Game/Job balance suggestions

[OmnysValefor]

As I said in previous page, in a melee setup, unless you need vex/attunement or DD isn't capping acc, this is just not true. There are only 2 GEO bubbles that directly improve DD output in hit rate capped situations, which is fury/frailty. If you roll with 2 GEO which bubble are you gonna use on 2nd GEO? While with COR in pt you can keep stacking more attack with chaos/dia 4 and improve TP gain past haste cap via SAM roll.

No doubt, and BLU is preferable for that because they can achieve higher acc than any other melee with Accuracy Bonus V attainable and dex all over their gear (and even the modifier for their preferred ws). 2 BLUs also bring Haste II for themselves, fulltimeable, or nearly, MG (depending on merits) and Tenebral crush which stacks with Frailty.

Yeah in situations where your melee don't need more accuracy and aren't at any risk, a second GEO (indi-dex? lol) doesn't offer much. However, most fights are more dangerous to the melee than to the tank.

FFXIAH makes it seem like every melee has things like accuracy sets and what-not, and I wish that were the case, but many of the playing population end up needing Precision.

[Zeldar]

Ugh, such a lack of vision. BRDs sing more than just carols......have you forgotten marches, minuets, and the other few dozen songs a brd has? Do you think that Flurry 2 and Haste 2 are equal to tier1 that can be used as rdm sub? Distract, Frazzle, Refresh, Para2, Slow2 (which DO land on most mobs)? In an 18 man alliance, If you dont have at least one brd or cor theres something seriously wrong in your planning. RDM can contribute to ANY fight. Am I saying they are preferable to GEO? Not a chance, but you arent going to put 6 GEOs in an alliance. Again, I'm not saying brd,cor or rdm would ever REPLACE geo , or take a geo spot in low man content. I'm saying that if you dont see the benefit in SUPPLEMENTING geo with other buffing jobs in an alliance fight, you are really missing out.

[OmnysValefor]

Ugh, such a lack of vision. BRDs sing more than just carols......have you forgotten marches, minuets, and the other few dozen songs a brd has?

Nope, I was just trying to cover bard's unique buffs you mentioned ("BRD has buffs that nobody has. COR has buffs that nobody has."). Bard's minuets (edit: said marches, typo) and madrigals aren't as potent as GEO's. I think the only thing Bard does more potent is refresh. In cases like Fury, the comparison isn't even close.

Do you think that Flurry 2 and Haste 2 are equal to tier1 that can be used as rdm sub? Distract, Frazzle, Refresh, Para2, Slow2 (which DO land on most mobs)?

Of course t2s are more potent. I was just saying they're not so necessary much of the time. This isn't 2007, you don't hope Paralyze catches meteor, you vex or attune or against it.

In an 18 man alliance, If you dont have at least one brd or cor theres something seriously wrong in your planning.

I don't know about you, I don't find myself doing 18-man that often anymore.. It's not that i'm not killing things, it's that these things don't need 18 people and in fact are only made harder with the additional people.

Suppose you can kill something with

PLD, WHM, SCH, SCH, GEO, BLM. That's easy, the whm can take care of that group easily. If you add a another nuker, you run into two problems--

1.) Someone needs to watch out for the BLM. Maybe he WHM can do that, heck the tank can help (I do), or maybe you get an 8th person, a healer, to do that.
2.) The short-term buff NMs gain against nukes so that you can't just stack BLMs. You run into the question of whether the BLM is contributing as much as they're costing. A lot of times 2 BLMs meeting this resist will outdamage what one BLM would do. Three might not outdamage two.

You say "lack of vision", like FFXI is painting. It's not, it relies on cold math. There are best strategies for everything and frequently it's the same strategy. It's a shame, it truly is, but it's where the game is at.

I know all of the ways in which bard is strong (mobile, not mp-dependent, does have a few unique buffs like Scherzo*, light-sleep) but I also know why GEO is preferable. It's gross that 2 GEOs is so nice, and sometimes 3 GEO is. I can't say much for 4 GEO, but I'm rarely in groups big enough to utilize that many buffers. I could see how acc/-eva/+att/-def/vex/attune/barrier/wilt might be awesome though.

On the other hand, Scherzo is frustrating because a lot of moves go right past it because they're multi-hit attacks.

[Zeldar]

And if your tank doesnt see the benefit of debuffs on a mob, your tank is spoiled with an excellent healer. Paralyze2, slow2, blind2, bio3 all have SIGNIFICANT effects on how hard or how often your tank gets punched in the face. Speaking of tanking, no I'm not crazy enough to think NIN is relevant in any real content anymore.

[Zeldar]

Well I do do alliance content quite a bit. I agree that, due to scaling, low-man is more desirable,and in such limited party space its a no-brainer that GEO gets the spot. I agree 100% that GEO is in a better spot than other support jobs. I agree that the other jobs need revamped. I don't agree that they are useless, which looking back, isn't what you were saying...its really in response to a post on the last page...lol. I also don't agree that debuffs usually don't matter. I can see where, if you play with a bad rdm, you won't really see the effect he has on a party. If you play with a rdm that is good at what he does, you'll see him curing, debuffing, buffing, nuking, Not using a sword in party darnit, and for the love of God subbing whm so he can cure your status ailments as well.

[detlef]

So you're saying COR is better than a 2nd GEO in situations where you don't need to worry about hitting the mob or being hit by the mob. In such a situation it really seems like it doesn't matter what job you use. Is that something worth arguing about?

[Afania]

So you're saying COR is better than a 2nd GEO in situations where you don't need to worry about hitting the mob or being hit by the mob. In such a situation it really seems like it doesn't matter what job you use. Is that something worth arguing about?

If you decide to bring w/e job or kill speed doesn't matter, then go ahead bring w/e job you have. I'm merely correcting Omny's statement about stacking multiple GEO buffs yielding better result. My personal experience is that using COR+GEO tend to have significantly faster kill speed than GEO+GEO or GEO+ another DD. And I believe it's a useful info to know for those who actually care about the kill speed.

Also just FYI to those who think "it doesn't matter what job you use", yesterday I was in an ambu pt with 2 GEO, each fight takes 5.5~6.5 min without COR. As soon as I switch to COR we're getting 2 min win including 1 min buff time, we didn't change DD job nor member in the pt. IMO a 60%+ reduction in clear time by adding additional COR buff is not as irrelevant as you claim.

No doubt, and BLU is preferable for that because they can achieve higher acc than any other melee with Accuracy Bonus V attainable and dex all over their gear (and even the modifier for their preferred ws). 2 BLUs also bring Haste II for themselves, fulltimeable, or nearly, MG (depending on merits) and Tenebral crush which stacks with Frailty.

Yeah in situations where your melee don't need more accuracy and aren't at any risk, a second GEO (indi-dex? lol) doesn't offer much. However, most fights are more dangerous to the melee than to the tank.

FFXIAH makes it seem like every melee has things like accuracy sets and what-not, and I wish that were the case, but many of the playing population end up needing Precision.

Alternatively you can have GEO entrust precision and have BLU cap haste themselves, or switch sam roll to hunters to cap hit rate and still get way more attack than GEO(fury/frailty)+GEO(precision/haste or DEX) setup. Even though GEO is consider the No.1 buff job, there's no need to pop on the forum and scream "GEO GEO GEOOOOOO let's invite more GEOs! More GEO the better" when GEO+COR often yield better result.

It's gross that 2 GEOs is so nice, and sometimes 3 GEO is. I can't say much for 4 GEO, but I'm rarely in groups big enough to utilize that many buffers. I could see how acc/-eva/+att/-def/vex/attune/barrier/wilt might be awesome though.

Also I've done pretty much every content that favors melee setup, I can't think of anything that I'd need 3 GEO in pt with 2 of them doing defensive bubbles atm. Most things I can think of uses 2 GEO max, with 1 GEO doing defensive bubbles and another one doing DD bubbles. Just because GEO is nice, doesn't mean you need invite THAT many GEOs and promote 3+ GEO setup.

[Zeldar]

3 geos CAN be nice on higher tier mobs with mixed setups. Give the mob eva-. attk- and mdef- or def- , 1 party may be rng and need fury, while 2nd party could be all blms and want MACC+ MAB, even a 3rd party that could use ACC+or ATTK+. There are definately USES for 3 geo, but that doesn't discount what COR and BRD bring to the table.

[Afania]

3 geos CAN be nice on higher tier mobs with mixed setups. Give the mob eva-. attk- and mdef- or def- , 1 party may be rng and need fury, while 2nd party could be all blms and want MACC+ MAB, even a 3rd party that could use ACC+or ATTK+. There are definately USES for 3 geo, but that doesn't discount what COR and BRD bring to the table.

I'm pretty sure he isn't promoting 3 GEO in a mixed setup either because acc/-eva/+att/-def/vex/attune/barrier/wilt is clearly for melee jobs.

[OmnysValefor]

I'm not denying that in purely moar-firepower situations with properly geared players, mixing buff-jobs works better because SE deliberately designed it so same-buffs don't stack (wisely so). There's just not a lot of pure-firepower situations. A lot of times you need or want focus/languor or you want vex/attune; sometimes fade/fend or barrier/wilt.

Also just FYI to those who think "it doesn't matter what job you use", yesterday I was in an ambu pt with 2 GEO, each fight takes 5.5~6.5 min without COR. As soon as I switch to COR we're getting 2 min win including 1 min buff time, we didn't change DD job nor member in the pt. IMO a 60%+ reduction in clear time by adding additional COR buff is not as irrelevant as you claim.

Meh, I just got a 5 man VD ambuscade (we were helping my awful cor-mule grind towards last month's ambuscade set) as Idris/thf/thf/warrior-tank/whm/terrible cor mule and we were doing 2 minute fight-time. As I know you know, it depends a great deal on the strength of the players in the party. I can absolutely promise you that another geo, a bard, another DD, anything would have been better in that slot and would have brought us down to to 1 - 1.5m fight time.

It sounds like your cor was making up for a deficiency in some of your members' gear (and hey, that's often what buffers do, no insult to anyone intended!)

But Ambuscade isn't really the content we measure by.