[Dev1235] Job Adjustments

[Catmato]

IIRC, DNC had to fight tooth and nail to get DE and SB though. I'm sure it didn't originally have access to those WS?

DNC had them from the start.

[evanwimbish]

I wonder what the new regen will be for blu!? (Please please please regen 3-5)

I would have liked to see them make some adjustments to barrier tusk to make it more like phalanx enhancing spell vs diamond hide being adjusted

Excited for the skill in sword because this will make physical blu magics more potent

Mixed feelings towards them not stating what exactly they will do to subduction or tempest upheval... I hope they don't plan on lowering the damage values

Soooooooo happy overall they are increasing blu enhancements !!

Smn is exciting too!!! No more penelty for avatars favor! Now ifrit has even more power with double attack pacts! However they commented months ago atomos would be a astral flow avatar.. Hopefully they changed their mind! (The new job ability that halfs the recast timer sure does make it sound like they did... Also since these are spells haste 2 and such should work nicely with it)

Can't wait to test all this new stuff out on oct 6th! 22:00-01:00. (Can we have some earlier version updates! School is in session for us east coasters and I do like to log on immediately after VU )

[Kincard]

Except it's not, able to cap steps faster is DPS increase for the job itself, and every other DD job in the pt. It doesn't matter if it's annoying, it seems like a DPS gain for the job to me. If you find using JA annoying in FFXI, MNK or SAM is the job for you.

I really would like to think you're familiar enough with this game to know that spamming JAs every 5 seconds is not going to be helping DNC's output, DEF Down or not (and they need to continue using the steps every so often to keep the daze up). The idea that it would help a group is worth nothing too, because nobody is going to get a DNC to be doing DEF Down, they'll just get a GEO if they want that.

The thing about utility for the light armor jobs (NIN, THF, and DNC) is that I wouldn't have a problem with that meaning they have weaker damage output compared to heavy jobs if they could actually figure out what the heck they're doing with this utility. They need to:
-Make DNC's heals and debuffs better and make them better DPS
-Make NINs be able to tank something actually worth a damn, or just give up on trying to make them tanks because they're doing a really bad job at it
-Make THF at least the best DPS of these three because they have the least versatility out of them

I'm not sure about Byrth's claim that NIN is currently a better DPS than DNC, though. I mean, when both of them are all hasted up and just TP spamming I imagine katanas outpace daggers, but currently the place these jobs shine is in trash farmed solo content or whatever, and I'm guessing DNC can do better damage than NIN by self-skillchaining. Not saying DNC couldn't use a whole lot of adjustments because honestly, all three of these jobs need them still.

[Ataraxia]

Right sometimes I forget how hard SAM has it. But seriously if climactic flourish gets a 1/1 base damage increase with CHA how is it not better than Sneak Attack? With five moves and the Charis Tiara +2 you get six attack rounds of sneak attacks with an added 20% damage. It would be a cinch to get 2 weaponskills off in that time.

DNC have to worry a lot building steps, curing and samba those cost TP. With this update i don't see them being better than THF as a DD. To have a THF and DNC in a Party means that THF would most likely benefit from DNC steps and will do more DMG in Trick Attack and Sneak Attack. There is nothing to hold a THF back from DDing and they focus on sneak attack and trick attack. As for DNC they can DD a little with this update and put steps on NM but will lose Dps overtime. Overall I think it's a good update for DNC to have a strong support role.

There are more update to THF coming soon this is just part of it. I believe they were going to lower sneak attack and trick attack down to 45 second or 30 second depends. They also going to make changes to collaborator and ways to control enmity or transfer it to tank.
When i was doing incursion with THF a relic dagger do more damage than 119 weapon none R/E/M sam, monk, drk, war,. Someone phase the run and THF was first place. So imagine someone who can use Vajra mythic with that THF will make DNC look as if they are still nothing with this update.

[Ataraxia]

They also gave Ninjas, who were already better DDs than DNC or THF against a lot of content, kick-Katanas. Why don't you declare the death of your job for that reason? By the way, they buffed WAR as well (a better DD than DNC, THF, or NIN). Why doesn't that get you in the gut?


How goddamned dumb are people that they honestly think they're competing with the other melee jobs for DPS? There is no competition. If you want damage, you bring SAM. Reasons to bring other melee include:
1) You can't find a Tsurumaru (or better) SAM, so you bring a job that buffs the SAM indirectly in some way (DRG, DNC)
2) You can't find a Tsurumaru (or better) SAM, so you sacrifice the DPS and get a mythic heavy DD (WAR, DRK, DRG).
3) Pity (Q.Q)
4) TH (THF)


^ See? The only category DNC and THF compete in is the pity category.

This taru make a lot of sense and i agree. Byrth have years of experience with FFXI and i'm sure it has done many difficult content and knows about variety of job. I have play so many 99 job and max merits them. The job i do not play is a blue mage and a BLM. If someone gonna complain about DNC than they should do their homework and tell SE what is wrong with a THF and how to make it better. I for once am happy they update DNC and it took them 5 years to come this far. This is only part of update to THF I'm sure there is more if they pay more attention to forum post by SE.

[Afania]

I really would like to think you're familiar enough with this game to know that spamming JAs every 5 seconds is not going to be helping DNC's output, DEF Down or not (and they need to continue using the steps every so often to keep the daze up). The idea that it would help a group is worth nothing too, because nobody is going to get a DNC to be doing DEF Down, they'll just get a GEO if they want that.

How is potent def down NOT helping DNC's output? Don't you hit harder when your target has defense down on them?

According to wiki,step duration is 1 min. So technically you only need to keep it up after 1 min when you reach max lv.

Unless the target dies in 30 sec so you don't have time to step enough, I'm not convinced that using 1 JA every 1 min after first min of JA spamming result a output decrease. It may be an output decease in first min, but after that I highly doubt it. Or else SAM WAR DRK wouldn't pop their JA like berzerk/warcry. If the fight last over 5-10 min(which is common in Incursion MB fight), you don't use step every 5 sec for the entire duration of the fight, I see an output increase instead of decrease.

Also, unless you can cap attack with a GEO in pt, more defense down is still a net gain in DPS. So how is it "worth nothing"?

There are also times that you can't get GEO, but can get other forms of defense down/attack boost such as COR BLU RDM, and able to reach cap without a GEO. So what's wrong with using it?

It's more of being confuse about the community downplay the importance of defense down, less about defending for DNC tbh. I guess ppl tend to organize party based on parse result gap instead of pt output. Is sacrificing your own DPS for DPS gain in entire pt a concept so hard accept?

I mean, do you honestly expect a job that can do 23%(assuming this is the correct number) defense down parse as high as SAM? Seems severally broken to me.

[Byrth]

Because every time you use a step, you suffer 2 seconds of JA delay. Spamming steps every 5 seconds for 50 seconds would get you a nominal 40% DPS penalty and an average of 14% defense down (less than Dia III). That 14% defense down would have to increase the dancer's DPS by more than 2/3 in order to exceed the original DPS, and it won't, so Kincard's statement is correct.


Daze duration maxes out at 2 minutes and you get at most 40 seconds duration per step (with 10/10 JPs), so you have to do one step every 40 seconds (after the next 2 minutes after capping out) to maintain this defense reduction. So lets look at some ideal cases:
1) If you extend the simulation out to 3 minutes (just one more step), you have suffered a JA-related DPS penalty of 12.2% in exchange for an average defense down of 20.5%. At that point, it's not a bad trade-off. It's probably even likely that you would benefit from this solo.
2) If you mix in Presto, you hit the cap in 30 seconds, experience an average of 21.5% defense down over 3 minutes, and suffer a 10.3% DPS penalty due to JA delay.
3) If you assume every step is also perfectly timed with a weapon skill (and use Presto), you get an average of 21.5% defense down over 3 minutes and suffer a 7.2% DPS penalty due to JA delay. It is worth noting that this case is unreasonable because 5 second WS cycle times are impossible for DNC at the moment.


So that sounds pretty good, yeah? Problem is that the vast majority of fights in all current content clock in at or below 30 seconds. So it's essentially not worth doing any more than Presto -> Box Step on the vast majority of mobs. Even in the most ideal case (#3), you average 17.8% Defense Down and 33.4% JA delay in the first 30 seconds. Unless that 17.8% Defense Down causes +50% DPS, you will personally lose DPS by doing those steps. Your party may gain a little DPS depending how large it is, what your other buffs/debuffs are, and what you're fighting, but it would hardly be worth the massive annoyance of doing all those steps.


Everything above ignores Step TP costs and the fact that players aren't really perfect, so reality is much less favorable than the pictures painted above.



Also, to clarify, I'm not asking for Dancer to parse as high as SAM. I'd just like less annoying mechanisms for the job, like reducing the Daze limit back to 5 and increasing the potency of the individual Steps to cap at their current caps. This would have a totally nominal impact on party performance and a massive impact on job enjoyment.

[Glamdring]

I really would like to think you're familiar enough with this game to know that spamming JAs every 5 seconds is not going to be helping DNC's output, DEF Down or not (and they need to continue using the steps every so often to keep the daze up). The idea that it would help a group is worth nothing too, because nobody is going to get a DNC to be doing DEF Down, they'll just get a GEO if they want that.

The thing about utility for the light armor jobs (NIN, THF, and DNC) is that I wouldn't have a problem with that meaning they have weaker damage output compared to heavy jobs if they could actually figure out what the heck they're doing with this utility. They need to:
-Make DNC's heals and debuffs better and make them better DPS
-Make NINs be able to tank something actually worth a damn, or just give up on trying to make them tanks because they're doing a really bad job at it
-Make THF at least the best DPS of these three because they have the least versatility out of them

I'm not sure about Byrth's claim that NIN is currently a better DPS than DNC, though. I mean, when both of them are all hasted up and just TP spamming I imagine katanas outpace daggers, but currently the place these jobs shine is in trash farmed solo content or whatever, and I'm guessing DNC can do better damage than NIN by self-skillchaining. Not saying DNC couldn't use a whole lot of adjustments because honestly, all three of these jobs need them still.

Gotta disagree with some of your assessments here. Light armor melee aren’t there in a damage role generally but for other qualities they bring to the table. Dancer cures, while more power might help I think they don’t want to step on the toes of healing mages. Also, dancer derives its power from inflicting hits on prey, it is the only job that can do more the more stuff you have coming in, mages need to rest and/or Refresh, even dragoons if they are having to heal spam could, especially with different subs. And dancer is very much like a rdm in design, just fueled by TP instead of MP, and it should be obvious they don’t want utility jobs to supplant dedicated jobs based on the way they keep them underpowered vs. dedicated jobs, e.g. geo and rdm only having tier 4 nukes, only whm has cure 5 or 6, etc.


As to nin tanking, I think most are of the opinion SE never wanted Nin to tank in the first place, players were just less attached to their gil than SE estimated and didn’t mind fishing for Squid. As every mob they are bringing in to new content seemingly strips shadows in 2 seconds or less I’d say it’s pretty obvious SE does not WANT blink-tanking back in any form either. So buffing them in a DD and/or puller role seems kind of natural to bring them back to the table. To be honest, a free ranged attack in a melee round is a little weird as a “fix” but they needed to do something.


As to the Thief DPS/versatility remarks, I think you are way off. First, SE seems to think there is nothing wrong with thief’s hate control abilities (and if players would modulate their damage output to accommodate them then SE would be correct, but players won’t). Assuming you could still SA>WS reliably, then thf will likely outparse both Dancer and Nin, especially if Dnc is using their TP frequently to help the party. If that was working, so would the rest of thief’s hate control, and that coupled with TH makes thief more desirable than either DD Nin or utility Dnc.


Lastly, for a comparison between jobs, I think you need to do your testing on the same prey conning EM, likely 119 mobs. Against those I think Nin will outparse dnc because they hit harder and have that extra ranged attack, while a dancer which may occasionally self-SC may also be healing quite a bit.


Now, as to group utility for any job, it seems SE’s current efforts are directed to renewing the balanced party, I think they want to revive tank/2 DD/Nuker-Ranged/Support/Healer. If they do so, well if you remember back that far there was a great deal of wriggle room in that set-up. Obviously, the way they are going end-game means nin is out as a tank, but monk and (if they can ever get it to work) Rune may rotate in as tanks. Support has the addition of scholar, and I guess blue and geo may be here depending how they are used. Nin is rotated into DD, probably in a hybrid role as a puller, too. Other jobs are frankly a bit muddled, but they have their spots. This will likely be shaken up some as SE tries to work the kinks out yet (and I’m not confident they will succeed in their attempts either), but some of these changes that seem to have no purpose right now do have a purpose if you map the trend across all the jobs they are playing with. In fact, the only jobs I see getting outright hurt are pet jobs, as their pets are being weakened compared to their historical performance, and based on what they have done it is clearly intentional.


The biggest problem actually is that they are doing this stuff piecemeal. I’m sure from a developer standpoint it makes it easier for them to get a handle on what adjustments are working and what aren’t, but it leads to A LOT of player dissatisfaction with seemingly useless updates. And in addition, while we players speculate based on what we DO know-how to play the jobs as currently built + hints from timelines-we don’t have much of a clue what new bad-guys SE is planning to throw at us, let alone in what kind of playsystem, although I think an Aby analogue is highly unlikely. We also don’t know what the eventual AF3 JSE gear upgrades are going to do exactly, except we have been told they are in the pipeline (I hope so, I’d hate to think I was stockpiling chapters for nothing). But any futher adjustment could have a profound impact on play.

[pretre]

WARRIORS COME OUT AND PLAYAY!!!! my bravura starting to look nice again

[Kincard]

I don't get why people always assume that whenever someone mentions that a job should be adjusted in this game, it means "make them as good as what is currently best at that role". I can't tell if people who make this sort of argument actually misunderstand or just feel the need to exaggerate everything to win an argument about a video game.

Red Mage is not as good a healer as WHM, not as good a nuker as BLM, not as good a debuff/buffer as pretty much every other support class. But they offer such a nice combination of the three that they can easily find themselves a slot in a group (maybe not in most shout groups since people are dumb, but most linkshells seem to understand RDMs are quite useful). This is not the case for DNC, NIN, and arguably THF. Part of this is because of just how much weaker these three jobs are at doing damage, the DPS loss your group suffers simply isn't worth the versatility these jobs bring. I mean, BLU is probably the most ridiculously versatile job in the game and even they can have a hard time finding slots in a lot of parties because of their weaker DPS compared to two-handers.

It's not even a small loss either, if I recall correctly a heavy DD with a 119 weapon will be outdoing these jobs even with a mythic by at least 30%. This is if they're continuously attacking and never stopping to do something else. The versatility these jobs supposedly add are:

DNC: Support healer, debuffs through steps and some flourishes, buffs through samba
NIN: Tanking, mixed damage through shuriken and ton-jutsu, debuffs from ninjutsu
THF: Treasure hunter, enmity control

I think DNC needs waltz recast reduction (or at least more equipment that can do this and not just a level 75 helm nobody uses anymore) and probably a cost reduction on them as well. That or DNC needs more ways to quickly generate TP if they want DNC to be an effective healer. Their steps work against this concept because they'll be losing TP from using it and not getting TP from the JA delay. Like Byrth said, a reduction in either the JA delay (hell, you can make it a special job trait for DNCs if you'd like) or making steps scale up faster would help. Not sure what they could do for sambas, I guess another 5% on haste samba would be nice? Or if they want to be redundant with a bunch of other jobs they can create new sambas that give attack up or something.

NIN is a terrible tank at anything high end (please stop talking about what SE used to think of this job, they have referred to this job as a tank for years now, so their intention is to make it a tank, no matter how bad of a job they're doing at it). They tank fine against mid level stuff but you could make a DD tank those things usually so it's not like it matters. SE needs to look at shields and understand why that has made PLD the only useful tank in the game. They need to give NIN evasion bonus and add some kind of ridiculously powerful item that makes NIN's evasion comparable to the PLD's shield damage reduction. If they can fix them as a tank their DPS role really isn't as important, but I should note that there have been leaks that suggest that level 119 shuriken have 104D. This means any hope of Daken "fixing" the job is out the window unless they're going to change that. That's actually less damage than Kannagi, a weapon that purposefully had its Base Damage set low because of its AM. Funny to think at level 75 shurikens often had damage that matches or even beat two handed weapons, and suddenly now they have damage comparable to daggers. What? Ninjutsu outside of Utsusemi and Migawari are rarely used (Kakka other self buffs can be used pre-pull), I probably don't need to expand on how you can fix these.

THF is the only job out of these that is invited to groups, exclusively because of their ability to make items drop more. Okay, fine, I guess that's something. Their Enmity control is too limited, though. They have basically just two abilities that can do this, Trick Attack and Collaborator/Accomplice (shared recast). Personally I think something like making a stance that basically has Trick Attack's effects minus the damage spike would work, but even that wouldn't help if THF continues to only poke enemies for bad damage, so they would need to boost THF's damage output if they want that idea to work.