[dev1210] Why Not Merit Weaponskills ??

[Afania]

I know that was in response to spells, but that carries over to the WSs as well. It doesn't break anything or make anything easier by allowing people to 5/5 more WSs, since Joe-Smoe #1 has 5/5 WS A, B, C, Joe-Smoe #2 has 5/5 WS D, E, F, and Joe-Smoe #3 has WS X, Y, and Z. The damage increase is already available, thus the content is already balanced and designed around 5/5 WS damage proportions.

The only legitimate argument I can see to it, beyond "they want specializations!" is a job like War that gets access to many of them being capable of using a 5/5 WS for any given weapon they're using. But really, the weapons themselves aren't available to make this much of a problem, nevermind that it's already currently possible since a War could very well decide that they want 5/5 Upheaval, Realmrazer, and Stardiver in order to cover those very possibilities.

Going off of your quote, and how there's plenty of junk spells that there isn't much choice in what we use...it's the very same for WSs. For a fair number of jobs, their best WSs are Empy or Merited. What about the jobs that it's merit or bust? Without them, you're left using the "junk" WSs you have access to, thus making the content artificially more difficult by limiting the abilities of the player. Most just choose not to play that job, rather than be "gimp." Is that really how an MMORPG should run, in order to keep "specializations" in place? I'd expect an MMO that's largest draw was a variable class system of 22 jobs to be fully capable of allowing players to play each and every one of those jobs to their fullest ability, at any given time, as long as the job has been lvled, merited, geared, and learned.

I do agree that the cap between merit WS and 2nd best WS for some jobs needs to be fixed, but they should have fix that first. Those who argued that "my job isn't playable without merit WS" should look at bow RNG. I also think the gap between 1/5 and 5/5 should be smaller.

Another way to balance the content is to give additional special effect for 5/5, something like virus duration or eva down duration. That wouldn't affect the balance that much but it's still "specialization concept"

You argued that MMORPG shouldn't allow specialization cuz of game balance issue, but games with talent tree do that all the time, why can't FFXI? In a game with talent tree you can't play a class to it's "fullest ability" if you choose certain specialization, unless you reroll or re-allocate the points.

With job system or not, it's basically the same concept.