Nerf Beastmaster

[Kensagaku]

I am not normally one to jump on this, but I feel like that post is absolute BS, or there is a lot more you're not telling us. Given that your BST's accuracy was abysmal, they could not have been hitting the majority of their Ready moves. Now, my gear isn't exceptional, it's about mid-tier, and I average about 3000-4000 with Razor Fang. If they have dated gear without things such as Pet: TP Bonus, Pet: Attack, and Pet: DA, their numbers are going to be lower. I also land (and this is an estimate) about 80-90% of my Ready moves, depending on whether Torpor goes down at that time. Assuming he had roughly a third of that rate, there's no way he should have outparsed the SAM, let alone the SMN, short of your SAM there being absolutely crap.

If he were at 90-100% Accuracy and had up to date gear? I could totally see it. The biggest limitation to SMN is a 30-second timer for Rages. In addition, to skillchain with your pet you'd have to be in melee range, and hitting something in Sinister Reign is not the easiest task for melees who actually gear for their own accuracy. So if they're not skillchaining and they're just using a BP every 30 seconds, they're going to fall behind. We have a well-geared Nirvana SMN in our linkshell, and we see things like 11k physical pacts, 6-9k Impacts varying with the situation, etc. So let's use an average of about 8k/30 seconds, or something like 2.6k/10 seconds. My BST, comparatively, would do on average about 3.5k/10 seconds. Someone hitting with a third of my accuracy would do far less, and there is no way that they would have kept up with a competent mythic SMN.

Of course, this is all theory and I could be wrong, but your argument makes no logical sense with the situation you've given us.

[Zekander]

I will admit, the BST was better geared then I made it out to be, I didn't realize that many non-item level pieces are still some of the best things to use on BST. I was not, however, exaggerating any of those numbers. The damage disparity was around 10%, the accuracy numbers were correct, and the BST was using only one gearset (again admittedly better then I made it out to be). It also just now occurred to me that the SMN changed avatars several times, that is not only lost time for melee damage to be dealt, but would also skew the accuracy numbers in his favor, since it would be counting landed bloodpacts as a higher percentage of the total attacks. Yes, that example of the SMNs damage was an incredible outlier, and yes the skillchain was for around 95k damage, I think we had a GEO (non-idris) at the time, the NM was Gestalt in Escha Zi'tah (so fairly low defense).

As I said, this is just my anecdote, it is likely somewhat of an outlier itself. However, given that these numbers were accrued over about 20 minutes of fighting, that would bring it considerably closer to an accepted average. Therefor, if the two pet jobs were at all balanced in power (not that they should be exactly equal) then the BST should have been much better geared in order to achieve those numbers.

The entire point of this conversation is ultimately not whether or not BST should be nerfed, it is whether or not BST is balanced with respect to the other jobs in this game. In my opinion the answer is that it is not, it is completely unbalanced in almost every way.

I do not play BST myself, so I can't really say what the job is capable of. However, one of the jobs I do play is WHM, and I have done various content both with and without BSTs. From a WHMs perspective, content done with BSTs is done stupidly easily and completed much more quickly then a non-BST party. Playing WHM in sinister reign with a party consisting of three players in melee range (one tank and two DD) is an absolute NIGHTMARE, I could not cure stats fast enough when I even had time between spamming Curaga to keep them alive, which inevitably led to me taking hate and dying. The same content played with BSTs led me to nearly fall asleep, the only thing I could even do to support the party was cast Dia II, there was no need to cure the tank as he took so little damage (since most of the time the pets had hate anyway) that he could easily keep himself cured, and most of the time would use echo drops before my silena would even land. From this perspective BST trivializes almost all content, this is UNBALANCED.

[kylani]

I do not play BST myself, so I can't really say what the job is capable of. However, one of the jobs I do play is WHM, and I have done various content both with and without BSTs. From a WHMs perspective, content done with BSTs is done stupidly easily and completed much more quickly then a non-BST party. Playing WHM in sinister reign with a party consisting of three players in melee range (one tank and two DD) is an absolute NIGHTMARE, I could not cure stats fast enough when I even had time between spamming Curaga to keep them alive, which inevitably led to me taking hate and dying. The same content played with BSTs led me to nearly fall asleep, the only thing I could even do to support the party was cast Dia II, there was no need to cure the tank as he took so little damage (since most of the time the pets had hate anyway) that he could easily keep himself cured, and most of the time would use echo drops before my silena would even land. From this perspective BST trivializes almost all content, this is UNBALANCED.

I just don't understand this thinking at all. You think BST and SMN should deal the same damage when SMN has so many additional abilities? That would be like saying RDM, SCH and WHM should do the same damage as BST, while curing, buffing, debuffing. It's ridiculous.

And this trivializes ALL content? Really? I've played BST for around 11 years and this is the first time EVER I've heard of BST being even useful in End Game content, much less preferred.

[Arthos]

It is unbalanced. Too many nasty moves on melee on the one side, bored range jobs players on the other side.

Why not making battles a bit smoother for melee, game is ending anyway.

Difficulty should'nt be too high for content player need to farm over and over again, like Sinister Reign. It should mainly be fun to do, and also doable on every job.

I would set difficult high on mission fights, for special KI's and similar things. Things u only do once. Wich makes them memorable, like CoP was back in the days.

Too bad SE did just the opposite, for reasons i don't see.

[Zekander]

And this trivializes ALL content? Really? I've played BST for around 11 years and this is the first time EVER I've heard of BST being even useful in End Game content, much less preferred.

This is what made me assume you do not play the game. This discussion is not all that new, it's been going on for several weeks at this point, and if this post does represent the first time you've even heard about this then I would have to assume you haven't been playing the game for at least a month. Apologies if this is not what you meant to say.

The only GEO in our linkshell does not play often, and is not all that familiar with the job (and does not really like to play it either), so none of us really know the most effective way to use it in every situation.

Yes, sinister reign is only one event. Yes, there are some situations where BST is not the optimal job (Escha Ru'Aun Caturae come to mind).

At least setting up a skillchain and magic burst is a somewhat complex strategy that involves teamwork.

To be clear I did not skew the accuracy numbers, they were what they were, I simply did not understand all the variables that led to those numbers. Personally I don't trust parsers for exactly this reason, they only give hard numbers without any of the details about how those numbers came to be.

You are entitled to your opinion, just as I am entitled to mine, the facts however, will always be somewhere in between.

[dasva]

Also 95k skillchain are you saying that the skillchain itself was that much or the BP plus skillchain? If the former than yeah I'd say that's a pimp smn with good buffs/debuffs on par with what Papasse (spelling?) does and I triply can't understand how anyone with low acc could beat him. If you mean the latter... then that isn't pimp outlier that's what the better smns in my ls (but not capped out in helios) do with my geo mule only doing malaise and only geo gear being dunna. Heck that's what my rng can do with trueflight with same geo mule for the only buffs/debuffs. In fact that repost of mine from a page back was in that situation only reason it didn't skillchain as I was trying to with our smn was because of the bsts spamming ready moves

Anyways so you're saying a okish good bst can win when the smn wasn't even fighting the whole time and you skew the acc numbers? The jugs ready accuracy probably was better than his overall as well. But I mean geez you can say that about job comparison if you try to compare like that. My pld has won parses when people kept dying and had meh acc

As far as sinister goes... if you want to melee get a geo and use Vex/Attunement. If you don't want to do that you could go just as fast with rngs or even faster with mages. You should see half the shouts for it these days. It's things like pld whm sch (that can skillchain) +3x blm/geo. MBing death absolutely destroys them almost in 1 go

[Zekander]

95k was the skillchain damage.

No, I don't think BST and SMN should do the same amount of damage. I believe that any job that is incredibly well geared and played by a very dedicated player should be able to beat any job that is undergeared and played by a mediocre player.

@Kylani: Please don't post here if you don't currently play the game.

I watch the shouts here on Asura when I'm in town (I rarely sit afk there for hours on end) and as of today they are all shouts for BST.

[kylani]

95k was the skillchain damage.

No, I don't think BST and SMN should do the same amount of damage. I believe that any job that is incredibly well geared and played by a very dedicated player should be able to beat any job that is undergeared and played by a mediocre player.

@Kylani: Please don't post here if you don't currently play the game.

I watch the shouts here on Asura when I'm in town (I rarely sit afk there for hours on end) and as of today they are all shouts for BST.

Why do you think I don't currently play the game? I play every day, and I don't only play BST. And you already said you were incorrect about the BSTs gear. I suspect a lot of this is more speculation than fact.

[dasva]

95k was the skillchain damage.

No, I don't think BST and SMN should do the same amount of damage. I believe that any job that is incredibly well geared and played by a very dedicated player should be able to beat any job that is undergeared and played by a mediocre player.

@Kylani: Please don't post here if you don't currently play the game.

I watch the shouts here on Asura when I'm in town (I rarely sit afk there for hours on end) and as of today they are all shouts for BST.

Then I kind of call BS on the smn doing so poorly in that other circumstances with what you had listed. I highly suspect that the actual accuracies were somewhat similar and/or that smner was doing at best 1 bp rage a minute.

Also all I see are shouts for mages so....

At least setting up a skillchain and magic burst is a somewhat complex strategy that involves teamwork.

Um schs can do that all by themselves (so can a few other jobs like blu or smn but not quite as constantly). Heck I recently watched a vid of the Belladonna type escha nm where the setup was a pld to pop, trust august to tank, whm for heals, brd for sleeping adds, geo just for bubbles and the sole source of dmg (unless you count the little August was doing lol) was a sch creating self skillchains and MBing