Game/Job balance suggestions

[Castanica]

FFXI has always been the same, if you want to play the job you like... you either are going to make your own groups, have gear from the gods of Olympus or know people that will invite you.

Everyone else plays the jobs that gets them the ability to do content.

Heck, most every mmorpg is the same. On many games I play tank or healer because a those jobs get instant group invites, melee jobs = 30-60 min waits.

[Selindrile]

How can you call if difficult content if only 1 player in your entire group is ever getting hit by anything including AOEs? lol

Whether content is "difficult" or not generally is decided by the percentage of the population can complete it, at the end of the day, not by the method they use. A small percentage of players can clear Reisenjimma Helm or Kirin/WoC with any job selection, much less melee, therefore it would be considered "difficult", an even smaller percentage can clear master trials, therefore it's considered difficult.

[Rooj]

Just saying, it seems silly to call it difficult while you're cheesing it at the same time, lol.

[Selindrile]

Well I'm just saying, that it's illogical to consider it silly, difficulty in MMO terms is purely a function of the percentage of players that can complete it, by whatever means.

[Rooj]

That's only true in a game that's balanced, and according to you all, it isn't. Soooo....

[Selindrile]

Why on Earth would that only be true in a balanced game?

[Rooj]

If the game is so imbalanced that you're only bringing 25% or less of the total jobs in the game to clear content, how do the other 75% of the jobs clear the content then? You are practically saying it's impossible to clear content with melee. That means the content is imbalanced, not difficult lol. When you are CHOOSING (yes, you are making a choice) to ONLY play jobs where you get to stand out of range of anything the NM does, you are choosing a cheesy no skill strategy. And hey, that's fine, but don't pretend it's difficult. If every player in the game wanted to ruin the experience for themselves and only bring PLD WHM GEO GEO BLM SCH to every NM in the game, I'm sure the kill rate of this "difficult" content would be exceedingly higher.

Difficulty requires you to actually have to pay attention to what is going on around you, both the monsters and other players, and to actually deal with the mechanics at hand, not hide from them completely.

[Urmom]

The problem, Zeldar, is that what you're suggesting about going to find a Yagrush WHM is impractical in the current metagame. On this topic, Selindrile is right, and the majority of people follow the path of least resistance. To explain, let's imagine any one of the powerful endgame NMs with cornucopias of Status effects and heavy AoE damage. Yes, an excellent WHM/SCH with Yagrush that is on-point with status removals is almost a necessity if using melee jobs in the alliance. But they're not needed at all for Mage Burns. So why would one bother hunting down an exceptionally capable white mage that can keep melees alive, when they can get any random white mage, or even a whm trust, to heal for a mage-only alliance?

1 small addendums. On a lot of the stuff an extra idris geo can serve a similar function of keeping people in range from being too debilitated in a more proactive manner.... but it also faces similar difficulties of finding said person and well adding another person into being in range.

[Urmom]

If the game is so imbalanced that you're only bringing 25% or less of the total jobs in the game to clear content, how do the other 75% of the jobs clear the content then? You are practically saying it's impossible to clear content with melee. That means the content is imbalanced, not difficult lol. When you are CHOOSING (yes, you are making a choice) to ONLY play jobs where you get to stand out of range of anything the NM does, you are choosing a cheesy no skill strategy. And hey, that's fine, but don't pretend it's difficult. If every player in the game wanted to ruin the experience for themselves and only bring PLD WHM GEO GEO BLM SCH to every NM in the game, I'm sure the kill rate of this "difficult" content would be exceedingly higher.

Difficulty requires you to actually have to pay attention to what is going on around you, both the monsters and other players, and to actually deal with the mechanics at hand, not hide from them completely.

Um I get the feeling you haven't fought much of the highest ilvl stuff. Because some of those things are difficult even with the right jobs to "cheese" thru it as you say. And there is definitely a bit of skill a lot of them you still have to pay attention and sometimes a single mistake can still wipe you. You still have to deal with their mechanics. Still gotta keep tank(s) alive. Deal with adds. Keep the geo stuff up. Time your skillchains. Sometimes remove tp constantly and still make sure you deal dmg fast enough etc. Just because you don't keep everyone in range doesn't mean everything is easy if that were true everyone and their mom would have aeonics.

And it's not like meleeing always automatically means people are paying more attention. First delve kills? Yeah super buff and have a sch stun lock so much skill for the people not on sch. Early VD fights with huge AoE like avatars? Yeah a lot of people switched from rng strat to melee with things like EA/scherzo because it was way faster and took way less skill and less room for things like hate resets to cause a wipe

[Zeldar]

How can you call if difficult content if only 1 player in your entire group is ever getting hit by anything including AOEs? lol

Mt group utilizes SAM, WAR, GEOs that are actually geared and smart enough to survive within range of the mob to give these DDs indi buffs, THF, and BLU. Are you saying these 5 aren't getting hit? When we bring everyone in the LS that wants to come to an event, sometimes these close range jobs are all they have leveled. Some have these just just so well geared and mastered that it wouldn't make sense for them to bring another ( because they GOT GOOD.) They don't complain about status ailments....our WHMs actually remove them quickly. As for the accuracy compared to magic accuracy comment, mages need magic accuracy on gear just like DDs need accuracy on gear. Gearing is the fix, not nerfing. Do you see BLMs complaining about content with obstacles that THEY have to overcome? Rotating magic weakness, magic shields, the fact that we can't aspir undead, complete immunity to magic ... these are all issues mages deal with. Some of these issues leave mages out of the fight. They aren't crying.