Job balancing?

[OmnysValefor]

Getting better really has nothing to do with it. The mobs are unbalanced with AOE spam. We need DT sets for melee because the amount of aoe spam they have to deal with is garbage. Taking away from the player community by putting a 20%- on magic bursts wouldn't be the route to go unless SE wants a bunch of mad customers. It just needs to be reformed so that way each job is useful like the lvl 75 days. Back in those days each job was useful there were preffered jobs but all jobs could go do end game content, unlike range/ mage only content we have today.

AOE Spam is part of it, but there's a lot more going on than that. Enfeebling AOES (especially paralyzes so potent that you can't remedy and no practical way to remove Amensia, and even a well timed Blind by the boss) are a huge part of it.

Said it before, say it again: Melee require too much babysitting when a pair of scholars can do the same job far more efficiently, in lesser gear. (An evaded attack means a miss. A magic-evaded attack means a resist). Since your party will have some mages (50-99k MBs for minimal tp feed and minimal hate is too lovely not to embrace), its easier with just mages. The GEO buffs to favor them and doesn't worry about melee who aren't there.

And each job did not have a use at 75 besides niche fights. They were called lolpup and lolbst for a reason. DNC was pretty awful, THF and sometimes DRG were only wanted for TH and Angon. SCH replaced SMN for buff-magic.

[xiozen]

In review of the "gifts"...I'm wondering if this concept really continues to hold true for jobs that have already been mastered... since the gifts do provide over time and cumulatively, a significant boost to all aspects of the job (phy def, mag def, mag attk, attck, acc, mag acc etc. etc.) unless some gifts don't provide these types of boosts on the way to 2100... if all jobs receive these benefits, is rebalancing necessary??? I've personally witnessed the difficulties of a mastered "master" bst, "NOT" being one-shotted during sinister reign vs, non-mastered jobs getting wiped during the 1st aoe...

[dmuller30]

AOE Spam is part of it, but there's a lot more going on than that. Enfeebling AOES (especially paralyzes so potent that you can't remedy and no practical way to remove Amensia, and even a well timed Blind by the boss) are a huge part of it.

Said it before, say it again: Melee require too much babysitting when a pair of scholars can do the same job far more efficiently, in lesser gear. (An evaded attack means a miss. A magic-evaded attack means a resist). Since your party will have some mages (50-99k MBs for minimal tp feed and minimal hate is too lovely not to embrace), its easier with just mages. The GEO buffs to favor them and doesn't worry about melee who aren't there.

And each job did not have a use at 75 besides niche fights. They were called lolpup and lolbst for a reason. DNC was pretty awful, THF and sometimes DRG were only wanted for TH and Angon. SCH replaced SMN for buff-magic.

Every job had some purpose there wasn't lolpup when it had it's over powered ja set and bst well you are right there lol. . . . . DNC on Titan / Pheonix servers were pretty nice I don't have any clue what you are talking about DNC and THF were both used pretty fairly in the HNMLS I was inm because DNC could survive so many different things that other jobs couldn't and could help keep a party alive while putting out dps. THF still had its uses and so did a good DRG. SMN . . . . don't even get me started on what that job needs because the list on that job is enough to write a novel about, I don't understand why that job has never really caught up with the other jobs in the entire what 13/14 years the game has been out? Anyways back at lvl 75 there were the preferred jobs but they weren't set in stone as must have jobs like we have now.

[Fae]

Although this is nice I would love a bit more for SMN. To me SMN should either be equal on both support and dps or one or the other. It's dps is a little mediocre at best and it's buffs are super dated. Maybe feeding the players stats to your pet with some modifiers to make them more balanced, and upping the cap on the pets wards would make a world of difference.

I play a lot of SMN and don't really favor either suggestion lol To me SMN is about making those 30 second recasts count and then they become amazing when you unleash one hours. Our wards are very lacking at the moment though. Phalanx and stoneskin effects super weak compared to player version using accession. Evasion and accuracy buffs/debuffs are not worth using compared to even what some DD can do, including shiva's high level pact for debuffing evasion. Compare Distract III of rdm to the -25 evasion Shiva gives or Feint of a THF, which maybe you could come up with some argument for. But considering you can sub rdm and give -35 evasion from tier I distract and a high level pact of Shiva gives -25 evasion seems really off to me.

There's a lot more so I am hoping the update will really help us. In fact if I sub rdm in the 30 seconds it takes to cast one blood pact ward I can have better phalanx, better stoneskin, better evasion down, better shell effect than shining ruby and depending on my def rating better protect. Having more power from subjob vs 30 second recast pacts is not good for SMN at all. While we do have some powerful wards, like Earthen Armor, and Hastega II, they represent when wards do what they are supposed to do... be powerful party wide buffs or debuffs on the mob with long duration and long recasts. Back in the day it was awesome to see SMN keep up haste 1 and aerial armor on an entire party and keep you safe with stone skin, phalanx effect etc. Now I feel like why do I have these wards at all if /rdm subjob beats them.

Favor is nice but you are limited in where your pet can be and what pet you can have out. If the mob isn't weak to ice, you get to stand there and do nothing the entire fight after you cast a few wards if you are asked to give MAB to a mage party. But why would they ask you when COR is far easier to gear as a support up to speed and there's a lot more of them and they can give magic acc and mab at the same time? Dream shroud depending on time of day gives you some edge but not enough to make up for an entire other roll. You could conflag strike and impact. But the mobs don't tell you when debuffs wear to reapply and while you reapply poof goes the favor and has to rebuild. SMN can do a lot but they don't let us make a choice between support and do damage and due to how favor works unless you're very luck on the mobs weaknesses you'll never really be doing both, and if you are lucky enough to have them be both, you have to make them miss favor sometimes to reapply debuffs or do damage if the mob is too far away. Even if you stack all our outdated buffs at one time, and do favor, people will prefer COR every time. And COR isn't even strictly a support it can deal heavy damage and while I agree SMN can do great damage if you unleash your one hours, the rest the time it can't keep up to other mages simply due to recast.

Unlike BRD, GEO and BLU we also can't cap magical haste so at most we over load with indi-haste or save a bard one song. BLU it can work but if their stacking haste is dispelled it's welp. Basically there's no role SMN fill well, and if you try to do both support and damage, you miss out on avatars favor nearly totally and our old wards a lot of them sub rdm is better than them. So as it stands now people only respect SMN for three things: 1 hour ability, which just makes it sort of like a BST that has better magic burst options, and no physical AoE and Mewing lullaby on a few hard nms to lock out TP moves, which with enough support subbing summoner a full smn isn't needed then either. So that leaves... 1 hour and flaming crush on weak mobs as the third. Flaming crush doesn't scale well at all though so around t1 reisenjima it's not really that useful at all and you start using things like volt strike instead. I thought SE was gonna try to fix SMN from being just a 1 hour tool. Alexander was weakened a lot, and now we can do awesome damage every hour, but we still just slaves to that 1 hour timer. SMN needs to be useful enough while that's down to get party invites if you are seriously considering balancing it. I should mention too, if people screw up skillchains or bubbles when you 1 hour, or a badly times amnesia or petrify goes off on the avatar or it's killed mid 1 hour, it becomes pretty much a useless strategy so it has downsides too. I like the idea of SMN being able to unleash the full potential of an avatar every hour. But it being the main thing it's used for as a job is stale and resetting 1 hours every time you wanna do something hard that sch blm and geo can do w/o 1 hours gets very old very fast. I realize people are tired of hearing about SMN rants probably from me and a few others in particular, but these are what are actually facing SMN as a job right now if you look at endgame with endgame event LS, and like it or not people play to endgame strats because that's where they want to eventually belong so if you can't fix it there you can't fix it anywhere else.

[dmuller30]

I play a lot of SMN and don't really favor either suggestion lol To me SMN is about making those 30 second recasts count and then they become amazing when you unleash one hours. Our wards are very lacking at the moment though. Phalanx and stoneskin effects super weak compared to player version using accession. Evasion and accuracy buffs/debuffs are not worth using compared to even what some DD can do, including shiva's high level pact for debuffing evasion. Compare Distract III of rdm to the -25 evasion Shiva gives or Feint of a THF, which maybe you could come up with some argument for. But considering you can sub rdm and give -35 evasion from tier I distract and a high level pact of Shiva gives -25 evasion seems really off to me.

There's a lot more so I am hoping the update will really help us. In fact if I sub rdm in the 30 seconds it takes to cast one blood pact ward I can have better phalanx, better stoneskin, better evasion down, better shell effect than shining ruby and depending on my def rating better protect. Having more power from subjob vs 30 second recast pacts is not good for SMN at all. While we do have some powerful wards, like Earthen Armor, and Hastega II, they represent when wards do what they are supposed to do... be powerful party wide buffs or debuffs on the mob with long duration and long recasts. Back in the day it was awesome to see SMN keep up haste 1 and aerial armor on an entire party and keep you safe with stone skin, phalanx effect etc. Now I feel like why do I have these wards at all if /rdm subjob beats them.

Favor is nice but you are limited in where your pet can be and what pet you can have out. If the mob isn't weak to ice, you get to stand there and do nothing the entire fight after you cast a few wards if you are asked to give MAB to a mage party. But why would they ask you when COR is far easier to gear as a support up to speed and there's a lot more of them and they can give magic acc and mab at the same time? Dream shroud depending on time of day gives you some edge but not enough to make up for an entire other roll. You could conflag strike and impact. But the mobs don't tell you when debuffs wear to reapply and while you reapply poof goes the favor and has to rebuild. SMN can do a lot but they don't let us make a choice between support and do damage and due to how favor works unless you're very luck on the mobs weaknesses you'll never really be doing both, and if you are lucky enough to have them be both, you have to make them miss favor sometimes to reapply debuffs or do damage if the mob is too far away. Even if you stack all our outdated buffs at one time, and do favor, people will prefer COR every time. And COR isn't even strictly a support it can deal heavy damage and while I agree SMN can do great damage if you unleash your one hours, the rest the time it can't keep up to other mages simply due to recast.

Unlike BRD, GEO and BLU we also can't cap magical haste so at most we over load with indi-haste or save a bard one song. BLU it can work but if their stacking haste is dispelled it's welp. Basically there's no role SMN fill well, and if you try to do both support and damage, you miss out on avatars favor nearly totally and our old wards a lot of them sub rdm is better than them. So as it stands now people only respect SMN for three things: 1 hour ability, which just makes it sort of like a BST that has better magic burst options, and no physical AoE and Mewing lullaby on a few hard nms to lock out TP moves, which with enough support subbing summoner a full smn isn't needed then either. So that leaves... 1 hour and flaming crush on weak mobs as the third. Flaming crush doesn't scale well at all though so around t1 reisenjima it's not really that useful at all and you start using things like volt strike instead. I thought SE was gonna try to fix SMN from being just a 1 hour tool. Alexander was weakened a lot, and now we can do awesome damage every hour, but we still just slaves to that 1 hour timer. SMN needs to be useful enough while that's down to get party invites if you are seriously considering balancing it. I should mention too, if people screw up skillchains or bubbles when you 1 hour, or a badly times amnesia or petrify goes off on the avatar or it's killed mid 1 hour, it becomes pretty much a useless strategy so it has downsides too. I like the idea of SMN being able to unleash the full potential of an avatar every hour. But it being the main thing it's used for as a job is stale and resetting 1 hours every time you wanna do something hard that sch blm and geo can do w/o 1 hours gets very old very fast. I realize people are tired of hearing about SMN rants probably from me and a few others in particular, but these are what are actually facing SMN as a job right now if you look at endgame with endgame event LS, and like it or not people play to endgame strats because that's where they want to eventually belong so if you can't fix it there you can't fix it anywhere else.

It was just a suggestion but yes the wards are super ineffective and this is widely known even by people who are not SMN. I am a SMN since the good old PS2 release after getting my job to lvl 30 SMN was the first job I went for. Right now playing SMN I switched to BLU just for the simple fact the SMN just isn't enough atm. I love SMN don't get me wrong but seeing other jobs that can out DPS it pretty easily is very unreasonable. One of the biggest things I find wrong with SMN is it's 30 second timer, to me this isn't the greatest we can spike every 30 seconds while the amount our avatar hits for + the low rate of hitting means we truly shine only every 30 seconds. While the BLM and the BLU next to us already totally out DPSed us a long time ago. Not to mention the aoe spam our Avatars have to endure along with any enfeebs because they are close range. I don't know how many times I went to BP and bam my Avatar is dead and my BP timer is wasted. We are no longer viable buffers because most jobs can do it better we have longer timers on our buffs but they are a fraction of what someone else can do.

In every Reisnjima party (sorry for the spelling), that I have been in I have never once used avatars favor its not necessary any more. Maybe in a CP party but that is about it. And since there buffs are garbage that puts them in the DPS slot which they are still vastly behind most other DPS. And referring to the other SMN in our group who mains it just like I did for years his Flaming crush does about 20-50k on t1-t3 on all escha mobs it really all come down to how much acc + bp damage you can put on those Merlinic pieces or apogee pieces that will make them hit better (Nirvana helps a ton, also Gridavor fully upgraded). Same goes for nuking but with magic acc. But any BP can hit super hard but having a 30 second wait time while other DPS can do the same on a WS or spell faster is just plain silly. SMN needs some tweaking and I feel that it wouldn't even be that hard to make it as balanced as other DPS.

[Dale]

Crazyvic, you clearly don't play most of those jobs in order to think those ideas are beneficial.

While Aegis and Ochain could use some buffs (Ochain is no longer king of blocking,

So what is the new king of blocking?

[OmnysValefor]

Every job had some purpose there wasn't lolpup when it had it's over powered ja set and bst well you are right there lol. . . . . DNC on Titan / Pheonix servers were pretty nice I don't have any clue what you are talking about DNC and THF were both used pretty fairly in the HNMLS I was inm because DNC could survive so many different things that other jobs couldn't and could help keep a party alive while putting out dps. THF still had its uses and so did a good DRG. SMN . . . . don't even get me started on what that job needs because the list on that job is enough to write a novel about, I don't understand why that job has never really caught up with the other jobs in the entire what 13/14 years the game has been out? Anyways back at lvl 75 there were the preferred jobs but they weren't set in stone as must have jobs like we have now.

When DNC was introduced, DNC did similar dmg to thf without SATA to back it up. DNC at 75 (at least for the first year or two of WoTG) was impotent.

BST at 75? It was basically a warrior without any offensive ability, and since it did its best with /nin, it got nothing from sub either. The pets were laughable because they couldn't hit anything remotely difficult.

BST is in a good spot now and was in a really great spot for a long time, but it was crap at 75. THF was used for two things -- Treasure hunter and hate-control and if it didn't have TH, noone would have brought it.

So what is the new king of blocking?

Don't laugh, Priwen while Reprisal is up--so you build yourself a good haste/fc set and cast Reprisal in that. Aeonic blocks more-per-hit but blocks much less often. I don't like it anymore than anyone else but SE is fine with where shields are at.

[Stompa]

BST at 75? It was basically a warrior without any offensive ability, and since it did its best with /nin, it got nothing from sub either. The pets were laughable because they couldn't hit anything remotely difficult.

BST is in a good spot now and was in a really great spot for a long time, but it was crap at 75.

In 2005 I watched a girl on Remora, as she solo'd Xolotl on BST75/whm. She was charming the hidden Antlions and running away, for hours. She won. Xol was an alliance mob at the time.

In 2005 I got my Ohat, in a group 3/18. Me and two other BST75/whm, we trio'd Haku using charmed eyes. Haku was an alliance mob at the time.

Also in 2005 I solo'd Alkyoneus on BST/whm, using charmed bats and stop jugs. He was quite a powerful mob to solo at the time.

I'm not wanting to start an argument here, and I would completely agree with you that BST JugPets were incredibly weak, and had miserable accuracy. I totally agree with you on that. But that doesn't mean Bst75 "was crap." Bst75 was a master of the wilderness, and in the wild lands Bst was the most powerful job in FFXI.

In BCNM / Sky / Mission battles / etc., Bst was forced to us JugPets, and was indeed crap. But in the wilderness, Bst was completely mighty, the mightiest job of all.

[OmnysValefor]

We don't have to "argue" Stompa. We can have polite debate or disagreement .

I'd heard of Xolotl solos by BST but never saw it. I had never heard of BSTs vs O.Hat NM (that I reacall), but cool^^.

A monk solo'd genbu by boost>boost...>boost Chi Blasting for a long long time. While these feats are respectable, it doesn't say as much about the job as it does about the player (skill and endurance). These jobs were still not wanted in endgame activities. My very first EGLS had an Armadaberk. He had every piece of gear a WAR would want, and he played BST. He enjoyed it, and that was fine, but he did lackluster damage and CourierCarrie contributed nothing to be even worth the rewards.

Lots of jobs could do amazing things in the game world, but the point I'm replying to is that all jobs were useful at 75 in endgame (the thread, after all, is called Job Balancing).

[Urthdigger]

In review of the "gifts"...I'm wondering if this concept really continues to hold true for jobs that have already been mastered... since the gifts do provide over time and cumulatively, a significant boost to all aspects of the job (phy def, mag def, mag attk, attck, acc, mag acc etc. etc.) unless some gifts don't provide these types of boosts on the way to 2100... if all jobs receive these benefits, is rebalancing necessary??? I've personally witnessed the difficulties of a mastered "master" bst, "NOT" being one-shotted during sinister reign vs, non-mastered jobs getting wiped during the 1st aoe...

Yes, even with gifts job balancing is a major issue. For starters, the gap between melee and magic effectiveness is just that massive, but there's also the issue of jobs where the gifts don't help them. Take monk for instance: Almost all their job specific gifts (so, minus things like small amounts of att/acc, superior equipment, capacity point bonuses, etc) are things that help counter and guard. You know, for all the tanking people have monk doing. The one gift that does "help" damage is a martial arts bonus, but that speeds up attacks while reducing TP gained, and if we can already hit the delay cap that's actually a straight up detriment.