BST ready/sic/reward range

[Fynlar]

It wasn't all that cool being known for our 2-hour and nothing else.

Still beats nothing.

The bottom line is that if BST was all you had to bring to the table, you likely weren't getting many events cleared.

[Andro]

Best thing ever...

Hardcore BST players are already adjusting and picking up new ways to play. Bandwagoner's are falling off or attempting to really adjust. If you all truly love the job so much as you claim you do then you can adjust and figure out a way to work the system.

Try BST BST COR GEO WHM BRD You can melee and fight with your pet. You just cant be lazy and unprepared anymore and beat any content by never dying. I know you might have to learn what pets do what instead of Blackbeard Randy or Scissorleg Xerin spam everything. Its false that you cant play the job anymore and its false that it was always intended as a solo job. This is or was a MMORPG if your not sure what that acronym means look it up. Good BST will and can find spots in parties that work. Think outside the box.

I also think the change to SMN was stupid but then I melee on SMN so I guess I am weird.

Well, I have played BST a lot during the good old days, and I have a few things to say. If this job was never intended as a solo job, then why did SE do nothing for how long to force it into a party? They could have made adjustments to this job and made it into what they "intended" a long, long time ago. Instead, BST was pretty much The preferred solo job. Why, in fact, I chose it as a main. I think I was in all of 5 or 6 parties til 75 for exp, maybe 2 weren't all BST. I can only remember 1.

Secondly, BST and DRG are the only jobs I get enjoyment playing most of the time. As DRG has pretty much been ignored and lol'd since I started playing, I rely on BST to get things done. It isn't that I cannot find ways to make it work if I have to, it's that I shouldn't have to, and this update/nerf makes the job unplayable to me. I have breifly tried twice, and it's aggravating, annoying and just plain pisses me off. It isn't Beastmaster anymore, they should change the name to Beastslave. That range is ridiculous. If me playing the job is no longer enjoyable, I should find some way to make it work and do it anyways? Get real man. That is one high, high horse my friend.

Besides that, not a viable job for so much content now, pretty much useless.

[Alhanelem]

I also think the change to SMN was stupid but then I melee on SMN so I guess I am weird.

Rest of your comment notwithstanding (hardcore BSTs are complaining about this too,not just "bandwagoners"), it's not that weird. The problem BST faces (SMN faces it as well, it's much less of a problem for PUP) is that it's difficult to find a setup where either your pet or yourself won't wiff too much on anything that matters. Most gear doesn't provide accuracy for both, food is one of the few things that does. If you can get enough accuracy, usually you're compromising your pet's effectivness in some way.

But what it all boils down to is these changes are mostly a message from SE: "BST get up close or GTHO, SMN stay far away or GTHO." Neither of these things are good messages. People should be able to play in whatever style that suits them, as long as it doesn't totally break the entire game.

[machini]

Rest of your comment notwithstanding (hardcore BSTs are complaining about this too,not just "bandwagoners"), it's not that weird.

It's not just BSTs who are complaining. I have BST at 15, it's been 15 for years, and I'm complaining about the nerf. 'cause it was a bad idea. Good intentions, maybe, but a bad idea.

If SE wants people to do things other than spam one specific job constantly, they should do something that rewards players for NOT doing cookie cutter stuff. I've thought of an idea for instanced content that would work, I think, and could probably be made to work with force popped NMs:

Each time the content is entered/popped, the server makes a note of what jobs are being used. Just simple internal counters for each content, each one gets incremented once for each player on a job. When the content is cleared, the server compares the party composition to the most used jobs for that content, and then, the fewer jobs are in that 'most used' list, which would probably be top 6 or 8, the drop rates/drop quality increases.

People who want to spam idiot-proof fail-safe strategies like PLD with RNGs, or all BST, or whatever is 'the correct way' to do content can still clear the content. But people who go in with odd job combinations and still manage to clear the content get more and/or better rewards.

This would either force people to accept that half the strategies they use are NOT optimal strategies, or even, dare I say it, FUN strategies, and change their tactics up if they want to get the increased rewards. And it would also keep a constant (in theory) shift in the meta-game as far as job combinations for content goes: if everyone is doing one or two strategies that represent the majority of clears, with the same jobs, those will be the baseline reward rates for drop rates and loot quality. So there will be an impetus for people to find and use other strategies that do not use those job compositions. However, once those strategies are found, and widely used, those will become the baseline, and there will need to be another 'shift', either back to the old strategies, or to new ones.

It might eventually set up into a cycle, but at least it provides incentive for the community to not rehash stale, boring ways to do content.

[Arthos]

Can we get a comment from the devs? Do they realize what funny thing they did there? And maybe have some plans to overthink that?
It is my favourite game and i think they mostly do a good job. I also see the balancing problems and i can imagine how hard it can be to do the right in this matter.
But this adjustment is just wrong, in many ways. You cannot do this to that job, cannot let the master run after the dog. It's like putting a warrior in a tutu. You know... the core.

[Alhanelem]

It's not just BSTs who are complaining. I have BST at 15, it's been 15 for years, and I'm complaining about the nerf. 'cause it was a bad idea. Good intentions, maybe, but a bad idea.

If SE wants people to do things other than spam one specific job constantly, they should do something that rewards players for NOT doing cookie cutter stuff. I've thought of an idea for instanced content that would work, I think, and could probably be made to work with force popped NMs:

Each time the content is entered/popped, the server makes a note of what jobs are being used. Just simple internal counters for each content, each one gets incremented once for each player on a job. When the content is cleared, the server compares the party composition to the most used jobs for that content, and then, the fewer jobs are in that 'most used' list, which would probably be top 6 or 8, the drop rates/drop quality increases.

People who want to spam idiot-proof fail-safe strategies like PLD with RNGs, or all BST, or whatever is 'the correct way' to do content can still clear the content. But people who go in with odd job combinations and still manage to clear the content get more and/or better rewards.

This would either force people to accept that half the strategies they use are NOT optimal strategies, or even, dare I say it, FUN strategies, and change their tactics up if they want to get the increased rewards. And it would also keep a constant (in theory) shift in the meta-game as far as job combinations for content goes: if everyone is doing one or two strategies that represent the majority of clears, with the same jobs, those will be the baseline reward rates for drop rates and loot quality. So there will be an impetus for people to find and use other strategies that do not use those job compositions. However, once those strategies are found, and widely used, those will become the baseline, and there will need to be another 'shift', either back to the old strategies, or to new ones.

It might eventually set up into a cycle, but at least it provides incentive for the community to not rehash stale, boring ways to do content.

I don't think punishing people for using popular strategies is the best approach here.

[machini]

I don't think punishing people for using popular strategies is the best approach here.

Please reread what I said. People who continue to use popular strategies would have the same drop rates and drop quality they always did. People who use unpopular strategies would receive increased drop rates and drop quality.

Under that system, people could continue to do things exactly the way they have been doing them and never notice the change, unless their strategy became unpopular, in which case they would see their loot improve.

This isn't punishing people who use cookie-cutter strats. It's rewarding people who don't.

[machini]

To give a possible example with possible values, let's say for each job in your party/alliance that is not one of the 8 most popular jobs, drop rates go up 10%.

So if you have an entire party of unpopular jobs, and you clear something where the normal drop rate for an item is 20%, that goes up from 20% to 32%.

That's not punishing people for doing what's popular and tried and true and tested. That's rewarding people for doing stuff differently.

[Alhanelem]

Please reread what I said. People who continue to use popular strategies would have the same drop rates and drop quality they always did. People who use unpopular strategies would receive increased drop rates and drop quality.

That's not punishing people for doing what's popular and tried and true and tested. That's rewarding people for doing stuff differently.

This isn't punishing people who use cookie-cutter strats. It's rewarding people who don't.

I know what you said. That's still a punishment. You're telling people that to get the best drop rates, they have to change their team comp. I know you see it as a bonus, but a bonus for doing something can also be seen as a penalty for not doing something. Don't single me out here, you know very well that if they did this, there would be people complaining that they're forced to not play the job they want to play because what they want may not drop if they do.

I realize also that you're proposing something dynamic, where if playstyles change, what will constitute atypical will change and what will give or not give the bonus will change. It's not a terrible idea, but it will probably result in a rotation of cookie cutter builds instead of just one- Use one build til it stops giving the bonus, change the team comp, use that til it stops giving the bonus, repeat. And what if there are very few viable team comps due to a fight's mechanics? Then nobody can get the "bonus."

I don't think we should mess with drop rates or tell people what team comps to use at all. That's not what's broken here, if anything's broken at all. We're talking about a probably unnecessary balance change for one job because it was being used in certain counters in a possibly unexpected way. That's a flaw of the content itself, not the job, because it hasn't been a problem in the years leading up to this point. The content should be made by SE knowing what sorts of strategies may be possible. I realize with their low budgets these days they might not be able to test as many team comps, but this is something that should have been anticipated.

[Olor]

Can we get a comment from the devs? Do they realize what funny thing they did there? And maybe have some plans to overthink that?
It is my favourite game and i think they mostly do a good job. I also see the balancing problems and i can imagine how hard it can be to do the right in this matter.
But this adjustment is just wrong, in many ways. You cannot do this to that job, cannot let the master run after the dog. It's like putting a warrior in a tutu. You know... the core.

At the very least they have to recognize that pets have their own hate lists and run around making it pretty well impossible for the master to do anything but run around. It's ludicrous.

I got it. Add a 1200 jp gift that increases sic/ready and reward distance to 20'. The career bst's already have 1200 while the bandwagons only went to 100 and wouldn't care to spend the time to go up to 1200.

I am not a bandwagon BST, I don't even have 100 JP yet. I barely ever have a chance to play for a long time and when I do it seems like JP parties want you to already have most of your JP before you get JP.... I don't understand it. So I slowly solo the things and I think I have like 20 now.

Just fix the range, it's ludicrous.