The importance of job points

[Alhanelem]

Which only perpetuated bad job balance, since it wasn't critical that they make the less popular jobs able to compete in parties. Now that we have job points job balance is more important and they are, to some degree, taking steps to improve it.

Also you're forgetting that merit points aren't all job specific, the bulk of your merit points are spent on boosts that apply regardless of job.

Job points, in combination with ilvl gear, are intended as "leveling up past 99". You couldn't earn EXP on one job to level up another now, could you? How did those jobs you say can't get job points level up? If you can get to level 99 on the job, you can earn job points on the job. I see no problem here.

[Metaking]

@Camiie
more than likely he is talking about one of the 3 butterfly camps, but unless your a drg or a thf with a really boss acc set and nearly full 119 gear you should not go there, but for where it is, just enter woh gates from bev 4 in Marjami, head ummm i think north past the frog camp(which is actually a great camp if you can sleep them) tell you run into a big room full of acrux(great blm and smn camp) and wide scan one of the rooms joined to that one should be full of efts and butterflys, stretched over 3 rooms, that is the camp you would be looking for. Now if you have a party tho, there is a great camp in woh gates basement near the highwing helm nms spawn point, room full of big bats that have oddly low evasion for there level a bit of def tho, and its kinda funny there cp chain duration is waaaay longer than exp chain duration, and it can build quite high i can rember but i think it was double cp at the time, and was getting 2.5k a kill once the chain got a rolling so i guess normal they would be 1.2k, throw a cor in there and wait for another double cp tho, and yea....

On the issues of gaining cp tho, i would prefer more events like incursion were you get alot of CP simply doing the event, i do think nms in incursion and any new events should probably give half a point at least, and the megaboss like a full point.

[Alhanelem]

Even club and staff wielding jobs can put on a 119 weapon, and use their merit or other good WS and do sufficient damage to chain mobs that any average person would consider soloing. offensive trusts may not be great but they can still help.

[Byrth]

Summoners get resisted to shit in Woh Gates without a god tier MAcc build. Either way, it's certainly not a safe place for them to solo.

Go to Outer Ra' South quadrant on the first floor. There's a mix of DC Leeches and Acuex. Sub Scholar (with a nuking build) and nuke things to death with Fire and Ice. It's not as good as other magic DDs there, but it's the best easy camp I've found for SMN.

[Malithar]

Focus + Malaise spoils me on soloing Umbrils, tend to forget the issues with MAcc besides in BCs. MAcc really that harsh without a strict build, to the point you'd be forfeiting to much damage to kill? Agree with that Acuex room in Outer though, it's very nice and casual. No aggro from any of the mobs, but still gotta watch for links.

[Camiie]

I appreciate the advice. That sure doesn't sound like the smooth and easy JP some people on here are describing though. I mean it's not like the average SMN probably has a nuking set even if they should. Not an attack on you Byrth. I'm not hating the player, just the game.

[Byrth]

Well, Flaming Crush is hybrid damage so it's going to do crap damage to Umbrils even if it hits because Avatar Ratio will be really low.

I did try to do Shiva/Ifrit on Acuex in Woh Gates, though, and typically I couldn't one-shot them even if I didn't resist. IIRC Acuex are weaker to Fire than Ice, and I think I could land Meteor Strike pretty regularly for full damage but not Heavenly Strike. Also, they sound link so they're kind of a pain in the ass. I know that parties of summoners do the Acuex camps there, but if Camiie is looking for easy then that's really not the way to go.

Edit:
Without nuking, SMN is left going /SAM and trying to melee + BP things to death. They would probably be best off targeting some low tier camp (like Stryx south of Waypoint #4 in Marjami), because Flaming Crush damage drops off pretty fast against higher level monsters. Summoner's damage output has always been horrible, but I bet they can still get 1 JP/hr with meleeing, which isn't that unusual for a melee job. In comparison, I can get 2-3 JPs/hr with nuking without bonuses, but I do have a full set of Hagondes +1 with pretty good MAB augments.

[Byrth]

Guess I'll bump this topic now that we have confirmation that next update will include high tier elemental magic from Gifts.

I'm of two minds about this:
1) We really do need upgraded elemental magic. - I really feel that they either should have directly adjusted elemental magic (like last time), or made a more permanent change that causes it to scale based on iLevel or haste level or main weapon base damage or something, so that we don't have to abandon all the lower tier spells if the new ones are good (or ignore the new ones if they aren't better than the lower tier spells).
2) They shouldn't lock advancement behind Job Points. - If you think about it, our rate of gaining JPs now is about the same as merits at 75. It only cost 18 merits to unlock all the AMIIs or Tier 2 debuffs, though, and it will almost certainly cost more than 50JPs to unlock these Gift spells. It's more grindy than it used to be and the playerbase is less dedicated than we were.

So I'm kind of half-hoping the spells are good and half hoping they're bad. Ideal for me would be if the spells are strategically useful, but not overpowered (like AMIII for BLM), which would allow the update to be followed by another update that actually fixes the elemental magic damage issue.

[Camiie]

Merits and JPs should be about adding to what's already a completely functional job, not trying to fix what's broken about it. If a job is attack starved you don't fix that through JPs and Gifts, you give it Attack Bonus traits beginning at whatever level range it starts falling behind. If a job needs stronger spells just to compete with other forms of DPS, you put the scrolls on vendors and make them super cheap.

I feel like I shouldn't even have to say this. It should just be common sense. As a contractor you don't fix someone's house by telling the owner to go out himself and add on a garage to prop the rest of the house up. You and your employees work to repair the structure and foundation.