[dev1289] Job Adjustments

[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.

[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.'

[Dale]

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.

The problem with your post Machini is that Beast Master did change. So your post extends from a false premise.

What changed is that SE gave Beast Masters access to insanely powerful pets who have both massive damage and survivability. That is also why you saw the job's role change: which was almost exclusively a niche solo job before: then changed into a preferred method for dealing with endgame content. This is why you saw the Beast Master population begin to change as well, from very few to so many. So to suggest Beast Masters didn't change - it was the content that did - just isn't dealing with the reality.

This game has always had content that puts melee DPS at a disadvantage. It's been a fair and consistent criticism of this game since it's inception: and is the primary reason so many jobs get left out in the cold. So that is nothing new about this game. It's something melee jobs have been dealing with for well over a decade on FFXI.

As far as wearing -DT gear... that sounds easy enough in theory. But it's not so easy to deck your character out in a lot of -DT gear and still maintain a healthy offense capable of consistently hitting and doing damage to the notorious monster. So either way you look at: melee DPS are put at a significant disadvantage. It's not just because players are stubborn and refuse to adapt. It's because the game's design itself makes it hard for them.