Thoughts on the FFXI Job Adjustment Manifesto

Oh my God...

Just...

... Oh my God.

(Sneak-peak of Brave inbound Fox/Camate? :o)

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Originally Posted by Winrie

a well geared BLM will always outdo a SCH, i one shot things in abyssea on BLM so how exactly is one spell for SCH going to replace a whole job? Yeah..

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Damage isn't reduced with Manifestation. Also do you want me to highlight "for Azure/Chest farming"? Because that's all I said Merton would outdo Black Mage in.

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Originally Posted by Sotek

Damage isn't reduced with Manifestation. Also do you want me to highlight "for Azure/Chest farming"? Because that's all I said Merton would outdo Black Mage in.

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Although, if a monster dies to the dot effect rather than the initial nuke, it will cause pearl light.

Well that's great for Pearl then, I usually cap Azure on several ephemeral mobs anyway. Mostly it's great for farming chests.

First and foremost, what does the .gif in your signature come from, Sotek? I have always wanted to watch a cartoon about a little girl in a funny hat shooting evil bumblebees in strawberry short-cake forest.

Edit:
After many hard-spent minutes of research, I have determined it's from "Puella Magi Madoka Magica"! I have also determined a lot of lonely dudes draw a lot of creepy pictures of a lot of little girls, but that's the price one must pay for progress!

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Originally Posted by Sotek

White Mage doesn't need a fraction of the attention Scholar needs. Complaining that one very undermined job is getting more attention that what is currently the most vital job in the game is just ridiculous.

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Pretty much this.

Scholar does pretty well with Dark Arts. In return for what the job has, it lacks the AoE component that's such a huge part of Black Mage. It could use a second tier of Helixes or something, but the stratagem system jives really well with how Black Magic works.

Scholar currently scrapes by in Light Arts, with the former complete inability to cast Haste being replaced by the need to strain and grunt and groan just to squeeze out a cure for about the same amount of HP as Cure V. By casting light weather on himself, and taking the time to expend a job ability; Scholar is capable of casting the Cure V of the worst White Mage in all of Vana'diel.

This situation will improve a bit at 99 when Scholar has access to Haste while subbing Red Mage, but the current healing paradigm isn't what it's been for the first 75 levels.

Before, it was comparable to a race. White Mage held the lead, and if it ever fell behind, it was given abilities to regain that lead. Now, it's a dichotomy. There's White Mage and everything else, with second-best being irrelevant since they are all perfectly adequate healers for old content and generally inadequate healers for new content. Yes, they all put out different numbers in the chat log, but the end result is the same.

Maybe this is intentional on SE's part, but given the premise of the job, I'd think at least Scholar should fall somewhere between White Mage and the rest.

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Originally Posted by SpankWustler

First and foremost, what does the .gif in your signature come from, Sotek? I have always wanted to watch a cartoon about a little girl in a funny hat shooting evil bumblebees in strawberry short-cake forest.



Pretty much this.

Scholar does pretty well with Dark Arts. In return for what the job has, it lacks the AoE component that's such a huge part of Black Mage. It could use a second tier of Helixes or something, but the stratagem system jives really well with how Black Magic works.

Scholar currently scrapes by in Light Arts, with the former complete inability to cast Haste being replaced by the need to strain and grunt and groan just to squeeze out a cure for about the same amount of HP as Cure V. By casting light weather on himself, and taking the time to expend a job ability; Scholar is capable of casting the Cure V of the worst White Mage in all of Vana'diel.

This situation will improve a bit at 99 when Scholar has access to Haste while subbing Red Mage, but the current healing paradigm isn't what it's been for the first 75 levels.

Before, it was comparable to a race. White Mage held the lead, and if it ever fell behind, it was given abilities to regain that lead. Now, it's a dichotomy. There's White Mage and everything else, with second-best being irrelevant since they are all perfectly adequate healers for old content and generally inadequate healers for new content. Yes, they all put out different numbers in the chat log, but the end result is the same.

Maybe this is intentional on SE's part, but given the premise of the job, I'd think at least Scholar should fall somewhere between White Mage and the rest.

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Couldn't have said it better myself.

You know what I'd really like to know? Seeing Merton in action was great, but I want to see, and specially know the specifics of Brave. Anything short of 40 regen, 3 TP/tic, and 15% haste will be underwhelming. The duration has to be decent too, 3 mins MINIMUM, 5 mins would be ideal.

On the other hand, I completely agree with mostly everyone in saying that our Dark Arts side is mostly fine, but our Light Arts side needs real help. There's the obvious help like something extra to make us more effective at healing (whether it is Cure V, an alternative healing spell, new awesome forms of damage mitigation, etc.), and there's also things like fixing our enmity spells to make them worth using (Make augeo a decent reduction to CE lost per hit, or something like that, and minuo a greatly increased rate of VE loss, like I think Sotek suggested, and we're done), and our pathetic TP spell, Adloquium. 2 TP/tick would be adequate, 3 TP/tick ideal. Anything higher would be welcome but potentially overpowered.

I don't understand why WHM and BLM are so intimidated by the idea of SCH getting any sorts of boosts. Both of those jobs are at the top of the list for Abyssea parties. Is there something I'm missing? We're just asking for changes so that SCH can actually be relevant in endgame, as opposed to holding the spot as the 19th least popular job on the census.

First, I'm a SCH 90, love the job, got pretty much everything for SCH except the Relic/Mythic/Emp weapon but I got ToM staffs! ^^.
Ok my sight on this...

First lets start with the job traits.

Defensive Traits
- Scholar is dependent on job abilities, without our job abilities were nothing. Why haven't Scholar received "Resist Amnesia" as a job trait.
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Offensive Triats
- Job trait that boosts our spells naturally by weather effects.
- Elemental Celerity
- A job trait that extend the duration for us to self Skillchain.
- job trait "Adrenaline" boosts your magic depending on your health (From FF13).

Now onto Spells :

Defensive Light Arts Spells:
- Faith (Refresh+3, Magic atk. Bonus+5,Magic Accuracy+5)
- Veil (Defense+30,Magic Def. Bonus+5, Resistance to all status ailments increased)
- augmenting storm spells..
** Giving the spells an added effect. Firestorm - Attack, Rainstorm - Magic defensive or Magical dmg -5%, Windstorm - Evasion, Earth - physical dmg -5%, Hailstorm - Magic Atk. Bonus, Thunderstorm - Critical Hit rate or dmg +3%, Voidstorm - +1 to all, Aurorastorm - Cure Potency +3%**
- Or augment stormspells where they occasionally absorb damage like Watereater from ff10

Offensive Dark Arts Spells:
- Comet
- Spells that give added effect when under the corresponding weather effect and lowers the resistence the element strong to it. (i.e Helix II spells)
**Example, I have to have firestorm up first before casting spell, once casted it give a Helix and Addle+1 and lowers the resistence for my water spells.**

Job Abilities:

Light Arts: - Could get a Cure Potency +5% naturally
I figure since Scholars read books to increase their knowledge why not stack the strategems? This can be gimped for example rapture give 50% base with stacking that is increase by half so 75%. Or Accession Can be charged 3 times to cure an entire alliance. etc. etc...

Dark Arts: - Get a magic Atk. Bonus +3~5

- A jobability that enhances the duration of your dark magic spells.
-Ebullience same as Rapture increase by 20% if charged again 10% then 5%
-Manifestation would increase in Radius
-Penury halves the mp each charge
Alacrity decreases the casting time by half each charge.

Libra:
Shows the target weakness/enmity/HP(if not shown)

Enlightenment:
Access to both Light Arts/Dark Arts and Stratagems

There's a whole lot of other stuff I have but I have to go ; ;

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I know its alot I'm not asking for all these but these are just thought I would like to seem what others think are cool and what not.

I think the biggest problem I have with the scholar cure V argument is that many white mages think that's all they bring to the table. Maybe they were brought up in abyssea so that's all they know, but the list of tools a white mage has is solid. There was a time when shellra IV, cure V, and haste was all a white mage had to offer, but those days are in the past.

Esuna, sacrifice, curaga, and barspells all have their place on my macro bar, and they can often turn challenging fights into pushovers. I know that the introduction of esuna/cura back at 75 cap made a lot of einherjar monster sets easy, and esuna + curaga IV has made glavoid laughably easy. It's not always possible to leverage these abilities, but whenever I can I become a healing juggernaut. Solace cureskin is just icing on the cake.

This brings me back to scholar. I understand the pushback from many whm's that if scholar gained access to cure V that they could potentially heal for more HP then a white mage, but they seem unwilling to acknowledge that cure IV isn't an acceptable healing tool in today's end game. These same white mages need to realize that having one job that is completely irreplaceable can't exist, especially when you generally need at least 1 white mage per party.

The mp efficiency argument is also a bit dated. A serious white mage can sport 7 mp/tick in idle gear, and their mp cost per healing spell has gone down since af3+2 pants have become available. Throw on top of this sublimation+light arts or refresh+convert, and 10 mp/tick isn't unreasonable before you take in account outside refresh. That's a far cry from when mp efficiency was a legitimate argument, when the numbers were 1 mp/tick from gear (if you had omfg gil), which would go up to 4/tick if you had a bard or redmage.

And honestly, melees don't care what job is behind them as long as they get cures, haste, and you keep plague and paralyze off of them. Someone who is willing to play white mage will always be wanted.

here here, lets break scholar even more, its alreay more useful then any other mage, fuck lets just give them AOE AM too, why not i mean they got everythign else!

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Originally Posted by ffxititanplayer

here here, lets break scholar even more, its alreay more useful then any other mage, fuck lets just give them AOE AM too, why not i mean they got everythign else!

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Haters gonna hate.

lol not hating just pissed they they get so much crap when the rest of us get just meh stuff, but i expect to be flamed! FLAME AWAY!!!

So, this is the Tabula Rasa only spell?

Looks freaking sweet, love it. And it's not Ultima:

http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Meltdown


^^ good times.

I ignored most of the posts because I'm sure its the typical bullshit that makes no sense but:

It's a damn nice looking spell and should be pretty powerful given it's not the typical give and take "Oh it's powerful..with a powerful DoT!.....but it lasts only .4 seconds :3".

All is well if thats not the case.

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Originally Posted by ffxititanplayer

lol not hating just pissed they they get so much crap when the rest of us get just meh stuff, but i expect to be flamed! FLAME AWAY!!!

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man.....they get SO MUCH "CRAP" (let me emphasize CRAP) yet they are the 18th on the most wanted list, guess what, there's 20 jobs. So yeah, we get cool things like regain, which is mildly not even worth casting, libra which requires you to risk getting your head blown off in the process of finding out useless information because you are never in the tank party, you're in the mage party, which well isnt going to tell you much when its only telling you the enmity values of YOUR party. and hell lets stomp all over the fact that in the time it takes a sch to get a cure IV off, a whm will have got off a Cure IV, Cure V, Cure VI, and go to watch the lord of the rings, that's a problem, is it even worth pulling up light arts aside from tossing out the accensioned buffs and the occasional "oh crap, someone has X number of enfeebles" *switches to light arts and by the time you figure out whats going on the whm has stolen everyone's enfeebles and already esuna'd herself*. and gee we are supposed to be focusing on regen, yet we got regen III with a slight boost from af3 that doesn't do much at all for things that will hit you for 200+ a hit, get back to me when you give us a regen that cures at least 50 hp a tic seriously. Oh lets not even go into modus veritas, you give us the opportunity to merit something that you nerfed sooooooo bad that it misses on your run of the mill monsters, never mind trying to get them to stick in voidwatch when it's a sch proc, god forbid it's the proc you need.

do i need to go further? or have i got acrossed that yeah we are getting stuff, but SE is so afraid to do it right that they mess up in the process, including metron, having to see elemental seal in the video for both demonstrations pretty much means there's going to be a problem landing the spell well.


sorry [/rage]

So, this spell seemed to do a lot of damage to that poor akrab (atleast 80%?), my question is: this spell is available at level5, does it scale with level? Percentage based initial damage? Some other mechanic?

I personnally think Merton is nice, but I'm more interested into the potency of Brave.

And there is some things you guys aren't taking into account about the video provided of Merton:

1- Does she have Atmas on?

2- Does she have an Ascetic's Tonic on?

3- How potent is this spell under a brew?

4- Also note: Two hour abilities might be two hour, but you guys seem to forget how you can reset abilities often in abyssea (2 hour chests/revitalizers anyone?)

Idk, I guess it'll be fun to experiment this.

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here here, lets break scholar even more, its alreay more useful then any other mage, fuck lets just give them AOE AM too, why not i mean they got everythign else!

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Your post would have some kind of meaning if the general consensus here wasn't "Dark Arts is fine, Light Arts sucks". There aren't enough Scholars asking for a serious nuking buff around here to screw in a light bulb. I'd feel like actually countering the tripe you might call a point with that post, but A) I already have numerous times and B) you're either a troll or an idiot, both ignorable from this point on.

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Originally Posted by Raksha

It looked to me to be about as powerful as a good t5 nuke, with a hefty DoT (non-helix-like DoT). Only awesome part I see is that it is AoE'able. That alone makes it awesome.

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Well since i posted that on the other thread might post here as well, looks like merton inflicts bind as well, take a real good look at the scorpion on the video and you will see what im talking about, 2 ticks would be time enough for that scorpion to get to that sch and swing for at least one time. yet it stays in place he just turns around to the character direction like a bound mob would.

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Originally Posted by Megusta

Well since i posted that on the other thread might post here as well, looks like merton inflicts bind as well, take a real good look at the scorpion on the video and you will see what im talking about, 2 ticks would be time enough for that scorpion to get to that sch and swing for at least one time. yet it stays in place he just turns around to the character direction like a bound mob would.

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Wow that's really observant of you. It looks like merton will definitely be SCH's tool for doing chest spam in Abyssea EXP/Time Building/KI Hunting.

Well if the damage isn't as amazing as the video is pretending it is, bind would be amazing side effect to a spell that quite possibly dot'd all your mobs heh.

It kinda makes me happy that SCH is getting all of this attention. Hopefully SE can continue making improvements like this to the job, hopefully next we see adjustments to things that aren't as situational as 2 hours.

I am too, but I'm cautious. I remember being excited about a lot of things SCH that didn't deliver.

For example, I'm worried SE is going to make Merton and Brave terribly difficult to obtain. This is where SCH actually has a really good track record - job specific spells have always been purchasable through NPCs (except Klimaform). People can scream the "lazy" and "hard work" rhetoric all they want, but one thing I've really enjoyed about SCH is that it provided a nice break from my other mage jobs in terms of time and cost to obtain spells. In some ways it did feel rewarding for a while to expend time and effort to get the best spells but after doing this for BLM, WHM, RDM, and BLU, the SCH leveling path has been refreshing.

I'm trembling thinking that Merton is going to follow the SMN precedent and I'm going to have to finally finish the WoTG missions to obtain it ; ;

As far as the accuracy worries, I know Mocchi was shown using elemental seal, but if it does turn out to be inaccurate, I can't imagine it would be so bad that our current tools couldn't deal. Focalization (free during TR), Voidstorm + Klimaform - if that doesn't cover it and I have to sub BLM, then yuck, no thanks.

I assume the use of Elemental Seal was to make sure the spell landed with no degree of resist in the video, rather than any reflection on the magic accuracy of the spell. It's definite faster and easier to just use Elemental Seal rather than to do other things which would increase magic accuracy.

That video just gave me diabetes... ;o

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Originally Posted by TimeMage

Regarding the topic of super-buffed Cure IVs, (which btw, inside abyssea, lightsday, theoretical double weather, capped cure potency and AF3+2 hat bonus, could go up to 1300 HP healed), no one is taking into account one key factor: ENMITY. A Cure IV of that magnitude is going to get the attention of the NM real fast, no matter how much -enmity gear you accumulate. Sure, in longer fights even WHM using Cure V will reach the hate cap, but mega Cure IVs are a real quick way to cap your enmity as a healer >_>

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This is why I think they should just fix the Animus spells to Gain and decaying type instead of a puny -5

Should work like the SCH regain spells. -2 or +2 Enmity every second and should last about the same if not a lttlle longer than the regain spell.

Spell/JA Update notes are up. Color me fairly disappointed with SCH.

BLM, WHM and RDM are all getting some very nice spells and abilities. (0 mp for next spell, party magic def up, quick magic, breakga & comet for BLM, holy II and what looks like an occasionally attack twice spell for RDM.) So I'm quite happy about that.

Tabula Rasa is being extended from 30 seconds to 90 seconds. Merton (I forget the new name) and Aura (name changed from Brave) both cost 30% of you max MP and are learned at lv5. We also are getting the natural upgrades, Raise III, Reraise III, Fire V, Bliz V, etc.

Raise/reraise III were natural upgrades? I never expected SCH to get those TBH. Guess i missed some updates :X

raise III before cure V? how does that work....

Yeah this is terribly disappointing..

A two hour update, and a couple spell extensions that were coming anyways..
Not sure anyone would have cared about raise3.

After all the crying that was happening after the video of merton, the update notes feel like we got trolled just a little bit.

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Originally Posted by Karbuncle

Raise/reraise III were natural upgrades? I never expected SCH to get those TBH. Guess i missed some updates :X

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I saw it coming from a mile away. In fact I've had raise 3 scroll in mog storage since lvl 80 cap.

I don't think I can put my disappointment into words really. I'll go with insulting.

After three feedback posts dedicated to SCH and just the presence of these forums themselves, this is a huge let down. Raise III and Reraise III are pointless, and a slap in the face to the requests for more healing capability. Maybe I should be happy that when I pull hate and die from Rapture + Cure IV spam it will now only take me 5 seconds to recover the lost exp instead of 10. Ridiculous.

Oh wait, since I'll now maybe be coming to Abyssea on SCH only for hours of boring Fell Cleave burns, I suppose I can get excited about being able to use Crapstra for 90 seconds once per ISL chest. Seriously, for as terrible as I expected this spell to be in practice, I thought I at least had a nostalgic name to enjoy. Yet another SCH nerf, and this time before implementation. We better get some use out of it now before it gets obsoleted as too powerful and starts to miss. Actually we probably have a couple years, because they'll need time to implement merits for it so they can make them useless when they nerf it.

BLM and RDM are getting superior versions of our strategems. MV still sucks. No healing helix or damage prevention spell, no AOE nukes (except Crapstra every two hours), still stuck with tier 1 weather that everyone /SCH will get except three of them. lolquium, Libra range, Animuseless ... all unaddressed with only the hope of 96-99 that's probably another year away.

What was the point of these forums again? Right now they seem like another way for SE to prove its position as the poster company for Overpromise and Underdeliver, especially when it comes to SCH.

So they check these forums, give us feedback and then do the opposite. Should have seen it coming really, I knew this was going to be as disappointing as Odin/Alexander from the start. At least they did something with Tabula Rasa, though I'd rather they just make it so Stratagems don't naturally wear off during it like the bloody NPCs version, but tripling the duration of something you lose half the time of due to Stratagems isn't too bad. Its still a half baked fix, though.
I'd say Merton/Brave (why exactly have they been renamed?) better be good, but they're only really good for Abyssea where you can spam it to begin with, regardless of how good they are, so I'll say SE seems to want to leave us five pegs behind; we'll be good in Abyssea when it's irrelevant.

Would have at least been nice if they gave us a new Job Ability like every other job.

Scholar
Gemini (Lv.95)
Allows next Stratagem to last for two spells.

Go add it fast SE. I may even forgive you.
I wouldn't particularly mind this update if it wasn't "Scholar is getting two new spells and nothing else". I knew from the start "New two hour spells" would translate into an update notice just like this one. I'd raise hell about this, but fuck it. I've said it all before and it has fallen on deaf ears time and time again. Unless I get a one on one with the development team (or whoever handles this crap) themselves, I really can't be asked. And given the fact that the development team turned around and said Modus Veritas is fine, it's probably a very bad idea to leave me in a room with them.

I'm just going to walk away happy that I didn't read;

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Existing Spells Made Available to New Jobs
Recall-Jugner (SCH Lv.91)
Recall-Meriph (SCH Lv.91)
Recall-Pashh (SCH Lv.91)
Retrace (SCH Lv.91)

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Christ I would have blown a fuse. Nice to see my post of the front page out did it in 'Likes' at least, shame that didn't seem to make an ounce of difference. If I take my Scholar past Lv.90 it'll be from EXP from NMs, I can't be asked to actively level something SE doesn't give a shit about.

As expected, SCH got Fire V and Blizzard V. I don't know if I should finish my Ice magian staff, or wait until I'm 95... Detectors are a PITA to kill with only Blizz IV, I bet I could oneshot the DC ones with Blizz V. On the other hand, I need to start thinking in a Dark staff for Kaustra... Ugh.

As for Embrava, the potency of the various buffs will be the key of its usefulness. I bet it scales with level (Or max MP, since it consumes 30% of it), and hope it's really potent at 95.

Other than that, no buffs to our Light Arts self outside of RIII and RRIII. What can I say? RRIII is convenient, but not that awesome anymore. And without a better form of healing, we're stuck as nukers, and occasional buffers, nothing more.

All in all, a really underwhelming update, not because of just getting a boost to our 2H (It's really nice they made it 90 seconds, at least now the time lost using stratagems will be compensated...), but because they outright IGNORED our concerns about our Light Arts side.

I'm trying to stay positive, but it's hard to really be psyched about the update notes. I guess all we can do is wait and see how potent the 2-hr spells are. If they're good maybe we can have a spot in 2-hr burn fights right next to the summoners.

On the plus side, anyone who comes in here crying about how OP scholars are we can now point them at this video without acknowledging their argument.

What's worse is with only another what, four levels left? I really don't see a full allotment of storm or helices fitting in there by 99. Pray for a merit update to stormsurge that effectively does the same. Actually a possible merit update could still surprise us but I'm not very hopeful for anything at the moment.

Some kind of maelstrom weather that grants all weather's at once could be cool to, if they don't want us to have double weathers.

Like hell I'm buying raise 3 though.

half the whm i know dont even have r3, its just not worth getting...

Have you ever been shaking someones hand right as they put a knife in your back? Sure feel that way at the moment. Seriously, what did we get? Here! we'll give you something nifty that you can only use every 2 ours and is now available at lvl 5. Why at level 5? Because clearly SE would rather us delvl our sch's and be more effective at lvl 5 than we currently are at 90. I dont dislike the new 2hr ability but i sure expected to see cure 5 under current white magic to be obtained not LOL raiseIII/reraiseIII. I barely use reraise 2 why on earth would i need reraise 3? Nice i guess, but definetly not what sch or rdm need spellwise especially in the healing deparment. Truth is we got totally screwed. All i can hope is that what they posted was simply the tip of the iceberg not the main course on a very very very VERY small silver platter. Eh, why bother believing they'll follow through though, they always draw up short citing balance issues. You want us comparable to WHM and BLM while not stepping on the WHM or BLM's toes. Why create SCH then? Seriously.

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Originally Posted by Watts101

Why create SCH then?

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Isn't it clear? We're the subjob they wanted for mages. Right now, not much more, sadly.