[dev1289] Job Adjustments

[Dale]

He might be biased, but he's also correct. Do the math or Google it. There are spreadsheets available if you don't want to figure it out on your own. It's a fact. BST pets were never the best DDs. Get it out of your head. No matter how many time you say it, it will never be true. If you saw a bst pet doing better damage it's because that bst is better than other players. Not because the job is better. If geared and played at the same level with the same buffs, other jobs can easily out damage BST. This isn't a matter of opinion. It's a matter of game mechanics. Your opinion can't change the way the game works. That's just how it is. There is nothing to discuss on this front.

The only thing you should be discussing is survival, because that's the only thing unique about BST pets. It has to do with their HP. Because a pet can only be healed once ever 52 seconds or something like that (Without pooping money) a normal player can actually be healed for more damage over time. But, because a pet has high HP it can survive large AOE moves or breaks in healing without dieing. That's it. That's what needs to be brought to scale with players. In my opinion they could do that in various ways, but this nerf wasn't one of them. Personally, I think they need to raise player HP and defensive capabilities and lower pets HP somewhat to meet in the middle more. It's pretty stupid that you have to have a GEO and a WHM for all content that isn't soloable.

I'll just quote another Beast Master in this thread for you:

This change is like reducing the fuel tank of a super car because it goes too fast.
It sure did not change the fact that we still have the super cricket and can still do what we did before. I still laugh at all the melee trying to do as much damage as i do. You all still suck compared to a well geared BST.

That was pretty much my experience as well. So I'm not sure what spreadsheets you are talking about: but chances are if this supposed DD really was out-damaging a Beast Master's super cricket it was because that DD was exceptionally geared and doing content very agreeable to him. But generally speaking - most DDs could only dream of putting out the kind of numbers a Beast Master can - to say nothing of their survivability. Which is relevant in context to damage anyway: because it's a lot easier to do damage when you don't have to worry about dying when you go to do it.

There was a reason the Beast Master population started to explode on this game.

[machini]

Dale, when you have a DD who has hundreds of millions of gil in gear, and a COR buffing their ACC/ATT, they are gonna do a shit ton of damage.

I don't think it is unreasonable that a BST who has spent 100/+ million gil on multiple gear sets, receiving BST-specific buffs, should outdamage someone's fudo SAM that's in unaugmented skirmish armor with an unaugmented nene.

BST was not the issue here. BST was fine for years. BST did not change. The content changed, and then BST became a problem. Ergo, it is the content's fault, or, more directly, the community. There are things that work a lot better in a lot of situations than BST BST BST BST BST COR. However, BST BST BST BST BST COR requires virtually no coordination or teamwork compared to other things to make it work. I honestly think that's what made it so popular.

As to people doing BST because pets, with their high HP relative to players, can survive high damage AoE: Most DDs refuse to wear any -DT gear. When I go to things with PUGs I frequently see people who "outdamage" me do far, far, far less damage because the TP move that hit them for 1700 damage while they weren't topped off only did 850 to me. People who focus purely on theoretical damage output without any thought to survivability are a large part of the reason why BST was so heavily used as they were.

[machini]

Also, Dale, the spreadsheets, though you may not know them, are very, very good at showing a theoretical maximum DPS, wherein one is never debuffed, stunned, knocked out of range, and WSes at exactly 1000TP. Too many people consider them some sort of Holy Bible for how to do things without understanding their limitations. Which, as I stated, most DDs are unprepared for high damage TP moves, as they display the mentality that "It's the white mage's job to keep me alive, so if I die, even due to my own stupidity and recklessness, it's not my fault and I am clearly not doing anything wrong that needs to be changed."

And I should say that it's not 'as they were'. I still see plenty of shouts for BST.

[detlef]

BST was not the issue here. BST was fine for years. BST did not change. The content changed, and then BST became a problem. Ergo, it is the content's fault, or, more directly, the community.

You sure BST didn't change? Didn't SE change the way Ready worked? What about Run Wild, that's fairly recent isn't it? Did BST always have pets that did strong magical AoE attacks or a powerful evasion down effect? Stout Servant didn't exist at the 75 cap. Isn't Unleash super powerful?

Look, I obviously am no BST expert but they've been steadily building BST up for awhile including some radical improvements that make the job very powerful. The job has evolved quite a bit without grabbing the limelight until recently. Nobody cared when you were just attacking with CC but the pets have gotten much stronger and varied.

With that said, blaming the content is reasonable too because it's made BST look much more attractive compared to melee jobs.

[machini]

You sure BST didn't change? Didn't SE change the way Ready worked? What about Run Wild, that's fairly recent isn't it? Did BST always have pets that did strong magical AoE attacks or a powerful evasion down effect? Stout Servant didn't exist at the 75 cap. Isn't Unleash super powerful?

Look, I obviously am no BST expert but they've been steadily building BST up for awhile including some radical improvements that make the job very powerful. The job has evolved quite a bit without grabbing the limelight until recently. Nobody cared when you were just attacking with CC but the pets have gotten much stronger and varied.

With that said, blaming the content is reasonable too because it's made BST look much more attractive compared to melee jobs.

There are people who have complained directly to me that it's unfair that a DNC can outdamage them, despite there being several hundred million gil between how much I have spent on gear compared to them.

No job has remained the same since release. And BST did not change from what it was then to what it is now overnight. What did happen, more or less overnight, was people suddenly started demanding BST spam for absolutely everything and anything. Which is the fault of the community, for being unable or unwilling to do other things, and the fault of the content, for making pet spam the most attractive option by far for most people due to massive AoE.

When you can get someone who can do self double darkness reliably, and repeatedly, back to back to back to back as long as they are not stunned, paralyzed, petrified, terrored, or dead (which are all things that will screw BST pets over, too), with their ATT buffed through the roof so that they're at capped ATT/DEF ratio, they are going to do an absolute shit ton of damage. More than a single BST pet will do. The BSTs, however, only need 1 buffer and no healer, or needed no healer, whereas you'd need 2-4 non-DDs in the other party, depending on exact composition. An RDM/WHM and a GEO/WHM, if the two have decent cure potency and fast cast, can suffice in a lot of situations. In situations where they can't the BST pets are generally going to be just as screwed. Now throw in 3-4 Dual Wield DDs, all at attack speed cap, spamming hard-hitting WSes back to back to back, specifically WSes that will chain with each other just in case the timing is works out through the spam, and you're going to get some pretty massive damage.

Sometimes more DDs doesn't actually translate into more damage (but still adds more people the mob might want to kill before attacking the healer/WHM), because massive amounts of damage can be done via skillchains. Evisceration -> Shark Bite -> Pyrrhic Kleos/Rudra's Storm(/Mordant Rime, I guess) -> Evisceration -> Rudra's Storm can do an awful lot of damage from the skillchain damage, which can sometimes be more damage than multiple people just spamming WSes, or even trying to chain together, depending on exactly how much skillchain bonus the person or persons executing those WSes have.

One can make an argument that BST was too safe compared to other jobs, although I think it's a particularly weak argument, given the whole "either the pet or the master is functional, and the pet being function often means the master is in non-item level gear and no -DT gear", but the same argument goes for an A/O PLD in reforge AF/Relic/Empy, with a WHM standing by. No one complains that the PLD, with 100s of millions of gil in gear, with a person supporting them is too survivable, but people were levying the same charge against a BST with someone supporting them. One requires a WHM, the other a COR, but I've seen several PLDs who, except for the need to have paralysis and petrify removed for them, don't actually need a WHM to keep them alive. And, again, paralysis and petrify are things that completely screw over a BST, too.

An awful lot of this 'problem' seems to be a very vocal minority of people who are composed of the following two groups: People who have no idea how BST works, how much money is involved in getting it well geared, and are upset that BSTs do better than them; and certain people who constantly complain when anyone does better than their already strong-to-OP pet (as in favorite) job.

There are a very few people who are actually reasonable in saying that, yes, something should be done to rectify this situation, but that that 'something' should not be 'alter BST so that it becomes unviable in much of the content.'

[machini]

And for an example, as I mentioned in a previous post, of "DDs who cannot grasp survivability", I'd give as an example melee DDs who go to Avatar II fights without being /RUN because "it would hurt their DPS". I point out that having nothing but Shell on to mitigate massive magic damage hurts their DPS, too, which they don't get until they're hit for 2000/+ damage by an Astral Flow Blood Pact and promptly spend the rest of the fight in careful inspection and contemplation of the ground.

Actually, if you wanna get right down to it, a major part of BST survivability, in party environments, comes down to BSTs pulling out pets one after another after another. However, that costs gil. A lot of it. Stacks of Isleracea don't cost 1 million gil on Asura because it cures cancer. It's because BST became 'the correct and only way to do content' and that's required for some of the jugs.

[detlef]

Yeah, nobody complains that PLD and WHM have strangleholds for at least 2 PT slots for almost everything. In fact, during the times when you could DD tank things without PLD, people complained, insisting that you should always need a PLD. Weird.

DDs really are just crabs in a bucket.

[hakrev]

I see a lot of people implying that they did this nerf because it was so strong, or that it was able to fight safely away from the monster, but I have to ask, where have any of the dev's stated that's why they did it? Do any of us know the official reason? I'm just curious what the exact reason was. I mean if we explore the reasons that you all are listing as to why bst was tethered to the front lines it really doesn't make any sense. If they wanted the beastmaster to fight along side of their pet they should have made it so that bst could not "Call Beast" or use commands from x amount of distance from the monster. That's not what they did, they made it so we have to be leashed to the pet. So that whole argument pretty much is simply an opinion of why they did it.

So then it must be the great amount of damage they did? But wait...the damage wasn't gimped at all. Neither was the ability to tank things? So I have to wonder what WAS the reason? Was it that beastmasters were clearing content they shouldn't have been? Well...no that's not it either or they would have made adjustments to the content (ie pet enmity is ignored, which is what they have done in the past). So no that can't be it at all. We're all kind of left wondering just what on earth was the reason? I can't think of a single one why you would strap a leash around the beastmaster (player) on a job that's own description says that it's a job to control pets.

The problem that it all stems down to when you take all the non-sense and hearsay away is that in some way they thought, "Hey Summoner has a 15 yalm range, why does beast have a larger range, lets give summon a bigger range and beastmaster less of a range." Which is basically exactly what they did. So despite whatever players feel about the reason is really might not be the reason at all. I think it would be reasonable to conclude that if that's what their reasoning was, which is still just my own opinion and nothing more, then why not try to get the 15 yalms for beastmaster? seems the most fair and balanced approach to just simple swap the ranges of the two jobs. 5 yalms is too tiny, we all know that, there is no opinion that can justify that range. 10-15 yalms is reasonable, there is no reason why not. And as for wanting beastmasters to melee, that is simply the stupidest argument of them all. Even with a mythic your damage will be horrible compared to your pet's damage dealing and come on that whole argument is basically saying that "SE thinks beastmaster should do MORE damage because it's not doing enough, go melee, do more damage! get hit with paralyze every 1 second so your timers are all screwed up! Yeah that'll fix the job..."

My point is that there's a ton of people saying it's this or that and frankly we don't know the exact reason, all we can do is look at what they did, and they increased summon range and decreased beast range (too much). Your opinions that it was overpowered in this that or the other thing are YOUR opinions, not absolute truth. I have opinions about rngs and blu's and plds and whm against how powerful they are, but honestly do I want them nerfed because of it? No. IDK why the ffxi community is so volatile, but it's really regressed in recent years. You know what we should be complaining about more than this or that job being 'too powerful?' We should be complaining about the side-grades we keep getting. Like escha, there's is no point in it, it's all just more 119 rare/exclusive gear that is marginally better than the 119 unity or 119 delve or 119 skirmish gear or 119 Vagary, or 119 H-T Battlefield gear. Who cares if bst was better (which in reality it wasn't, and isn't, and never was except when we could -100% dmg in aby) in the new content, when the content itself isn't even worth bothering about to begin with. What a fussy and ridiculous community we've become >.> and no wonder ppl are jumping ship. Complaining about jobs being too powerful because of xyz is just playing into SE's idle hands, they are releasing content that is boring/irrelevant and stagnating the community, you want to be mad about something be mad at that, not about xyz jobs being too powerful and helping YOU clear YOUR content MORE QUICKLY! When SE nerf's we all lose. None of us gained anything from bst getting this change and there's nothing you can say to make me think any of you could possibly be happy that another job was nerfed into oblivion 2 months before major updates end. I just don't buy it unless you're a cave troll roaming the internet looking to become the next great keyboard warrior >.>

[Fynlar]

The reason's kinda irrelevant when no matter how you slice it is was a heavy handed "fix" that did nothing to address the actual "problem" with BST (assuming you think there was ever actually any problem with it to begin with) and will only serve to alienate more solo-style players in a dying game where solo-style play has had to become more and more prevalent out of sheer necessity.

[Stompa]

I think the reason this job nerf thread and other similar recent threads have had such bionic legs, is really that FFXI original game was groundbreaking in creating so many unique and individual jobs, with real personalities and unique strengths / weaknesses.

For example, BST as pet job, people will compare with SMN, PUP, DRG. Notably, SMN PUP DRG pets will actively heal the master. BST primary job ability was always charm, that was your BST power ability. And yet charm pets did not cure the master. Charm pets often tried to kill the beastmaster, and would often link with a dozen nearby mobs to hilariously rip the BST to shreds.

Charm was a super-powerful ability, and unique to BST. The Barbarian Nomad, master of the wilderness! This is one of many FFXI unique job profiles, all the jobs were unique and individual, with powers and weaknesses and personalities that were entirely their own. Even if we bracket BST PUP SMN DRG together as pet jobs, they were completely unique, and weaker/stronger in different ways and different settings.

You could spend time mastering a job, and learning what the main strengths and weaknesses were. Many of us fell in love with our main jobs, we grew to adore the job's unique characteristics. We may not have got invited to events, but many of us really did not care, because we actually loved playing our main job which everyone else said was lol. We got very protective and sensitive about changes to our favourite jobs!

This was always the danger in the 2010-2015 era of trying to form a sort of uniform job soup, with gear that stat-bombs everyone, and trying to make all jobs suitable in all situations. Many people did want this to happen, but it did come at a price, which was the loss of the original unique job characteristics and quirky strengths/weaknesses.

I agree with the statements that the nerfed range for pet commands is too short, I hope they will re-think this and give BST a more realistic pet-command range. But I also hoped for automaton /lockstyle pyjamas, and that did not happen!