[dev1289] Job Adjustments

[Jile]

They should have just made whatever pet that was OP less OP and left everything else alone. Fundamentally enforcing SE's idea of BST's playstyle without really addressing anything makes no sense.

Exactly. Why change the fundamental functionally of the job when all that was needed was a small adjustment on just the pet aoe dmg.

---------

I don't want to see SCH or BLM nerfed but it should be obvious by now that if the numbers BST can get under optimal conditions are nerf-worthy, the much higher numbers SCH and BLM pull are coming next. I hope people are just as calloused when that happens.

[Alhanelem]

Well it just continues to illustrate SE's penchant for fixing a balancing crack in the wall by swinging a sledgehammer at it and missing the crack entirely, making a separate hole in the wall.

[Jile]

Concise analogy.

Again, SE community reps, can you respond if the devs are going to review and repair this?

[Dale]

A lot of people are complaining that BST does too much damage and they shouldn't. It isn't nearly the strongest job in that regard. It is the best at surviving large damage spikes. But that isn't what people are complaining about. And oddly enough, SAM, MONK, DRK and WAR could just eat damage and have a WHM mule cure through it for years without a nerf. Or RNG could just sit there and shoot. So BST being able to do it through pet food shouldn't shock or offend anyone.

That's part of the problem we have now. The reason people are using BST so much is because half the people playing now don't have DT- sets or know what any of the defensive spells do, so they just bring bst to any event that they can't plow through by spamming Fudo or Rudra's. That's how long those other jobs have been OP DD tanks. People completely forgot that they aren't supposed to be tanks. They don't know anything but zerg now. And the sad thing is that nerfing BST isn't going to bring the zerg back. It just pissed off BSTs. Players have weak defense and low HP and changing BST did nothing to fix that. These people who cried about BST still won't be able to get in groups on SAM, MNK etc. because they cried to nerf BST when they should have cried for more HP / defense and less cheap AOE mechanics.

The affects are already evident. Now instead of seeing people shouting for bst, they shout for SCH and people still aren't engaging these high tier monsters because they have cheap crappy AOE mechanics. Given that this is close to the final update, I guess SE just wants us to RNG or SCH burn everything for the duration of the game's life.

I understand what you are saying. But t I have seen Beast Master pets out-survive my Paladin in full - damage sets while doing probably 100 times more damage than I would ever be capable of.

So it's just not realistic to imply all a Samurai would have to do is slap on a -DT set and he would instantly have the survivability that a Beast Master does.. I just don't see that happening. This isn't even to mention that equipping a full -DT set would significantly lower the damage output of the Melee DD anyway.

I personally don't mind so much the damage of the Beast Master. It's very high - perhaps overpowered - but I wouldn't be inclined to call for a nerf. It's only when you take into account this kind of damage combined with so much survivability that I believe it rises to level of needing to be nerfed. So take my comments in that context.

I agree with you about cheap crappy AOE mechanics. That's been a failing of this game since the beginning - and is probably one of the big reasons it never reached the pinnacle of MMO success that I believe this game could have.

[Dale]

All pet jobs have been able to do what you described, so why single out BST?

No they haven't Alhanelem.

Try tanking a high-tier Avatar or some other powerful notorious monster with a dragoon pet and see how far it gets you.

Sure: it might can stay alive - but if you even sneeze on the boss it's going to lose threat and come after you.

No other Pet Job I have see comes even close to what Beast Master is capable of in terms of damage and raw tanking ability. It's not even a contest. Those special pets they have rip hate even off my Paladin. They are enmity machines - not to mention they are hard to kill and do crazy damage to boot.

[Jile]

I understand what you are saying. But t I have seen Beast Master pets out-survive my Paladin in full - damage sets while doing probably 100 times more damage than I would ever be capable of.

So it's just not realistic to imply all a Samurai would have to do is slap on a -DT set and he would instantly have the survivability that a Beast Master does.. I just don't see that happening. This isn't even to mention that equipping a full -DT set would significantly lower the damage output of the Melee DD anyway.

I personally don't mind so much the damage of the Beast Master. It's very high - perhaps overpowered - but I wouldn't be inclined to call for a nerf. It's only when you take into account this kind of damage combined is with so much survivability that I believe it rises to level of needing to be nerfed. So take my comments in that context.

I agree with you about cheap crappy AOE mechanics. That's been a failing of this game since the beginning - and is probably one of the big reasons it never reached the pinnacle of MMO success that I believe this game could have.

BST do not gear for themselves because that's not how SE designed our gear. Unless we want jugs that can't hit, can't hit and do damage, can't take a hit, we have to take ourselves out of the picture completely.

Pet can hit, do decent dmg, take a hit.

Or.

We can hit, can do ok dmg, can take a hit.

Both do not occur at the same time on relevant content.

That is how SE designed BST.

I appreciate that any job capable of burst dmg will take attention of the community and devs. They didn't need to castrate BST in the process of balance.

--------

All I'm asking SE to do is undo the distance Nerf, in exchange for an aoe-pet tp move dmg decrease.

I'm not excited to lose dmg but I'd much prefer a reasonable nerf on pet aoe dmg than giving up on the one job out of 22 lvl99's I love, being removed from relevant content.

[bazookatooth]

I understand what you are saying. But t I have seen Beast Master pets out-survive my Paladin in full - damage sets while doing probably 100 times more damage than I would ever be capable of.

I have capped emnity gifts and +pet emnity gear in just about every action I do on BST, capped JP and pretty much every desirable piece of gear there is for bst with the exception of Aymur, which I am working on currently. The PLDs in my shell still hold hate about as well as you could hope. PLD isn't supposed to be able to hold hate permanently. Eventually DDs should be able to rip it off if they go all out. Especially if they are fully buffed on some low/mid level content. That's just how the game is designed. I could sneak attack -> rudras a mob at the start of the fight on thf and I guarantee that you won't get hate back until I die if I don't want you to. As for surviving, a good PLD has close to 3k HP in escha. You shouldn't be dieing unless your whm is failing to heal you. Anything that hits you that hard is going to eat through a pet just as fast and they can only be healed every 52 seconds. PLD should be rocking about the same amount of DT- as a bst pet with shell/pro and gear etc. possibly more. Higher HP is the only thing a pet has over PLD.

They could chaqnge the HP of pets and reward timer to be more similar to how a real player gets healed, or they could raise player HP / defense to be more like pets. They probably should have just done a little of both.

So it's just not realistic to imply all a Samurai would have to do is slap on a -DT set and he would instantly have the survivability that a Beast Master does.. I just don't see that happening. This isn't even to mention that equipping a full -DT set would significantly lower the damage output of the Melee DD anyway.

No, they couldn't. They need to use defensive buffs and gear. The buffs are the part that people always forget. They want to just roll with all haste and attack and zerg. Why should a SAM be able to survive like a pet does anyways? Shouldn't there be some downside to pumping out infinite light/dark skillchains?

No they haven't Alhanelem.

Try tanking a high-tier Avatar or some other powerful notorious monster with a dragoon pet and see how far it gets you.

Sure: it might can stay alive - but if you even sneeze on the boss it's going to lose threat and come after you.

No other Pet Job I have see comes even close to what Beast Master is capable of in terms of damage and raw tanking ability. It's not even a contest. Those special pets they have rip hate even off my Paladin. They are enmity machines - not to mention they are hard to kill and do crazy damage to boot.

A BST with capped JP has at minimal +15 emnity before gear which in my case adds like another 15~ish. You'd be hard pressed to find a DD job that wouldn't pull hate eventually in that much +emnity gear.

[Alhanelem]

No they haven't Alhanelem.

Try tanking a high-tier Avatar or some other powerful notorious monster with a dragoon pet and see how far it gets you.

Sure: it might can stay alive - but if you even sneeze on the boss it's going to lose threat and come after you.

No other Pet Job I have see comes even close to what Beast Master is capable of in terms of damage and raw tanking ability. It's not even a contest. Those special pets they have rip hate even off my Paladin. They are enmity machines - not to mention they are hard to kill and do crazy damage to boot.

I'm speaking in general terms about content across the entirety of the game over the years, not just what people do this very moment. Also, the valoredge puppet properly configured can actually tank a lot of stuff (having 100 or 1200 JP makes it really effective as well). BST might be the best at it, but the other pet jobs have kited or tanked all kinds of NMs and content throughout FFXI's history. Have you never heard of summoner burns? When WoE was new (and pretty much even to this day), many of the first clears were all or mostly summoners throwing pets at it- Although summons won't survive as long as BST pets, they also can be resummoned quickly and immediately. I've pet tanked a variety of NMs over the years on SMN. It's not a new concept and it's not exclusive to BST.

Enmity can be managed on the other pet jobs, so I'm not even considering that a factor in this.

[Jile]

Carby kiting - gogo! Oh Wait, it's OP cause the SMN didn't hit... >.>

/end sarcasm

Nobody had my SMN nerffed when I literally sat and let my avatars kill nm's in abyssea while i ate my dinner or chatted on vent either.

As brought up earlier, the zerg-only attitude people mad their respective dd wasn't asked for because they pull too much hate and die ten seconds into a fight and our pets don't have multi-minute weakness on ko is why we're here.

Minor BST adjustment was needed.... That's not what we got.

[Kaory]

I hate the fact that i use to play BST a ton in the old 75 days of no invites, solo only, charm and 2 hr, etc. and no one cared. Could we kill NMs solo, oh yeah. Was it a challenge most of the time, yep. Again, no one cared. fastforward, today a good BST has spent millions on stones, days on capacity farming, and years of disregard to finally be "sought for" to get hijacked by complainers now. I spent far too much time, gil, etc on this job to see it get jacked up. Yes, i can still use it, but I have to get screwed by dumb mechanics because gimped players ran to the job. Let us not forget, there are only a few ways to buff and heal pets. A dd gets far more, so yes being in aoe range is annoying but makes sense. Also, charm can ruin us if timers are down. We already have to deal with all enfeebles on our pets too. Meanwhile, sch can sit back and kill a mob from safe distance with sc mb solo. Add a blm and mobs melt. Smn always could do from a distance, and with conduit can melt mobs too. If we have to keep a distance nerf, give us PUP distance at least. It is a fair distance of danger to safe ratios with the ability to reward from a safe distance. Many will still complain, but it is better than standing next to my pet and still getting too far messages. Useless players wont know how to play from PUP distance either and veterans should have no trouble with that distance. Otherwise, give us what we had in Aug and fix the real problems of balance: too much mob aoe, too little hp for players, acc/att increases, etc. I dont want easy mode, but when my shellmates can just mb for 99999 every min or less, not much is challenge mode anyway. Why fundamentally change one job when many jobs are OP and others havent seen the real light of day in years.