Job Adjustments for the Next Version Update

[Hawklaser]

That's a very cool idea and I like it a lot, hope they'll think about implementing it! But it still wouldn't solve the Pet Scaling issue, and I doubt it would have a big impact on the Pet Survivability either.

Well as to the scaling issue, I know certain merit categories have had their max amounts of adjustments increased over time, and different categories have different limitations. They can at least go up to 15 improvements to a single merit, as shown by hp/mp merits, they can also break a category into two groups as shown by job merit categories. So unless 15 is as high as a single meritable choice can go, that could take care of a good amount of the scaling.

How I would likely do is would have generic boost portion for a specific jobs pets be a flat increase to pet stats, essentially to get the pet a little below the baseline raw stats for certain content levels, and as content levels go up the amount spendable in this section could go up, or values adjusted if a cap is hit. While the second grouping of merits could be more percent based improvements, with a more strict max per/combo limit on these ones.

Unfortunately, BST and possibly PUP would be the more difficult ones to balance with a system like this. BST mostly because of the all the variability they get with pets currently. PUP would be more due to attachment interactions.

[Zhronne]

Well as to the scaling issue, I know certain merit categories have had their max amounts of adjustments increased over time

Don't think this would be a solution.
"Scaling" means that the stats of your pets (or at least a small part of them) receive a dynamic bonus according to the stats of the master.
This means that if your master receives a buff that increase its stats, the pet will receive a small % of increase to.
This means that if your master upgrades his gear then the pet's stats too will see a small jump forward.

Can't abuse of this like other games do, wouldn't work in FFXI, and we don't want to make pet-specific buffs/gear useless.
At least I don't.
That's why I suggested that this scaling should be very small and only applied to a certain number of stats.
For instance Attack, 10:1. For every 10 points of attack the master has, the pet will gain one.
Master has 800 attack? Pet will have +80 attack bonus.
They could apply this to Defense too and other stats, with different ratios of course.
Only some very basic stats like basic attributes maybe and Att/ratt/mab/acc/racc/macc/def/eva.

For everything else and much more, you'll still have "Pet: ..." gear.
I'm not against the new "Pets" merit category btw. I would warmly welcome that! I'm just staying that they should do "only" that but both things, because while the merit category would be an awesome addition, it probably wouldn't solve the issues I mentioned (scaling and survivability)