January 2020 FINAL FANTASY XI Digest

[Akihiko_Matsui]

The latest FINAL FANTASY XI Digest is now available! The digest covers key features from the most recent version update. Check out the video, try the version update, and leave a feedback based on your experience of playing the new content.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qt4w0Hxovn4" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>


Please reply to this thread to leave your feedback.
Please only post feedback pertaining to the version update and digest video in this thread.
To better collect your feedback, we ask that you post one specific feedback per reply (of course you are allowed to post several replies!)
Before posting your feedback, check the thread to see if similar feedback was already mentioned and hit the “Like!” button instead of re-posting the same feedback.



12609

As mentioned in the video, the Meat Mithkabob t-shirt is available for pre-order, so be sure to get yours today (https://sqex.to/H5XwU)!

[Xilk]

these are really great adjustments for beastmaster!!!!

Thank you!
These are MEANINGFUL changes which actually encourage the master to engage!

The ready recast merit adjustment is PERFECT. Thank you.

I was not expecting the Adjustment to READY move activation time. However it is VERY welcome and a very clever adjustment. Thank you.

I also was not expecting buffing ready moves to affect the master either. It is also a very welcome and interesting adjustment. Thank you.
I am curious if the same duration and potencies apply to master as to pet. I will be testing soon. :D
Did you forget about Rhino Guard and fantod though?

I still hope for some type of enmity generation on those self-buffing ready moves. so i will check and see. Its not in the notes, so I do not have high hopes. However this is a very welcome adjustment to beastmaster.

[Xilk]

hmmm ??

the update notes say pets summoned with 'Call Beast'
Does this mean "Bestial Loyalty" pets won't give buffs to master? cuz thats gonna be expensive.

[Papesse]

Please do something about the recent Blood Pact nerf/adjustement currently present in Cait Sith Prime, Alexander Prime, Lady Lilith BF and in Domain Invasion.

The developers implemented this measure in order to prevent easy wins with Astral Conduit which is very understable but it's also affecting physical multi-hits Blood Pacts and the purpose of the job ability Apogee. For example, a Predator Claws normally doing 30000 damage (10000 + 10000 + 10000) will deal only 12000 damage (10000 + 1000 + 1000) which feels really weak compared to what players can do.
Spinning Dive and Mountain Buster do barely better and can't make up for the heavy loss in damage.

Players can also nerf each other, this is particulary frustrating in Domain Invasion when multiple SMNs are present. People aware about the nerf are forced to wait over 10 seconds before using a Blood Pact if someone else already performed one otherwise the damage dealt will be extremely low.

A possible way to fix this situation would be to have the damage reduction take effect after 3~5 Blood Pacts or after 9~15 hits from multi-hits Blood Pacts (if the game can't recognize the difference between the Blood Pacts as general and the separate hits from a same Blood Pact) instead of 1. Only Astral Conduit should be penalized this way.

The issue has also been reported by a japanese player http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/56300

[prats]

what they have to do is nerf the pld, brd, rng, pup thf and other jobs, the summoner doesn't do any harm without a corsair and a geomancer, and you need a lot of equipment to do damage, the smn has been a job that has never done anything has been more than 10 years that is not worth anything, when they are set to have been a more used job, stop protesting this job that if the astral conduit and nonsense, I have more than 15 years with The smn and I have never complained when they did not want me to party and not worth any event, stop crying please

[prats]

The smn has always had to subtract all the time a very slow job to play, thanks to the astral conduit we have been able to enjoy something more of the smn, what they have to do is that they can not enter more than 2 smn in a party and this problem, but please always stop crying for the same thing, pld, cor, rng, thf, pup, blu, these jobs can shine better than the smn and would need to be nerfed, I hope the new avatar hurts because the last ones They did not do anything, the smn does not hurt only when in a party there are more than 3 smn it hurts, otherwise the smn without buffs is very bad, I hope they fix all this

[larrymc]

I for one welcome the changes to Beastmaster. However there has been (I hope) and unintended consequence to the speed change of Ready moves. It is now no longer possible to swap from a "ready" set so the pet damage set. This means in order to maintain the minimum Ready time of 10 seconds, you must full time the level 75 legs that has -5 ready recast reduction. This has the net effect of making all BST ready moves weaker, except when under Unleash when the legs are not necessary.

Please consider a further adjustment to the ready recast merit category, 3 seconds per merit, which will eliminate the need for this level 75 piece of gear and restore BST ready moves back to their prior potency.

[Xilk]

Hmm... after a little testing on beastmaster there are some problems.


The ready activation time reduction is nice in some ways.. but its actually a penalty for normal use.

Players have been swapping 2x gearsets for every ready move. This is just like a fast cast set and a magic attack bonus set for elemental magic. OR a bloodpact delay reduction set and a bloodpact damage+ set for summoner.


With the delay reduced to 0.25 seconds, it is no longer possible use 2 sets. This will not matter for the moves with instant casting time because pet tp bonus is all that matters for those.


The macro looks like this:

/equipset 19 (Aymur, Charmer's merlin, Nukumi manoplas +1, desultor tassets)
/bstpet 1 <wait .5>
/equipset 20 (Pet mab gear, or pet macc gear, or pet attack gear or pet Double attack gear)

However, the 3rd line cannot activate now. It cannot work. The only work around is to do everything in the first line macro. This mostly hurts when not using emicho gambierras +1 in the leg slot for sweeping gouge, pentapeck, chomp rush, etc... however it hurts all the damage dealing ready moves.

I have not tested the effect on Unleash yet, which this will not matter for. WE can probably use more ready moves during unleash, and tp is locked at 3000 already and recast is no issue, so the change is definitely a buff to unleash. But it is a nerf to normal fighting.

IF you want to keep the .25s ready timer, AND not have it a nerf, then ready recast merits would need to be 3s per merit, AND the way Aymur TP Bonus works would need to change to be like Nukumi Manoplas +1.
Otherwise, this update includes another nerf to Beastmaster and I think I would prefer the ready activation time to remain closer to 1 second than to .25 seconds.

Also the haste from Zealous Snort is disappointing. Don't get me wrong, 25% haste is very nice. However, it is Magical Haste instead of Job Ability haste, and it Overwrites haste II.

This means that if we use it while buffed by players or trusts, it actually becomes a debuff.
It would be much better, and more appropriate if it were Job Ability Haste instead of Magical haste.

[Gwydion]

Dear Director Fujito,
Thank you for the significant effort towards the Beastmaster class. The quality of life improvements towards removing the need for Charmer's Merlin is appreciated. I have taken the time to consolidate some feedback and hope you consider it.

1.) Most JA activation is still inconsistent with 7 yalm restriction, especially REWARD.
2.) Instant Ready activation is problematic because it is breaking our ability to swap gear consistently. We cannot wear Desultor Legs for Ready-5 consistently. Please revert this or increase Ready merit from 2 seconds to 3 seconds.
3.) Zealous snort is overwritten by Trust Haste2 and significant other Buff priority problems. (This should be Haste2 or JA Haste in my opinion). More buffs should extend to the party so that Beastmaster can be willfully included in a group setting.
4.) It is not acceptable to rely on lvl 113/117 pets for self-buffs when content level can reach 145-150. Can you give us 5/5 Beast Affinity automatically? This should allow jug pets to match our item-level natively. Replace Beast Affinity with a meritable category that increases the distance from 7 yalms to 12 (+1 per merit).

The long-standing job ability activation inconsistencies have been compounded by additional difficulty in swapping gear for Ready moves (Beastmasters do this for recast time (Legs, specifically), as well as Pet buffs).

To summarize, your effort is greatly appreciated, but this months' update for Beastmaster seems to be more hindering than helpful, as it does not ease the frustration of inconsistent job ability activation for all job abilities ...and abilities such as Ready, penalizes gear-swapping for recast duration and potency of pet abilities.

Respectfully, please try again.

[Inx]

RE: Beastmaster Job Update

I agree with the above posters on all the points raised.

Whilst the merit category revision to Ready Recast is most welcome, it is insufficient to cover the loss incurred by the added difficulty in equipment set swapping. Losing access to both -5 recast reduction pieces is a net loss.

The least intrusive solution would be adding an ilvl 119 item with -5 ready recast reduction, or adding that parameter to an existing piece of equipment.

On a related note, as your vision for the job appears to encourage more frontline melee, increasing the range of shields usable by BST would be most helpful. For example, allowing access to Blurred Shield would add incentive as it is well suited to BST/DRG fencer type builds.

Finally, the damage capability of all pets has largely remained static for several years now. Isn't it past time to increase their dps potential? Especially given the relative scarcity of equipment with pet attack, their utility against high-level targets has effectively declined substantially.

[Zehira]

Hello!

Thank you for the video! Please try your best from now on. :)

(Wind-up Cheerleader)

[Urmom]

Yeah this is a 1 step forward 2 steps back for bst. Really need to fix the distance thing... I get you've changed your mind on how bst should work after 15 years but you can have it be something like 10-15 yalms and still be in melee range... heck some mobs even that would leave you out of range when meleeing.

[JKap_Goat]

please announce something for Fan fest, please be FFXI Reboot and get rid of this PS2 engine. I've been waiting for news for Mobile or Remastered since it's announcement long ago


come on SE please!

[Xilk]

AFter more testing and review, it appears that the ready activation time being .25 seconds does NOT help Unleash damage at all. The Animation delay is still the limiting factor.

I see no good point in keeping the normal ready delay at .25 seconds. It prevents some of the tp phase interruption for master with pet, but it loses ALOT of damage from ready moves and Adds aLOT of complication.

as enthusiastic my first impression for ready activation time is, the potential positives evaporated very quickly. It is better to revert that change, than to keep it how it is.
I think I already listed the other changes that would need to happen to overcome all the downsides of this change.

the plus side is a split second more of melee tp. However, making zealous snort Job ability haste instead of magical haste would do that much better.

[Rwolf]

Thank you for taking the time to adjust Beastmaster again.

Ready Execution Issues
The additional -5 seconds of Ready recast allowed us to finally drop Charmer's Merlin axe which is a step in the right direction for melee. However the changes with Ready animation time as stated is too fast to equip pet damage gear and you sacrifice the Leg slot to Desultor's Tassets.

I would suggest bringing Ready more in line with Summoner.

Activation Time: 1.25 seconds
Ability to interrupt the animation to execute another Ready move.
Ability to execute Ready moves without engaging the pet with Fight.


Ready Buff Concern
My concern is that this style of play locks you into using particular pets to melee more effectively. You will always end up using a Sheep or Raaz pet to make use of their offensive abilities to melee. Crab and Jagil being the defensive side of this.

It feels like this new rock/paper/scissors model of choosing a pet is an unnecessary complication where you already have to consider the pets damage type, element and monster correlation.

If the goal is to make Beastmaster a frontline melee that the master is engaged at all times, then I would suggest alternatives that have worked.

The boost to damage comes directly from the Beastmaster.
Like Dragoon, where as long as you have any pet out.
Like Summoner, where the duration is so long and Call Beast is so short you can stack abilities and move to your preferred pet.


Distance Issue
Distance remains a huge hindrance for Beastmaster. It is unreliable. You have to constantly worry about your distance to your pet and when multiple monsters are present, you have to find and run to your pet if say a caster from a distance uses an AoE spell and aggros your pet.

https://i.imgur.com/APWpXuk.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/hNWNMma.jpg

I'm not even that far away and in regard to buffs, I'm within the proposed AoE circle and cannot execute. Please revert this. I guarantee you, the state of pet damage right now isn't creating an exploitable opportunity.

Beastmaster does not have an endless supply of pets nor the damage to even keep up with current day melee on their own. They will melee if you give them reason to.

Suggestion for further changes

Melee Gear Access/New Items: Blurred Shield, Iosheka Belt, and Knobkierre. Maybe some BST only shields and ammo that have really good master and pet stats.

Jug Consumption/Inventory Issues: Like the other consumable jobs, maybe it's time BST just has a learn system for individual pets and has universal jug ammo. In this example /ja "Vivacious Vickie" <me> uses Call Beast. Bestial Loyalty changes to Deus Ex Automata and resummons your last recorded pet without full HP.

Pet Poultice/Roborant: Give us a reason to use these. Roborant = Full Erase. Poultice = Potent Regen that stacks with Reward.

Charm: Let us execute it with a pet for utility for a bind/enmity tool. Charm+ also works on duration.

Tame: Can execute while a pet is active to reset hate on a target. Gives BST a unique tool to bring to groups. No more exploitable than death/reraise currently. Make it give a Tame resistance if successful so it can't be spammed.

Feral Howl: Needs to be a useful stun and lowered to 3 mins like the other Killer job stun job abilities. Make mobs less terror resistant.

Run Wild: Like Spur and Ready moves, should be allowed to use without first engaging a target.

[Alhanelem]

They seriously still need to re-evaluate the ability range thing. But these changes to buff the job a bit with the extension of various monster buffs to the master, which is an incentive to play close. Stuff like this is all you really need to do to keep people in melee range- just make being melee range effective enough to be worth the risk and people will do it. You don't have to strong-arm people into doing it.

[Mavrick]

Thank you SE. This beastmaster Update is much better. Just a few notes.


AFter more testing and review, it appears that the ready activation time being .25 seconds does NOT help Unleash damage at all. The Animation delay is still the limiting factor.

I see no good point in keeping the normal ready delay at .25 seconds. It prevents some of the tp phase interruption for master with pet, but it loses ALOT of damage from ready moves and Adds aLOT of complication.

as enthusiastic my first impression for ready activation time is, the potential positives evaporated very quickly. It is better to revert that change, than to keep it how it is.
I think I already listed the other changes that would need to happen to overcome all the downsides of this change.

the plus side is a split second more of melee tp. However, making zealous snort Job ability haste instead of magical haste would do that much better.



I really like being able to Stun with lizard's new instant ready move :( But I prefer ready-5 from pants :/

about Zealous Snout:
Right Now, Zealous Haste+25% overwrites WHM Haste II (+30%). Please change this.

A) I agree Change to Job Ability Haste +25%... even if effect was lowered to 15~20% Job Ability Haste, it would still be preferred... or
B) Maintain Magical Haste Effect, but allow combining with Whm Haste II, similar to WHM+GEO+BRD haste effects.


Likewise, Crab's Bubble Curtain Shell effect (Magic Damage Taken-50%) has lower priority than whm shell V (Magic Damage Taken-29%).

A) Please consider giving Crab's Bubble Curtain higher priority... or
B) Change Crab's Bubble Curtain to Magic Defense Boost instead.

[Safiyyah]

This BST update is much better. I want to start out by saying "thank you".

Add me to the list of people saying that:

a) the new Ready activation time means that we either need to give up midcast pet attack or magic attack bonus legs, or eat a 15 second charge timer. It's not ideal. Please just make BST Ready moves identical to SMN as far as activation timers and don't animation lock us during Unleash please.

b) Zealous Snort should be job ability haste. That opens up more usefulness for it.



To beastmaster's overall utility as a frontline damage dealer, though, I think this update sorta addressed one side of that but wasn't a full solution. Melee damage dealers in FFXI are generally characterized by either native multihit:

-thief
-samurai
-dancer

Attack boosts and physical damage limit bonus:

-dark knight

Or both:

-dragoon
-warrior
-blue mage

Beastmaster can now reach high levels of attack but we still have no native multihit, and axe weapon skills are versatile but not exploitable. For example, Mistral Axe has a 50% STR mod and 13.625 fTP at 3000 TP. Savage Blade has a 50% STR 50% MND mod and 13.75 fTP at 3000 TP, and is also two hits. Mistral Axe should have a higher STR mod or higher fTP, or both. And BST needs either access to better melee gear (why are we not on Niqmaddu Ring or Knobkierrie? Rwolf has some good suggestions in his post) or some form of native multihit. We gain TP too slowly and our weaponskills are not that strong.

Why not add a 119 hippogryph pet (or raise the level cap on Falcorr?) and add Fantod to the list of pet abilities that also affect the master? That would provide us with better WS damage and fit into the framework that you have created for BST with the January update.

[Typral]

Please add more MERCH, i love to support the game and get cool stuff

[RandomCanadian]

Re: bst update, I just want to reiterate what has been so well explained above...

i) Fix the haste prioritization on the boar (ready overwrites trust haste II with a lesser magical haste). Extra points if you make Vickie's haste JA haste so that Fencer builds would actually be viable.

ii) Fix the MDEF on crab (trust Shell V overwrites ready with a lesser mdef).

iii) Allow us to hit the BST ready delay cap without resorting to axe-swapping or using non-ilevel pants during ready moves.

iv) Make pets with special ready moves that impact the master reach 119 level cap. I'm not playing with under-leveled pets at this point in the game.

We all really appreciate that bst was finally worked over, we just need to fix these things with the implementation to make it right.

[Jerbob]

Thank for you this adjustment. It's a fun idea and much more interesting than just tweaking a few numbers here and there.

There are, however, a few problems related to the adjustment that I'd like to draw your attention to in the hopes that they will be rectified. I'll be brief as most have already by mentioned by others.

While I very much appreciate adjustments to the Ready recast merit (finally we can get rid of Charmer's Merlin - this is wonderful), we are still forced to use a piece of level 75 equipment in order to fully reduce our recast time. This is really dangerous in an item level environment, even if we remove the Desultor Tassets after one second (which I must emphasise is the minimum /wait time). If the merit reduced recast time by 3 seconds instead of 2, this final piece of ancient equipment can finally be purged from our inventories, and I would owe the development team a round of Tavnazian tacos.

There are some potency and prioritisation issues with some of the shared enhancement effects, notably Bubble Curtain (wiped by the weaker Shell spells), Metallic Body (the effect is really quite weak) and Zealous Snort's Haste effect. As other people here have said, The latter needs careful consideration; it's weaker than the Haste II effect we can readily access with Trust, and overwrites it. If the effects could stack, or at least prioritise correctly, it would be appreciated.

The sharing of enhancement effects is really fun, but it does mean that some pets without enhancement effects are now significantly weakened relative to pets such as the raaz, sheep, pugil, crab, etc. Variety is the spice of life, and having a wide pool of pets to draw from is part of what makes Beastmaster fun. It would be really nice if, in the future, more could be done with this "sharing" mechanic - pets could be given more enhancements, like mandragora gaining access to Photosynthesis, or even things outside of enhancement effects - for example, the MosquitoFamiliar's Infected Leech could restore some HP to the Beastmaster (or even their allies!). Not all pets have obviously applicable moves, nor do all pets necessarily need them, but expanding the scope of pet moves affecting the Beastmaster in some way would be a lot of fun. And if some, or even all, were able to affect our allies... well, that'd be even more fun.

The inclusion of underlevelled pets in the list of transferrable enhancement effects I think highlights a need for Beast Affinity to be improved. There is a perfect opportunity here - simply improve the potency of the merit category, as you did for Ready recast! As I said before, a wide variety of pets makes for fun and flexible options.

Outside of ideas related to this adjustment:

- Charm, Gauge, Sic and Tame still have no place at level 119. Please find a way to make these fun again, while retaining the original functionality. Any chance we could Charm a pet alongside a jug familiar?

- Perhaps you could consider better shields and a higher shield ranking for Beastmaster, as we're supposedly a frontline job?

- Please continue to bear in mind that gearing to support our familiars and ourselves simultaneously is very difficult. I recognise and appreciate the work done so far, but it must continue, and hopefully improve.

- Could we please use non-aggressive Ready moves when the familiar isn't engaged?

- The distance nerf is still broken, unacceptable, and in need of reversion. I don't think I speak only for myself when I say that I will never accept the development team's stance on this matter.

As a final, semi-related comment, I think careful reading of the comments in this thread illustrates the importance of reducing the minimum time permitted for /wait commands for everyone. It's sad when "broken" for some people is the only experience of the game that I legitimately have access to.

[Selindrile]

The attempt to improve Beastmaster is welcome, but has fallen flat, the shared master buffs is a neat touch, but ultimately doesn't fix the core issues. The lack of ability range is extremely frustrating, I personally would prefer a full revert to original Ready distance, but if you're dead set on making sure the player is within AoE range, consider raising the ready distance to at least 12 or 13 yalms, most abilities will still hit them, and it will be far less infuriating to use.

Also the reduction in ability use time is neat, but ultimately makes us sacrifice the legs in our ready set due to recast considerations, please consider reverting this change or enhancing merits to fully cap ready recast without the use of gear, because ultimately this patch nerfs a job that's not in the greatest place at the moment.

[YosemiteYogorockBlondelle]

:o :confused::eek:
So um... any reason we need this many 99999999 Model Synergy Furnaces? https://clips.twitch.tv/AlluringCrispyDuckAMPEnergyCherrySynergy Furnaces on the login campaign rewards given out in the numbers considering you can't synergize it to a +1 version and also I do think we don't have that many inventory spaces or bags/units with that many spaces to even hold that many of them, If you could bazaar them or AH them, maybe at least npc sell them to a synergy guild sort of sales NPC then I guess the non+1 would make sense then since apparently it must also be treating it as a stackable furnishings items as well.

I honestly thought :eek: you could get two of them and synergize two of them into a +1 version that would look like the synergy furnace in Bastoks Metalworks that has more of gold/golden color furnace metals look to it being next to the NPC Hildolf last time I checked, I was even hoping maybe it would have a clickable synergy furnace reactions inside MH additionally upon it becoming a +1 or doing a +1 version of it that really doesn't just yet, apparently. . .
I tried adding these combinations too to see if it synergize a special kind of synergy furnace furnishing as well: two synergy furnaces furnishings - a catalytic oil = no results, {the catalytic oil used to make elemental fewell}, two synergy furnace furnishings - catalytic oil and an Astral Matter which again has no crafting synergy effect because not in the game after all apparently to which I was hoping it was to make the synergy synergizing effect of synergizing as even sometimes you see happen when you zone into an area that has two synergy furnaces side by side as you walk closer to them becoming onto view!

Hope that helps and if the link of my yogorockbowlerffxi11yo twitch clip of it happening doesn't work try this one?: https://dashboard.twitch.tv/u/yogorockbowlerffxi11yo/content/clips
then look for the clip that says... Holy Moly!!! that's a lot of synergy furnaces as a title to it, k?

[Yoji_Fujito]

Thank you for the feedback.

The number of participating adventurers was larger than we anticipated. As such, monsters were often defeated almost instantaneously without much time to do anything at all.

To address this, we increased the monsters’ HP when a large number of adventurers have assembled. As a result, monsters take somewhat longer to defeat; however, when compared to December, you should now be able to obtain more Escha Beads and other items that are rewarded based on battle evaluation.

We do understand that it may seem like it takes longer for those who are there only to collect Domain Points. However, please note that Domain Invasion isn’t intended to be content where you idly wait nearby, so we hope that you’ll consider contributing to the battles if you’d like for them to proceed more quickly.

[Yoji_Fujito]

The Model Synergy Furnace’s Moglification was specifically created for this implementation. The Synergy system can be a bit tricky, so take advantage of this effect to skill up!

We’ll consider other new furnishings as well.

[Yoji_Fujito]

Thank you for the feedback.

As of the January adjustments, gear swapping cannot keep up when used after “/pet” commands. This isn’t limited to just beastmaster, but rather tied to equipment that apply effects at a specific timing. Even if a particular macro functions correctly, (for instance, equip recast reduction gear, then execute a command, then swapping to another gear are all executed) it doesn’t go as far as to guarantee the activation of equipment effects. However, in this case there were some pet abilities where there was enough time to change equipment, which currently don’t function as they had before. This particular change wasn’t intended and will be addressed.

Next is the question of determining the activation time.
“/equipset” has always been a command that takes time between execution and actually applying the equipment. Changing the activation time to match this would mean a delay of 75 frames, which would be the same as summoner.
However, this would make the overall activation time slower than before, and would result negatively for players who don’t change equipment.

On the other hand, “/equip” command executes in 60 frames and is considerably faster than “/equipset”. There have been many abilities that were 60 frames, and so this would probably feel similar to how it was previously.

This time we’re planning to make adjustments using the latter idea. Should we receive a large amount of feedback that gear swapping doesn’t work or players who prefer to use /equipset instead, we’ll consider changing it to be the same as summoner, at 75 frames. Please give it a try and let us know what you think.

Regarding ability ranges, as we’ve mentioned multiple times in the past, we are not considering making changes. The January 2020 adjustments are meant to encourage beastmasters themselves to fight on the frontline, so we’d like you to find a way to work together with your pets.

[Akihiko_Matsui]

We’re happy to hear that the shirts were also popular in the West.
We were able to release them in North America thanks to the support from our Western community.

We hope that you’ll continue to support FINAL FANTASY XI!

[Nadie]

There is no issue with /equipset commands not swapping gear quickly enough on the server. If I use a macro with an /equipset command followed by a pet move, it swaps in just as intended. If there is a chance of failure, then it is incredibly small.

The problem is that the developers do not seem to have accounted for Desultor Tassets when they said, quoting the digest video: "These adjustments are intended to make recast time reducing equipment unnecessary".

At present the base recast timer for Ready is 30 seconds, with a minimum of 10 seconds. We can reduce this by 20 seconds with the following:
10 seconds from merits
5 seconds from the 100 job point gift
5 seconds from Desultor Tassets augmented with "Sic" and "Ready" ability delay -5
If the goal, as stated, was to make recast time reducing equipment unnecessary, then the simplest solution here is to provide another 5 seconds through either Ready merits, the 100 job point gift, or by reducing the base recast.

[Nadie]

Regarding ability ranges, as we’ve mentioned multiple times in the past, we are not considering making changes. The January 2020 adjustments are meant to encourage beastmasters themselves to fight on the frontline, so we’d like you to find a way to work together with your pets.

If the developers want beastmasters to fight, then more should be done to encourage it, rather than attempt to discourage them from not doing so.

The main issues with meleeing with beastmaster are:
No native delay reduction
Axe weapon skills are weaker than most other weapon types
Keeping your pet alive often requires you to spend a lot of time in pet damage reduction gear, which has poor melee stats, resulting in even lower damage output

At present, since beastmaster melee output is low and will put your pet at greater risk of dying, not meleeing is only a natural consequence. Improving on these aspects would mean players would be more inclined to melee since by not doing so they would lose out on a meaningful contribution to damage.

[YosemiteYogorockBlondelle]

The Model Synergy Furnace’s Moglification was specifically created for this implementation. The Synergy system can be a bit tricky, so take advantage of this effect to skill up!

We’ll consider other new furnishings as well.

Um... don't think they actually took the time to read my original post or even actually took the time to understand my post by taking a look at the numbers shown in my clip upon the link I posted to show it's counting number...
Apparently, yes we are supposed to be able to select and grab 99,999,999 Model Synergy furnaces into our inventories spaces which they are totally unstackable LOL!!! well okaaay SE Dev crews or creators! {Yeah were do want me to put all of these 99999999 furnaces/model synergy furnaces into the bags/storages for all the spaces we actually do have to place them into holding it all, by the way, just saying... [gussing game creators trying to funny this time around by perchance!? :rolleyes:]

This on the January's log-in campaign rewards being given out for points exchanged to the items received by selection or selection of numbers.

[YosemiteYogorockBlondelle]

There is no issue with /equipset commands not swapping gear quickly enough on the server. If I use a macro with an /equipset command followed by a pet move, it swaps in just as intended. If there is a chance of failure, then it is incredibly small.

The problem is that the developers do not seem to have accounted for Desultor Tassets when they said, quoting the digest video: "These adjustments are intended to make recast time reducing equipment unnecessary".

At present the base recast timer for Ready is 30 seconds, with a minimum of 10 seconds. We can reduce this by 20 seconds with the following:
10 seconds from merits
5 seconds from the 100 job point gift
5 seconds from Desultor Tassets augmented with "Sic" and "Ready" ability delay -5
If the goal, as stated, was to make recast time reducing equipment unnecessary, then the simplest solution here is to provide another 5 seconds through either Ready merits, the 100 job point gift, or by reducing the base recast.

I just don't use the gearing swappage \ gear swapping macro's commands and try to set myself to one gear's being best they can be for all situations myself but I am speaking for all gears for all jobs as well. It just seems to be complicated of a system to actually working of its own version created into the game myself with that much more of trying to be remembering to do too on those of us whom don't already have the best of memories to it too.

[Ferth]

There is no issue with /equipset commands not swapping gear quickly enough on the server. If I use a macro with an /equipset command followed by a pet move, it swaps in just as intended. If there is a chance of failure, then it is incredibly small.

The problem is that the developers do not seem to have accounted for Desultor Tassets when they said, quoting the digest video: "These adjustments are intended to make recast time reducing equipment unnecessary".

At present the base recast timer for Ready is 30 seconds, with a minimum of 10 seconds. We can reduce this by 20 seconds with the following:
10 seconds from merits
5 seconds from the 100 job point gift
5 seconds from Desultor Tassets augmented with "Sic" and "Ready" ability delay -5
If the goal, as stated, was to make recast time reducing equipment unnecessary, then the simplest solution here is to provide another 5 seconds through either Ready merits, the 100 job point gift, or by reducing the base recast.

I feel like the obvious answer here should be replace the 1200 job gift that is currently pet tp bonus +40 to -5 ability delay for sic and ready.

[Alhanelem]

Regarding ability ranges, as we’ve mentioned multiple times in the past, we are not considering making changes. The January 2020 adjustments are meant to encourage beastmasters themselves to fight on the frontline, so we’d like you to find a way to work together with your pets. and as *we* have mentioned multiple times, your changes which you are being so stubborn on have had substantial unintended consequences, and you keep missing the point. There are other ways you can encourage players to be on the front line, and you've even already implemented some of them

So why are you doubling down so hard on this? You continue to fail to understand what the real problem is. Your change intended at ending a playstyle you don't agree with didn't even really accomplish that goal. It only makes it inconvenient, not impossible. All you accomplished here was making the normal gameplay experience for BST a less pleasant one. What good is a balance change if it means nobody enjoys playing the job anymore? Find a way to achieve your goal without crippling the experience for people who already play the way you want them to.

The January 2020 adjustments provide benefits for keeping close. This is really all you needed to do. Why keep a draconian penalty in place that harms players playing the intended way as much as it harms the unintended way you don't want?

As others have put it, the correct approach to the "problem" is make close range combat more viable for the job- not strong arm people into doing it despite it not offering a lot over the previous alternative. It's borderline insulting how you continue to dig your heals in and not really listen to what your playerbase is telling you- Something you have a unique obligation to consider in order to keep your paying customers.

[Smokenttp]

Thank you for the feedback.

As of the January adjustments, gear swapping cannot keep up when used after “/pet” commands. This isn’t limited to just beastmaster, but rather tied to equipment that apply effects at a specific timing. Even if a particular macro functions correctly, (for instance, equip recast reduction gear, then execute a command, then swapping to another gear are all executed) it doesn’t go as far as to guarantee the activation of equipment effects. However, in this case there were some pet abilities where there was enough time to change equipment, which currently don’t function as they had before. This particular change wasn’t intended and will be addressed.

Next is the question of determining the activation time.
“/equipset” has always been a command that takes time between execution and actually applying the equipment. Changing the activation time to match this would mean a delay of 75 frames, which would be the same as summoner.
However, this would make the overall activation time slower than before, and would result negatively for players who don’t change equipment.

On the other hand, “/equip” command executes in 60 frames and is considerably faster than “/equipset”. There have been many abilities that were 60 frames, and so this would probably feel similar to how it was previously.

This time we’re planning to make adjustments using the latter idea. Should we receive a large amount of feedback that gear swapping doesn’t work or players who prefer to use /equipset instead, we’ll consider changing it to be the same as summoner, at 75 frames. Please give it a try and let us know what you think.

Regarding ability ranges, as we’ve mentioned multiple times in the past, we are not considering making changes. The January 2020 adjustments are meant to encourage beastmasters themselves to fight on the frontline, so we’d like you to find a way to work together with your pets.

Just change the damage abilities to 75 frames already (the same as smn) it will save you time, /equipset is too valuable of a macro tool to passby and /equip piece by piece now adays begs players to use 3rd party tools.....

[Rwolf]

Regarding ability ranges, as we’ve mentioned multiple times in the past, we are not considering making changes. The January 2020 adjustments are meant to encourage beastmasters themselves to fight on the frontline, so we’d like you to find a way to work together with your pets.

Distance for ability activation is broken.
It's been mentioned dozens of times, the distance for ability ranges are broken. Please listen to your community. We are frequently put in a position where maintaining standing on top of the pet is hard. The game has so many mechanics that revolve around constant movement.

Beastmaster pets have their own enmity. They will run after anything that hits them with area of effect and you can't call it back unless you run to go stand on top of them. No other pet job has to deal with that.

Bind and knockback effects are equivalent to Amnesia. I can't command my pet if on some fights I'm constantly being thrown out of the small range you're giving to issue any command at all. The changes to range are extremely overbearing.

January 2020 Changes to Melee
If you want players to melee with their pets then make meaningful contributions to melee. The January 2020 changes wasn't enough. I also don't like the precedent this creates where you're stuck using certain pets to melee.


Harden Shell: Comes from a Level 99 Jug that can only hit item level 114.
Secretion: Evasion+25 is nothing. Especially on a job with C rating in Evasion.
Rage: Forced to use a weak jug pet for Attack +50%/Defense -50%.
Zealous Snort: Haste is overwritten by Haste II, which almost everyone is gonna have access to with trusts. Counter and Magic Defense Bonus is good. Pretty much stuck using this jug only.
Water Wall: The duration is random.
Bubble Curtain: The Magic Damage Taken is overwritten by Shell/Shellra V even though it's more potent.

I feel like the team is trying to rewrite Beastmaster into something else and is not sure what to do. This feels like how Puppetmaster was treated in the beginning but worse.

Ideas

Give us good axe/shield Fencer builds.
Remove the distance nerf to ability activation.
Uncap jug pets so we have more at 99.

[Mavrick]

At least FIX the pet AI so it does not attack random monsters on its hate list. Its very annoying having pet constantly dart all around the battle field, especially now with the super small command radius. Group events with multiple monsters are a nightmare because the pet is always running out of command radius attacking the wrong monsters. In these battles I spend half the time spamming Heel, Heel, Heel, Heel, Heel when I could be using Ready for damage instead.

[TullemoreAsuraFFXI]

A major solution for inventory and equipment torment

My theory for a combined JSE equipment evolution. This is an incredibly innovative concept compared to the status quo of FFXI from launch to present day. It would require the creation of at least one new type of a NPC. This NPC could be a stand-alone NPC or duplicates could be spread to major cities similar to how Porter Moogle are placed.

With a version update for content a new class of progression JSE item would be introduced. To obtain this new class of progression JSE a player would interface with the new associated NPC when their current job is level 99. That way the NPC selects it's dispensable items corresponding to the job the player shows. Example: a player speaks to the NPC as a level 99 DRG, the NPC menus adjust and selections are established for the DRG equipment category.

This NPC will dispense at ZERO cost a new blank piece of progression JSE (congruous to what is already established with base dispensable trial of the magian progression weapons).

Each non-weaponry equipment type would dispense a menu select-able item.

Head / Body / Hands / Legs / Feet / Waist / Back / Neck / Ammo (Satchel) / Left Ring(1) / Right Ring(2)

FFXI dev team would apply a visual skin (appearance) and a name for each of these. Appearance could be entirely new or a regenerated use of currently existing appearances (i personally would chose the abyssea class skins).

The new progression JSE equipment would require a "EX" item tag, and CAN NOT receive a "rare" item tag. This is extremely important as concerns the attribute for +/-enmity as i will explain further below.

OK! now on to the good part of how this works. I can best describe it as attribute assimilation. For fans of Star Trek, a reference would be how the Borg are conceptualized. Your new progression JSE assimilates and combines the attributes of each item a particular job can wear, {Obvious exclusions can be made for specific non-combat related attributes such as Warp and Teleport capabilities}

WHILE WEARING a currently existing item, the player trades the new progression JSE item corresponding to the item slot they are wearing to the new NPC and that new NPC has TWO confirmation dialogues. ~ 1st is apply enmity. This gives selections for "Yes" "No" and "Neutral". Selecting "Yes" will apply the enmity attribute of the item you are wearing to the corresponding JSE progression item. Selecting "No" will ignore the enmity attribute. Selecting "Neutral" will remove adjustment of +/- enmity from the JSE progression item. ~ 2nd is apply attributes. This gives selections for "Yes" and "No". Selecting "Yes" will apply the highest value of a combat attribute to the corresponding JSE progression item when compared to the item that is worn and the current attributes on the JSE progression item. Higher value overwrites lower value and lower value will never overwrite a higher value. Attribute values are stored onto the JSE progression item using the existing augmented capability display. {Reference Oseem / Nolan npc and Escha item augments}.

This innovation will not only fix the torment associated with inventory limitations, but in addition will fix the torment associated with pre-cast & potency & idle & +/- enmity & JSE capes & selective adjustments related to /equipset and macros.

Below i'll represent a brief display of a set of trades for a visualization of what i have described above.

We start with our "Blank" JSE progression item. In it's "Blank" state it would only have an associated appearance and whatever it's attached name would be. For this case we will utilize a Head slot equipment for WAR. We trade the blank JSE progression item to the npc as we are a lvl 99 WAR while we have equipped on our character a Boii Mask +1. We select our choices from the dialogue confirmations and our JSE progression item will now have these augments. ->

DEF:114 HP+43 STR+33 DEX+17 VIT+32 AGI+15 INT+11 MND+11 CHR+11 Accuracy+24 Attack+24 Evasion+36 Magic Evasion+48 "Magic Def. Bonus"+2 Haste+7% Critical hit rate +4% "Double Attack"+5% Set: Augments "Double Attack"

Now we remove the Boii Mask +1 and equip on our character a Pummeler's Mask +3. We trade the JSE progression item to our new favorite NPC and select the dialogue confirmations and our JSE progression item will now have these augments. ->

DEF:133 HP+67 STR+33 DEX+34 VIT+34 AGI+31 INT+31 MND+31 CHR+31 Accuracy+47 Attack +24 Evasion+56 Magic Evasion+73 "Magic Def. Bonus"+3 Haste+8% Critical hit rate +4% "Double Attack" +5% Enmity+12 "Aggressor" duration +18 Physical damage taken -5% Set: Increases Accuracy, Ranged Accuracy, and Magic Accuracy Augments "Double Attack".

Now we remove the Pummeler's Mask +3 and equip on our character a Agoge Mask +3. We trade the JSE progression item to our new favorite NPC and select the dialogue confirmations and our JSE progression item will now have these augments. ->

DEF:135 HP+67 STR+35 DEX+34 VIT+35 AGI+31 INT+31 MND+31 CHR+31 Accuracy+47 Attack+83 Magic Accuracy+37 Evasion+56 Magic Evasion+73 "Magic Def. Bonus"+4 Parrying skill +21 Haste+8% Critical hit rate +4% "Double Attack" +5% Enmity+12 "Warcry" effect duration +30 Weapon skill damage +10% Physical damage taken -5% Set: Increases Accuracy, Ranged Accuracy, and Magic Accuracy Augments "Double Attack".

Now we remove the Agoge Mask +3 and equip on our character a Sulevia's Mask +2. We trade the JSE progression item to our new favorite NPC and select the dialogue confirmations and our JSE progression item will now have these augments. ->

DEF:135 HP+67 MP+40 STR+35 DEX+34 VIT+40 AGI+31 INT+31 MND+31 CHR+31 Accuracy+47 Attack+83 Magic Accuracy +37 Evasion+56 Magic Evasion+73 "Magic Def. Bonus"+4 Parrying skill +21 Haste+8% "Store TP"+10 Critical hit rate +4% "Double Attack" +5% Enmity+12 "Warcry" effect duration +30 Weapon skill damage +10% Damage taken -6% Set: Enhances "Subtle Blow" effect Increases Accuracy, Ranged Accuracy, and Magic Accuracy Augments "Double Attack".


{wherever i used the acronym "JSE" this refers to Job Specific Equipment}

[Alhanelem]

I don't know why we're failing to communicate that we aren't explicitly asking for a revert, just a more forgiving range value. I get it, they want to keep BST on the front. Why can't they compromise and increase the range by just a few yalms to ease the frustration?

Just increase the current value by 3-5y and give hte master a little freedom to reposition without losing the ability to command.

[Lucor]

The biggest thing I can't understand about the BST range issue is... Why is range an issue with BST and not PUP? PUP has better melee gear and weaponskills than BST, yet they can issue commands even further than SMN could.

[Gwydion]

This time we’re planning to make adjustments using the latter idea. Should we receive a large amount of feedback that gear swapping doesn’t work or players who prefer to use /equipset instead, we’ll consider changing it to be the same as summoner, at 75 frames. Please give it a try and let us know what you think.

Regarding ability ranges, as we’ve mentioned multiple times in the past, we are not considering making changes. The January 2020 adjustments are meant to encourage beastmasters themselves to fight on the frontline, so we’d like you to find a way to work together with your pets.

I'm unable to guess how SE will fix inconsistent gear swapping with Desultor Legs (and retain the use of full Pet Stat sets), but Reward Job Ability activation is still broken. Please consider fixing the buff priority problems as well.

A simple fix of +3 yalms would go such a long way. It would mean, that the Beastmaster and pet can fight a monster from opposite sides ..and still activate Reward consistently. This is something we have always done since 2003!

As a paying customer, my patience is wearing very thin. However, I am reserving my judgement for the next Beastmaster update. SE can sometimes surprise us and produce very good things. I am still hopeful, you can get Beastmaster right.

[Gwydion]

We’re happy to hear that the shirts were also popular in the West.
We were able to release them in North America thanks to the support from our Western community.

We hope that you’ll continue to support FINAL FANTASY XI!

I purchased a shirt, but I have to completely honest. I'm very disappointed in front-facing artwork on this t-shirt. Final Fantasy, in general, has some of the BEST artwork every made for any franchise, period. In fact, take a look at this artwork you display during your weekly Digest videos. Can we see more artwork like this on Final Fantasy 11 merchandise? At the very least, please at least, include the official Final Fantasy heading that is so iconic to every game in the series.

https://i.imgur.com/QT2f13p.png

P.S. I would also buy the giant artwork you have behind you, shown above, during the digest video. T-shirt, poster, etc. Please make it available! Who is the artist?

Thank you.

[Zehira]

We’re happy to hear that the shirts were also popular in the West.
We were able to release them in North America thanks to the support from our Western community.

We hope that you’ll continue to support FINAL FANTASY XI!

I am happy that you are happy about how popular the shirt is. However, you could have done better than that don't you think? :)

[TullemoreAsuraFFXI]

On amazon alone, granted the filter is spread when you seek for "Final Fantasy" in the apparel category, 488 results appear. So it's not as if Square-Enix is not exploring fashion related products. I am certain that prudent decisions are being made based upon what return on investment can be projected for. Individual aesthetic tastes are tough for even top tier fashion professionals to pin point especially when considering producing thousands of merchandise.

May I suggest a biannual fan art contest for T-shirt prints (Front & Back) where the community could vote for a winner from a offering of 24-36 contenders selected by FFXI staff?

[Wanorano]

We’re happy to hear that the shirts were also popular in the West.
We were able to release them in North America thanks to the support from our Western community.

We hope that you’ll continue to support FINAL FANTASY XI!

Europe says hi...

[Spaitin]

The decision to let pets buff the master is a welcome change. It is however, a fairly insignificant improvement to the Master. Extra attack doesnt do anything in a full party situation and while the extra defensive stats are nice, the master will never be a tank in a party. So those extra defensive stats are mostly a waste. But it is at least an improvement.

The rest of the update was pretty detrimental to the job. It was actually a rather large step backwards for the Beastmaster class overall. Three solutions to fixing this. Option 1 is to make merits reduce ready to the minimum 10 seconds, this would make the most sense since no 119 gear exists for ready reduction anyway. Option 2 is to revert everything from the last update with the exception of the Pet buffing the master and the ready recast. Option 3 would be to create new gear that decreases ready time that is iLvl that also increases pet attack/acc/multi attack/ready dmg.

Even with this solution, Beastmaster job will be a TINY bit better than it was before the update. Before the update Beastmaster was widely considered one of the least effective jobs. I currently rank beastmaster as the worst job. Too bad since it is my favorite job. If you want to have Beastmaster be a front line job, then you need to have gear AND buffs affect the master and pet. If your goal all along was to have the master fight right next to the pet, then I am baffled as to why you never made gear that buffs both the master and the pet at the same time to actually encourage side by side fighting. I am also baffled that it took you 14 YEARS to realize the master was not fighting next to the pet. The gear is just not made that way, why didn't you make them both able to be enhanced by gear at the same time if you want them to do the same thing? Currently gear and buffs are segmented in a way that forces the player to choose between having a strong pet OR master, you cant have both. You can have a strong pet with a weak master or a weak pet with a strong master. "Strong" in this case is subjective, bst has by far the weakest of the pet jobs and the master is one of the weaker melee jobs.

The range issue is huge. It is completely possible to try and use "Ready" while attacking a mob and be too far away from the pet to use it. This is despite having both pet and master next to the target. This needs to have a better solution than simply ignoring it. So to compensate for this, since only the master OR pet can be enhanced by gear and buffs, players are actually just running in and using ready and then running out of range. This is because your range nerf ENCOURAGES players to keep distance from their pets. Just makes it a larger pain to do the EXACT SAME THING YOU WERE TRYING TO PREVENT. they still do it. Adding a couple yalms or making the distance for ready based on the target would be a much smarter way of doing things. I cant really think of a worse way to do it than the current distance requirements. It was a HARD fail at encouraging master and pets to be side by side.

A simple but fantastic solution to most of bst's issue would be giving it access to Job ability haste. This would at least make it a solid melee class.


Currently Beastmaster's best builds are to have a well buffed master and then have the pet sit in the corner and not do anything. The pet in those builds is so weak that it is actually a loss to use ready moves. The difference between a master + pet VS just the master is actually quite small in a party set up.

Gear for bstmaster needs a large overhaul OR you need to massively increase the Multi attack, attack, acc, crit rate, crit dmg, pDif and Weapon skill damage of pets. The second would probably be the easier one to do. Making the pets stats based off the masters stats would also be a fairly solid option.

Charm and Tame are two job abilities that have 0 use in today's game. Removing them entirely would make no difference on how Beastmaster is played. I highly suggest turning them into new job abilities that do something else.


All of the "jug" pets need to be made accessible at 119 levels. Or at least a version of each one.

Your attempts so far to get the master to fight next to the pet have been hilariously lacking. You have yet to address ANY of the big issues that make the masters not want to stand close the the pet.


We have been trying to fight along side the pets for a long time now. Unfortunately there are no gears/buffs that encourage this. You have given us zero incentive.

So my main question would be, what exactly do you think you have done to encourage the master fighting next to the pet other than the range nerf?

In a party build the master or pet wont be a tank. The extra attack and defense will be useless. The only thing that is somewhat working is the slug pets ooze, but that has been around since before you started "encouraging" us. Using pet attacks has a negative effect on the Beastmaster damage.

The recently added pets were EVEN worse than existing options.

Perhaps tieing ready moves to the master's WS similar to that of drg. DRG is the only pet job that actually has incentive to melee alongside the pet. Or maybe allowing the pet buffs to effect the entire party. BST needs SOMETHING to be good at. It currently has no strengths.


As it currently stands. completely deleting the bstmaster job would have minimal effect on the game as a whole. Nothing would change, no fights would become harder.

Unless you give bst SOMETHING to be good at, i recommend just removing the job from the game until you can brainstorm a solution to improve the job. Your constant updates that end up weakening the job are just sad at this point.

The reason you get so little feedback on the job is simple. You have wrecked the job to the point that all the dedicated beastmaster players have quite the game. Not may people play the job. You can go weeks without seeing one in the field.

[Lucor]

I'm gonna give the perfect solution for fixing BST, hopefully it doesn't get buried...

Change the Merit effect of Beast Affinity. Like other jobs let the pet be the master's level, ilvl matching the weapon.

Make the new effect for Beast Affinity actually match the name, have it make the pet and master stronger while they are a set distance next to each other. Each merit could give both master and pet a 2-5% attack/magic attack buff and 1-3% job ability haste. Maybe even some -physical/magic damage taken II for the master.

The relic hands augment could add the -DT effects if adding them to Beast Affinity by default is too much.

With something like this, you would give the master a reason to always be by their pet, as well as the means to not be afraid to. You wouldn't even need to limit the distance for pet commands anymore since the master would always be by the pet. And let's be fair about it, with how sporadic the pet AI is, it feels like the master is on a leash, not the pet.

[Nadie]

Regarding ability ranges, as we’ve mentioned multiple times in the past, we are not considering making changes. The January 2020 adjustments are meant to encourage beastmasters themselves to fight on the frontline, so we’d like you to find a way to work together with your pets.

Would you consider an adjustment that would make it both easier to melee on beastmaster, while making it harder to stand back?

Presently, when meleeing, the short range makes it very frustrating, even when meleeing, to issue pet commands, as it's possible for the pet and master to be fighting on opposite sides of the target yet still be too far away to use pet moves.

Meanwhile, somebody who stands out of range, can just run in after a TP move, use a ready move, then run back.

My suggestion is that the requirements for using sic and ready be changed from being within 7 yalms from pet, to being within 7 yalms of the pet's target, and reward being changed to 10 to account for the pet potentially being on the opposite side of the target.

This means a beastmaster still has to be up close to the target to use pet moves, whereas for somebody who stands back, they will have to run in even further to use pet moves.

Here's an illustration of the suggestion to help visualize it:
https://abload.de/img/bstsuggestion02j28.png

Apologies for any improper translations. Hopefully it's still readable.

[Xilk]

Thank you for the feedback.

As of the January adjustments, gear swapping cannot keep up when used after “/pet” commands. This isn’t limited to just beastmaster, but rather tied to equipment that apply effects at a specific timing. Even if a particular macro functions correctly, (for instance, equip recast reduction gear, then execute a command, then swapping to another gear are all executed) it doesn’t go as far as to guarantee the activation of equipment effects. However, in this case there were some pet abilities where there was enough time to change equipment, which currently don’t function as they had before. This particular change wasn’t intended and will be addressed.

Next is the question of determining the activation time.
“/equipset” has always been a command that takes time between execution and actually applying the equipment. Changing the activation time to match this would mean a delay of 75 frames, which would be the same as summoner.
However, this would make the overall activation time slower than before, and would result negatively for players who don’t change equipment.

On the other hand, “/equip” command executes in 60 frames and is considerably faster than “/equipset”. There have been many abilities that were 60 frames, and so this would probably feel similar to how it was previously.

This time we’re planning to make adjustments using the latter idea. Should we receive a large amount of feedback that gear swapping doesn’t work or players who prefer to use /equipset instead, we’ll consider changing it to be the same as summoner, at 75 frames. Please give it a try and let us know what you think.

Regarding ability ranges, as we’ve mentioned multiple times in the past, we are not considering making changes. The January 2020 adjustments are meant to encourage beastmasters themselves to fight on the frontline, so we’d like you to find a way to work together with your pets.

Thank you for your attention into these concerns.
Making the ready activation time 60 frames will work just fine. OR as some others have suggested, making the jp 1200 gift into ready recast -5 is also fine instead.
The latter would probably be preferable for players.. It does simpify things. Its not that instant or 25ms activation is bad. Its that it creates a conflict with our ability to swap the appropriate gear. Either solution is workable, but the 1200 JP gift is probably the most elegant solution.

I know you want players to stop complaining about the range nerf. However it is rather onerous. ALL the comments from Square Enix tell the players that you don't understand our concerns.

You think Beastmaster is too powerful when it can fight with only the pet, while the master stays away in safety.
This is the only argument we have heard from you. You want the beastmaster to be in danger.

I think there are 2 big player complaints.
1. The range is so short, it is actually difficult and cumbersome when the master is close and we play exactly how you want us to. It is frustrating to fight in close, and the large model enemy means our pet will not follow commands. It tells the players that it does not work as intended, and you refuse to see this.

2. You have eliminated the beastmaster role. It now has nowhere to exist except for solo'ing. Again.
I think this is the point we players have had a difficult time articulating.

There is a long tradition of forming up Pet-Centered strategies. They were already limited to very few jobs:
Beastmaster, Puppetmaster, Summoner, Geomancer, Corsair

The range reduction for beastmaster pet commands has removed beastmaster from this strategy.

However, beastmaster is NOT competitive with other jobs for party damage dealing and support. Corsair, Redmage, Bluemage, and Dancer, are all better in the hybrid damage dealer and support roles. The pure support classes of Bard and Geomancer are practically required in all high level content.

So where does Beastmaster belong? Final Fantasy XI is still alive today because the absolute NEED to work together in a party. This is a brilliant design choice. We players LOVE it! However, when a job has no home, that is no party role, it is painful.

Your argument for reducing the ready recast range is that beastmaster should not be able to fight with only the pet. Yet that playstyle still exists for puppetmasters and summoners. This fact cripples your argument.

There is already a built in balance for beastmaster when it uses Pet only. It sacrifices a HUGE portion of its power to fight with ONLY the pet.

This is very similiar to how Ninja has Innin and Yonin stances. It has an offensive mode, and a defensive mode. It cannot Play both a damage dealer and a tank at the same time!
Dancer is in the same situation with Saber Dance and Fan Dance. OR Scholar with Light arts and Dark arts.

Well Beastmaster does not have explicit job abilities to change its role. However the gear options and pet mechanics have this limitation and balance built in.
In order for a beastmaster to use pet to tank, they must give up the damage dealing power from both master and pet.
In order to deal good damage, beastmaster must give up defense on both master and pet
In order to recover from Enfeeblement, there is at least 1 minute recast from reward AND the master probably needs to be erased first.

MOST SIGNIFICANTLY, the way party buffs work either focus on buffing the master OR the pet. It is unfeasible to give sufficient buffs to both.
Support buffs from Corsair can target either pet OR master. Not both. Bard has no buffs for pets. Geomancer has DEBUFFS which might help pets, but no buffs which will help pets (though thematically they should)

The current dependence on these 3 jobs for high level content, AND the fact that ready move range has been reduced, means that Beastmaster has no home in party content.

Aside from Nostolgic appeal from players like me, it will die.

The recent update allowing pet self-buffing ready moves to affect the master is very fun and clever. It helps the bst function better in a party as a melee dps. However, it is a short-lived novelty.

The party roles are NOT well distributed. They are like the folllowing:

Healer: Whitemage, Scholar, Red Mage, Paladin, Dancer? mabye, Bluemage? maybe
Tank: Paladin, Rune Fencer, Puppetmaster, Ninja (situational), Dancer? mabye, Blue Mage? maybe
Support: Bard, Geomancer, Corsair, Red mage
Damage Dealer: Warrior, Monk, Dark Knight, Blue Mage, Red Mage, Dancer, Thief, Samurai, Dragoon, Beastmaster, Ninja,
Ranger, Summoner, Black Mage, Puppetmaster, Corsair, Scholar

The traditional party will consist of:
1 Tank
1 Healer
2~3 support
1~2 damage dealers

17 jobs are competing for 1~2 party slots. They Hybrid Damage dealer jobs already have a disadvantage for these slots. Beastmaster has the additional problem of a pet who does NOT fit the strategy for buffs.

However, the 2 ~ 3 Support Slots only have 3~4 Jobs competing for them.

I think enabling jobs to fill in other roles, or partial roles, would help alleviate this party imbalance. For Example: If a puppetmaster and a dancer could partially play as damage dealers, and replace the need for a geomancer it would open additional options.

However, this really assumes that we are constrained to this traditional party setup. I have been proposing slight modifications to let beastmaster slide into a tanking role. Namely, methods for managing Enmity, as an alternative so that it has a home.

With all the buffs red mage recieved last year, I would not think this to be onerous. I don't really play red mage, but I'm happy for the rdms who get to play with alot of REALLY cool abilities. I think Red mage is so powerful right now, I can fill many party roles by itself even at the same time. I don't want Red mage to be nerfed, but by comparison, ready range abilities on beastmaster are nothing.

Some players have done really great things with Subtle blow focused parties. Using Ninja, Monk, Dancer, etc. This is a wonderful style option for the game and for these jobs.

Having a pet style option is also a wonderful option for the game and for those jobs.

However, you kicked beastmaster out of the pet party and left it homeless. That is why we won't stop nagging you about this design change.
It might fit a rubric or balance for individual job, but for party dynamics and variety of strategy it was a poor choice.

[Jerbob]

I don't know why we're failing to communicate that we aren't explicitly asking for a revert, just a more forgiving range value. I get it, they want to keep BST on the front. Why can't they compromise and increase the range by just a few yalms to ease the frustration?

Just increase the current value by 3-5y and give hte master a little freedom to reposition without losing the ability to command.
I'm not going to lie - I won't be happy with anything but a full and complete reversion of the distance nerf. All these suggestions are good compromises, but the nerf is based on a flawed premise, and we shouldn't have to compromise. I am explicitly asking for a revert, because it's ridiculous.

SE, please understand that I already want to fight on the frontline with my familiar. Please understand that I will do so in any situation that I possibly can. Please understand that I have no desire to stand back and spam Ready moves from 20 yalms away. You don't need to force me to fight. But also, you need to understand that familiars move and retarget erratically, that monsters are large, that knockbacks are commonplace, that equipment that allows true master/pet synergy is still not quite up to scratch, and that having to constantly perfectly position myself relative to a familiar that has a mind of its own is NOT. FUN. AT. ALL.

It's also important to understand that sometimes I want to fight at range. Sometimes I want to kite things. Sometimes I want to solo things at a distance. These are things that Beastmasters (AND OTHER PET JOBS) have done since their introduction into the game. Sometimes it's really fun to do these things. And the same penalties have always been there - they're intrinsic to the strategy. If I'm not fighting, I'm not adding master damage. If I'm not able to safely be on the front line, managing enmity and my familiar's HP is going to be challenging. I get that there are concerns that people will just spam Ready moves to kill dangerous monsters, but... (a) that was years ago and things have changed, and (b) other jobs are still doing it.

SE, please understand that people are going to keep bringing this up whenever BST is mentioned, because it's not working. Asserting that you are not considering making changes is all very well, but you're going to have to keep making that statement over and over, because what we have now isn't fun, and it isn't working.

And, from another perspective, I want to address the fact that we've recently heard SE say they want to promote a wide range of playstyles. Beastmastering from the back lines is unquestionably a valid playstyle - there are other jobs that do exactly that, and not only pet jobs. The penalty is intrinsic - I'm not adding master damage. That should be motivation enough for me to be in melee range as frequently as I possibly can (which, I reiterate, I want to do). I don't want to backline as a standard thing, but if I can when situations are less than ideal, or when I play solo, I have more options available to me, and I can BST in more situations. That's fun!

A recent example - I run with a fairly relaxed linkshell. We don't mandate that people have to level certain jobs. We try to make sure people can come to events on jobs they enjoy. We don't demand that people log in at XPM on Someday or face consequences. Of course, we don't expect to have this ethos and also be The Very Best Like No-one Ever Was, but we work hard and do what we can. And despite appearances on forums, I suspect this is how most people play the game. Sometimes we'll not have quite enough support, or quite the right jobs, to use a given strategy perfectly; as things stand, with the range nerf, that means I can't come as BST, because I endanger the group if I have no choice but to be frontline at all times. With an acceptable pet command range, I could go back to the well-established Beastmaster emergency fallback of bobbing in and out of melee range as support permitted without standing around like a complete lemon for half the fight. A different playstyle, adapting to available jobs! And again, the penalty is intrinsic - I'm not adding master damage. We might lose; if we win, it'll be much slower that a well-formulated, draconian-job-assignment strategy.

But we all had fun.

Regarding the equip issue:

- Please just increase the Ready recast merits to 3 seconds per merit spent. We should not have to use level 75 gear at this stage in the game. Please don't forget that our shortest <wait> is 1 second.
- Also, it's really interesting to see developer discussion about precast gear. I would really love for you to look into how this works for magic - at the moment, with the granularity of <wait>, those of us who aren't cheating can't use fast cast gear to reduce the casting time of quite a lot of spells, as there's no way for us to change into the appropriate gear in time to finish the casting. Anything you can do to address this would be extremely welcome.

[Xilk]

We have been trying to fight along side the pets for a long time now. Unfortunately there are no gears/buffs that encourage this. You have given us zero incentive.

So my main question would be, what exactly do you think you have done to encourage the master fighting next to the pet other than the range nerf?



I will give the developers a little more credit.

Some recent pieces do quite a good job at buffing both master and pet. Aymur, Guttler, Heyoka armor, Tali'ah armor, Pangu, Beastmaster Collar +2, Voluspa Tathlum, Cath Palug Ring, Shulmanu Collar, Adad amulet, Udug Jacket (if it really exists... It might be a myth:P).

Heyoka set buffs both master and pet for tp. However, the tp phase does not matter much for bst pets. The ready recast of 10s and the pet tp bonus equipment means that the pet tp phase is not very significant. its also rather superseded by Malignance set for master.

Tali'ah set is decent tp set, but realy its mostly wonderful to have good options for master and pet magic accuracy.

The reforged +3 artifact and relic gear ~kinda attempt to buff both master and pet, but its rather awkward for several pieces.

It is a turn in the right direction. I hope the momentum keeps going. It is not yet enough though.

[Rwolf]

I'm not going to lie - I won't be happy with anything but a full and complete reversion of the distance nerf. All these suggestions are good compromises, but the nerf is based on a flawed premise, and we shouldn't have to compromise. I am explicitly asking for a revert, because it's ridiculous.

I wish I could thumbs up more than once. I won't either for the same reason. There hasn't been a reasonable explanation for the distance nerf. Monster attributes were heavily inflated at the time and doesn't exist any more. PUP is in a similar situation but doesn't have to deal with fallout because again the issue no longer exists.

It's not fun being in the heat of battle having to remind myself that I need to watch my pet like a toddler that likes to run off.

[Alhanelem]

I don't like it either but with the devs digging their heels in an doubling down on this being the right way to fix BST even though the range was fine for the near decade-and-a-half before it, making the exact reason we're frustrated as clear as possible and aiming for a compromise my have a chance of getting them to listen. Then if/when they do that, they'll see players are happier and ppl won't be abusing the mechanics more.

[Xilk]

... ppl won't be abusing the mechanics more.

I take issue with your phrasing :P
Manipulating the mechanics is exactly what you do when playing this game. I would hardly call it abuse.

Is it abuse when a solo RDM takes down Odin by silencing him, using 1 damage daggers and enspells to kill him while he cannot use magic or tp moves? its simply smart strategy. Why would you want to punish such a thing?

I understand if there are unintended consequences and scenarios in a complex system like ffxi. However, I hardly call it abuse unless a player is using a 3rd party app to manipulate the game.

Learning the limitations well, and finding a niche application of abilities or loophole is exactly what makes the fights in FFXI so much fun.

[Alhanelem]

I take issue with your phrasing :P
Manipulating the mechanics is exactly what you do when playing this game. I would hardly call it abuse.

Is it abuse when a solo RDM takes down Odin by silencing him, using 1 damage daggers and enspells to kill him while he cannot use magic or tp moves? its simply smart strategy. Why would you want to punish such a thing?

I understand if there are unintended consequences and scenarios in a complex system like ffxi. However, I hardly call it abuse unless a player is using a 3rd party app to manipulate the game.

Learning the limitations well, and finding a niche application of abilities or loophole is exactly what makes the fights in FFXI so much fun.
I'm referring to what SE considers abuse, i.e. the reason they made this nerf in the first place.

Your example is different, and it's not something that there is any easy way to address (the only easy way would be to make enemies no longer follow the same rules as players and just use abilities whenever they want), even though it might not, strictly speaking, be specifically intended. They've always been pretty loose with red mage especially, since with various tactics they can solo virutally everything, it's just extremely time consuming / inefficient in many cases. In the case of BST, their changes were directed at discouraging a playstyle that has no downsides- both efficient and safe. This is understandable- it's their solution that isn't, because it punishes players who were already playing or trying to play the way SE wanted. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater, i believe is the right expression here.

[Nyarlko]

I'm referring to what SE considers abuse, i.e. the reason they made this nerf in the first place.

Your example is different, and it's not something that there is any easy way to address (the only easy way would be to make enemies no longer follow the same rules as players and just use abilities whenever they want), even though it might not, strictly speaking, be specifically intended. They've always been pretty loose with red mage especially, since with various tactics they can solo virutally everything, it's just extremely time consuming / inefficient in many cases. In the case of BST, their changes were directed at discouraging a playstyle that has no downsides- both efficient and safe. This is understandable- it's their solution that isn't, because it punishes players who were already playing or trying to play the way SE wanted. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater, i believe is the right expression here.

The reason they nerfed us in the first place was because monster stats were overinflated (it was pre-GEO/macc/meva nerf/adjustment) and the non-BST players whined up a storm about how they could not beat Geas Fete NMs when middling-geared BST pets had higher baseline accuracy and attack than many melee players and were capable of defeating T1 NMs with pet Ready moves that dealt roughly as much damage as well geared melee WS, (even though doing so often risked timing out in the encounter. lol) The nerf to JA range had very little, if anything at all, to do with the actual complaints and problems at the time. Said complaints also quickly fizzled out after only a few months of gear creep and melees got access to Escha-Ru'aun gear, yet the unnecessary nerf to an entire job remains half a decade later..

The stubborn insistance that there is nothing wrong with the current implementation has finally convinced me, and I am converting camps from asking for compromise to demanding a full reversion of all BST JAs. There are quite literally zero reasonable, rational justifications for proclaiming that all is well while the city burns around us. Please explain how exactly a bugged implementation of an overreaching nerf that reduced an entire job's functionality to less than melee range is something worthy of being defended as staunchly as you have been doing? Restoring our JA ranges to what they were 6yrs ago will not result in BST suddenly becoming OP, and the only increase in DPS will be due to no longer seeing that accursed "out of range" error message. It will make the job far less frustrating and more fun to play however, since there will be no worries about our JAs failing to complete while playing the way you have told us to.

At this point, a BST who is perfectly geared for the pet-only playstyle will perform far worse than any other DD job, even with a full reversion of the range nerf, barring fight-specific gimmicks which increase damage taken by the target. A BST who is perfectly geared for master-only playstyle will also perform far worse than any other DD job. Because of how our gear has been designed so far, it's not feasible for both master+pet to perform anywhere close to peak performance at the same time. (BST master-meleeing is also a very bland experience since we are also lacking any mainjob JA/JT that properly encourage meleeing, which results in doing literally nothing except WS and auto-attacks.)

I'm still pinning my hopes on everything being a mistake due to a flawed testing environment, btw. I really don't want to believe that the current dev team actually seriously expects their customers to enjoy any job that fails to function more reliably than it does succeeding to do... anything. I would much prefer to believe that your hearts and ideas are in the right place, and you are just mistakenly basing your judgements on a bad test build of the game's program, and/or failing to account for reasonable network latency due to using a locally hosted test system, or something else along those lines. Please take into account just how many YEARS that the entire game had the wrong stats for magic evasion and magic accuracy before dismissing this question. The change to readying time to 0.25sec feels supportive of a mismatch between the testing environment and live servers being a probable source of discontinuity between what the devs think is happening versus what players are experiencing during live gameplay (some of whom are playing from the other side of the planet and naturally have significantly more unavoidable latency than those playing while in the same geographical region as the servers.) It should not be all that difficult or time consuming to verify parity between testing/live builds, so I implore the dev team to do so periodically for the sake of knowing for absolute certain that the game actually plays the way you believe that it does.




Once again, my suggestions for further adjustments to allow the BST job to function more in-line with the proscribed playstyle:

* New JT: Pet gains a portion of ALL master stats from gear. To start with, +30% seems reasonable to test the waters and verify that it doesn't create any unexpected overwhelmingly powerful results, then adjust upwards as feasible without disrupting overall game balance. Let's start with naturally gaining this new JT at T1:lv25, T2:lv50, T3:lv75, (T4:lv99 could be added 1-3 months later once you're satisfied that it won't break the game,) with each tier giving +10% to the effect. This takes all stats that master gains from equipment into account, (though with this, I am assuming there would be no problems with not-applicable-to-pet stats from gear like Dual Wield, similar to how gear stats work for players.) My eyeballed estimate would be roughly around the +60% mark before the benefit from this trait while equipped in purely master-based gear would overtake purely pet-based gear, so it would still be optimal to use pet gear when wanting to focus purely on the pet. This would give us a means to properly melee as master without totally crippling our pets. It would also give the devs the bonus of having a "knob to turn" for the job that could be used to easily and directly affect pet damage output, by adding tiers gained thru leveling and/or gear that enhances the stat by a further percentage. I see this as a simple, yet fundamentally ideal, solution to the issues surrounding equipment for a pet job that is now intended to be equally focused on pet and master when equipment has absolutely not been implemented in a style that actually supports that playstyle in any way up until now, where the only questionable aspects are the percentage values involved.

* Do away with the current jug pet level system for ilvl players, including ignoring any/all level caps normally baked into each jug. Either simply set pet base level to master's average ilvl, (like trusts,) or steal the system used for PUP and have our pet's lvl determined by a new ranged slot item (that plays nice with pet foods being equipped into the ammo slot.) It is quite unbalanced that ours is the only job in-game that essentially is being forced to use underleveled "equipment" to gain access to what are effectively JAs. Unlocking all jugs to allow usage in higher level endgame content would also effectively give us a whole bunch of new pets to play with that most of us have probably never used before! Convert all existing effects that adjust pet level cap into "Pet: Lv+", adjusting values as needed after actually testing the new pet levels. (Given how ilvl was implemented for pets, I sincerely doubt that even an ilvl150 jug pet would actually be overpowered in practice since it'd just be gaining base attributes/stats and BST does not have anything equivalent to SMN's "Blood Pact Damage+" stat on gear for our Ready moves.) Although, I probably would not complain if the Pet: Lv+ range was reduced a bit more in-line with PUP/DRG/SMN. (I'm personally partial to stealing the PUP system as it would give another "knob to turn" by providing a new slot to pile pet stats onto as needed.)

* Consider allowing our new pet-based buff effects to affect party/alliance members. As others have mentioned, we don't exactly bring much utility or support to a group currently. This should probably wait until other factors like the current buff conflicts being resolved, but after that's addressed, this could be a nice way for us to contribute more in group settings than only personal damage output (which currently, is depressingly going to be lower than just about any other equivalently geared DD in the same party slot with near absolute certainty.)

* Also in-line with the new buff-type Ready adjustment, please drastically reduce the cooldown on Call Beast and Bestial Loyalty. Including all possible reductions, the lower bounds on each should be 10sec and 5min, respectively, to allow us to use multiple pet buff effects simultaneously and/or swap to our preferred pet after buffing ourselves with other pets. Alternatively, reset Call Beast and reduce the cooldown remaining on Bestial Loyalty by 10min when Leave is used on a pet that has 100% HP, again similar to PUP's system. This may sound extreme, but the increased usage would be already offset by the inherent costs involved with using more jugs. Unlike all other pet jobs: BST has to use paid-for consumable jug items each time they call a pet, our pets despawn on zoning, and have a time limit on duration. We should be allowed to take full advantage of our new toolbox of abilities if we are willing to pay the increased combat time and gil cost to do so. If this were to be implemented, I would also like to ask to have all NQ jugs stack-size changed to 99 to facilitate more frequent usage, and NPC price for jugs substantially reduced so that a stack costs around the cost of quivers from the Curio Moogle. Even with the proposed NPC cost reduction, I would still expect BST to quickly climb to the dubious position of being the most expensive job to play.. But at least our Cooking friends would get a nice new stream of income! lol (Actually might want to increase crafting/synergy yield per synth for jugs to reduce complaints about increased cost to play the job as well.)

* Convert "Pet Roboront" to an on-use item like medicines, with a 1sec use time. Reward simply can not keep up with how frequently pets get debuffed, and the current usage of roboront requires the sacrifice of using Reward to actually heal our pet, which oftentimes negates the benefit of clearing debuffs. As an on-use item, we'd be able to use it on demand as frequently as required while the 1sec usage timer includes the cost of losing master damage output during that time spent. We also need a method to clear Petrify, Amnesia, etc. from pets, so please tack those onto the new-style roboront or additionally add another type of on-use roboront which covers other debuffs which can be removed from players normally via -na spells.


tl;dr: Please fix the bugs in my favorite job and enable me to play it the way you keep telling me to play it. :(

[Sirmarki]

The stubborn insistance that there is nothing wrong with the current implementation has finally convinced me, and I am converting camps from asking for compromise to demanding a full reversion of all BST JAs.

How about getting some video footage up to illustrate the points that you are trying to make, and the bugs you are concerned about? A few visual examples.

[Xilk]

maybe reward recast NOT being Capped at 25% (23 seconds) would be a good tweak.

I actually already have 34 seconds of recast reduction from gear.. both of which I need to hit the 23 second cap, while one is 19 seconds and the other is 15 seconds. its kinda a silly cap.

[Gwydion]

maybe reward recast NOT being Capped at 25% (23 seconds) would be a good tweak.

I actually already have 34 seconds of recast reduction from gear.. both of which I need to hit the 23 second cap, while one is 19 seconds and the other is 15 seconds. its kinda a silly cap.

I agree so much with this. I wish we had more options to increase reward recast reduction so that we Group 1 merits are not necessary and I can use Killer Effects and Ready Recast to fight alongside my pet. While we're at it, double the potency of killer merits and allowed reward recast reduction and reward potency to be increased further.

[Selindrile]

I can't agree more with most of the things that have been said lately on this thread.

Beastmaster range really, really needs a full range revert..... I know the devs want Bst to melee, but that's just historically been the less popular way to play, it's very odd, doesn't anyone remember that some of the most popular mobs were bombs to exp on as pet jobs were bombs because they self destructed and you could stay in a safe range? Snarl didn't exist for a long time, either, and jug pets weren't really a thing, often you tended to stay far back so you had time to react when a mob lost charm/killed your pet... it's really weird and unfortunate that this late in the game they've decided to force us out of our traditional playstyle, and for reasons that have not aged well. (Yes Bst was strong at the time of the nerf, but even with a full range revert, I highly doubt our popularity would be anywhere close to Smn's) And worse yet that they continue to insist on a playstyle that most people don't wish to participate in, most of the few Bsts that I see still just stand as far back as they can (which isn't far).

IIRC the original vision of Samurai was to be more tank than DD, and Ninja to be a DD not a tank. Imagine if SE had continually nerfed Sam's damage potential again and again while people tried to use it to DD. Imagine if in response to Ninjas tanking they nerfed Utsusemi into the ground, (less shadows, longer recast, etc), while they might have resisted at first, (Utsusemi hate nerf comes to mind.) at some point, SE eventually embraced the community's vision of these jobs, they gave Sam DD gear, they gave Ninja tanking gear, and tried to balance around it, they realized the players found a more applicable/fun way to play the job, and made allowances for that, rather than just dictating that we must play the way the developers initially intended, why is that not possible now?

[Alhanelem]

I think BST should be meleeing, I just thing this is the complete wrong way to do it. THe right way to do it is to make their WS better, give them traits that support melee DPS, maybe stat bonuses for being near the pet, etc.

Players shouldn't be strongarmed into a play style- If you want them to do it, make it attractive, make it the obviously more effective option.

My summoner is almost better at it. Easy level 3 skillchains, a surprising amount of attack/accuracy available, etc. But they're not forcing me to do it, I have that choice. Changes like this have me wondering if SE is going to some day force me to be at range somehow. o.O