Episode VI: FFXI - Return of the DD!!! -

[Hercule]

Hello,

So, I returning in the game recently since I have more free time to spend.
And nowadays look like DD jobs (WAR, SAM, MNK, SAM, DRK, DRG.... etc....) Are useless in new content, and are alot overdated for nearly anything in the game.

I don't have a big knowledge of all the current situation, but, I will try here to make a quick summary about it based on my knowledge:

- DD take too much damages in new contents
- DD have serious problem with accuracy in new contents
- DD are not anymore usefull for skillchains since SCH can replace them
- It's easier to get rid of any DD in a party, so you don't need supports + heavy healer for them.
- Even a full Job Point DD with R/E/M iLv119 is nowadays almost too weak and useless in events

So, Square-Enix, I would like to know if you plan anything to patch those problems?
And get back "DDs" in the buisness.

And I hope R/E/M future update will really be good, cause currently those weapons don't deserve all the time spent to get them.

Thanks :)

[machini]

Hello,

So, I returning in the game recently since I have more free time to spend.
And nowadays look like DD jobs (WAR, SAM, MNK, SAM, DRK, DRG.... etc....) Are useless in new content, and are alot overdated for nearly anything in the game.

I don't have a big knowledge of all the current situation, but, I will try here to make a quick summary about it based on my knowledge:


- DD take too much damages in new contents
Bad DDs take too much damage in current content. Bad DDs don't understand and/or refuse to use -DT gear, because it lowers their theoretical maximum DPS. They do not understand that spending half the fight eating dirt lowers their theoretical DPS much more than throwing on a Twilight Torque and a Defending Ring, or a Twilight Torque and a pair of nicely augmented Dark Rings (15% -DT gives you 17% more effective HP; that is, if you have 1000 HP, with -15% Damage Taken in gear on, you'd survive a TP move that previously did 1000 damage and killed you and survive with 150 HP, and for a TP move to kill you with your HP bar full, it would have to deal what would be, without the -DT gear on, 1176 damage. I apologize if you can actually do that math; a lot of people can't so I've stopped assuming anyone can.)[/QUOTE]
- DD have serious problem with accuracy in new contents
Bad DDs and undergeared DDs have accuracy problems in current content. For example, consider Thaumas Coat. With 3% Double Attack, 3% Triple Attack, and 3% Quadruple Attack it would seem like a great DD item, as it is up to 17.6% increase in attacks per round (if you are wearing no other gear with DA/TA/QA.) However, the Thaumas Coat only has +12 Accuracy and +4% Haste, and lacks the stat vomit of item level gear.

For an example, a perfectly augmented Taeon Tabard, which is no longer considered best in slot for anyone that I am aware of, with +20 Accuracy/Attack, 2% Triple Attack, and +7 Strength/Dexterity, will have roughly 27 more accuracy (from actual accuracy, and from Dexterity), give a much higher potential critical hit rate, compared to wearing Taeon, and give a much higher fSTR, which affects physical damage.

Those are merely the offensive stats on it (for melee.) It also has 65 more Defense, 63 more evasion (counting actual evasion stat and the contribution from Agility, and 22 Vitality which, just as Strength increases damage, Vitality helps reduce it.

None of this is even considering the effective level increase from wearing item level gear, which in and of itself helps increase hit rate and evasion rate.

63 evasion is the difference between a monster hitting you 75% of the time and one hitting you 44% of the time. That means you'd be getting hit up to 30% less (not even counting the benefit of higher effective level) and that translates in to taking significantly less damage. Combine that with the above mention -15% DT gear, and you're now taking roughly 41% less damage than someone without -15% DT and wearing a Thaumas Coat.

There are many items in the game that could be considered a sort of "skill test", in that part of your skill as a player is being able to see an item that is superficially attractive, but actually bad. Seeing a player running around in certain pieces of gear can be a red flag that they're not going to perform well and/or could use some help and/or mentoring.


It's easier to get rid of any DD in a party, so you don't need supports + heavy healer for them.
As you mention supports and healers, this again is part of the above mentioned problems: namely, too many DDs are incapable of building for anything but damage and, in sacrificing survivability for offensive potential, they wind up doing less damage, not being able to contribute, and become part of the reason why it's hard for any melee DD to get into current content. People tend to focus on the negative; you remember more easily the times things go wrong than the times they go right. One spectacularly bad melee DD does more damage to the playerbase's willingness to take melee DDs on content than a good one can fix.


Even a full Job Point DD with R/E/M iLv119 is nowadays almost too weak and useless in events.

While I hate sounding like a broken record, this is again mostly the fault of bad DDs. People who can't take a hit and get killed in a single TP move give all DDs a bad name. For an example of being able to take a hit, on Dancer I am capable of achieving an effective -55.2% physical damage taken (-44% PDT from gear when I throw it all on, and the a multiplicative -20% from Fan Dance.) This means that if I am fighting alongside a THF in no -DT gear while I am in full defensive mode, having roughly the same amount of HP, a single attack or spell would need to deal 123.2% more physical damage to kill me from full HP as it would to kill the THF. That is, a physical damage move that would hit a THF with 2000 HP for 2000 damage would only deal 896 damage to me, while, to kill me from full HP, a physical attack would need to deal ~4465 damage, assuming the THF and I are taking roughly the same damage if I had no -DT.

And, again, something that I think should be obvious is you can't deal any damage at all if you're eating dirt. Combine that with content, such as Vagary leg and body runs, where a single death ruins the run, and you see why people are hesitant to take melee DDs on a great deal of content.


And I hope R/E/M future update will really be good, cause currently those weapons don't deserve all the time spent to get them.

This I agree on. There are a lot of easy fixes, but I doubt those will happen. It is frustrating, though, for a lot of people, that their mythics are barely better, or, in some instances, worse, than things that some can get with extremely little effort.

[Mithlas]

machini, I really appreciate your insight. :}

[Hercule]

machini, you know when i said "I recently returning in the game" that's mean what it's mean, i don't even tried one of the new content already because currently all the people doing this content just don't want any DD but only PLD, RUN, RDM, BLM, SCH, BLU...etc

So, the problem is not to know if i'm a "Casual" a "Bad Player" a "Douche Bag" or anything as that, but that is just an ascertainment i've made.
(And I have some friends with full JP high end gear & Mythic DD that don't anymore play their favorites jobs in event nowadays)

Then the reason why I talk on the forum about this is because I see no post about it and until I can do the high end event in the future, I just would hope this will have to change because I love playing my "LOL bullshit Scythe DRK" even if he is not the best and I would love to complete thoses new stuffs with my favorite job and be able to join any random shout party.

[machini]

I didn't mean to imply you were a casual, a bad player, or any other sort of thing. I was merely explaining the why of why melee DD is currently so undesired.

[Hercule]

I remember back in time i'm was in a really good high end LS and we was one of the first LS of the server to do Legion, at that time in this event all DD was full time in DT set, it was mandatory.

So it was not bad at all, and still fun to play, but, I think even if DD could do that now in current event, a setup without any DD will still be better in comparaison, so even if DDs did what you say, i don't think it could change anything, because it is less complicated with the new method I guess.

[Pups323]

My issue is machini is only half right:

Good DD or bad DD....a mnk/pup/war (aka front line dd) is going to get hit by ae more than a back line job (geo/blm/sch) and is thus less desired. Unlike FF14, we have no way to plan for and dodge ae other than having a -DT set.

Acc is an issue, even a 'good' DD with a high acc set needs more acc than an average blm needs macc. A blm using skill chain magic bursts is going to feed less tp, and do more dmg with less acc needed on gear. A good DD is going to need 1100+ acc (aka 300-400 from gear) before buffs to cap acc on anything, a good blm needs maybe +100 macc on gear to start dealing 99,999 dmg magic bursts.

The current setup favors mages too strongly for everything. They do more dmg, they take less dmg, the require less gear, etc everything favors mages.

I am not saying you cant do it with melee (which you cant for most high end mobs), I am just saying it will be harder and require better gear. And even in full DT all the time they will still take more than the 0 dmg mages take which will require more healing, etc.

Not to mention, in your full -dt gear, you no longer have that capped acc you need to hit the mob sooooooo....yeah

[machini]

The first thing you list is something that is addressed in my post. Being a Good DD means having a -DT set and using it when circumstances warrant it.

And I can hit 1099 ACC in full DT with food and no outside buffs. And then I can stack Quickstep for -44 evasion, effectively raising everyone's accuracy by 44. Throw on Hunter's Roll, and you're looking at ~1160 ACC with the target having -44 Evasion.

And you are entirely wrong. A BLM requires more than +100 macc to do high damage magic bursts. They require someone, virtually always a melee DD, to do skillchains for them so that they can magic burst. And to do that the melee needs high accuracy. And to stay in range, they need to survive. And there will most certainly be a COR, BRD, GEO, or possibly some combination of those three present, for Wizard's Roll, Ballad, or Geomancer buffs/debuffs. And if the BLMs have buffs (which they will), the DDs will have buffs, too.

So... you were saying?

[machini]

I also want to point out, aside from Terpsichore, nothing I have is best in slot anymore, except possibly Horos Toeshoes +1, and there's better acc options.

If you had, for example, a full set of Herculean gear from Reisenjima, you could, if I'm reading this correctly, get it augmented with 30 accuracy, 30 attack, and -4% DT per piece. have that on your whole set and you're looking at +150 acc and -20%DT on just those five slots. That's on top of the 37 already on the set. So that's 187 accuracy and -20%DT. Which is 117 more accuracy than I have on my -DT set. And it would mean I could hit 37%-DT with Vocane Ring and Defending Ring, or someone with two nice Dark Rings could hit -30%. Throw on a Twilight Torque and a Mollusca Mantle, and that would be -47% DT with Defending and Vocane, or -40% with two dark rings.

So not only can you get -40~47% DT, but you can get higher accuracy than I have in my current DT set, and better base stats on the gear to boot. I mean, if I had that, I could hit -47% DT, and hit ~1220 accuracy, with just food. And then with Quickstep I could lower the target's evasion by 44, effectively giving me ~1260 accuracy. And this is all before any outside buffs.

So please, go on telling me about how melee DD are worthless.

[Kensagaku]

Eh, to be fair, using the random lottery augs is a poor argument simply because you can spend stones for days and not get anywhere near them. I've yet to get a single DT-4% augment, for example, and I've spent more than a thousand stones on Herculean pieces alone, no exaggeration. Heaven forbid trying to get that elusive -4% AND a good Acc/Attack.

That being said, it's still not that hard to keep an eye out, filter the chat log as needed, and tap a DT set macro so that you don't need a fulltimed DT set. Make an itemset, tap your macro, tap another macro to switch back post-TP and boom, less damage taken. As you said, it's not hard to get a good DT set going.

[Belmonts]

In my humble opinion, all new high tier stuff is so fixated on accuracy is somewhat ridiculous.

Sure, the new abjuration stuff is sweet and all that, but there are gear that was more job related (i.e. empyrean armor) that had cool stuff like Yonin augmentation, Footwork +15 and other stuff that would make your job specific attributes more amazing. Sure, some of them you can make 'em just a macro piece, but others have to be on yourself full time so the effect can be up at all times.

But instead of that, to hit a... lets say, a T3 in Reisenjima, like one of The Beetles song says: "♪All you need is... Accuracy♬ ((；´・ω・)？？)". To the point nothing else matters. Again, abjuration gear has amazing stats, but many of them are ""generic"" (yeah ppl will say "nuh nuh nuh, it is very specific for my job") but the thing is, that there are more specific gear for a job, but on 80% of the new 130+ level stuff, you simply can't wear those. All you need is Accuracy, period.

A good DD yes, must have a lot of stuff, such as temps, potions, PDT- gear, antidotes, food, remedies, because they can't just be "I have Para, chop chop, mages" especially if those AoE's (like dragons wings TP AoEs, which they have ridiculous long range radius) also paralyze healers and is so potent that they are struggling to remove those ailment on themselves to keep alive the party with heals. But that aside, being prepared has to be a must and it draws a line between a -good DD- and a -MP sponge-/-Bad DD-. There is this fixation on artificial difficulty that SE gave us with new NM's and their absurd Physical Evasion that makes me really frustrated.

We all know that, on a Developers whim, they can adjust M.Eva and M.Defense on mobs to a point that a nowadays bandwagon Magic Zerg Burst can be no longer the bandwagon trend anymore, has happened before and nobody liked it, but let see how long this will last. So far, even Grekumah said they have no plans to adjust this.

So to everyone else who are not accustomed to some static strats or a regular LS, who will appreciate people with useful evasion- steps or other nice strategy will say you in a tell after you responded a shout:

"We don't need that, we only need a BST or a bunch of SCHs and BLMs who can self SC and Magic Burst it, so |Thanks for your offer, but I'll have to pass|" stuff.

Again, it has happened before and they will keep it up forevermore...

My two cents.

[xiozen]

In my humble opinion, all new high tier stuff is so fixated on accuracy is somewhat ridiculous.

Sure, the new abjuration stuff is sweet and all that, but there are gear that was more job related (i.e. empyrean armor) that had cool stuff like Yonin augmentation, Footstep +15 and other stuff that would make your job specific attributes more amazing. Sure, some of them you can make 'em just a macro piece, but others have to be on yourself full time so the effect can be up at all times.

But instead of that, to hit a... lets say, a T3 in Reisenjima, like one of The Beetles song says: "♪All you need is... Accuracy♬ ((；´・ω・)？？)". To the point nothing else matters. Again, abjuration gear has amazing stats, but many of them are ""generic"" (yeah ppl will say "nuh nuh nuh, it is very specific for my job") but the thing is, that there are more specific gear for a job, but on 80% of the new 130+ level stuff, you simply can't wear those. All you need is Accuracy, period.

A good DD yes, must have a lot of stuff, such as temps, potions, PDT- gear, antidotes, food, remedies, because they can't just be "I have Para, chop chop, mages" especially if those AoE's (like dragons wings TP AoEs, which they have ridiculous long rage radius) also paralyze healers and is so potent that they are struggling to remove those ailment on themselves to keep alive the party with heals. But that aside, being prepared has to be a must and it draws a line between a -good DD- and a -MP sponge-/-Bad DD-. There is this fixation on artificial difficulty that SE gave us with new NM's and their absurd Physical Evasion that makes me really frustrated.

We all know that, on a Developers whim, they can adjust M.Eva and M.Defense on mobs to a point that a nowadays bandwagon Magic Zerg Burst can be no longer the bandwagon trend anymore, has happened before and nobody liked it, but let see how long this will last. So far, even Grekumah said they have no plans to adjust this.

So to everyone else who are not accustomed to some static strats or a regular LS, who will appreciate people with useful evasion- steps or other nice strategy will say you in a tell after you responded a shout:

"We don't need that, we only need a BST or a bunch of SCHs and BLMs who can self SC and Magic Burst it, so |Thanks for your offer, but I'll have to pass|" stuff.

Again, it has happened before and they will keep it up forevermore...

My two cents.

Wow, this seems to capture the current gameplay attitude quite accurately; especially in content 130+ (Sinister Reign comes to mind...)... the OP is a scythe welding Dark Knight and we know the fate of a scythe welding Dark Knight... but does it "have to be this way"... probably and probably not, depends on the player. A little research and a lot of investment will make a difference since this game isn't exactly cookie-cutter it does require that if you don't fit the "mold" such as having the required accuracy to hit the mob as a melee DPS job, (Scythe welding Dark Knight) then you'll wiff wiff every time and no amount of wishing will get you anywhere, however if you spend time investing in the jobs abilities, stats, weapons and multiple armor sets for swap purposes to account for the varying battle conditions you may find yourself in, I believe even a Scythe welding Dark Knight can fit comfortably in any content, with some exceptions due to mechanics, but nevertheless, it can still "work" acceptably so... you'll just need to invest significantly more than non-melee DPS (aka mage).

[Ulth]

I also want to point out, aside from Terpsichore, nothing I have is best in slot anymore, except possibly Horos Toeshoes +1, and there's better acc options.

If you had, for example, a full set of Herculean gear from Reisenjima, you could, if I'm reading this correctly, get it augmented with 30 accuracy, 30 attack, and -4% DT per piece. have that on your whole set and you're looking at +150 acc and -20%DT on just those five slots. That's on top of the 37 already on the set. So that's 187 accuracy and -20%DT. Which is 117 more accuracy than I have on my -DT set. And it would mean I could hit 37%-DT with Vocane Ring and Defending Ring, or someone with two nice Dark Rings could hit -30%. Throw on a Twilight Torque and a Mollusca Mantle, and that would be -47% DT with Defending and Vocane, or -40% with two dark rings.

So not only can you get -40~47% DT, but you can get higher accuracy than I have in my current DT set, and better base stats on the gear to boot. I mean, if I had that, I could hit -47% DT, and hit ~1220 accuracy, with just food. And then with Quickstep I could lower the target's evasion by 44, effectively giving me ~1260 accuracy. And this is all before any outside buffs.

So please, go on telling me about how melee DD are worthless.

What if you want to play something other then dancer? Dancer pretty much has the market cornered on accuracy with it's accuracy bonus traits and the massive amounts it gets from gifts. Thief gets 36 accuracy and dancer gets 64, add that to the 35 from accuracy bonus III and dancer has 63 more accuracy than thief. Then like you mentioned dancer has job abilities that help. Steps fall under a category of their own and stacks with everything while being able to be put up all the time, while thief's accuracy helping abilities can not be up all the time and feint conflicts with distract.

Dancer also has abilities that helps with staying alive, like you mentioned fan dance which gives pdt II, and then waltz to cure and remove statues effects and now also gives blink. Thief gets treasure hunter, something that everyone gets now because of dark matter augments on reisenjima armor. And while it would be nice to get max augments for damage taken and accuracy on Herculean, that is very unlikely for one piece let alone all 5. Maybe if you could roll augment individually like with snow/leaf/dusk but with the current system, I don't see it being viable.

I guess my point is while accuracy and damage taken might not be an issue for dancer, it is for other jobs, and you saying that those players are bad for basically not being lucky with random augments is pretty mean.

[Urthdigger]

They should honestly just remove melee DD from the game. It's just a trap for folks to waste their time on nowadays.

[machini]

Ulth, if you wanted to play something other than Dancer, do it.

With no THF-specific gear on other than Sandung and an unaugmented Canny Cape, using random crap I had laying around, as I have no specific THF gear that is not +Treasure Hunter, I can hit 989 Accuracy as THF/WAR. Throw in 36 more Accuracy from Job Points (to reflect all those job points I have on DNC) and you're looking at 1025 accuracy. Throw on some shoes that have more than 5 accuracy on them, like a pair of Taeon Shoes with a decent accuracy augment (+15 ACC augment) and you're looking at 1042 accuracy. Eat some sublime sushi and you're at 1142 accuracy, before outside buffs. Switch to THF/DNC instead of THF/WAR, and you're now at 1153 accuracy. Now please reflect that nothing I am putting my THF in is BiS, that there are better alternatives for virtually every piece of gear I'm using on this THF, as some of it isn't actually even accuracy gear (there's better options for accuracy than the +2 ACC on my waist slot, for instance), and you could easily hit 1150 accuracy. Throw on some actual THF-specific gear, like a Path C Shijo, and that's 1175 Accuracy.

And no, I'm not saying that other players are bad. As above with my THF example, I have no Reisenjima gear. The augmentable items I'm using are either mezotinted or alluvion skirmish stuff. So I'll thank you kindly to not put words in my mouth.

I have a friend who has just restarted playing, and in a very short period of time we were able to get her up to being able to hit ~1120 accuracy, going from essentially spark gear to where she is now. It's via Skirmish gear.

There are a plethora of options out there to gear dual wield jobs. If you want to talk about jobs that actually need the help, you're talking about WAR, DRK, and SAM, to name three. Unfortunately, I cannot give you any good numbers for them, as the gear I have for them is all so horrendously out of date.

If you give melees the same support that non-melees get, and put them in comparable gear (as I know those BLMs aren't getting 99999 bursts in Spark armor), they can do just fine. And looking at my THF, I lose 27 accuracy if I put on -DT gear, which, coincidentally, also gives me -27% Damage Taken. Which could be made up for with better augments. And losing a theoretical maximum 13% hit rate to gain 37% more effective HP is a pretty decent trade off.

It's not hard to get decently augmented Alluvion Skirmish armor. It's also not hard to get Escha - Zi'tah gear which can be augmented and be better than Alluvion Armor. You need to understand that you can't hit 99, slap on some spark armor, and dive right on in to level 135 content. This is something I see an awful lot of people having a problem understanding. Just because it says "Item Level 119" on your gear, that means nothing. Not all 119 gear is created equal. There has been a lot of power creep, and it's going to be necessary for you to gear yourself in increments. Get some alluvion skirmish armor, get some okay augments on it, do some Escha - Zi'tah, get some rawhide/pursuer's/whatever, mezotint it, work your way up. I didn't just miraculously hit 99 and be able to get my accuracy as high as it is on either DNC or THF the instant SoA came out. I did skirmish, I did delve, I reforged gear, I did more skirmish, I reforged gear, I did Escha, I reforged even more gear.

Looking at SAM gear, with a full set of Acro with at least 5 Dexterity and 15 accuracy on each piece, which is not in any way hard to get, you should be able to hit roughly 1070 accuracy with a couple of accessories with ACC on them and sublime sushi. That is admitted lower than I could get on THF, but this is using gear a decent set of Alluvion Skirmish armor, combined with gear I have on me for SAM which hasn't been touched since Delve II was a thing.

Does content need to be adjusted for melee jobs that have innately lower accuracy? Yes.

Is that because it's impossible for those jobs to be useful in current content? Mostly no.

The reason you don't see people wanting to do melee-centric strategies for a lot of things, and prefer to sit back and nuke, or sic pets on things, is because that's easier, safer, and requires very little coordination or teamwork. There are so many examples of how "proper" strategies for doing things are actually worse than doing them in a way that requires coordination and teamwork. There are people I know who refuse to coordinate skillchains, or do anything but close a skillchain, even when a little coordination results in much faster, safer, and surer kills. 'cause it's easier for them to just spam a single WS as soon as they get 1000 TP than it is for them to have to wait and cooperate.

[Ulth]

Oh wow 1175 accuracy including food consider my previous argument withdrawn. /s

That might be fine for some T1 and T2 escha nms, but not for T3s and helms.

And yeah people who don't know how to skillchain and still wear thaumus coat are annoying, but that is not what this is about. It's about monsters the size of houses having crazy high evasion and AoE moves that will drop anyone other than a tank on the front line.

[Urthdigger]

It's also not hard to get Escha - Zi'tah gear which can be augmented and be better than Alluvion Armor.

I really don't think a DD who's not already at near BiS could get folks to follow them to Escha - Zitah unless those folks are kind enough to carry him. Alluvion's possible though, as you can use RoE vouchers for obsidian to avoid needing to actually fight.

[machini]

Oh wow 1175 accuracy including food consider my previous argument withdrawn. /s

That might be fine for some T1 and T2 escha nms, but not for T3s and helms.

And yeah people who don't know how to skillchain and still wear thaumus coat are annoying, but that is not what this is about. It's about monsters the size of houses having crazy high evasion and AoE moves that will drop anyone other than a tank on the front line.

Again, I'm not trying to say this isn't a problem and sweep it under the rug. It is a problem, but the problem isn't just "high ACC is hard to get." The problem is also partly the playerbase not wanting to do anything that isn't the easiest, safest, most idiot-proofed strategy. Those strategies tend not to be fun, though, and severely limit who and what can come. The only real way I see of actually addressing this problem in a way that would have any real effect would be to incentivize bringing unpopular jobs. Unfortunatley, that would never get implemented. I've brought the suggestion up before, and people were very... upset at the thought of people getting bonuses for doing new and different things.

[Olor]

I really don't think a DD who's not already at near BiS could get folks to follow them to Escha - Zitah unless those folks are kind enough to carry him. Alluvion's possible though, as you can use RoE vouchers for obsidian to avoid needing to actually fight.

This. I've got basic 119 gear, and *do not* feel confident leading a party to kill Escha NM's I've never fought. I don't like being a millstone. There is not really an adequate stepping stone between skirmish and everything else, at least not without millions and millions of gil in stones. At least I used to be able to bard but now GEO has completely supplanted that and BRDs are not really in demand.

Besides which *no one* is shouting for those lower tier NMs. Only stuff I see shouts for is CP parties (which I am also not geared enough to join...) and high-tier endgame. The middle is totally hollow.


And honestly I can't even really bear to use the stones anymore it's just so depressing to roll crappy augs over and over and over and over again.

[Urthdigger]

This. I've got basic 119 gear, and *do not* feel confident leading a party to kill Escha NM's I've never fought. I don't like being a millstone. There is not really an adequate stepping stone between skirmish and everything else, at least not without millions and millions of gil in stones. At least I used to be able to bard but now GEO has completely supplanted that and BRDs are not really in demand.

Besides which *no one* is shouting for those lower tier NMs. Only stuff I see shouts for is CP parties (which I am also not geared enough to join...) and high-tier endgame. The middle is totally hollow.


And honestly I can't even really bear to use the stones anymore it's just so depressing to roll crappy augs over and over and over and over again.

This right here is basically the issue. In order for a melee to participate in endgame, they already need to have endgame gear, stuff they can't solo. The only real option is to gear up a REAL job first, and do endgame with it... but at that point, why even bother gearing up a job you'll never get to use? Even if you use the other job to level up a melee, it's clear what you'll actually be using :P

[Ulth]

Again, I'm not trying to say this isn't a problem and sweep it under the rug. It is a problem, but the problem isn't just "high ACC is hard to get." The problem is also partly the playerbase not wanting to do anything that isn't the easiest, safest, most idiot-proofed strategy. Those strategies tend not to be fun, though, and severely limit who and what can come. The only real way I see of actually addressing this problem in a way that would have any real effect would be to incentivize bringing unpopular jobs. Unfortunatley, that would never get implemented. I've brought the suggestion up before, and people were very... upset at the thought of people getting bonuses for doing new and different things.

I can see why you would get flak for suggesting mechanics that incentivize having different jobs. Whenever I hear stuff like that I picture the VW system which is something I despise, or needing a token thief for treasure hunter. An incentive I could see working is something like in escha where the NM's health scales per player over 3. Just have that change so as unique instances of jobs don't count. That way you don't get strategies like "blm all the things" or "sam onry", but also not getting the rigged tokenism that comes with the voidwatch system.

[Vae]

All square ever had to do was make a system where if you had 2 sources of the same damage, the enemy would become immune to that damage. There were more than enough jobs/weapons to spread out and make everyone able to deal damage. And poor DRG wouldn't have been screwed so hard. (sam w/ polearm womp womp.)

2 GK's? Immune to GK damage. 12 BLMS? well guess what no MB'ing scrubs. 7 Kraken blood weapon DRKS? lots o' zeros. 8 failwagon RUDRAALLTHETHINGS THF/DNC scrubs? Rudra does 0 QQ moar.

It would've changed the entire scope of the game, for the better.

YEAH, it would've been HARD AS SHIT to make sky/sea/HNM work at 75, maybe a little more forgiving pre-2011ish. 1 source per party.

It would've put a stop to that 3 war/nin double bard rdm ONRY merit parties too.

It was always so god damn boring; SAM ALL THE THINGS. RNG ALL THE THINGS. BLM ALL THE THINGS. RUDRA ALL THE THINGS. BST ALL THE THINGS. SMN ALL THE THINGS. It would've been so simple to fix, the mechanic ALREADY existed to identify jobs in party (corsair).

[machini]

Honestly, something for instanced content, like Unity, Delve, Skirmish, Geas Fete, etc, that would work is simply keep a running tally of the party/alliance compositions for each successful completion, and then increase drop rates when not using things that are not the most preferred jobs.

If everyone is bringing WHM PLD BRD COR GEO BLU BLM THF to virtually everything, and then you and your party clear it with RUN SCH DNC WAR DRG RDM, it would see that none of those jobs are in the top 8 (or whatever you call the cut-off), and then increase drop rates accordingly. That would require keeping a running count of who's doing what (not as hard as it sounds, but still a good bit of information to store). Instead, you could simply say "There are X unique jobs in this alliance, increase drop rates by 10% for each unique job over six."

Even when dealing with content where the difficulty scales up as the alliance size increase, this is a good system. And if for nothing else, it would get people into content simply to fill out alliances to increase drop rates. Sure, you and your group can clear something with 3 people that would normally take six, so why bring 3 other people to fight with drops over? Unless bringing three random people who are on jobs you're not on increases the drop rate?

I've done plenty of clears of Delve for LS mates where myself, a GEO, and a WHM can trio the damn thing, and since difficulty doesn't (didn't?) drop under six people, we could seriously just bring three other people along, have them sit in a corner (if we were mean), and still clear it easily. I'm sure there are far better groups who can do such a thing with far more difficult content.

You think you'd have seen 18 man alliances for Vagary with DRG, WAR, MNK, and PUP tagging along if each unique job increased the drop rates by some amount? Hell yes. "Hey guys, you and 12 other random strangers are gonna get free clears, just don't touch the Tartarus Platemail when it drops" would have been happening left and right if those 12 extra people increased the droprate by 120%.