BLU Balance

[Afania]

Of course blu can call trusts like every other job. The whole point of trusts is that they can make up for abilities and spells your own job lacks. People playing solo with trusts shouldn't even care about blu, especially since hey, you're solo, it's not like you have to compete against a blu for your trusts to invite you to a party.

Because I do have the suspicion that all this hate against blu really is about other melee jobs feeling inferior. They can try to justify themselves with "but...BALANCE!", but the game has never been balanced, and there have always been jobs that outperformed others. They can argue that MG is too strong, but it's not like no other jobs can cast haste II. They can complain that the PUG leader might pick a blu over their own melee job, but you can always just start a shout yourself.

Sure, you can pretend the balance/design issue doesn't exist by playing with ls/friends, make your own party, job change to BLU, deal with lack of haste, whatever.

But it's like an ugly looking person that breaks all the mirrors in his house so he doesn't have to see his own face, thus able to pretend he looks beautiful.

Or a Chocobo buries his head in the sand and ignoring what happens to the outside world.

Or pre-lockstyle era that players do .dat mods so they can pretend their gear combination visually looks appealing.

Asking people to play with ls/friends, make their own pt, job change to BLU doesn't change the fact that there's an issue with design, it only solves individual player's personal problems.

They can try to justify themselves with "but...BALANCE!", but the game has never been balanced, and there have always been jobs that outperformed others. They can argue that MG is too strong, but it's not like no other jobs can cast haste II. They can complain that the PUG leader might pick a blu over their own melee job, but you can always just start a shout yourself.

My question is why can't people express opinions about design adjustments?

Back in the past people asked for BST nerf, SAM nerf, THF rudra nerf, WAR MNK nerf, all the time.

In fact there's one very, very vocal BLU in FFXI community(not naming names) that always run around asking BST nerf, and went "SAM needs nerf ASAP" in SAM discussion when he thinks those jobs had advantage over other jobs.

And now that BLU has slight advantage over other jobs, this same BLU suddenly jump into every single BLU discussion and essentially attack anyone that asked for BLU job adjustment.

This is double standard. Back when people ask for BST, SAM, WAR, MNK, THF or whatever job to be nerfed, there weren't massive wave of anti nerf opinions like today. Unlike these days people uses all sorts of excuses, including "just play BLU" or "just play with people let you come other jobs" to justify their reasoning against adjustments.

I'll tell you why design issues, regardless of the jobs, needs to be adjusted. Because that's the whole point of game design. SE as a game dev, it's their job to work on adjustments to designs. If you play a fighting game and every player picked same char in tournament, or if you play a RTS game and every player picked same side, it's called bad games. MMORPG is the same.

Therefore us as a player, our job is to provide feedback when we notice issues in design, to help them create a better game.

Just because MMO can never be truly balanced, doesn't mean dev and playerbase shouldn't work toward this goal.

Therefore comments like "just play BLU!!!" or "just deal with the lack of haste!!!" or "just play with friends!!!" really shouldn't be in a design balance discussion as it doesn't solve any issue from game design pov, it only solve individual player issue of not getting pt invite.

[Afania]

This helps put the entire issue into context and changes the discussion altogether.

I get criticized by my friend for doing this, probably because I'm usually quite blunt about it, but I'd suggest teaching those RDMs to keep Haste up, the GEOs to JP/gear up for 900+ skill and ensuring DDs can hit their targets before asking the development team to divert precious time into nerfing a job that, to quote you, "is nothing special" in a world where everyone is average or better.

Priorities and all that.

Except RDMs aren't even in most regular melee pt setup due to the lack of strong aoe cure/cure skin/aoe -na and weaker bars. Even if supports can keep haste up none BLU DDs still not gonna cap haste.

And even in situations that you DO use RDM, none BLU DDs still need MG to cap haste unless you wanna waste precious bubble slot.

[OmnysValefor]

Therefore comments like "just play BLU!!!" or "just deal with the lack of haste!!!" or "just play with friends!!!" really shouldn't be in a design balance discussion as it doesn't solve any issue from game design pov, it only solve individual player issue of not getting pt invite.

I agree that "just play BLU" is a stupid defense, but if you don't like how other people are building groups. Build your own groups. The only thing that can be said for "just play BLU" is that clearly, some of the complainers have no idea what they're talking about. Should at least play a job before you try to state how OP it is.

Valefor may be a low pop server but it doesn't suffer from a blu craze. I see lots of jobs going to Ambuscade and lots of nuking jobs at anything remotely serious. However, I can appreciate that people who insist on stacking BLUs in any and all content must get pretty old.

[Diavolo]

My question is why can't people express opinions about design adjustments?

Back in the past people asked for BST nerf, SAM nerf, THF rudra nerf, WAR MNK nerf, all the time.

In fact there's one very, very vocal BLU in FFXI community(not naming names) that always run around asking BST nerf, and went "SAM needs nerf ASAP" in SAM discussion when he thinks those jobs had advantage over other jobs.

And now that BLU has slight advantage over other jobs, this same BLU suddenly jump into every single BLU discussion and essentially attack anyone that asked for BLU job adjustment.

This is double standard.

He asked for a nerf. You are asking for a nerf. I'm sure he was met with both support and resistance, just as you are being met with both support and resistance. Where's the double standard?

Back when people ask for BST, SAM, WAR, MNK, THF or whatever job to be nerfed, there weren't massive wave of anti nerf opinions like today. Unlike these days people uses all sorts of excuses, including "just play BLU" or "just play with people let you come other jobs" to justify their reasoning against adjustments.

This made me laugh because it seems the answer to your problem continues to elude you, despite being right under your nose.

Job imbalances become easy to detect if they involve mechanics that everyone wants to exploit, which is the case that's been made, so if the dev team takes the time to monitor its servers and the number of people playing BLU over a period of time rises to an unacceptable level you can be sure they would address the issue even if there was no forum feedback whatsoever. Ergo, "Go play BLU" isn't an excuse - I'm not even sure how you've come to define it as such - it acts as a means to an end and doubles as a devastatingly powerful job choice if you happen to share the beliefs of others asking for a nerf, so hey, why not, right?

[Afania]

I agree that "just play BLU" is a stupid defense, but if you don't like how other people are building groups. Build your own groups.

I build groups all the time, I build Ambu vol2 pt for casual players, I build UNM 135 pt for returning players, I build woc melee pt and master trials pt for top end players with near perfect gear in every slot and uses scripts to minimize human errors. Outside of SV honor march situations, I don't have some sort of magic that can magically generate 1 free GEO bubble while keeping every DD fully hasted.

Building your own groups doesn't change the fact that MG mechanic still has a flaw.

Again, this is a design mechanics discussion, not personal circumstance discussion. It doesn't matter whether you play with robots, high end players, casual players, returning players, and it doesn't matter whether you organize pt or not.

You aren't going to bypass the limitation of losing 1~0.5 GEO bubble without SV.

[Afania]

He asked for a nerf. You are asking for a nerf. I'm sure he was met with both support and resistance, just as you are being met with both support and resistance. Where's the double standard?

Exactly who was against SAM nerf in 2014? Even some of the most hardcore SAM players in the community at that time agreed SAM needed a nerf. There definitely weren't this massive wave of anti nerf people in 2014 saying the job in question is just fine.

Job imbalances become easy to detect if they involve mechanics that everyone wants to exploit, which is the case that's been made, so if the dev team takes the time to monitor its servers and the number of people playing BLU over a period of time rises to an unacceptable level you can be sure they would address the issue even if there was no forum feedback whatsoever. Ergo, "Go play BLU" isn't an excuse - I'm not even sure how you've come to define it as such - it acts as a means to an end and doubles as a devastatingly powerful job choice if you happen to share the beliefs of others asking for a nerf, so hey, why not, right?

Suggesting people "go play BLU" is fine, saying design adjustment shouldn't happen because you can just play BLU isn't. And the msg I kept getting from people.

[detlef]

So just to be clear, the thing people have a problem with is Mighty Guard? Like, if somehow the haste property were weakened or removed then people would be happy?

[Vae]

So just to be clear, the thing people have a problem with is Mighty Guard? Like, if somehow the haste property were weakened or removed then people would be happy?

Diffusion MG is (most) of the issue. Embrava was *broken* so how is MG not, seriously. They're the same god damn spell. (obviously hyperbolic).

1200 Gift is the rest of the issue.

Other issues that would be less broken, once those two are fixed.

[detlef]

If they nerfed Diffusion-MG I would accept it in 1 second if it meant that people would bitch about MNK or BRD instead.

[Urmom]

If they nerfed Diffusion-MG I would accept it in 1 second if it meant that people would bitch about MNK or BRD instead.

Ha. Mnk has been left out in the cold basically since delve 2. Kind of funny but it's kind of a worse pup now when before was the opposite. Likewise brd has been out of favor since they first started buffing geo... well that and fights/fights made rotating brds or prebuffing and dropping less good