp that you have to add the pet's output to the player's output to figure out actual DPS-and that you are doing that for the non-pet jobs in any calculation, the difference is the value of their pet damage is 0, ours is not.

The other player issue is the one track mind. You know, the "official" strategy people. Yes, strategy x has been shown to work. Problem is, y-n also work, but noone will do them because they aren't x. And noone will try to make o-w work, even though they may very well work with a bit of fine-tuning. That's how jobs just die in this game. Example, could paladin tank in Aby? yeah-if the other players didn't try to break records on every swing/cast. But they did, so Zerg killed pld. That's why as much as I love my new rune I was kind of sorry to see it introduced-what's the use of a new tank when all content is Zerg Uber Alles? So yeah, it's levelled and I'm going to keep playing it because I like the style, but I'm resigned to its primary use being to solo beastman/mob mage types, and the few occasions I can talk my friends into letting me play something besides thf or brd.

[Alhanelem]

I'd like to follow up a bit about the planned wyvern enhancements for dragoon.

To give a simpler idea of what we have planned, by equipping a high content level weapon, we are envisioning that the stats of your wyvern also increase along with you. It's somewhat close to what a player mentioned about making it so your wyverns damage value, delay, attack, and defense increase based on your own values.

Currently there are pieces of equipment that have pet enhancing stats and by equipping them they influence your pet's strength (for example, there are already polearms in existence that enhance wyverns); however, this is not what we will be doing this time with polearms.Okay, so this is great, so how about doing this for SMN, PUP and BST too? This would even give high damage staves such as the R/M/E weapons meaning to SMNs who choose not to melee.

Why in the world would this only apply to dragoon?

(edit: I guess other people were thinking exactly what I was thinking! How often does that happen?)

[Hawklaser]

Alternatively people could not flip out by assuming the worst and post pages of why it won't work despite misunderstanding and making wild assumptions, but hey..

Difference between when they say "Addition of polearms that have stats to increase the parameters of wyverns", vs saying they will be allowing your lance to adjust the stats of your wvyern. First one causes Pet: effects being on weapons to jump to mind while the other does not cause that as much, though would still get some of the same feedback because with Pet: effect gear already being in the game that could be what was coming. All in how the news is delivered.

Back to the all the adjustments, while this may solve some of DRG's wyvern scalability, PUP, SMN, and BST is still going to have issues unless they have plans to consistently add new grips, animators and jugs. So for grips, see one of two things happening either they become situationally used or they will be the only one used. And as for the Jugs, unless they are special Rare/Ex ones that don't get used up, every BST is going to have immediate access to them, and there will be a huge demand for them. With high demand, can only hope supply will be able to keep up otherwise prices are either going to be very high or will struggle with trying to get them unless you make your own. And when Content Level goes up again, end up back at square one.

[Theytak]

Greetings everyone (and happy Friday!),

I'd like to follow up a bit about the planned wyvern enhancements for dragoon.

To give a simpler idea of what we have planned, by equipping a high content level weapon, we are envisioning that the stats of your wyvern also increase along with you. It's somewhat close to what a player mentioned about making it so your wyverns damage value, delay, attack, and defense increase based on your own values.

Currently there are pieces of equipment that have pet enhancing stats and by equipping them they influence your pet's strength (for example, there are already polearms in existence that enhance wyverns); however, this is not what we will be doing this time with polearms. With that said, it'll help a lot if you think of this as the polearms that are to be introduced from here on out will allow you enhance your wyvern, and the enhancements will not only increase specific stats. (We will be making it possible to enhance your wyverns after we implement the RME revamps.)

Also, the reason we didn't choose grips was because there are varieties of strong pieces of equipment that can be selected based on the situation, and if we were to make these enhance wyverns, it would be difficult to choose other options.

With that said, we felt it would be best for dragoons to be able to enhance their wyverns with their weapons.

Mmmm. I'll need to hear from you that this is also being applied to bst, pup, and smn, and then get a much more concrete explanation of just what it is you plan on doing, before I can really judge it. Thus, I'm going to stand by what I said before,

Fixing pets by adding new, pet enhancing gear is not the correct answer. It's no different than applying a band-aid to someone who's in need of surgery, and expecting the band-aid to somehow magically fix the problem. The only difference this little clarification gives, from my perspective, is that we'd be getting one of those cool cartoon-character band-aids, rather than a boring one.


not gonna quote Theytak, too long. I agree with most everything you said, EXCEPT the part about pup being designed with the 6-man party playstyle in mind. I think the vision from the get go was as another soloer job, using a different mechanism than bst. It was just poorly executed which is why we are only overcoming-to an extent-"lolpup" after all these years.

That's not true. PUP was a horrible soloer at first. It didn't have the gear, or the resources, to reliably solo. The only reason people made it work was through grit, and because we had no other choice. PUP has become a soloing powerhouse, but that's no different than NIN becoming a tank, or bst becoming a soloer (bst wasn't intended to solo either, they were just damn good at it)


The other player issue is the one track mind. You know, the "official" strategy people. Yes, strategy x has been shown to work. Problem is, y-n also work, but noone will do them because they aren't x. And noone will try to make o-w work, even though they may very well work with a bit of fine-tuning. That's how jobs just die in this game. Example, could paladin tank in Aby? yeah-if the other players didn't try to break records on every swing/cast. But they did, so Zerg killed pld. That's why as much as I love my new rune I was kind of sorry to see it introduced-what's the use of a new tank when all content is Zerg Uber Alles? So yeah, it's levelled and I'm going to keep playing it because I like the style, but I'm resigned to its primary use being to solo beastman/mob mage types, and the few occasions I can talk my friends into letting me play something besides thf or brd.

I'd like to remind you that I'm one of those "official" strategy people. The reason other methods aren't used isn't because people don't know how to do them, or don't want to do them, but because they're not remotely as effective or efficient as the tried and true melee zerg. Sure, method x, y, and z might all be able to kill the NM, but when the key difference between them is that method x achieves the same results as method y in a third the time, and method z with half the people, it's clear that method x is the superior choice, and doing either y or z is a waste of both your, and everyone else's, valuable time. That said, the main reason tanking died was more that tanks couldn't even hope to try and hold hate in a zerg situation. If they could, which SEis slowly working them back towards, that would only make zerging even better.

[Alpheus]

now I'm a bit puzzled. Why is this approach not being applied to SMN, PUP, BST as well?

If I had to guess, they wanna see if this pans out well and then roll it out for the rest of the pet jobs. If it doesn't pan out THEN they'll have to rework stuff from the ground up so they're probably trying the least intrusive method first on a job that doesn't necessarily need it per se.

[RAIST]

If I had to guess, they wanna see if this pans out well and then roll it out for the rest of the pet jobs. If it doesn't pan out THEN they'll have to rework stuff from the ground up so they're probably trying the least intrusive method first on a job that doesn't necessarily need it per se.

Think you may be giving SE too much credit. If that were the case, the proper thing to do would be to put it on the test server and let people test it for them and provide feedback before going live with it--be that on just DRG or all pet jobs. That is, after all, the primary function of a test server---to test significant changes before putting them into production.

As it stands now, it looks more like they have seperate plans for each pet job...none of which really make sense if you acknowledge that the problem is inherant to the pet's scaling since level 75 cap was exceeded (may be the problem here.. SE just not getting it). If they would just fix that aspect across the board, there may not need to be any additional gear added as an attempt to fix the job (that's not exactly a fix to the job...more a tweak to it's gear selection, but not a fix to the job).

Now, if they wanted to add grips and such as new items to help us tweak pets in certain ways like we already do with Magian's and such, that might be acceptable (provided the pets themselves are fixed)---but to make that basically a requirement to put them on par with where they should be naturally is just not acceptable when our main inventory is already clogged up with Pet: Enhancement gears as is.

[poodlehat]

I wish there was some kind of jug, maybe not as powerful as a typical one, but that could be used with bst as a sub. It would be maybe level 49 all jobs?

[Luscia]

Here's the thing and yeah maybe it's me being a DRG main, but; the only possible reason I can see this being DRG only vs SMN, BST and PUP is because DRG isn't a traditional pet job. The wyvern doesn't get any options to really do much of anything; it heals every minute when not /mage, it deals breath dmg every minute on command but that dmg really isn't much in the long run and thats it. We as the DRG can up it's survivability via Steady Wing, but there's still a really good shot of it getting taken down quickly and we can heal it by sacrificing some of our own HP to do so and get a little TP in return. BST, SMN and PUP all have more options so to speak; SMNs have different avatars to call upon and depending on the type of mob or power needed you will use a different avatar, same goes for BST; you need power you will use a heavy hitter, you need a tank you will use a pet with high def. PUP's puppet is only slightly different, but again has options in what you need it to do; it can be a nuker, a healer, a ranged attacker or even a tank. But a DRG's wyvern does pretty much nothing, so anything to help it out is a welcome change as it is a part of being a DRG.

[Demon6324236]

On the list of new pets, I want a Mantid, that is all.

[Alpheus]

Think you may be giving SE too much credit.

lol well put

Edit: Also the rest of your post I agree with so only quoting the start of it

[Raksha]

what camate meant was:

"We know that no one is gonna be retarded enough to switch their duplus grip for some crap that still wont make your wyvern worth a shit, so we're not even gonna bother."

[Thorbean]

The MP cost/Damage of spells is a complete mess. Why standardise the damage/cast time/recast, then split the MP costs so drastically between elements?

Surely if you are making the damage more equal, the cost should be more equal too. Otherwise whats the point in using thunder V (10%ish more damage than stone V) at the cost of 300 MP (100% higher MP cost than stone V).

I'm not against the more standardised damage/cast time/recast, I'd like the MP costs to follow roughly the same scale though.

[Glamdring]

...or don't want to do them..., That said, the main reason tanking died was more that tanks couldn't even hope to try and hold hate in a zerg situation. If they could, which SEis slowly working them back towards, that would only make zerging even better.

Didn't quote the part about soloing, I still hold to my opinion pup was meant as a soloer, I just think they did a piss-poor job on the roll out. The fact that some people could solo despite that is really more a testament to their ability in the face of massive design/implementation flaws-face it pup was rolled out with the the auto meant to deal the damage and the player tanking, in essentially mage gear. That's not my idea of fun and why I didn't pick up the job until Aby.

As to the "official" strategy thing, I left the relevant part. See, there's my beef, it's not that it doesn't work, it's that people don't WANT to do the alt tactics. Yes, they are probably slower, BUT they allow players to play on the jobs they prefer (for the most part) instead of being forced into jobs they don't like because strategy "x" requires that build. That is why jobs die. I've seen you over in the rdm discussions so I'm positive you know what I'm talking about. Lest we forget, the primary reason for playing a GAME is to have fun, if you aren't enjoying the job you are pigeonholed into the fun part is lost, so you are left with a secondary reason to play, i.e. I do like to help my friends which is why I still roll out my brd or thf as needed even though I prefer my other jobs.

The tank thing, I know they are FINALLY working on it, but waiting this long was a MASSIVE screw-up. Pld is essentially dead now due to YEARS of this issue. It was designed essentially as a single-purpose job-to take hits so the rest of us don't have to-but even in its heyday holding hate wasn't an absolute, the players around it had to play smart, and yes, that meant holding back at times until the pld (with or without a cooperative thf) could reestablish their place at the top of the hate list. Even moreso for nin which didn't have inate hate building tools the way pld and war do. Rune is even worse, we have Flash... and? We're going to be dependent on our DD output-GS doesn't suck, but that means we have to haste almost exclusively in our gear builds and with the choices out there that means our weak physical def is going to suffer since the haste gear for the most part is on bad defensive pieces. And the other prob is that all the melee DD are also hasted out the wazoo so we still will lag on damage-generated enmity. They are going to need to beef our enmity from JA, probably the runes and wards if they are serious about us ever tanking. Still, the fact they are TRYING to bring back legitimate tanks will be a help and well received by our nuking and ranger friends that have been absent from the DD table for too long...

I still think a thf is going to be mandatory now for hate control instead of just for building TH IF they can manage to revive tanking at all, looking at the new weaps numbers I have doubts about tanks being able to try to hold hate in the face of that kind of Zerg, or nukes being able to keep up for that matter. Too bad, blm was a fun job...

[Alhanelem]

The MP cost/Damage of spells is a complete mess. Why standardise the damage/cast time/recast, then split the MP costs so drastically between elements?

Surely if you are making the damage more equal, the cost should be more equal too. Otherwise whats the point in using thunder V (10%ish more damage than stone V) at the cost of 300 MP (100% higher MP cost than stone V).

I'm not against the more standardised damage/cast time/recast, I'd like the MP costs to follow roughly the same scale though.
You have to consider power over time. If thunder V is more damage efficient, the MP cost is turned up higher to compensate, so that you only use the highest damage output when you need a sudden burst- otherwise due to the MP cost, it will be more efficient to use a lesser spell.

[RAIST]

You have to consider power over time. If thunder V is more damage efficient, the MP cost is turned up higher to compensate, so that you only use the highest damage output when you need a sudden burst- otherwise due to the MP cost, it will be more efficient to use a lesser spell.

I see what you are saying, and at first glance I was inclined to agree....but the numbers seem to be telling a slightly different story.

Old values:
Stone V: 626-855 damage for 222MP (2.82 - 3.85 damage per mp point)
Thunder V: 874-1103 damage for 294MP (2.97 - 3.75 damage per mp point)

New Values
Stone V: 650-1200 damage for 156MP (4.17 - 7.69 damage per mp point)
Thunder V: 900-1300 damage for 306MP (2.94 - 4.24 damage per mp point)

They were actually fairly balanced before. You spent pretty close to the same ratio for doing a set amount of damage. For instance (and bear in mind these are base values and not taking MAB and such into account, we're comparing the raw numbers used early in the formula, and only adjusted by INT):

breaking 3000 base damage via each spell:

Old values:
Stone V: 4 or 5 casts (3420 - 3130) for 888 - 1110 MP
Thunder V: 3 or 4 casts (3309 - 3496) for 882 - 1176 MP

New values:
Stone V: 3 to 5 casts (3600 - 3250) for 468 - 780MP
Thunder V: 3 or 4 casts (3900 - 3600) for 918 - 1224

With this adjustment, it is skewed so you are spending considerably less MP in comparison for Stone V, and a bit more MP for Thunder V to surpass the same benchmark for base damage. Before, you were spending roughly the same amount of MP for the same output.

Bear in mind also that you are potentially casting the same number of times as well, so it's not really making a massive improvement for efficiency (unless you are staying on the high side of INT, and that is really only an advantage weighted towards Stone, and in a BIG way). Granted, if you were to expand this out for really long fights requiring you to do much larger amounts of base damage over time it may have a more profound impact, but even then it may only be a couple casts.

As for the "sudden burst of damage" angle.... look at the high end comparison of those two spells:

Stone V: 1200 for 156 MP
Thunder V: 1300 for 306 MP

Barring resists due to elemental affinity and what not, they are really out of whack there for the damage/cost ratio---and generating very close to the same damage output.

So depending on just where your dINT is falling....this is potentially really out of whack.

[Fynlar]

To people that are pessimistic about potential pet changes (and honestly, I can understand that):

Have you taken a look at the Alternator (http://wiki.bluegartr.com/bg/Alternator) yet?

If this thing is a sign of boosts other pets will get (presumably with Delve weaponry, but still), I'm honestly not too concerned.

[Hawklaser]

Willing to wait and see on the spell adjustments, as while the stone line does become more efficient, it also takes a fairly large amount of Int to make it get up to around where Thunder performs. So unless out side of abyssea RDM, BLM, and SCHs are consistently able to get +100 int over their target I don't quite see this becoming a huge issue yet.

[Aezelas]

Still, the fact they are TRYING to bring back legitimate tanks will be a help and well received by our nuking and ranger friends that have been absent from the DD table for too long...

I still think a thf is going to be mandatory now for hate control instead of just for building TH IF they can manage to revive tanking at all, looking at the new weaps numbers I have doubts about tanks being able to try to hold hate in the face of that kind of Zerg, or nukes being able to keep up for that matter. Too bad, blm was a fun job...

And then, they set a time limit on delve nms and we're going zergfest.
SE is going back and forth, and i'm not sure about what we can expect.
PLD still shines in Naakuals fights though.

[Alahra]

Are there any plans to make Ninja relevant for content beyond Abyssea?

[HimuraKenshyn]

To people that are pessimistic about potential pet changes (and honestly, I can understand that):

Have you taken a look at the Alternator (http://wiki.bluegartr.com/bg/Alternator) yet?

If this thing is a sign of boosts other pets will get (presumably with Delve weaponry, but still), I'm honestly not too concerned.

Shussh still not sure if they didn't make another typo like they did with butts............ I thought 10 tp a tick was a dream and sadly they made it that way....

[kingfury]

Greetings everyone (and happy Friday!),

I'd like to follow up a bit about the planned wyvern enhancements for dragoon.

To give a simpler idea of what we have planned, by equipping a high content level weapon, we are envisioning that the stats of your wyvern also increase along with you. It's somewhat close to what a player mentioned about making it so your wyverns damage value, delay, attack, and defense increase based on your own values.

Currently there are pieces of equipment that have pet enhancing stats and by equipping them they influence your pet's strength (for example, there are already polearms in existence that enhance wyverns); however, this is not what we will be doing this time with polearms. With that said, it'll help a lot if you think of this as the polearms that are to be introduced from here on out will allow you enhance your wyvern, and the enhancements will not only increase specific stats. (We will be making it possible to enhance your wyverns after we implement the RME revamps.)

Also, the reason we didn't choose grips was because there are varieties of strong pieces of equipment that can be selected based on the situation, and if we were to make these enhance wyverns, it would be difficult to choose other options.

With that said, we felt it would be best for dragoons to be able to enhance their wyverns with their weapons.
------------------------------------
I know it's more work on the graphics team, but wouldn't this be far cooler??


http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b167/soulchld4/WyvernArmor-WEB-1_zpsf8157687.jpg
This way you can add one overall new graphic that all wyverns with the armor equipped would appear with when called and simply add stats to the wyvern armor... scale the stats as you need to type of thing. Just saying.

[Yandaime]

My apologies for the slight derail but (and forgive me if someone else already said this)

Red Mage....
...Where?...

I'm happy for the pet adjustments but Dear Square Enix...
You broke my 1st job several years ago. Can Red Mage get a fix sometime soon please? You promised you would do something and NEVER DID lol.

Sorry, I just had to say something xD

[Teraniku]

------------------------------------
I know it's more work on the graphics team, but wouldn't this be far cooler??


http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b167/soulchld4/WyvernArmor-WEB-1_zpsf8157687.jpg
This way you can add one overall new graphic that all wyverns with the armor equipped would appear with when called and simply add stats to the wyvern armor... scale the stats as you need to type of thing. Just saying.

Use a modified Puppetmaster automaton equip screen to do it.

[Okipuit]

Just to let you all know, we'll be adding wyvern enhancement stats to all of the equipment and weapons that were added during the March 27th version update, as well as the equipment and weapons that will be added in the future. While there is currently a lack of pet enhancement stats on the Delve gear, we will be making adjustments to add these stats. :)

[Theytak]

Just to let you all know, we'll be adding wyvern enhancement stats to all of the equipment and weapons that were added during the March 27th version update, as well as the equipment and weapons that will be added in the future. While there is currently a lack of pet enhancement stats on the Delve gear, we will be making adjustments to add these stats. :)

That's nice. Drg is the pet job whose pet matters the least. What about the rest of us pet jobs who actually need our pet to function at all?

[Duelle]

My apologies for the slight derail but (and forgive me if someone else already said this)

Red Mage....
...Where?...

I'm happy for the pet adjustments but Dear Square Enix...
You broke my 1st job several years ago. Can Red Mage get a fix sometime soon please? You promised you would do something and NEVER DID lol.

Sorry, I just had to say something xDTrust me, I know how you feel.


That's nice. Drg is the pet job whose pet matters the least. What about the rest of us pet jobs who actually need our pet to function at all?This. DRG's performance comes from the DRG themselves, and as such there's little impact to be seen from buffing the wyvern. Would be better to work on the other pet jobs and boosting DRG on the side.

[Gippo]

What if we already bought for example a brethren axe for bst?

Do we need to scrap it and start over?

(I'm assuming this would be the case)

[Glamdring]

And then, they set a time limit on delve nms and we're going zergfest.
SE is going back and forth, and i'm not sure about what we can expect.
PLD still shines in Naakuals fights though.

tell me about it. Honestly, what's wrong with being able to bring a nuke? I got alot of BLM buddies, they would like to be part of end-game as well. most of them didn't whine about having to lay off the big nukes until the mobs HP had been whittled down due to their squishyness. The few that were dropping AM from the opening a. aren't my buds, but b. I taught them to care about hate by TE>>DE on the blms that did it (they wanted hate, they got hate). And I liked the days when rng was interchangeable with a blm, even though I had neither job at the time. It was just fun watching them work, and they actually enjoyed working.

so SE doesn't want everything to be arrow/mana-burned? fine, the bosses should be immune to sleep/gravity/bind AND make it take more than 6 meteors to take them down, and strong enough to 1-shot a blm or rng. That means a balanced party, most likely with a tank.

[Quetzacoatl]

and still no in-depth detail into GEO and RUN updates...

[Chimerawizard]

@Glamdring

I knew a THF that would always try to do that to me @75. I laughed when on SMN because I would still never pull hate.
On BLM ... He just made sure I would not lose hate as long as I was alive. We joked about it in vent all the time trying to MPK each other. He gets charmed...kaboom, I do a MB and find out the closing WS was done with TA on me.
I manage to stay alive for more than a minute while tanking on BLM...get ready for Spikeflail :). Well unless its Tiamat, then I just go afk while I wait to be finished getting eaten. (don't wanna piss off the rest of the group)

[Absinthe]

I definitely appreciate the attention that PUPs are getting... but I'm curious as to what the devs have planned for animators in general. I don't really want to get the new Alternator if it's just going to become junk within a month ^^;




Puppetmaster

Addition of animators that have stats to increase the parameters of automatons.
(Also... please improve the User Interface for attachments...)

[Volarione]

and still no in-depth detail into GEO and RUN updates...

Just wondering what happened to being in the next version update myself. I seriously want that rune coat and some good merits to spend points on would rock.

[Quetzacoatl]

Just wondering what happened to being in the next version update myself. I seriously want that rune coat and some good merits to spend points on would rock.

I want to see GEO actually get some love for its buffing capabilities as well

[Louispv]

To people that are pessimistic about potential pet changes (and honestly, I can understand that):

Have you taken a look at the Alternator (http://wiki.bluegartr.com/bg/Alternator) yet?

If this thing is a sign of boosts other pets will get (presumably with Delve weaponry, but still), I'm honestly not too concerned.

Yes, but that means any PUP that doesn't have an alternator is broken and worthless until they get one. Their job does not function. No matter what you do, your puppet cannot hit delve enemies even with 3 thunder maneuvers and accuracy attachments. But then you get an alternator, your puppet get 45 more accuracy and it works again. But you can't even play the job, because it cannot do what it was designed to, until you get an item. There's no way for you to, for instance, get an alternator, AS a PUP that needs the alternator.

On the other hand, a WAR, or a SAM that hasn't got a Delve item yet is still fully capable of doing delve. You cannot fix a job with items, unless you're given those items for unlocking the job.

Also, what happens when they add the next tier of delve they promised? Will there be a new animator with all stats+150? Will that be enough to keep up with other players who will have new 350 damage weapons? Because STR+ 70 and Weapon Damage+70 sure aren't the same thing. And if it's not, we're screwed, because SE never goes back and changes things until they are pointless, unless we stop them from implementing it in the first place.

Fix the jobs, don't make players of those jobs put in extra effort to get extra items other jobs don't need, just to keep up. (or worse, still be behind)

[Fynlar]

Yes, but that means any PUP that doesn't have an alternator is broken and worthless until they get one. Their job does not function. No matter what you do, your puppet cannot hit delve enemies even with 3 thunder maneuvers and accuracy attachments. But then you get an alternator, your puppet get 45 more accuracy and it works again. But you can't even play the job, because it cannot do what it was designed to, until you get an item. There's no way for you to, for instance, get an alternator, AS a PUP that needs the alternator.

On the other hand, a WAR, or a SAM that hasn't got a Delve item yet is still fully capable of doing delve. You cannot fix a job with items, unless you're given those items for unlocking the job.

Ehh, pretty much every DD in Delve sucks until they have Delve equips, tbh. For many people, their only solution is to bring a support job like BRD, for which their gear matters far less.

This is not a PUP-specific issue.

[Samunai]

That's nice. Drg is the pet job whose pet matters the least. What about the rest of us pet jobs who actually need our pet to function at all?


This. DRG's performance comes from the DRG themselves, and as such there's little impact to be seen from buffing the wyvern. Would be better to work on the other pet jobs and boosting DRG on the side.

seriously? "what about the rest of the jobs that actually need our pet to function at all?" you even play drg? as for function, PUP and SMN do need a pet to function but bst not, what does a pet bst do to your master? nothing... i dont know one pet that is used frequently that buffs a pt or w/e besides the fact the bunny can use wild carrot....But if u strip off the wyvern a DRG is so much less. it wouldnt be able to do the dmg it does now and it would not be able to solo at all, let alone take care of itself or pt members while being /whm. Is that not being a pet needed to be able to play the job? If you enhance your wyvern and 2hr, your 2hr is so much better so... You are seriously about what you say? Then you dont understand the job DRG at all. perm.

[Duelle]

As for function, PUP and SMN do need a pet to function but BST not, what does a pet BST do to your master? nothing.While BST does have a questionable relationship with their pet, that is more on the side of how poor jug pet design is.


But if you strip off the wyvern a DRG is so much less. It wouldn't be able to do the damage it does now and it would not be able to solo at all, let alone take care of itself or pt members while being /WHM. Is that not being a pet needed to be able to play the job?Except no respectable DRG would sub WHM for endgame content. Dragoons deal damage and they go into content ready to do that.

The main point is that the devs are giving scaling based on the master's stats to the job that least benefits from it, while other pet jobs with heavier reliance on their pets aside from soloing get more of the same (the wyvern being dead doesn't prevent the DRG from jumping, nor being able to use WS). This is in tandem with the possibility of them throwing in more Pet: Stat gear.

[RAIST]

Which just greater enforces the need to directly adjust the pets...as in not binding it to gear.

Whether it's better to bind that to the players stats or directly adjust the pet's baseline states can be open to debate I guess. But the point is NOT requiring one to equip an item to make the pet scale to where it should be by default.

[Louispv]

Ehh, pretty much every DD in Delve sucks until they have Delve equips, tbh. For many people, their only solution is to bring a support job like BRD, for which their gear matters far less.

This is not a PUP-specific issue.
Well, SAM doesn't even notice that the enemies have increased evasion because Zanshin cancels it out. But Sam has always been SE's overpowered favorite child.

It is most definitely a pet job issue, though. The other jobs kind of suck so they bring a BRD, whose songs fix the problem. The songs that don't hit pets, and thus don't fix the problem for pet jobs.

[Duelle]

Which just greater enforces the need to directly adjust the pets...as in not binding it to gear.

Whether it's better to bind that to the players stats or directly adjust the pet's baseline states can be open to debate I guess. But the point is NOT requiring one to equip an item to make the pet scale to where it should be by default.Indeed. I've never been one for the "fix classes through gear" approach the developers took to since the TAU days. Pet design is clearly flawed and has been for years. A more in-depth fix is needed across all jobs, because even I realize that Pet: Stat gear is a band-aid the devs attempted to sneak in as a carrot on a stick for pet jobs.

[Theytak]

seriously? "what about the rest of the jobs that actually need our pet to function at all?" you even play drg? as for function, PUP and SMN do need a pet to function but bst not, what does a pet bst do to your master? nothing... i dont know one pet that is used frequently that buffs a pt or w/e besides the fact the bunny can use wild carrot....But if u strip off the wyvern a DRG is so much less. it wouldnt be able to do the dmg it does now and it would not be able to solo at all, let alone take care of itself or pt members while being /whm. Is that not being a pet needed to be able to play the job? If you enhance your wyvern and 2hr, your 2hr is so much better so... You are seriously about what you say? Then you dont understand the job DRG at all. perm.

*Ahem*

Let's take a look at the pet jobs and their pets, shall we?

Bst relies heavily on their pets. Bsts JAs are entirely pet-centric. The only non-pet focused JAs bst has are Feral Howl, Tame, and to a lesser extent, Charm, which can act like a ghetto-bind if the mob can't becharmed and you have no pet. Take away the pet, and you have a gimpy warrior who can't make use of war's strengths (berserk, aggressor, double attack, warcry, as well as retaliation and blood rage, and great axes), and DW at the same time, thus giving us a gimpy 1h axe war. Back when content was a bit more balanced as far as pets go, Bst damage was skewed about 40%:60% player:pet, depending on the pet and the situation. That's shifted now, but it's not hard to say that the pet is still a huge chunk of bst's damage, and without their pet, they're dead weight.

Smn, well... the fuck can smn do without the avatar? Bash crap with a stick in shitty mage-quality melee gear? woopdefuck. Blm can do that AND nuke.

Pup, originally, was sort of the reverse of bst, where the player is the dominant half of the pair, and the puppet supports them. Unlike bst, though, every single one of pup's JAs requires or relates directly to the puppet. If the puppet isn't there, all pup is is a weaker mnk with worse gear due to pup's awful gear selection (though this has improved substantially, we're still regularly left off of gear that every other melee job is on in favor of mage gear that we don't even have a use for.). In the olden days, the damage split was 60:40 player:pet for pup, again shifting depending on the puppet and the monster (ie: vs birds, sharpshot's piercing bonus made it a lot more even), but like bst, this has shifted, and now at best our puppet can maybe pull 70:30 in the right situation.

Now let's look at drg. What does the wyvern add to drg 99% of the time? A little bit more damage, a tp bonus on spirit/soul jump, and the occasional healing breath. What was drg's damage split way back? Oh yea, something like 90:10 player:pet. What is it now? more like 95:5. What can drg do without their wyvern? All of their jumps, with only the tp gain of spirit/soul jump suffering, as well as angon, and their silly anti-dragon shtick. Oh, and they're a 2h weapon user, and get some pretty amazing DD gear.

Drg without their wyvern is still Drg. Bst, Pup, and Smn without their pets? They're reduced to gimpy versions of whatever they have subbed. Sure, pup suffers the least from this, but even a pup will feel the loss of their automaton a lot more than a drg will notice the loss of their wyvern.

So yea, drg is the least pet-centric of the pet jobs, so the rest of us would appreciate if the devs focused on the pets of the jobs who need their pets to function, rather than the one who barely knows their pet is there.

[Rekin]

This didn't occur to me til just now but with all the delve weps, etc. going on I realize nin spells are going to be even more worthless damage wise. I mean they were situational at best against mobs specifically with high pdt but now they are as useless as twilight scythe I would think. I mean at least blu has the spell dmg adjustment coming along but what do nins that want to branch out their job's capabilities have to do?
Delve screwed nin in so many ways its not even funny as other Dwielders have at least another option whilst nin is forced to use at best a skirmish wep offhand. I'm no main nin but seeing a job screwed in such a way makes me worry about what kinds of oversight is going on when making content and balancing jobs/battles.

[Kristal]

Delve screwed nin in so many ways its not even funny as other Dwielders have at least another option whilst nin is forced to use at best a skirmish wep offhand. I'm no main nin but seeing a job screwed in such a way makes me worry about what kinds of oversight is going on when making content and balancing jobs/battles.

Let me guess, you are complaining that there is no fracture boss katana yet, so you are forced to dual wield a delve katana with a delve dagger instead? Has it occurred to you that maybe said weapon will drop from one of the four remaining naakuals?

I was more upset about BST being able to dual wield two delve pet axes.. again. But then I realised the Alternator pisses all over those BST axes anyway :D (Then again, PUP can't use the Honed Tathlum AND Alternator, so I guess it all balanced out in the end.)

[Rekin]

Let me guess, you are complaining that there is no fracture boss katana yet, so you are forced to dual wield a delve katana with a delve dagger instead? Has it occurred to you that maybe said weapon will drop from one of the four remaining naakuals?

I was more upset about BST being able to dual wield two delve pet axes.. again. But then I realised the Alternator pisses all over those BST axes anyway :D (Then again, PUP can't use the Honed Tathlum AND Alternator, so I guess it all balanced out in the end.)

You missed the part about me not main nin. I have it leveled sure and some gear but the reason I'm not satisfied is because as a gamer I am not pleased to see a niche job lose part of its options and continue to be penalized for even having said weakened options once job adjustments comes around or when Devs have to consider gear for jobs.

[Kimjongil]

*Ahem*

Let's take a look at the pet jobs and their pets, shall we?

Bst relies heavily on their pets. Bsts JAs are entirely pet-centric. The only non-pet focused JAs bst has are Feral Howl, Tame, and to a lesser extent, Charm, which can act like a ghetto-bind if the mob can't becharmed and you have no pet. Take away the pet, and you have a gimpy warrior who can't make use of war's strengths (berserk, aggressor, double attack, warcry, as well as retaliation and blood rage, and great axes), and DW at the same time, thus giving us a gimpy 1h axe war. Back when content was a bit more balanced as far as pets go, Bst damage was skewed about 40%:60% player:pet, depending on the pet and the situation. That's shifted now, but it's not hard to say that the pet is still a huge chunk of bst's damage, and without their pet, they're dead weight.

Smn, well... the fuck can smn do without the avatar? Bash crap with a stick in shitty mage-quality melee gear? woopdefuck. Blm can do that AND nuke.

Pup, originally, was sort of the reverse of bst, where the player is the dominant half of the pair, and the puppet supports them. Unlike bst, though, every single one of pup's JAs requires or relates directly to the puppet. If the puppet isn't there, all pup is is a weaker mnk with worse gear due to pup's awful gear selection (though this has improved substantially, we're still regularly left off of gear that every other melee job is on in favor of mage gear that we don't even have a use for.). In the olden days, the damage split was 60:40 player:pet for pup, again shifting depending on the puppet and the monster (ie: vs birds, sharpshot's piercing bonus made it a lot more even), but like bst, this has shifted, and now at best our puppet can maybe pull 70:30 in the right situation.

Now let's look at drg. What does the wyvern add to drg 99% of the time? A little bit more damage, a tp bonus on spirit/soul jump, and the occasional healing breath. What was drg's damage split way back? Oh yea, something like 90:10 player:pet. What is it now? more like 95:5. What can drg do without their wyvern? All of their jumps, with only the tp gain of spirit/soul jump suffering, as well as angon, and their silly anti-dragon shtick. Oh, and they're a 2h weapon user, and get some pretty amazing DD gear.

Drg without their wyvern is still Drg. Bst, Pup, and Smn without their pets? They're reduced to gimpy versions of whatever they have subbed. Sure, pup suffers the least from this, but even a pup will feel the loss of their automaton a lot more than a drg will notice the loss of their wyvern.

So yea, drg is the least pet-centric of the pet jobs, so the rest of us would appreciate if the devs focused on the pets of the jobs who need their pets to function, rather than the one who barely knows their pet is there.

Blu's feel the same way about their magic. We are dual wielders with DA right now. :(

[Leatherman]

Please Camate tell the person that makes these calls to quit their jobs... If they can't at least listen to their players feedback. Use a little logic please. Why not just add a merit job trait for pet jobs that fix the gap?

[Leatherman]

I swear my posts are getting deleted... As I sad... why not give a merit point Job Trait or just a lvl99 Job trait that fixes this issue? Fire the person responsible for these failure decision and hire someone that listen to their player base. This is business after all. I cant wait for the new FFXIV so I can quit this game once and for all. And hopefully the 3rd time is a charm on that game... it would look bad on Square ENIX IF It failed again... Just saying... Give us something good and we will shut up about it. GDI.

[Kristal]

* Puppetmaster
Addition of animators that have stats to increase the parameters of automatons.

Just a thought, but what if existing animators could be augmented with exchangable augments, rather then entirely new animators? The augments would be exchangable via a NPC, similar to abyssea atmas and voidwatch atmacites, and upgradable similar to voidwatch atmacites. Unlocking augments would be done similar to unlocking attachments, via obtaining monster drops and crafted items and trading them to a NPC.

[Leatherman]

Is it possible to give Geomancers Enhancing Skill instead of enfeebling skill? In my experience with GEO it would be much more helpful.

[Kristal]

Is it possible to give Geomancers Enhancing Skill instead of enfeebling skill? In my experience with GEO it would be much more helpful.

If this is about Stoneskin:
Stoneskin caps at (Skill/3)+MND >= 177, so GEO/RDM needs 129 MND. Which is easily obtainable at 99.
Assuming you want to give GEO an E rank Enhancing skill, you only need 77, which is about the same as a GEO/RDM has without any merits, gear or buffs.

[Trisscar]

If they keep adding these sick 1 hnd weapons any spell casting is just a huge dps loss at this rate. Welcome to the drks world....

There is no comparison between Blue Mage and Dark Knight in my honest opinion. Most of a Dark Knight's DPS is melee and their spells merely expose a temporary weakness. And while a Blue Mage's sword skill is nothing to sneer at, most of their damage are from the spells. Without a significant revamp of Blue Magic (both magical and physical) there is no reason to take a Blue Mage to any event, they would just be taking up space better used by a garden variety DD.

[saevel]

There is no comparison between Blue Mage and Dark Knight in my honest opinion. Most of a Dark Knight's DPS is melee and their spells merely expose a temporary weakness. And while a Blue Mage's sword skill is nothing to sneer at, most of their damage are from the spells. Without a significant revamp of Blue Magic (both magical and physical) there is no reason to take a Blue Mage to any event, they would just be taking up space better used by a garden variety DD.

People saying sh!t like this is why people don't invite BLUs.