A Suggestion From The Pet Job Community: Stop Ignoring Us and Listen To Our Plea.

[WoW]

^^I only use bst to farm in Salvage; quit that job recently. I realized that our issues may be much deeper than food, rather, the actual mechanics may be flawed. I mentioned this in the bst thread, but the XIV producer doubts they will release a wyvern pet for dragoons due to the sacrifice in damage. Perhaps they have learned from past mistakes. Realistically, how can a dd whom is weaker than non-pet dd individually shine on harder content? They will always be at a disadvantage; not even going to mention the pet whom is weaker than the master.

If bst never rises, XI will still get subs; not really going to affect their profits. SE made an error on the pet/master dd jobs, fine, lets learn from our mistakes and never release another one. Just my opinion/2 cents.

[Leonardus]

Really WoW? I like that attitude. It can't be fixed, so let's just give up?

I know the food wasn't super amazing, but it did help, and it's a start, I will give SE that. In the meantime, stop telling yourself you're completely useless- And if it's not you, but your "friends" saying that... Find new friends.

I also take offense to the claim that Dortwin is a bad pet. Quite the opposite, really. Have you tried Unleash > Whirl Claws on hordes of weak enemies, or Foot Kick in say, Morimar Delve? I've learned to respect this rabbit in recent days and grab up Verboshrooms as they appear.

[WoW]

Really WoW? I like that attitude. It can't be fixed, so let's just give up?

I know the food wasn't super amazing, but it did help, and it's a start, I will give SE that. In the meantime, stop telling yourself you're completely useless- And if it's not you, but your "friends" saying that... Find new friends.

I also take offense to the claim that Dortwin is a bad pet. Quite the opposite, really. Have you tried Unleash > Whirl Claws on hordes of weak enemies, or Foot Kick in say, Morimar Delve? I've learned to respect this rabbit in recent days and grab up Verboshrooms as they appear.

It is not my game, if it was, I would have faith in myself to correct things, but 11 years of depending on someone else gets tiring.

I will admit, bst pets are awesome on weaker content; not sure droopy can do much on lvl 128 content, never tried it, could be wrong, but I doubt it.

Edit: I will play bst main when they release decent dd pets; how do you release a vanity frog over a more serviceable aquan, orobon? Or another mandy over a sabotender? A razz (Barreling smash was most likely gonna be removed, so why bother) over a opo or sheep esque pet with zerk? A chapuli over a scorpion? Did they really believe a chapuli would out dd a scorpion? or any of the aforementioned pets for that matter? Things like this that are so obvious causes me to lose faith in bst's future.

[Vold]

The uphill battle for at least BST and PUP is that if you make them as useful as a war and mnk(their closest equals, I guess)then that would inevitably mean their pets would steamroll over certain kinds of content, so much so you could nearly or completely go AFK and come back to a win and drops. You can't just boost the masters to war/mnk levels because then everyone would just use BST/PUP because, "same as war/mnk but better with pets!" So you gotta have that difference in character DPS so the pets can even things up....except on hard content.

THEN, you can't just increase pet strength to withstand high level content because they would just steamroll low level content to the point that you just AFK and come back to free stuff. It's already the case on many old school encounters.

So, what in the eff do we do? Give us bit by bit over the years to make this fact of FFXI life easier, that's what. BST was never going to see justice to begin with because SE is content with letting pet jobs be the odd men out. But that doesn't mean it's too late to fix things with our skeleton ffxi crew. For starters, heck it might even be the case already and hasn't mattered for jack, I have been gone awhile and not entirely in the know of current BST adoulin areas, but they could start fixing BST and PUP by giving them incredibly strong pets for specific areas only where they are required, i.e. can only be summoned in blank zone or during blank event. The fears of overpoweredawesomeness are put to rest, pet jobs are equals with other DD, pets can be worth a damn and not be utterly destroyed in a blink of an eye just because they need to stay weak for fafnir/byakko/odin/whatever 2006-2011ish encounters, and people just might go, "ya know, BST/PUP ain't so effing bad anymore, sure we'll take you with us"

I don't see any other way this is going down. It's either that, or continue to give us bit by bit, year after year, to make up for getting the shaft. Because you know SE isn't about to make it a possibility where a BST can engage a NM(that "matters") and afk and come back later to new loot. It's just not going to happen.

[Alhanelem]

18 pages (@ 20 posts/page) and still not much of a result =\

I still don't understand why they can't make pets work like in any other MMO in existence and let them be affected by everything/almost everything instead of needing dedicated special effects just for them. It creates the very obvious problem, which we've run into, where the pet's power does not grow on the same scaling rate as the player himself (Even on SMN, where pre-audolin shattersoul was pushing blood pact damage in some circumstances...) therefore causing the pet jobs to decrease in power as the power of gear and effects rise.

In FFXIV, summoner's pets are affected by every buff under the sun (except protect for some reason), can be cured by anyone, take 10% damage from most AoE effects, and there is no outpouring of QQ of pets being OP. The damage of pet and master was carefully balanced and does not get out of line as stats increase, as the pet's stats are based on the master's.

It's simple, it's clean, it works. (That being said, FFXI's smn has much more of a coolness factor due to a currently greater variety of pets and their appearance, but design wise are more flawed)

It really makes me wonder if at any point in the game's development that the devs actually went and measured master+pet's DPS for all pet jobs and compared that to the other jobs. That's all it takes to see the problem. Being able to solo effectively doesn't mean that pet jobs should be less effective in endgame content than other jobs.

As far as the food: While it's a nice thing, there shouldn't be special food to buff the pets. All pets should simply gain whatever the master gains from their meal.

[Lithera]

Well all buffs but proshell and echo. Sorry had to nitpick lol. I wouldn't care if pet jobs could face roll on older content. It's old and at the rate they are going with allowing us to use trusts on this or that event everyone else will be able to go and do the same. Bringing out your pet in the hardest content shouldn't feel like you're bringing a lv 30 to endgame content.

[Mitruya]

So many likes for all the above posts.
I'm not seeing the new foods much on the AH, in fact I haven't been able to get my hands on the att food at all. I haven't had a reason really to even try out the acc food, afraid to waste the few stacks I have on lolsolo content. And skilling up crafting is just damn boring.
I've struggled to improve my COR for events, all the while wishing that I could stomp things on PUP or DRG instead.
Valefor's population keeps dropping. Shouts only want RNG PLD WHM BRD. I don't feel motivated to collect sparks or reforge armor for jobs that aren't used for anything. Every month I contemplate quitting out of boredom and frustration. Please SE, give us some job balance to revitalize the game.

[Olor]

yeah for how cheap the ingredients are, crafters are really gouging on the attack food as far as I can tell. I bought 1 NQ peice and it cost 100,000. Maybe it's improved (haven't had time to play for a few days) but it was really demoralizing to see no one even crafting the food. Seriously, as a BST I am really tired of a being a cash cow for cooks. Would be nice to get an upgrade to our job that doesn't involve me needing to farm more gil so I can do things worse on my favourite job.

[WoW]

18 pages (@ 20 posts/page) and still not much of a result =\

I still don't understand why they can't make pets work like in any other MMO in existence and let them be affected by everything/almost everything instead of needing dedicated special effects just for them. It creates the very obvious problem, which we've run into, where the pet's power does not grow on the same scaling rate as the player himself (Even on SMN, where pre-audolin shattersoul was pushing blood pact damage in some circumstances...) therefore causing the pet jobs to decrease in power as the power of gear and effects rise.

In FFXIV, summoner's pets are affected by every buff under the sun (except protect for some reason), can be cured by anyone, take 10% damage from most AoE effects, and there is no outpouring of QQ of pets being OP. The damage of pet and master was carefully balanced and does not get out of line as stats increase, as the pet's stats are based on the master's.

It's simple, it's clean, it works. (That being said, FFXI's smn has much more of a coolness factor due to a currently greater variety of pets and their appearance, but design wise are more flawed)

It really makes me wonder if at any point in the game's development that the devs actually went and measured master+pet's DPS for all pet jobs and compared that to the other jobs. That's all it takes to see the problem. Being able to solo effectively doesn't mean that pet jobs should be less effective in endgame content than other jobs.

As far as the food: While it's a nice thing, there shouldn't be special food to buff the pets. All pets should simply gain whatever the master gains from their meal.

There is 70 pages worth of smn rage compared to our 35; granted not everyone felt the same way, but nonetheless, there was plenty rage about XIV smn improvement. Never played smn in XIV, but from the comments, the majority are disappointed in it. Perhaps it is just a SE thing? "Shrugs"

[Olor]

The only thing I could really see wrong with FFXIV's arcanist/summoner is all the summons other than carby are hideous... well I never saw the fairy before I quit but, the dwarf ifrit looks stupid.