Quote Originally Posted by Zeldar View Post
"If I see a guy on a job that I could tell was once well-geared, and he's returned to make it glorious again, I'll tell him the hard truth. It's not a coincidence that you don't see SAMs and BRDs and WARs around."
REALLY? My ls uses all 3 frequently and with much success.
"To the newbie players who want to make their sparks-thieves glorious, I'll tell them the truth too. Not only is the job not really desirable and not usually relevant"
REALLY? We also use THF quite frequently. The ones we use normally top the parse.
As you can see, the real problem isnt the balancing of the jobs, but the unwillingness of the player base to accept anything other than a set of strategies developed by other players. Every job has a use, with a very few lacking in the ability to greatly contribute (SMN being one). We dont use DRK, DRG or PUP either, but probably would if any of our members cared enough about them to pimp them out.
I'm sorry, but while I am happy to see that other people are making attempts to be inclusive, you're an outlier, not a constant. In the majority of pickup groups, you won't see a melee because it's not the "safe" strategy. And in all honesty, on anything modestly reasonable, they're not 100% wrong, as sad as it is, and I say that as an AG Mythic DRG.

Let's just pick a few Reisenjima t2s; the Harpeia Strophadia spams AoE Sleep + unremovable Paralyze, AoE Silence and unremovable Plague, AoE Encumberance and Muddle (both unremovable), and high-damage AoE that can wipe out anyone not wearing proper DT gear, especially since the same mob can wipe buffs and it's risky to run your WHM in there to re-cast Shellra/Protectra. But this is one example, let's move to another; ol' Ironside. Every attack is AoE and comes with Bind, Stun, or Amnesia. Has moves like Arm Cannon (AoE damage + HP/MP down, meaning next attack may be your last), Seismic Impact (AoE damage + Slow/Terror), and Eradicator (AoE Weakness), all of which are easily avoided simply by being out of range, which is why people prefer this strategy.

And this isn't even getting to the harder content, where acc requirements become more and more strenuous for melee to keep up with, where you have to have many more support than mage strategies just to ensure they hit. And then when HP scaling comes into play, that means that all that extra support is a detriment that is going to drag you down in the end because they're adding more HP that you're not meeting by adding these extra people. This is why the idea of melee is undesirable; mobs do massive AoE damage and spam multiple enfeebles, their evasion is through the roof, and to even assure you have a fighting chance due to the disparity between mages standing safe and only needing macc on cast while you need to have all the acc in the world, you need extra support to buff up your accuracy along with the monster's HP.

Do I wish we could bring back more melee strategies? Of course. DRG is my favorite job by a long shot, and I'd love to see it in more content. I even AG'd my Ryunohige, so I definitely want to use it. Do I want to see more job inclusion? Definitely! I played BST and PUP and BLU back before they were bandwagoned (thankfully PUP not nearly as much) and enjoyed the chances I got included into a party, and loved it more when they were more accepted. But right now, in a system where mages are highly favored due to magic burst potential and safe positioning as opposed to melee buffing the enemy's HP by getting enough support to be viable on them, it's just not plausible.