SE and fixing things that arent broke

[Jordanrh]

bst has always had range on tp abilty...ty for ruining it... smn should have been expanded to bst range...long time in the coming...hoping u didn't ruin jp camps w/ new monster pops lol....add a new wardrobe...or let us pull from any storage slot/excluding moogle/slip storage...give us more merit cats would be nice...perm KI would be nice for woe or a few other things...pay 1 price and have ki like dyna....just sick of ppl that never played bst complaining....bst always = 1pt til adoulin came out then every dd in game was = to bst...ty for assisting on that...range change tho come on!

[Catmato]

I've read it a few times, but I have no idea what you're trying to say. You should try using complete sentences and punctuation if you want to get your message across.

[matsuiisgarbage]

i think a nerf was necessary but as usual the last guy still working at SE got it wrong. He could have made it so the amount of damage done varies with distance a la rng or idk put a minimum on sic/ready recast? Easy rational fixes could have been made but again lets piss of another 48% of the playerbase

[Buckaroo]

I am not going to defend if adjusting BST after so many years was necessary or not, but I'll say this. If I can't use my abilities while being engaged and fighting opposite of my pet with monster being inbetween, because of range issues, that's a problem. This severely hinders anyone's tactics of fighting along side of your pet. The main idea is to NOT be in front of the monster, as to avoid being hit with conal aoe. I've said my piece. Hopefully SE realizes what they've done and fixes what they broke.

[Krysten]

i think this woulda worked a few years ago but now that EVERYTHING i heavy Aoe THATS the problem here. stop making everything melee unfriendly why make every content in the game RNG and GEO???

[Camate]

I am not going to defend if adjusting BST after so many years was necessary or not, but I'll say this. If I can't use my abilities while being engaged and fighting opposite of my pet with monster being inbetween, because of range issues, that's a problem. This severely hinders anyone's tactics of fighting along side of your pet. The main idea is to NOT be in front of the monster, as to avoid being hit with conal aoe. I've said my piece. Hopefully SE realizes what they've done and fixes what they broke.

We’ve been receiving a lot of feedback about this.

Since there are monsters with varying sizes, if we make adjustments so that the somewhat larger monsters are the benchmark, then the distance in which commands can be used will be no different than before. While we can’t make any promises at the time, we will be looking into changing the target of pet commands, shifting them from the master to the pet. We believe that the way it feels to play will become very different, so we would like to hear everyone’s feedback once it is implemented.
*There is a possibility that commands cannot be accepted when pets are out of your field of vision.

[bazookatooth]

We’ve been receiving a lot of feedback about this.

Since there are monsters with varying sizes, if we make adjustments so that the somewhat larger monsters are the benchmark, then the distance in which commands can be used will be no different than before. While we can’t make any promises at the time, we will be looking into changing the target of pet commands, shifting them from the master to the pet. We believe that the way it feels to play will become very different, so we would like to hear everyone’s feedback once it is implemented.
*There is a possibility that commands cannot be accepted when pets are out of your field of vision.

How about you just change it back to the way it was and find something else to adjust?....

[Ataraxia]

We’ve been receiving a lot of feedback about this.

Since there are monsters with varying sizes, if we make adjustments so that the somewhat larger monsters are the benchmark, then the distance in which commands can be used will be no different than before. While we can’t make any promises at the time, we will be looking into changing the target of pet commands, shifting them from the master to the pet. We believe that the way it feels to play will become very different, so we would like to hear everyone’s feedback once it is implemented.
*There is a possibility that commands cannot be accepted when pets are out of your field of vision.

Ok Thank you for the respond and thank god it wasn't Grekumah "We have no plans" that would be a total nightmare for all veteran BST player. I have a feeling next update gonna be like Pokemon. =)

[Jile]

We’ve been receiving a lot of feedback about this.

Since there are monsters with varying sizes, if we make adjustments so that the somewhat larger monsters are the benchmark, then the distance in which commands can be used will be no different than before. While we can’t make any promises at the time, we will be looking into changing the target of pet commands, shifting them from the master to the pet. We believe that the way it feels to play will become very different, so we would like to hear everyone’s feedback once it is implemented.
*There is a possibility that commands cannot be accepted when pets are out of your field of vision.

First, thank you for letting us know.

My concern with using it as distance from our pets or requiring that we can "see" our pets would make things worse on some instances and better on others. We must fight some mobs from behind the mob itself to avoid conial charm for example, and if the distance is tied to our pet it will need to take that into consideration as well. Being required to "see" our pets is a disaster waiting to happen, too many line of sight issues exist in the game as it is (sending a pet and the terrain between you and your target is flat, you get a message that says you can't see your target cause a stick is on the ground between you and your target) so I'd really like to avoid more issues on top of everything.

Changing distance wasn't needed, it did not address why people were mad at BST, a pet aoe damage reduction that could be earned back with the accumulation of job points could be used more effectively instead to push away the bandwagon BST players.

[Malthar]

SE, just frickin' restore the original range and vary pet damage with master distance; job done.
If masters want more damage they'll have to get closer and expose themselves to more danger.

[Faithful]

I deactivated my account until this Bst nerf fiasco is fixed. I agree with what others are saying: restore the original range and have the pets damage decrease the further away you are. Maybe with Job Points the damage can be increased back some.

[bazookatooth]

Or you know... Put the range back where it was and address the issues with other DD jobs getting killed too easy instead. Doing enough damage is almost never a problem in this game. It's people getting killed if they engage the NM that is the problem. Fix that instead of breaking more things.

[Alhanelem]

We’ve been receiving a lot of feedback about this.

Since there are monsters with varying sizes, if we make adjustments so that the somewhat larger monsters are the benchmark, then the distance in which commands can be used will be no different than before. While we can’t make any promises at the time, we will be looking into changing the target of pet commands, shifting them from the master to the pet. We believe that the way it feels to play will become very different, so we would like to hear everyone’s feedback once it is implemented.
*There is a possibility that commands cannot be accepted when pets are out of your field of vision.
Range was not the problem to begin with and this change should be reverted. Address the real problems. If something else needs to be nerfed then maybe they should look into that, but the range change has been shown to do nothing but make the job more inconvenient and frustrating to play without solving any real balance issue.

[Kraggy]

We’ve been receiving a lot of feedback about this.

Since there are monsters with varying sizes, if we make adjustments so that the somewhat larger monsters are the benchmark, then the distance in which commands can be used will be no different than before. While we can’t make any promises at the time, we will be looking into changing the target of pet commands, shifting them from the master to the pet. We believe that the way it feels to play will become very different, so we would like to hear everyone’s feedback once it is implemented.
*There is a possibility that commands cannot be accepted when pets are out of your field of vision.
How about you learn not to fix that which ain't broke?

[Malthar]

Hey, don't you pick on Camate! If you have something against Camate you'll have to go through me first!
It's not Camate who "fixed" things that aren't broke. It's the devs.

[Tidis]

While I do think the distance nerf wasn't really the right target to level the playing field, it at least gives BST more to think about rather than sit back and spam Ready.

That said front line damage is a problem, I remember back when VW was at it's most popular they talked about making AoEs deal less damage to people who weren't targeted, couldn't they just apply something similar to every AoE move by monsters? That way it would be easier to keep front line DDs up and BST max distance could be reverted, hell at that point they may be willing to fight alongside their pet on the front lines.

[bazookatooth]

While I do think the distance nerf wasn't really the right target to level the playing field, it at least gives BST more to think about rather than sit back and spam Ready.

It's just annoying. That's all it is. It's like putting hot sauce on a dog's food just to be a jerk. The dog's still gonna eat it, but he will hate you for it. That's pretty much how a lot of people feel right now.


That said front line damage is a problem, I remember back when VW was at it's most popular they talked about making AoEs deal less damage to people who weren't targeted, couldn't they just apply something similar to every AoE move by monsters? That way it would be easier to keep front line DDs up and BST max distance could be reverted, hell at that point they may be willing to fight alongside their pet on the front lines.

They need to just straight up add HP and DEF/MDB to most jobs. They did a good job fixing the emnity issues imo, but the amount of damage that pretty much any job can take compared to PLD is ridiculous.


we will be looking into changing the target of pet commands, shifting them from the master to the pet.

I'm honestly not even sure what this means. If the distance from master to pet remains the same, how does reversing the target change anything functionally. Did you mean that you are considering changing commands to target the monster? Because while that would allow us to issue commands from the opposite side, it would also anchor us to whatever monster the pet is currently targeting which would effectively lock us from issuing commands at all when there is more than one target because pets change target at random when there is more than one monster attacking. That would be a horrible change. If that is what you were thinking, please, please, please don;t. There are a bazillion other more important things you could be doing. Just put BST back how it was and go fix something that actually serves a purpose other than to annoy people.

[machini]

It's just annoying. That's all it is. It's like putting hot sauce on a dog's food just to be a jerk. The dog's still gonna eat it, but he will hate you for it. That's pretty much how a lot of people feel right now.



They need to just straight up add HP and DEF/MDB to most jobs. They did a good job fixing the emnity issues imo, but the amount of damage that pretty much any job can take compared to PLD is ridiculous.

I honestly think a huge part of this problem is at this point they expect Aegis and Ochain to be something any PLD doing end game content is going to have, period, so they design things around that. 4000 magic damage AoE moves won't kill your tank when he has -87.5% MDT. And 3000 physical damage TP moves won't kill your PLD with -50% PDT who happens to be wearing full heavy armor with fully merited Protectra V on.

Other jobs do have abilities that allow them to mitigate massive damage, such as Third Eye, the first hit of Fan Dance, and Sacrosanctity. The problem is that these abilities have too long of a cooldown to be at all useful for mitigating high damage attacks in the current day and age.

Things were different when it might take 60 to 120 seconds, depending on conditions, to get TP to WS at 75 cap. These days, it's entirely possible, due to high amounts of multiattack, OAx, and capped attack speed, to come out of a WS animation with enough TP to immediately do another WS. The amount of TP feed to high level mobs is extreme, and probably an order of magnitude higher than was ever intended.

Increasing the overall HP, DEF, and MDB of players is one way to go about it. It lowers the marginal utility of BST pets, since they are no longer required to survive all the damage from those high damage AoE moves that would kill players. However, a decently geared PLD is practically invincible as it is. I remember doing one Plouton run where I was WHM (wanted to get a clear), and I literally never cast anything above Cure 3 on the PLD (except for status removal spells). He took so little damage from the at the time latest content end game <mega boss> NM that just Cure 3 with ~100 below cap Healing Magic (with capped +%Cure Potency) was overkill on healing him with afflatus solace up.

It's still going to be very hard to design anything that can inconvenience a good PLD tank that won't cripple or outright kill a bunch of DDs who refuse to wear -DT gear. Anything that will severely hurt a decent PLD with capped -DT, Aegis, and Ochain is going to kill most DDs, even in -DT gear.

The solution to this is, of course, Scherzo and Earthen Armor, but very few people seem to understand what a competent SMN is capable of doing, and the focus on melee zerg is so strong that most people don't even bother with anything that's not a march, madrigal, or minuet.

While there are other jobs in the game capable of tanking, none can do that anywhere near as well as a PLD without extensive gearing, and even then they fall short. RUN is great against NMs that don't do high physical damage TP moves and only do single elemental type magical attacks, as with full -MDT and 3 Runes up, rotation Valliance and Vallation, you can keep up -72.5% MDT against a specific element. But you're still going to get your face bashed in by anything that does high damage physical moves. The patch for the concept of a medium armor tank without a shield in RUN's case is their Ergon Weapon with its -25% PDT II. However, if we're talking about a RUN with their mythic-equivalent, a PLD with Ochain and Burtgang is still going to come out ahead in the 'surviving physical attacks' department.

A counterpart to RUN is DNC. RUN is a medium armor job that focuses on magical tanking and status ailment resistance, DNC is a medium armor job that, via Fan Dance and its ability to self cure via Curing Waltzes, can do a good job of mitigating physical damage. With -44% PDT and Fan Dance at its lowest value, you can achieve -55.2% PDT. The first hit of Fan Dance is -94.4% PDT, since Fan Dance is a separate step in the calculation and bypasses the -87.5% reduction cap. However, while Fan Dance's duration is longer than its cooldown, it is dispellable. And you're still going to be taking more damage than a PLD or RUN would from magic damage.

PLD can self-cure, and mitigate magic and physical damage both more or less equally well.
RUN cannot self-cure, cannot mitigate physical damage as well as a PLD, but can mitigate singe-element magic damage and status effects very well.
DNC can self-cure, and mitigate physical damage well, especially burst damage, such as eating Eagle Eye Shot, if timed right, but cannot mitigate magical damage well.

The problem is that, of those three jobs, RUN and DNC are more or less PLD but with half of PLD ripped out. DNC/RUN is something like 3/4ths PLD, and can tank very specific things, like Avatar Fights, just almost as well as a PLD, while also dealing far more damage.

There just really do not seem to be a whole lot of situations where any other jobs (and I mean the player, not the pets), can tank as well as PLD. Any status effect that will cripple PLD will cripple DNC and RUN, and anything that will kill the PLD will kill DNC and RUN as well, except infrequently in very limited circumstances (Fan Dance, One For All, Elemental Sforzo), except PLD has tricks like that up its sleeve too (Invincible, Sentinel, Rampart, Palisade).

So even if you increase HP, DEF and MDB for all jobs across the board, that means the base damage for things will just have to go higher to maintain the ability to even have a possibility of hurting the PLD, which will still annihilate most other jobs, often even in full -DT gear.

You could just start bring BRD and/or SMN to absolutely everything (some people do that with BRD, anyway), but then you have possibly three slots (PLD, WHM, BRD/SMN) that are fixed for all content, meaning there can be even less diversity of things taken, given the way the community works.

You could add abilities which increase RUN's ability to mitigate physical damage, except if they can do that as well as PLD without the Ergon Weapon, with it they'd outdo PLD, which is not desired. Similarly, you could increase DNC's ability to mitigate magical damage, such as making Fan Dance apply to both Physical and Magical damage (and also be undispellable), but then you're looking at a well geared DNC being able to approach -60% PDT and definitely able to get -60% MDT, which, with /RUN as your subjob, give you a minimum of -76% MDT for one specific element, which rivals RUN for single-elemental mitigation, and PLD in general (-6/8ths, whereas PLD gets -7/8ths).

However, none of that helps any other jobs, really.

You could lower the cooldown on Sacrosanctity, but then how much up time do they want that to have? As it is, it can be up 1/10th of the time. How much is too much? 1/4th? 1/3?

You could make more moves stunnable and all of them more easily stunnable, but that would just mean SCH/BLM would be mandatory for everything, and we'd just revert to "NM never gets a TP move off, gg, no re".

You could return Utsusemi to pre-nerf levels of mitigation, but there was a reason that got nerfed.

You could make more attacks conal, and increase the volatile enmity generated by certain JAs, and make a graduated system for enmity generation of massive damage, so that high spike damage would generate significantly more enmity, which would mean THFs would actually have to TA the PLD with that 3kTP Rudra's Storm, lest the PLD not be able to get the NM off of them before it kills them, and would make spamming skillchains + magic bursts riskier for mages, but that would be a lot of work (redoing all those TP moves), and would require a lot of tweaking (and would piss off most of the community, probably, for enmity tweaking and scaling for high damage.)

Or we could go with the theory that the problem is not, in fact, that everyone is so squishy compared to PLD, but that PLD is too survivable compared to everyone else. Capped DT, Aegis, and Ochain are almost mandatory these days, and not particularly hard to get, and, again, encounters are designed with these in mind. You could nerf PLD, but then everyone is dying, including the PLD.

You could have a hidden buff that is applied to players when they are hit with specific TP moves or spells, wherein each successive attack within the buff's duration lowers the effectiveness or damage. If an NM spams a specific TP move constantly, it would eventually deal less damage (I think there's a doll accessory that does exactly this). Make it cap at -50%, and multiplicative with other -%DT, and even a moderately -DT geared DD (Twilight Torque, D Ring, Mollusca Mantle) would hit -40% DT for high damage TP moves after being hit with it several times in rapid succession. At that point, it would become a matter of "If we don't wipe within the first 30 to 60 seconds, the fight becomes much easier for everyone in melee range." But that would also be a lot of work, although probably less worthk than most other things.

There is no easy solution to this that fixes all problems.

[edit] spelling

[Ataraxia]

I deactivated my account until this Bst nerf fiasco is fixed. I agree with what others are saying: restore the original range and have the pets damage decrease the further away you are. Maybe with Job Points the damage can be increased back some.

Hey Let's not do that just yet. This matter of BST range is taken seriously. Camate has come forward and is addressing this issue so let's us all give him a chance to prove himself and try out October 2015 Update for BST. We don't always get a reply from Camate and usually it's always Grekumah. We all should be thankful that it's not "We Have No Plan".

Now if we don't like this new changes to BST we can always come back and express our frustration. In mean time let's all try out the update and post some feedback. =)

[bazookatooth]

So even if you increase HP, DEF and MDB for all jobs across the board, that means the base damage for things will just have to go higher to maintain the ability to even have a possibility of hurting the PLD, which will still annihilate most other jobs, often even in full -DT gear.


[edit] spelling

They could raise HP/DEF/MDB for front line jobs on an individual basis and leave PLD, whm, smn etc as is. Not all jobs need to receive the buff.

[Olor]

So how about we nerf pld so that we can lower the damage done by NMs?

[bazookatooth]

So how about we nerf pld so that we can lower the damage done by NMs?

I think it would be a lot easier to add HP and DEF/MDB to 10 jobs than to change the stats of a thousand NMs, but who knows with SE. They have been known to be lazy in the past and just say "Uh... okay, going forward we won't do that anymore, but you're still screwed on current content.".

[Malthar]

No, it's not that they're lazy. They're actually a small, dedicated team that's under waaaay too much stress because the bulk of XI's developers were sent off to work on XIV.

[bazookatooth]

No, it's not that they're lazy. They're actually a small, dedicated team that's under waaaay too much stress because the bulk of XI's developers were sent off to work on XIV.

Potato... pOOOtAAAAtOOO

[Malthar]

You should get that looked at. :-P

[Ataraxia]

We’ve been receiving a lot of feedback about this.

Since there are monsters with varying sizes, if we make adjustments so that the somewhat larger monsters are the benchmark, then the distance in which commands can be used will be no different than before. While we can’t make any promises at the time, we will be looking into changing the target of pet commands, shifting them from the master to the pet. We believe that the way it feels to play will become very different, so we would like to hear everyone’s feedback once it is implemented.
*There is a possibility that commands cannot be accepted when pets are out of your field of vision.

hello Mr. Camate can you confirm with everyone on what you're trying to do with BST range? when you said "we will be looking into changing the target of pet commands, shifting them from the master to the pet. So this mean that big enemies will not be an issue anymore and everything will remain the same as in a BST must be closer to their pet to execute a command?

If this is the case than you're are not fixing anything. Unless what you meant to say is that as long as we can see our pet from any distance we can issue a command? Please be honest to all the player if you are gonna leave things as is. No BST like to cry out to a whm for heal and trust aren't healing if they are dead most of the thing in high level content.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

I think it would be a lot easier to add HP and DEF/MDB to 10 jobs than to change the stats of a thousand NMs, but who knows with SE. They have been known to be lazy in the past and just say "Uh... okay, going forward we won't do that anymore, but you're still screwed on current content.".

It should always have been the case AoE moves deal less damage to other party members due to the smaller HP pool, defense etc.. With the tank taking the most due to increased defense, HP etc... You shouldn't build a game around one job with HUGE defense reduction.

The idea of: "Well this tank job has 85% reduction so lets make the AoE do 5000 DMG, the tank has ~2000 HP so that's 750 DMG before any other reduction" being chosen is just wrong, especially in a game where Weakness and especially double-weakness exists.

[Jile]

hello Mr. Camate can you confirm with everyone on what you're trying to do with BST range? when you said "we will be looking into changing the target of pet commands, shifting them from the master to the pet. So this mean that big enemies will not be an issue anymore and everything will remain the same as in a BST must be closer to their pet to execute a command?

If this is the case than you're are not fixing anything. Unless what you meant to say is that as long as we can see our pet from any distance we can issue a command? Please be honest to all the player if you are gonna leave things as is. No BST like to cry out to a whm for heal and trust aren't healing if they are dead most of the thing in high level content.

The way I read the 2nd-nerf update is as follows:


Since some monsters are fat and get between you and your pet, we are going to make your job abilities tied to your pet but ONLY when your pet can SEE you, if your pet cant see you standing behind the fat monster your pet will be afraid and do nothing, if your pet runs after another monster and also can't see you, its going to become afraid and do nothing.

The area that concerns me most from Camate's post:

*There is a possibility that commands cannot be accepted when pets are out of your field of vision.

I replied:


My concern with using it as distance from our pets or requiring that we can "see" our pets would make things worse on some instances and better on others. We must fight some mobs from behind the mob itself to avoid conial charm for example, and if the distance is tied to our pet it will need to take that into consideration as well. Being required to "see" our pets is a disaster waiting to happen, too many line of sight issues exist in the game as it is (sending a pet and the terrain between you and your target is flat, you get a message that says you can't see your target cause a stick is on the ground between you and your target)

If SE "fixes" this first nerf by tethering us to our pets instead of the mobs face, that fixed almost nothing. If SE "fixes" the nerf and forces us to be where we are in line of sight of our pets - this second nerf is going to be far far worse than the 1st nerf.

I'm really just hoping they pull back the nerf, give a reasonable decrease to pet-aoe-dmg-only and move on to more important things that don't break the entire functionality of BST.

[machini]

I think it would be a lot easier to add HP and DEF/MDB to 10 jobs than to change the stats of a thousand NMs, but who knows with SE. They have been known to be lazy in the past and just say "Uh... okay, going forward we won't do that anymore, but you're still screwed on current content.".

When they've done stuff like this in recent memory, they've done it across the board. Instead of lowering Galka HP and raising Taru HP, and lowering Taru MP and raising Galka MP, they just raised every races' HP and MP.

Anyway, the entire reason this is a 'problem' is because of player HP relative to BST Pet HP, right? So lower BST pet HP is the same thing as a increase to player HP in terms of relative utility. But raising player HP would most certainly be across the board, in which case, now the PLD has too much HP relative to the damage output, so the damage output has to go up, in which case now the everyone is in the same boat as they were before, except the BSTs, who now have pets which are just as killable as players, while they themselves, due to lack of DT gear for themselves, are ever worse off than previously.

Without drastic changes, there's only so many ways they can make an NM lethal or threatening. And with how mature the game is, they have to design encounters around the idea that the a group is going to consist of people with certain gear, like A/O PLDs, and Yagrush WHMs. And they don't want current-end game content to be easy to clear, so they make it difficult. And then because it's difficult, they make the rewards better than previous content, to make an incentive to do that. And then new content comes out, which has to be harder, but which needs better gear (incentives), and it just goes on and on and on. Part of the whole reason for Spark gear was fresh players getting to 99 and disliking that they had to go through the gear progression of bayld/delve/skirmish/delve gear to get up to 119 and be useful for current content. It's part of the reason RME holders are so frequently annoyed is as the power creep goes on, the RME get comparatively worse.

There are plenty of ways to address this problem that are good and don't particularly screw anyone over. However, part of the problem is inherent to the game and its mechanics, and part of the problem is the community itself. Only one of those can be addressed to any degree. I just spent an hour or so explaining to someone the relative merits of WHM/SCH to WHM/RDM. I've had to explain over and over why certain multihit WSes are better than "better" WSes. I've seen mythic monks get declines for content because they don't have Oatixur and that's "the best". You can only do so much with design changes. An ignorant playerbase, or a lazy one, cannot be rectified thus. You can lead a child to knowledge but you cannot make him think. And you can create meaningful choices in a game which promote diversity, but you cannot make a player base adapt. People will do the same old same old they always did, and the nail that sticks up gets hammered down, even if it's only sticking up in people's minds.

Restore BST to pre nerf range and make the damage vary with distance to pet.
Restore BST to pre nerf range and reduce pet HP.
Increase certain jobs' HP to compensate (and then hear the howls of people who disagree with which jobs get what).
Fundamentally change the way pet/master gear works so that it's possible for both to be functional at the same time.
Change make damage for AoE TP moves and spells fall off as distance from the target increases
Give other jobs like NIN, RUN, and DNC, more and/or more effective tanking tools
Give healer and support jobs more and/or more effective damage mitigation tools.
Design content specifically so that certain jobs make the content easier, via weakness which can be triggered by certain spells or abilities only accessible to that job as main job.

Those are all things that the devs can do. They could implement them if they wanted. Some are easier than others from a mechanical stand point. As to coding, I can't say, I'm not privy to the internal mechanics of a 13 year old MMO, but from other projects I have seen of similar age, it is likely a complete nightmare in there.

The problem is that often times these changes aren't even necessary because of an inherent limitation, they're not needed at all because the things already exist. Scherzo and Earthen Armor exist: people rarely use them. Some people don't even know they exist. An awful lot of people are completely ignorant of a lot of the game mechanics, which they cannot be blamed for in some way, since they are, by and large, completely hidden, but, at the same time, there are plenty of resources, freely available, where people can go read about Cure Power, what spells are and what they do and how they do it, MP efficiency, etc. And often there are plenty of jobs and combinations that are more than capable of completing content, but just as current follows the path of least resistance, so too does the player base. What works, works, even if something else works better, and people dislike change, and dislike having to adapt. I just spend the last couple of days working on WHM because I've given up on being able to do any relevant content on DNC.

You cannot fix problems with the player base via mechanics changes. People are going to complain about something no matter what. I'm honestly waiting for the hammer to fall on BLU, since I'm now seeing people requiring BLU for content I've not seen people want BLU for before. Several people I know have suddenly started leveling BLU and gearing and hunting spells VERY suddenly after the BST changes, and these were people who didn't even play or have interest in BST; It's just that they have seen the writing on the wall.

[bazookatooth]

It should always have been the case AoE moves deal less damage to other party members due to the smaller HP pool, defense etc.. With the tank taking the most due to increased defense, HP etc... You shouldn't build a game around one job with HUGE defense reduction.

The idea of: "Well this tank job has 85% reduction so lets make the AoE do 5000 DMG, the tank has ~2000 HP so that's 750 DMG before any other reduction" being chosen is just wrong, especially in a game where Weakness and especially double-weakness exists.

I agree whole heatedly. They should fix the damage mechanics of AOE moves etc. instead of adjusting DDs to be more like a PLD. I'm just being realistic about the possibility of them adjusting a bunch of AOE mechanics on a thousand currently existing NMs. With one or two updates remaining, odds are it's not gonna happen. Changing the way the players react to those AOE moves is probably more realistic (albeit not as desirable). In reality though, they probably won't do either. They will probably release a bunch of new marginally better DT- gear that drops from more NMs with crazy AOE mechanics and laugh at us because we will have to beat the very things that we need that gear for 1,000 times in order to get the gear.



If SE "fixes" this first nerf by tethering us to our pets instead of the mobs face, that fixed almost nothing. If SE "fixes" the nerf and forces us to be where we are in line of sight of our pets - this second nerf is going to be far far worse than the 1st nerf.

I'm really just hoping they pull back the nerf, give a reasonable decrease to pet-aoe-dmg-only and move on to more important things that don't break the entire functionality of BST.


I'm reading it as: we will have to be in front of the pet to issue commands. In other words, we will have to be standing on the opposite side of the monster. Which means when we sick our pet on something, we will then have to run past it or at least up next to it to issue commands. This will allow them to increase the command range far enough to allow us to be on the opposite side because the monster will always be between us and the pet. It will also suck so bad that it's unfathomable that someone even suggested it, let alone decided to implement it. Even if that isn't what they are doing, I can't imagine any implementation based on that description that isn't absolutely horrible in every way.

To SE, For the love of all that is good... Put the range back the way it was before this insanity started and go fix something that is actually broken. You are dividing your player base and alienating your customers. No good can come of this.

[bazookatooth]

I think restoring the old pet command distance, cutting pet HP in half, cutting reward recast in half and allowing pet food to stack to 99 (it should have already really) would be a pretty good way to bring bst pets in line with normal DDs. They might need to test it a little to get it right. That would make a pet more similar to a standard DD in terms of the amount of damage it can survive and how it is healed. I also think they should add a separate ability that consumes those status removal foods instead of hooking them to reward so that nobody ever uses them. It would add a level of complexity to the job that isn't just running in circles in order to issue commands because of an arbitrary distance nerf.

That won't change the fact that SMN, BLM and RNG can still kill things just as fast without getting near the NM though.

It's true that they increased MP and HP across the board, but that doesn't mean they had to. I can't say for sure whether or not they know how to easily raise individual jobs HP or not, but I believe they do and they should.

When the choice is between bringing 5 mages and a pld (or 2 bst or RNG), killing an NM incredibly fast and having a 1/6 shot at the item you want, or bringing a couple SAMs and a boatload of support to keep them alive, people are going to pick the first option every time. Even if they completely nerf BST back to the stone ages, People will (and do) just use mages or SMN or RNG and do the exact same thing. They will leave the front line jobs behind. All they are doing is changing seats on the titanic. If they want SAM, THF, MNK, DRK, WAR, etc. to be relevant again, they have to either nerf everything that is not those jobs, or boost those jobs to the point that they can do the content without having to bring more people or jump through more hoops than the other set ups. There's no two ways about it.

[Vargos]

Even if they completely nerf BST back to the stone ages, People will (and do) just use mages or SMN or RNG and do the exact same thing

Agreed. It's all I've been seeing. As I type this I'm watching a pld and small group of mages with a geo take down T3 Escha - Ru'Aun NM's as if they were EP.


If they want SAM, THF, MNK, DRK, WAR, etc. to be relevant again, they have to either nerf everything that is not those jobs, or boost those jobs to the point that they can do the content

Agreed again. I don't even like beast as it is. If I had my way I'd still have +charm and +chr sets while using native pets. It was a lot more fun before jugs ruled, and required some skill. That said I am only back on beast for this reason quoted. I'm not fond of mage jobs and my DD jobs are ineffective for current content.

[dasva]

Well part of it is the players... while our tanks ability to outsurvive DDs is a lot better theses days and there are more annoying AoEs using slower "safe" methods of fighting has always been an option and usually the first option when doing stuff. Then once we get to know the content better use more melees backed up with the proper buffs/debuffs to keep them alive to kill things faster. Part of the problem now is a large part of the population of the game doesn't want to or can't go thru the extra effort of getting the proper support to make it good or in some cases even feasible. On top of that the requirements have sort have gone up with a lot of the harder content wanting geos now on top of the old normal support. I mean can you kill faster with a good set up? Sure but how long are you going to take setting it up and then having it fall apart when specific job leaves while say a manaburn just find another nuker or tank or whatever. With pets just find another smn or pup maybe bst. There are still a couple of key positions in those that might take time to find like cor or geo or sch but it's not as bad

[Gwydion]

We’ve been receiving a lot of feedback about this.

Since there are monsters with varying sizes, if we make adjustments so that the somewhat larger monsters are the benchmark, then the distance in which commands can be used will be no different than before. While we can’t make any promises at the time, we will be looking into changing the target of pet commands, shifting them from the master to the pet. We believe that the way it feels to play will become very different, so we would like to hear everyone’s feedback once it is implemented.
*There is a possibility that commands cannot be accepted when pets are out of your field of vision.

Camate,
Please put BST back the way it was. I also wanted to confirm that I have experienced the issue you posted in red: Commands are randomly not accepted if I am less than 7 yalms, but my pet is not on my screen. This is the most frustrating video game experience in my 25 years of gaming. Lastly, I don't think anyone wants the target of BST commands to shift from master to pet. It was never broken and is changing 13 years of play-style.

[Grekumah]

I’d like to give a slightly deeper explanation as to how we will be adjusting beastmaster in the next version update.

As mentioned previously, we will be changing the target of pet commands, and shifting the focus of the target to your pet. Up until now pet commands were focalized on yourself, and it’s been difficult to grasp the effective range. However, with this adjustment there will be a subtarget display over your pet, and you’ll be able to better judge the range by looking at its color.

Many have been concerned about commands not being executed when pets are not in your field of vision; however, when using macros with the “me” pronoun, pet commands will be executed as you have been used to up until now. Using macros with this pronoun will not bring up a subtarget, so in the event you want this to happen, you can utilize “stnpc.”

We realize there are many that have become very used to the way the current system works, and we’ve made adjustments to keep this option intact while adding another. We hope that you utilize the option that works best for your playstyle.

[Olor]

Please just put it back the way it was - if you want to nerf BST please just nerf our damage. I miss enjoying XI.

[larrymc]

I’d like to give a slightly deeper explanation as to how we will be adjusting beastmaster in the next version update.

As mentioned previously, we will be changing the target of pet commands, and shifting the focus of the target to your pet. Up until now pet commands were focalized on yourself, and it’s been difficult to grasp the effective range. However, with this adjustment there will be a subtarget display over your pet, and you’ll be able to better judge the range by looking at its color.

Many have been concerned about commands not being executed when pets are not in your field of vision; however, when using macros with the “me” pronoun, pet commands will be executed as you have been used to up until now. Using macros with this pronoun will not bring up a subtarget, so in the event you want this to happen, you can utilize “stnpc.”

We realize there are many that have become very used to the way the current system works, and we’ve made adjustments to keep this option intact while adding another. We hope that you utilize the option that works best for your playstyle.

I wish you would actually provide a clear & deep explanation of the change - this is not clear at all how it will impact gameplay for bst.

[Malthar]

What he's saying is they're going to leave the range as is and change the target from <me> to <pet> (using <stnpc>) so you can see exactly how horrible the range is.

Grekumah, I don't think the devs get it. We would rather have pets nerfed back to pre-buffed era rather than have this distance nerf. It's absolutely horrible any which way you spin it.

[Faithful]

This is a horribly solution. Just put Bst back the way it was a few years ago. I don't even care about the damage boosting it's received. Put the range on pet commands back the way they were. Doesn't anyone involved with this game realize what a mean spirited move it was to fundamentally change a job like Bst after all these years right at the end of the games life. I've been paying my fee's for around 12 years and right at the end you ruin my reason to play. This just doesn't make any sense.

[Voidstorm]

So, just make it so Pet needs 1000 TP to use an ability. Solved? sounds good here.

[Olor]

Doesn't anyone involved with this game realize what a mean spirited move it was to fundamentally change a job like Bst after all these years right at the end of the games life. I've been paying my fee's for around 12 years and right at the end you ruin my reason to play. This just doesn't make any sense.

This. I cannot emphasize this enough. This change is cruel to BSTs that have enjoyed the game for years. Please just put it back. Please Grekumah can you please just tell the developers to put it back - do a damage nerf it they want to make BST useless for party content like it was for more than a decade. I don't even care - just make the job fun to play again. This is terrible.

[Rubicant82]

The moment everyone realize that complaining about the change will do no good, and relearn how to play the job the better.
This has happened to almost every job in the game. A fundamental change at some point in its life or another.
-ga nerf, rudra nerf, Twilight Scythe nerf, etc etc etc the history of the game is spotted with nerfs of for every job.
Maybe instead of complaining you could give constructive feedback, that is usable. That might get the dev's attention. Where as complaints are just contemplates are generally ignored.
Also; reading over the bst jpn forum it appears most of them support the change. So... there is that too.
Good luck fighting this battle, the blms lost out maybe bst will succeed where every other job has failed at reversing a change.

[Ataraxia]

Grekumah
We realize there are many that have become very used to the way the current system works, and we’ve made adjustments to keep this option intact while adding another. We hope that you utilize the option that works best for your playstyle.

So does this mean you are allowing BST to have their old range back? that is what your sentences is implying and that Community Team adding something new to BST "command shift from Master to Pet". If that is the case than a lot of BST will be very very happy but if i misinterpret on what you said Grekumah than please correct me. I had a good feeling before about adjustment when Camate made a post but now I have this really really BAD feeling. :/

[machini]

The moment everyone realize that complaining about the change will do no good, and relearn how to play the job the better.
This has happened to almost every job in the game. A fundamental change at some point in its life or another.
-ga nerf, rudra nerf, Twilight Scythe nerf, etc etc etc the history of the game is spotted with nerfs of for every job.
Maybe instead of complaining you could give constructive feedback, that is usable. That might get the dev's attention. Where as complaints are just contemplates are generally ignored.
Also; reading over the bst jpn forum it appears most of them support the change. So... there is that too.
Good luck fighting this battle, the blms lost out maybe bst will succeed where every other job has failed at reversing a change.

Do you even understand what 'constructive feedback' is? It does not mean servile, sycophantic panegyrism. People have stated how the change affects them, how it has, in their opinions, altered the job to near uselessness, and have offered many suggestions they think would address this issue, the easiest one being to undo the range change. Add to that simply varying the damage dealt by distance to pet, and now BST can continue to play as they always have, but not deal so much damage that they are desired to the exclusion of all else, as dealing comparable damage to what they did previously would still require what SE was: BST being required to be in danger to put out large amounts of damage. If a BST wants to stay out of damage range, they can do so, but with reduced damage output. If they want to put themselves at risk, they get rewarded with increased (equal to the old) damage.

[Alhanelem]

Grekumah

So does this mean you are allowing BST to have their old range back? that is what your sentences is implying and that Community Team adding something new to BST "command shift from Master to Pet". If that is the case than a lot of BST will be very very happy but if i misinterpret on what you said Grekumah than please correct me. I had a good feeling before about adjustment when Camate made a post but now I have this really really BAD feeling. :/
It means you have the choice of seeing whether you're in range with the subtarget arrow being on the pet, or the option of not seeing it by using a macro. They're not restoring the range, or doing anything to alleviate the real problem.

[Alhanelem]

The moment everyone realize that complaining about the change will do no good, and relearn how to play the job the better.
This has happened to almost every job in the game. A fundamental change at some point in its life or another.
-ga nerf, rudra nerf, Twilight Scythe nerf, etc etc etc the history of the game is spotted with nerfs of for every job.
Maybe instead of complaining you could give constructive feedback, that is usable. That might get the dev's attention. Where as complaints are just contemplates are generally ignored.
Also; reading over the bst jpn forum it appears most of them support the change. So... there is that too.
Good luck fighting this battle, the blms lost out maybe bst will succeed where every other job has failed at reversing a change.
Just because a JP player says something, doesn't mean they're right just because they're Japanese.

[Alhanelem]

I’d like to give a slightly deeper explanation as to how we will be adjusting beastmaster in the next version update.

As mentioned previously, we will be changing the target of pet commands, and shifting the focus of the target to your pet. Up until now pet commands were focalized on yourself, and it’s been difficult to grasp the effective range. However, with this adjustment there will be a subtarget display over your pet, and you’ll be able to better judge the range by looking at its color.

Many have been concerned about commands not being executed when pets are not in your field of vision; however, when using macros with the “me” pronoun, pet commands will be executed as you have been used to up until now. Using macros with this pronoun will not bring up a subtarget, so in the event you want this to happen, you can utilize “stnpc.”

We realize there are many that have become very used to the way the current system works, and we’ve made adjustments to keep this option intact while adding another. We hope that you utilize the option that works best for your playstyle.

The dev team needs to fundamentally rethink its strategy to balance BST, because their change does not solve the problem and only make the job more frustrating to play for no good reason.

[Ataraxia]

It means you have the choice of seeing whether you're in range with the subtarget arrow being on the pet, or the option of not seeing it by using a macro. They're not restoring the range, or doing anything to alleviate the real problem.

If this is true than OMG!! this is really bad news. :/ Update is suppose to be coming soon and yet we haven't heard news on what is really coming?

[Leonardus]

Many of us have enjoyed BST the way it was for years and apparently we're the ones that are wrong.

Okay, SE.

Every time I start to have fun lately, I remember that I've been shot in the foot. Excuse me while I hobble closer towards my pet and pretend everything is business as usual.

[Kraggy]

I’d like to give a slightly deeper explanation as to how we will be adjusting beastmaster in the next version update.

As mentioned previously, we will be changing the target of pet commands, and shifting the focus of the target to your pet. Up until now pet commands were focalized on yourself, and it’s been difficult to grasp the effective range. However, with this adjustment there will be a subtarget display over your pet, and you’ll be able to better judge the range by looking at its color.

Many have been concerned about commands not being executed when pets are not in your field of vision; however, when using macros with the “me” pronoun, pet commands will be executed as you have been used to up until now. Using macros with this pronoun will not bring up a subtarget, so in the event you want this to happen, you can utilize “stnpc.”

We realize there are many that have become very used to the way the current system works, and we’ve made adjustments to keep this option intact while adding another. We hope that you utilize the option that works best for your playstyle.
Your devs still don't get it do they .. NOTHING'S BROKEN, NOTHING NEEDS FIXING! We didn't ASK for you to "add another" anything!

[bazookatooth]

<player> It's stupid that I can't issue commands to my pet from the opposite side of an NM. The distance is too short. Please fix.

<SE> Good news guys! In order to fix the problem, we've added a feature that will show you that you can't issue commands to your pet from there. Let us know if there's anything else that you want us to break what you think!

<player> But we already know we can't issue commands from there. That's why we asked you to fix it....

[Nicknick]

Hi devs, I'd like to share my feedback. I know most players won't like what I have to say, but if you're willing to read my post please hear me out.

BST has been insanely powerful for awhile now. Having to be in range to control your pet forces the player to take some risk to balance out the power budget. I think forcing BSTs into range is a healthy choice overall for balance even though players are whining about it because they are used to taking no risk for the reward.

Sorry to say this everyone, but a job that involves zero risk evaluation, while only involving you watching your pets make you some sweet, lazy loot is just a bad design.

Now, that being said, I think the devs should be bending over backwards to facilitate this NEW design control to actually work - and as of right now it doesn't. Being out of range for a pet ability when you're fighting the mob on the other side is terrible and needs to be fixed.

I know I'll probably get a lot of flak for saying this, but I think the devs need to stick to their guns with this new BST design decision while building the quality of life for controlling the job so it works as intended.

So why do I say this is a healthy balance choice for BST? Creating a paradigm of risk allows the power budget for BST to be adjusted in other areas, perhaps in the form of new abilities/additions being added to BST in the future. Shifting power budget around is a fundamental aspect of game design in RPGs. This is a good thing, assuming the budget actually gets shifted somewhere else.

I really hope the end result of these changes put BST in a good spot with some form of risk/decision making and that they are not reverted, but it goes without saying some work needs to be done to help player control.

Thanks for your time!

Cheers,
Nick

[Jile]

Nick, thank you for giving more thought to what BST are going through than the average person that supports this Nerf.

SE designed BST to be away from our pets. This is a complete fundamental transition 100% different than they designed our gear and for the Nerf to function better after they get it to work as intended SE needs to redesign BST gear to be beneficial to the master at the same time as our pets. Unless they have the dev time for that, they need to undo the Nerf and apply a simple Nerf like aoe-pet dmg multiplier decrease and stop wasting precious dev time.

[Malthar]

I really hope the end result of these changes put BST in a good spot with some form of risk/decision making and that they are not reverted, but it goes without saying some work needs to be done to help player control.

Hi Nick,

We career bsts wouldn't mind the nerf so much if it didn't cripple our job. Most career bst would actually love to mix it up with the mob and pump out massive Cloudsplitter damage, but the current gear situation either allows us or our pets to be close to the mob. If we gear for the pet we die. If we gear for ourselves the pet dies. If we gear for both we both die. It's a lose/lose situation. And to compound this problem, the range that SE set is way too short to be practical. It literally castrates us and makes us impotent. Taking our option away to play either close or far is one thing. Completely destroying our job is another.

As for taking risk, the risk is always there in keeping our pet alive. We have to time our rewards/sic/ready and other abilities just right or the pet would get destroyed. And guess who the mob will be coming after next?

[dasva]

The clear solution is to reduce the range of all jas and spells to just outside of melee range. Staying away from mobs is clearly OP and half the jobs do it!

[Gwydion]

Hi SE,
I'd like to share my feedback as I leveled Beastmaster from 1 to 75 solo many years ago. This nerf hurts us very badly. You changed SMN from 16 to 22 yalms, so why not make BST from 22 to 16 yalms? The current 7 yalm distance is very frustrating but the deeper explanation you give shows us via the target cursor that we are out of the 7 yalm range. This is not helpful.

Also, you're allowing us to use /bstpet 1 <me> (AND <stnpc>) ...and I appreciate that you're trying to lessen the damage to our job by including two methods of executing the pet ready move.

But, doesn't that just sound backwards? We're being forced to adhere to a broken rule (7 yalm distance) and target by either <me> or <stnpc> ...This doesn't fix the core problem that we are chasing our pet constantly or sometimes cannot even execute a Pet ready move with our current macros that use <me> (depending on whether the size of the mob or if our pet is on screen). Telling us that we're out of range or our pet is not visible via a cursor change doesn't fix the problem. If I'm not able to execute a Pet move in this 7 yalm restriction, why not just play a loud siren noise from my speakers? I'd certainly get the hint then.

None of this makes any sense, SE. I could not have leveled Beastmaster from 1 to 75 using charm if this were in effect.

[bazookatooth]

Hi devs, I'd like to share my feedback. I know most players won't like what I have to say, but if you're willing to read my post please hear me out.

BST has been insanely powerful for awhile now. Having to be in range to control your pet forces the player to take some risk to balance out the power budget. I think forcing BSTs into range is a healthy choice overall for balance even though players are whining about it because they are used to taking no risk for the reward.

Sorry to say this everyone, but a job that involves zero risk evaluation, while only involving you watching your pets make you some sweet, lazy loot is just a bad design.

Now, that being said, I think the devs should be bending over backwards to facilitate this NEW design control to actually work - and as of right now it doesn't. Being out of range for a pet ability when you're fighting the mob on the other side is terrible and needs to be fixed.

I know I'll probably get a lot of flak for saying this, but I think the devs need to stick to their guns with this new BST design decision while building the quality of life for controlling the job so it works as intended.

So why do I say this is a healthy balance choice for BST? Creating a paradigm of risk allows the power budget for BST to be adjusted in other areas, perhaps in the form of new abilities/additions being added to BST in the future. Shifting power budget around is a fundamental aspect of game design in RPGs. This is a good thing, assuming the budget actually gets shifted somewhere else.

I really hope the end result of these changes put BST in a good spot with some form of risk/decision making and that they are not reverted, but it goes without saying some work needs to be done to help player control.

Thanks for your time!

Cheers,
Nick

If they are to stick to their guns, the least they should do is fix the issue with being out of range and allow us the ability to reasonably remove statuses from our pet like real players. It's pretty ridiculous when an NM hits me with amnesia and it wears off but then I still can't do anything. Or when I get hit with break and the WHM has to remove it so that I can get out of range of AOEs but I still have to stand there doing nothing for a minute and a half while I watch my frozen pet just eat damage. Before I didn't mind that my pet had vulnerabilities because having the pet take them lowered my risk, but Now I am part of some weird healing chain where 2 characters have to be healed for the price of 1 DD and a lot of things just can't be removed either because of timers or the fact that there just plain isn't a remedy for pet debuffs. You just can't afford to use ready as a status removal because of the timer.

I'm still of the opinion that they should have made pet HP more in line with players, adjusted reward values and timers appropriately and given bst various status removal options to make the job more complex and more on par with others in terms of survival.

[Vold]

I’d like to give a slightly deeper explanation as to how we will be adjusting beastmaster in the next version update.

As mentioned previously, we will be changing the target of pet commands, and shifting the focus of the target to your pet. Up until now pet commands were focalized on yourself, and it’s been difficult to grasp the effective range. However, with this adjustment there will be a subtarget display over your pet, and you’ll be able to better judge the range by looking at its color.

Many have been concerned about commands not being executed when pets are not in your field of vision; however, when using macros with the “me” pronoun, pet commands will be executed as you have been used to up until now. Using macros with this pronoun will not bring up a subtarget, so in the event you want this to happen, you can utilize “stnpc.”

We realize there are many that have become very used to the way the current system works, and we’ve made adjustments to keep this option intact while adding another. We hope that you utilize the option that works best for your playstyle.


The moment everyone realize that complaining about the change will do no good, and relearn how to play the job the better.
This has happened to almost every job in the game. A fundamental change at some point in its life or another.
-ga nerf, rudra nerf, Twilight Scythe nerf, etc etc etc the history of the game is spotted with nerfs of for every job.
Maybe instead of complaining you could give constructive feedback, that is usable. That might get the dev's attention. Where as complaints are just contemplates are generally ignored.
Also; reading over the bst jpn forum it appears most of them support the change. So... there is that too.
Good luck fighting this battle, the blms lost out maybe bst will succeed where every other job has failed at reversing a change.


http://i.imgur.com/Y3zBPUi.gif

[Gwydion]

Grekumah, Camate,
Could you please give us a more thorough explanation? Thank you for allowing us to use <me> and the new <stnpc> ...However, using <stnpc> and showing us we're out of the 7-yalm range doesn't mitigate the problem. (With <me> still in effect, our frustrating levels only stay on par between September and November updates). Please help us.

Edit: Would it be possible to recover our range from 7 to 16 or 22 yalms by way of BST Job Point Gifts? Something to help us return to normalcy is better than nothing.

[bazookatooth]

Grekumah, Camate,
Could you please give us a more thorough explanation? Thank you for allowing us to use <me> and the new <stnpc> ...However, using <stnpc> and showing us we're out of the 7-yalm range doesn't mitigate the problem. (With <me> still in effect, our frustrating levels only stay on par between September and November updates). Please help us.

Edit: Would it be possible to recover our range from 7 to 16 or 22 yalms by way of BST Job Point Gifts? Something to help us return to normalcy is better than nothing.

It going to behave exactly the same. They just added the option to see the range. It's a useless change that 99.99% of people will never bother with.

It's like if we told them that our car gets crappy gas mileage and instead of fixing it, they just gave us a gauge to show us how crappy the mileage really is.

[Sp1cyryan]

There is nothing broken about the range on BST. If anything the only change should be that reward has a longer range.

People asking for the strength of the job to be nerfed so the distance can come back are asking to be made into a joke job again. Then these same people will of course be upset no one wants them for anything anymore again and then ask to be taken seriously.

You guys should be happy that you get to maintain your strength instead of being put back into a position of having no one that cares about you besides a Currier Carrie.

[Olor]

People asking for the strength of the job to be nerfed so the distance can come back are asking to be made into a joke job again.

No, I am asking for the job I enjoyed to be enjoyable again. Being allowed in a party doesn't help me when I solo everything because I'm not one of the uber elite.

[Jile]

There is nothing broken about the range on BST. If anything the only change should be that reward has a longer range.

Incorrect.

When your fighting beside your pet and ja's still don't work, I'd call that broken.

I'll take Courier Carrie over being nonfunctional. SE should turn the test server back on so these major screw-ups can be fixed before they make jobs impotent with a single overkill Nerf.

SE restore our job, please, I'm tired of people quitting because you ruined the playability of the job we pay you to play.

[VahnEris]

No, I am asking for the job I enjoyed to be enjoyable again. Being allowed in a party doesn't help me when I solo everything because I'm not one of the uber elite.

My linkshell, and the people in it, are often the ones referenced when people talk about Beastmasters being over powered. We've proven time and time again that there isn't anything negative about the range change, except Reward. Reward should have never been included in the range change.

What you are asking for WOULD change how we play, as Beastmasters would no longer deal as much damage. They aren't going to change the way damage functions based on distance. The only thing that COULD happen is that they just reduce damage period. That hurts my group. We'd rather have less range, because if you understand how to play the game, actually build a fast cast/stoneskin/cure set, it's irrelevant if you take a hit. You had to have seen Beaztmaster doing HTMBs on Very Difficult. Notice how even on Very Difficult, he can recover just fine and actually WIN those fights? It's because Beastmaster isn't broken. It's the player base that is. If the job was "broken" like people keep saying, how are we able to kill Sky Gods V2, Escha T3s, Divine Might V2 on VD, or any other amount of content we do just fine with how things are now? We couldn't.

[Jile]

Like Olor I've spent most of my xi-life soloing on BST, I don't have elite gear and don't foresee it happening post-Nerf. While the top 1% may be able to live with this Nerf, we can't.

How about a compromise.

A smn style ja like avatars favor. When in use though it restores ja range to pre-Nerf but lowers dmg our pets do, when off the current nerfed distance and dmg are in effect.

[Olor]

Like Olor I've spent most of my xi-life soloing on BST, I don't have elite gear and don't foresee it happening post-Nerf. While the top 1% may be able to live with this Nerf, we can't.

How about a compromise.

A smn style ja like avatars favor. When in use though it restores ja range to pre-Nerf but lowers dmg our pets do, when off the current nerfed distance and dmg are in effect.

Seriously I'd take this.

And people posting about how people with perfect gear and capped JP don't mind the change are ignoring the fact that 90+% of the playerbase is not anything like that. Punishing folks who just want to have some fun solo so that people who don't even care about the job and will use whatever flavour of the month turns their fancy get what they want? That's demented.

[VahnEris]

What content, specifically, do you want to do that you CAN NOT do? I'm guessing that if you're holding onto this opinion, you've surely got some examples of content you are unable to handle. I'm not asking this antagonistically, I'm asking because I am going to help you. You can refuse or disregard the help if you want, that's. But I honestly don't know what you are struggling with. Please, educate me.

As for perfect gear, capped JP, ect. I think about 6 of our Beastmasters have 1200 JP, maybe more than that. The rest are around the 100-500 range. They still do content as well. Those same 6 Beastmasters are the only ones with Aymur, everyone else mostly uses skirmish/delve/escha. Ready Move Gear is still mostly Arco/Taeon, which is easy to get solo. Time consuming, sure. But you can solo it.

Beastmaster DT gear comes from Skirmish 1, mostly. Various other pieces come from other places, but I can't think of any that comes from current end game content that requires a group to get. Fastcast gear can be all Taeon if you don't have the means to get other pieces, but there are options. There are supplemental pieces that DO come from end game content, but they certainly are not required. All four pieces of stoneskin gear come from old content, and two of them can be bought off the auction house. Cure potency gear can also be all Taeon.

As for the remark about people who don't even care about the job. Yeah. They invested that much time and gil into a job that's the "flavor of the month". And we're all still playing them after the "nerf", and rather than complaining on forums, we figured out how to make the jobs work so we could keep playing them. Clearly we don't care. /s

[Jile]

One fight that was laughable that isn't for me now is AATT. Frankly, never used to die from meteor but I've eaten dirt lately on this, for example.

[Xilk]

Changing the target of ready commands will do nothing for this buggyness.
We know how far away from our pets we are.
The distance required to execute a ready command is different depending on the pet.
Its buggy. It makes playing bst clunky. I was sitting on my pet fighting Wepket 2 days ago and I was getting error that I was too far from pet. Its rediculous and ineffective.

[Tidis]

One fight that was laughable that isn't for me now is AATT. Frankly, never used to die from meteor but I've eaten dirt lately on this, for example.

How will the distance changes have altered your survivability of meteor, you would have been in range pre and post nerf, unless what you're saying is that having to be 7 yalms from your pet makes it harder to run away from meteor in which case you probably deserve to be eating dirt from it. Heaven forbid you might actually have to team up with other people in an MMO rather than soloing everything.

[Malthar]

SE still doesn't get it. They're still proceeding with this ridiculous job adjustment. It reminds me of when they wanted to give bst stoneskin for their SP2. Stoneskin... SE, do you even play this game?

[Jile]

Changing the target of ready commands will do nothing for this buggyness.
We know how far away from our pets we are.
The distance required to execute a ready command is different depending on the pet.
Its buggy. It makes playing bst clunky. I was sitting on my pet fighting Wepket 2 days ago and I was getting error that I was too far from pet. Its rediculous and ineffective.

This, precisely.


How will the distance changes have altered your survivability of meteor, you would have been in range pre and post nerf, unless what you're saying is that having to be 7 yalms from your pet makes it harder to run away from meteor in which case you probably deserve to be eating dirt from it. Heaven forbid you might actually have to team up with other people in an MMO rather than soloing everything.

Tidis, respectfully..... You are one of those people that said no to BST at bird parties then got mad when I soloed the camps instead, I get it but moving past your pain, my BST was designed to solo and the Nerf negatively impacted its designed function and the majority of BST are upset. If you can't understand that then go play hello kitty world or at least don't reply on BST threads.

[bazookatooth]

How will the distance changes have altered your survivability of meteor, you would have been in range pre and post nerf, unless what you're saying is that having to be 7 yalms from your pet makes it harder to run away from meteor in which case you probably deserve to be eating dirt from it. Heaven forbid you might actually have to team up with other people in an MMO rather than soloing everything.

It keeps you in range of sleepga and Breakga, which pretty much guarantees that you will lose.

[Ataraxia]

The clear solution is to reduce the range of all jas and spells to just outside of melee range. Staying away from mobs is clearly OP and half the jobs do it!

You just might be right Taru. Doing this will make other people understand how mess up it is to reduce range from BST.

[Tidis]

It keeps you in range of sleepga and Breakga, which pretty much guarantees that you will lose.

Anyone who tries to solo something can get ruined by sleep or break, why should BST be above that?

[bazookatooth]

Anyone who tries to solo something can get ruined by sleep or break, why should BST be above that?

Because they were before and it was one of the things that made people like the job. Why should every job be the same?

[cebera001]

Ive been playing bst along time and i enjoy it, however my views are simple range should be nerfed to about 16 yalms not 7 so if we choose to fight, we can or stand back and run in, however there is more to the problems than just ready commands there is reward aswell, having to be close to reward your pet is just silly, I would like to see devs to do something simple like outer rukaz skirmish and fight iron giant nm, which tbh can be a easy solo with fighting from behind while pet tanks, but you are too far away from behind which is crazy. like im 2/3 of completing aymur now and with this nerf i rather just chuck it and start again and do burtgang as it has become that bad.

so if you can devs make reward like it was 22 yalms or whatever it was, and if fighting to 16 yalms ready, so we can actually survive from being on aoe conal hits.

hope devs can do something but changing command to just ready move <pet> instead of <me> and if its still 7 yalms will be no change at all, but if the devs can explain what changing name will do for us would be appreciated.

[Tidis]

Because they were before and it was one of the things that made people like the job. Why should every job be the same?

They don't have to be the same but BST was too powerful so SE needed to take action to balance the game, I know your army of BSTs will come in and say "We're not stronger than DDs", "We're not better tanks than PLD" but you roll 3 party roles into one job, that is over-powered. Was the distance nerf the way to combat this? Probably not, in the grand scheme of things it hasn't changed a lot, half the BST are still going in and doing what they were doing before while the other half are here in the forums complaining that they can no longer play their job.

But I suppose that's what you guys are good at, you made a huge fuss over the changes to Spur JPs even though SE clearly stated Spur was never meant to work it had been and that had been a bug they were fixing.

[Tidis]

In that case I will leave you be, you can all pat yourselves on the back and tell eachother you're right while liking eachothers comments and chewing out anyone who thinks otherwise, heaven forbid someone new comes in here and doesn't dare support the hypothesis that BST has been victimised.

[Jile]

SE, please listen to the people paying you to play BST. The range Nerf didn't do anything but negatively impact the playability of our job. Changing the target from "me" to "pet" does not address the fact the playability was negatively impacted.

Tidis, read what most BST have said. Most of us admit the pet dmg is op like BLU, BLM, SCH and SMN are op. We're not advocating they be nerfed but we just don't like how our job "plays" after the Nerf.

It's not even necessarily the fact we're expected to frontline that is the most important issue. While other jobs have had trait and gear progression with their frontline intent in mind, ours wasn't because before the Nerf that was never a thought and our gear is designed to completely render either the pet useless or us completely useless and if this new concept is going to work SE needs to invest dev time into completely revamping our gear and traits to make sense as if our job had naturally progressed them with that in mind.

If that isn't something SE has dev time for we should see them roll back the Nerf instead of dipping it in a new color without addressing the issues it created.

I don't want to argue about our differing opinions, but I do want SE to let us enjoy whatever remaining time we have on this game we all love.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

They don't have to be the same but BST was too powerful so SE needed to take action to balance the game, I know your army of BSTs will come in and say "We're not stronger than DDs", "We're not better tanks than PLD" but you roll 3 party roles into one job, that is over-powered. Was the distance nerf the way to combat this? Probably not, in the grand scheme of things it hasn't changed a lot, half the BST are still going in and doing what they were doing before while the other half are here in the forums complaining that they can no longer play their job.

But I suppose that's what you guys are good at, you made a huge fuss over the changes to Spur JPs even though SE clearly stated Spur was never meant to work it had been and that had been a bug they were fixing.

I suppose you're also in favour of a NERF to BLU then as well? My guess is since you have it levelled, No.

[Angemon]

BLU doesn't need a nerf, they are pretty much useless on ilevel135 (Bringing a BLU to KIrin v2 or AV v2 is silly compared to a BLM.) BLU requires much more prep work too.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

BLU doesn't need a nerf, they are pretty much useless on ilevel135 (Bringing a BLU to KIrin v2 or AV v2 is silly compared to a BLM.) BLU requires much more prep work too.

But can still do "three roles" with that work, just as BST could, using the person's argument I quoted that would make them need a NERF too, that's the problem with this mentality, it falls apart rather easily and ends up

"Waaaaahhhhhhh, my job isn't as good as said job so make said job weaker."

Rather than making the weaker job, stronger.

Also interesting is the people with this mindset are ignoring that BST's has a problem with what was adjusted and even stated they'd be fine with a DMG reduction or something else, which is a better suggestion then a MASSIVE job change 12 years into the game.

[Angemon]

BLU can't do three roles without swapping spells and equipsets, compare to BST who can do it instantly. ^^

[Kensagaku]

And BST can't do all three roles without swapping gear and/or pets. Tank? They have to be wearing DT gear, and up close that means a hybrid of master DT too. DD? Switch in DA/Attack/Acc gear, because they can whiff as much as anyone else. Support? Aside from some self buffs and a handful of debuffs (infrasonics and whatever the beetle move is) they've got nothing. Healer? Sure, if you want to use the rabbit, but good luck performing other roles successfully there. Your argument means nothing when that's the case for most jobs in the game.

And theoretically, you could perform all three roles at the same time on BLU without swapping spells. Set a healing spell, have Mighty Guard (with diffusion) and Diamondhide (the only AoE buff I can bring to mind atm) for buffs, offensive traits set via spells and enhanced with gifts for DD, and if you really feel froggy, you can even set TH1. All of that is viable, albeit forcing you to stretch your points and reduce some of your capabilities somewhat.

As a disclaimer, I play both BLU and BST, and love both jobs for different reasons. So let's stop comparing apples to oranges, shall we?

[detlef]

Crying to nerf other jobs is really pathetic. "I'm having less fun right now, SE please make the game less fun for other players so they can be unhappy like me."

[Olor]

Changing the target of ready commands will do nothing for this buggyness.
We know how far away from our pets we are.
The distance required to execute a ready command is different depending on the pet.
Its buggy. It makes playing bst clunky. I was sitting on my pet fighting Wepket 2 days ago and I was getting error that I was too far from pet. Its rediculous and ineffective.

This is the problem, it's just not fun

[Daniel_Hatcher]

BLU can't do three roles without swapping spells and equipsets, compare to BST who can do it instantly. ^^

Yes they can, not to the best as they can if they focused on one role only, but they can do a set that can do all three at a reliable level.


Crying to nerf other jobs is really pathetic. "I'm having less fun right now, SE please make the game less fun for other players so they can be unhappy like me."

Basically, also odd that the thought is NERF not BUFF, FFXI has really messed with peoples views of what an MMO should be.

[Skyrant_Kangaroomouse]

I’d like to give a slightly deeper explanation as to how we will be adjusting beastmaster in the next version update.

As mentioned previously, we will be changing the target of pet commands, and shifting the focus of the target to your pet. Up until now pet commands were focalized on yourself, and it’s been difficult to grasp the effective range. However, with this adjustment there will be a subtarget display over your pet, and you’ll be able to better judge the range by looking at its color.

Many have been concerned about commands not being executed when pets are not in your field of vision; however, when using macros with the “me” pronoun, pet commands will be executed as you have been used to up until now. Using macros with this pronoun will not bring up a subtarget, so in the event you want this to happen, you can utilize “stnpc.”

We realize there are many that have become very used to the way the current system works, and we’ve made adjustments to keep this option intact while adding another. We hope that you utilize the option that works best for your playstyle.

Giving us a visual confirmation that we are too far does not solve the issue. The issue is the RANGE IS TOO SMALL. Increase it to 10-15 yalms and we are good. No one want's 30 yalms like SMN has now.

The Distance Varies with the size of the pet and the player. Try Taru and the cricket or rabbit. You basically have to RIDE the damn thing to issue any commands!


1. ALL END GAME Monsters are BIG! Is that so hard to understand?
2. Pets Engage wherever they want. We got little to no control from which side they attack.
3. Pet's randomly change position, attack adds or simply decide to run inside the mob and do a little dance.

Behind the Monster? That's a laugh! You can't even stand on it's side. The range is too LOW. If you can't see how this is a problem then i am sorry to say this: You are ignorant.

http://i.imgur.com/jpS4sRJ.jpg

[Xilk]

nice screenshot Skyrant... but I was alot closer than that and still getting distance error. Chapuli is more like 2.5 yalms... Tiger or rabbit I have to be 5
Some I can get as far as 7, but that's the max.
what's worse is when you are fighting a big NM in something like a wildskeeper reive or anything where there are a large number or players and trusts.. I was sitting literally ontop of pet and could not reward it for the range bugginess.

Also, you cannot find your pet in a big melee to even get close enough to it. you need to heel pet and run away from fight just to get a bearring again, so you can get close enough to use your abilities.. its really silly.

[dasva]

Another problem in bigger fights even if things weren't buggy is the whole pet AI immediately going after whatever last hit it. So some mob uses some ranged move/spell your pet goes after it and you have to run away from the thing you are fighting and go follow your pet as it goes to various mobs. Been killing a lot of worms lately for cp and it's ridiculous how much I have to constantly move just to stay in range of using moves while never being out of the aoe range of the mobs being attacked

[Gwydion]

Another problem in bigger fights even if things weren't buggy is the whole pet AI immediately going after whatever last hit it. So some mob uses some ranged move/spell your pet goes after it and you have to run away from the thing you are fighting and go follow your pet as it goes to various mobs. Been killing a lot of worms lately for cp and it's ridiculous how much I have to constantly move just to stay in range of using moves while never being out of the aoe range of the mobs being attacked

With the update just 2 hours away, I'm being a little pessimistic. 7 yalms is an incredibly frustrating play style. My pet is a ball and chain and I must follow him around to get him to do anything, which takes away from things I could be doing as a front-line DD.

At this point, if BST's 2100 job point gift is "Ready range +10 yalms" ....I'll take it. :/ ...I'll feel cheated, having enjoyed Ready distance of 20-22 yalms for almost 13 years....but I just feel so defeated at this point. Best of luck everyone.

[dasva]

Yeah it's still fairly messed up. I'll be in range of even the aoe auto attacks of things like mantis or narraka and be unable to issue commands.... meanwhile every job and their mother can stand out of range. And let's not get into mage pts killing new pop nms in 30 seconds and most strats on nms being mage strats doing ridiculous dmg on almost everything kind of destroying any comparison to what bst every could do