SoA content for ALL 20 jobs...

[Jackstin]

That would be fine but storage limitations mean that you are going to be limited on how many jobs you can gear up to VW level.

[Alhanelem]

Since they haven't done anything to balance their jobs for the last 8 years, I'm pretty confident that their opinion is if you think the job you are playing is not useful, level a new job or do something else.

Its less that they haven't (they have) and more that what they've done hasn't been especially effective in most cases.

[Afania]

#1. I don't parse. I see no benefit from it, especially since I'm usually BLM or BRD in VW anyway.

#2 if you re-read what I posted above, you'll see that I was saying 90% of the time, the procs flow, and so does the damage, and the fight is easy.

HOWEVER: on occasion, you see shit like EV axe ws, Automation 3, pet ability 3, ice avatar 3, nin dark 3 (on a mob immune to dark enfeebs >.>). In this situation you'll have to agree, that you need that EV axe proc, and no amount of ukko's furys is going to help to cap red if you don't get it. (I'm assuming no smn bst or pup in the group, of course)

And if you read what I said above, I disagree with your opinion regarding parsing and was saying that parse does help pt lead organize the run and estimate pt capability. You playing BRD or BLM is irrelevant, it's not about who wins and deal most %, but it's about being able to tell who is doing the job properly. I'm not against proc at all, you don't need to repeat that and tell me how important procs are.



It has nothing to do with jobs you play, and if you're not pt lead you probably won't get benefit from it. But for someone who makes /shout pt often, and often makes higher tier /shout pt, parse helps a lot. There are a lot of ppl I know that often complained that they joined prov /shout pt and wiped or takes hours to finish BCx3+dragon run, and when they joined mine(I don't invite more than 3 ppl who don't do very well, and always ensure there's enough output to deal 350k dmg in 1.5~3 min), they often praise how fast and smooth the runs are. Most players would rather join a pt that can end every KI BC in 2~3 min(although a bit harder to end 1 BC in 2~3 min now that buff lock is nerfed) and dragon zerg in 1.5 min, not spending 1+ hr for 3 BC+dragon.

There are still a lot of /shout pt that wiped in prov, or takes hours to get it done, or wipe to B.rex with weakening item, mainly because pt lead have no ability to identify who is doing the job properly who isn't. It's the same thing as running a company, if you hire ppl that don't do the job right, your company won't work very well. Do you hire just anyone in your company? Of course not, you hire ppl that fits the position and get the job done well.

And there's just no way I can tell who is good who isn't if I don't collect parse data. Pt lead knowing pt capability, and knows how much dmg the ally can do in 2~3 min, is the key to have a fast and smooth run in higher tier, probably irrelevant in T3 I agree, but T6+prov? I'm just gonna disagree with you.

[Prrsha]

In FFT players tend to use the most efficient combination of abilities and then make like 8 copies of those across multiple characters so the actual jobs of those characters only dictate what the unit looks like, in the end the damage is the same. The problem in that game and this one is that there are some abilities that shit all over the other ones, so why would anyone waste their time with anything but the best possible combo? Why would you waste your time with the Summoner when you can invest in the Oracle or Samurai's ridiculously potent abilities?

The real issue here is that the game is hopelessly unbalanced and has been for a very long time. Adding new trinkets and novelty junk on top of already broken stuff isn't the answer either, it just creates a bigger mess. The fact that Embrava and PD were ever even considered to be added in the first place is amazing, but that was also after Doom auras, which are equally wtf. Why you would even add things like that to a game where you're forced to basically do nothing as "punishment" for death is beyond my comprehension. Add super weapons to this equation, which aren't actually needed but make the process of standing there and sighing heavily while your Elf beats on yet another reskinned NM named after a Mesopotamian demon that eats babies slightly faster, and the mess grows ever larger.

3 months for an average player to make a relic? If I do Dynamis every single day sure- you might say 2 hours a day isn't very much, but that's only if you assume I do nothing but play Dynamis every single day. If you add in other events (If someone is only doing Dynamis then they have no real reason to require a relic to begin with- you don't need a relic to farm Dynamis), that's a playtime of well over 2 hours a day. Unless I'm on vacation I doubt the average person has the time (or the patience) to relic up a job they don't even like just so they can play a certain event.

Aside from that, I should be able to play a job I simply enjoy playing in any endgame without severely crippling my group. Whenever I make groups with my friends, I do everything I can to let people come on jobs they enjoy playing even if it results in slightly worse results, because at the end of the day, we're playing to have fun. You shouldn't do something dumb like making a party of 6 THFs and go whack on something with massive AoE damage but you shouldn't be severely punished for taking a DRG or PUP instead of a WAR to Legion, either.

They can't make every job's DPS identical, no, but they should make classes that fill that role have their differences reduced to insignificance. Even the craziest min-maxer playing the game isn't obsessing over whether they should take a DRK or a WAR because the difference is simply negligible in the grand scheme of things. The problem isn't that there is a gap between DPS jobs, but rather that the gap is so large that it would severely cripple your run if you took anything but the 2 or 3 jobs that regularly top the DPS charts (generally SAM, WAR, DRK). Other games generally do not run into this issue because when their devs say balance, they obviously know what the word actually means.

Like, WAR and DRK both get really high DPS numbers but obviously there are cases where one will beat the other. There are very few, if any, cases where you'll see someone looking for a DPS and then tell a DRK he needs to have WAR leveled to participate (Aside from procs which are tailored to make you bring a variety of jobs anyway). The same isn't true if I want to DPS on DNC, THF, NIN, DRG etc. A THF dual wielding a Mandau and Twashtar 99 geared in Hexed-1 and perfect gear shouldn't be being out-DPSed by a WAR wielding a Laceratrice or Dies Irae using AF3+2 and AH gear.

You could argue that those listed jobs have utility to make up for it, but that would be ignoring the "utility" the top DPS jobs bring too- WARs can swap between multiple weapon classes quite easily and are very effective at dealing area melee damage, DRKs provide absorb spells and have several unique spells of their own.

tl;dr, the philosophy should be "balance DPS, then add unique utility to every job" instead of "make utility take the place of having higher DPS".

Repeating "It's not going to work, balance is unpossible, just trust me on this" over and over isn't proving your point. Also, the imbalance here is a developmental failure on SE's part for deciding to create oodles of content focusing on doing as much damage as possible in a short time and then loading down a few jobs with abilities and weapon proficiencies/skills that do huge damage, while at the same time decreeing that all others shall suck it.

Well summed up and explained.

[Prrsha]

We're not asking for perfection, we're asking for reasonable effort in balance. right now the game isn't even close to being within the realm of remotely balanced.

And Tanaka was complained about for his brand of balance... now people are starting to miss it?

[Demon6324236]

I highly doubt anyone is asking for more content with .1~.5% drop rates on high level NMs which require 6~18 people. Also doubt anyone is asking for NMs that nearly 1shot you with any attack, or give out 5 status ailments in 1 TP, have AoE 5-count doom+weakness, or anything else of the sort. So far as I know, that was part of his balance, and something no one I know, is asking to see again.

As many have said before, most, or all, of the content we have right now and have gotten recently has been influenced by Tanaka, so really its the same kinda balance we are talking about now that people hate. Zerg content is 90% of what we have at the moment, really all of it is, some things like Meebles are not always zerg, some are objectives, but many objectives are just zergs as well, kill all of this, kill these certain things, still zergs, just wrapped in an objective to make it look different.

[Prrsha]

As many have said before, most, or all, of the content we have right now and have gotten recently has been influenced by Tanaka.

I agree with you except for that sentence. He was just a puppethead for FFXI for the past year. It has been reveiled in many interviews that he claimed he let the dev staff "do their stuff" on both 11 and 14 while he was barely handling both due to illness and work overload.

[Rambus]

Before the Developers even think of announcing the starting content for Seekers of Adoulin, I'd like to know whether or not they have acted positively in creating content and events that are proof against the exclusion of nearly 3/4 of the jobs in the game by "professional" forum sites and the sheep who parrot their talking points. This was the only aspect of Abyssea that rubbed me the wrong way and is what keeps me from even thinking about Voidwatch (anyone saying they haven't seen "R/M/E DD only" shouts is an unbelievably bad liar).

I want to see content that is accessible to any and every job, whether their weapons are Relic, Empyrean, Mythic, Magian, or just store-bought. Exclusionary content at this point will only accelerate the demise of this franchise.

This issue is going to be made worse since it is not 20 jobs but 22 jobs or w/e with that out.

FFXI has too meany jobs and wow does fine with like 6?

a pt is 6 people, a full all is 18 people and the total job count is 22 .... I do not think it takes much thought why that is stupid.

[Kincard]

I think the reason why the system isn't as balanced as people would like is that it's doing exactly what it was intended to. This isn't like WoW where once you picked a job that character is stuck on it forever and you have to reroll, necessitating some kind of "balance" between the matching class roles. If PUP is bad for legion, don't go PUP, seems to be the dev mentality.

From a gameplay perspective, it makes sense to make certain jobs better for certain events for that reason in some ways, but I think they screwed up the way the reward structure works if they wanted it to work like that.

The problem is that if I was to play a single job, it means I have to eventually play content that the job is poor at running in in order to gear even that job properly, because they just stick items that are good for x job randomly between each event. I'm running an event a job is not good at on another job that IS good at it so I can gear the job that isn't good at just so it can continue being not good at it...wat.

For example, take the two pulse weapons in Legion (Without considering the fact that they're both mediocre for a second). Neither MNK nor NIN are particularly effective in Legion (MNK can do okayish, NIN is laughable). Let's say I only have MNK and NIN leveled...now I have to level WAR, skill it, then go around gearing it a lot just so I can get one more piece of gear for my MNK or NIN that won't even help me run said event better.

And Tanaka was complained about for his brand of balance... now people are starting to miss it?

I don't think anybody misses the balance attributed to Tanaka because I know I certainly wasn't satisfied back then either.

[Camiie]

I think the reason why the system isn't as balanced as people would like is that it's doing exactly what it was intended to. This isn't like WoW where once you picked a job that character is stuck on it forever and you have to reroll, necessitating some kind of "balance" between the matching class roles. If PUP is bad for legion, don't go PUP, seems to be the dev mentality.

My problem is with that mentality. I've never accepted "working as intended" as being synonymous with working as it should, and I definitely don't in this case.

To me, each job should be handled as if it's the only job available to someone's character. Does that mean every job should somehow be able to take on every possible role on its own? Of course not. BUT, when I utilize all that my job has to offer within its primary role, I should be on par with any other job performing the same role. That doesn't make all jobs the same. It just means they follow separate paths to reach the same goal. For hybrid jobs, I'll admit I don't have all the answers there, but it's obvious SE has never had the answers either. I think they definitely need to become more defined somehow.

The natural response to this is, "well WAR is useful for everything", or "but PUP isn't ever wanted." I think the problem with this statement is people tend to filter out everything that isn't endgame events, and I don't think the dev team thinks this way. PUPs and BSTs can solo things, DNC has great utility in lowman, I wouldn't want to bring WAR to a duo dynamis, some people may and that's perfectly fine, but to me that just sounds like a pain.

To anyone who came into the game wanting to play and master one specific job and do everything on that job, the system in place right now is a gigantic middle finger. I don't think it should be that way. If someone wants to play DNC and fight the biggest baddest NM in the hardest event around they should be able to do so. They should be able to contribute in a way that is considered valuable and certainly not detrimental. Combine their buffs/debuffs/healing/damage and you end up with a job that's just as welcome in that slot as one who just does damage or just buffs. I don't know why that would be so horrible.

Since they haven't done anything to balance their jobs for the last 8 years, I'm pretty confident that their opinion is if you think the job you are playing is not useful, level a new job or do something else.

And I'm sure that's great for the devs. People waste time leveling what turns out to be a generally useless job and then have to go back and level other jobs just to get through higher-end content. Now, at what point do they start thinking about what's good for the players?

Endgame events are generally done with a larger scale of people, so it makes far more sense to use "extremes" and balance out the setup by assigning different roles, then to use lukewarm jobs and potentially have 1 or more areas lacking at the end of the day.

It should be much harder to decide which jobs to take to an endgame event. The majority of jobs shouldn't be off the table from the outset. If you want to "foster skillful play" get a party leader's proverbial gears turning about what he prefers to take to the fight before he's even started shouting.