Job balancing?

[Dale]

A balanced party like PLD, WHM, GEO, SCH, SCH or BLM, BLM?

The pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. Two to three (edit: said one to two) melee, including the tank can SC faster than 2 SCH but the baggage melee bring far outweighs this benefit.

And some melee can solo SC pretty darn fast if they can wear offense-oriented gear and have proper support.

That's the other thing mages don't really need. They don't terribly need Geo-Haste.

I was mostly commenting on your point that all you need is enough melee (or DPS generally) to create skill chains. Adding any more than that can start to cause more problems than it alleviates.

That's probably true. But I believe that's as intended because it creates an inventive for support jobs. If all anyone has to do is load up on DPS jobs to kill quicker, then that is what they would likely do. I've seen that tragic scenario play out on multiple MMORPGs, where support jobs slowly go extinct in favor of DPS jobs. And I would hate to see that happen on this game. It's one of the few MMORPGs on the market today that still have a vibrant support role available for players.

As to your Mage > Melee argument, I am sure that is true in many cases. But so long as a melee can get the job done I don't really have a problem with it.

Survivability is definitely an issue. But it seems SE is finally starting to realize this with their recent ambuscade offerings. It only took them over a decade to start to address it.

[OmnysValefor]

I was mostly commenting on your point that all you need is enough melee (or DPS generally) to create skill chains. Adding any more than that can start to cause more problems than it alleviates.

That's probably true. But I believe that's as intended because it creates an inventive for support jobs. If all anyone has to do is load up on DPS jobs to kill quicker, then that is what they would likely do. I've seen that tragic scenario play out on multiple MMORPGs, where support jobs slowly go extinct in favor of DPS jobs. And I would hate to see that happen on this game. It's one of the few MMORPGs on the market today that still have a vibrant support role available for players.

As to your Mage > Melee argument, I am sure that is true in many cases. But so long as a melee can get the job done I don't really have a problem with it.

Survivability is definitely an issue. But it seems SE is finally starting to realize this with their recent ambuscade offerings. It only took them over a decade to start to address it.

You're mixing and matching support (brd, cor, rdm, geo--geo mostly; and I'm excluding healers because they're necessary) with mage DD. You'll have a far-easier time killing anything in this game with mages than with melee.

I don't remember Support ever going extinct in this game. More haste, more atk/-def on NM targets is always a good thing. Yeah, you can so-far outgear something that you "attack-cap" but in those cases you're usually fighting something that strategy isn't needed, because you outgear it so far.

The design of support in this game is that the supporting player does more for the other members of the party than another melee/nuking job would and I think XI has usually done well at making that happen, especially on content where accuracy is an issue.

You just don't see GEOs using precision/torpor (acc+/eva-) because you don't invite melee.

[OmnysValefor]

Survivability is definitely an issue. But it seems SE is finally starting to realize this with their recent ambuscade offerings. It only took them over a decade to start to address it.

Just saw this line, even though I'd replied to this particular post before. Sorry.

Sulevia's addresses that concern. The new Usukane does nothing to address this. Regen isn't a terrible stat but you almost always want -dt (dt, mdt, pdt, mdb) over regen. Some players like to wear regen gear while not in combat/out of range for aoes but if you're fighting, damage reduction gear.

I was super-duper stoked about Sulevia's. It's an amazing set for newbies, gap fillers, and my very-geared PLD uses the legs in my -breath set). It's also a generally terrific set for drk/drg that need more DT (unsure about war, since they dip into so much of PLD's best stuff).

The new usukane just isn't.

Take the Ambuscade fight this month. Maybe the high amount of evasion on the set helps the mnk evade some of Mow and survive, but the drk wearing Sulevia's doesn't have to depend on a chance for the set's benefit to proc, they can rely on the -dt. And the -dt may be what saves them and will do more for the demon's elemental aoes and Hecatomb Waves.

Many other fights, the -dt is much much better than it is in this scenario.

I hate to sound like a broken record but mnk/sam/nin deserved better. Pup deserved different.