Dev Input Requested: Macc/Meva Changes

[Domille]

It's literally impossible to do that.

Let's pretend that every single DD job got a massive buff so that they were all within 1 dps of each other.

Do you know what would happen? Every single player would use the one that had the highest dps even if the difference was a single digit. That's how ffxi (humans) work(s).

If geo gave meva 100, bard gave meva 99 and rdm gave meva 98, you would literally never see a rdm used for meva. (assuming said meva did not stack.)

[Secondplanet]

Ever noticed the trend of the people who say X Y Z jobs don't need nerfs, its all other jobs that need increases where the XYZ jobs are the current bandwagon? Yes GEO needed a nerf as it was the only support job that was needed for everything just like BLU needs a nerf as its the new RDM from early/mid 2000's. BST got its nerf (if you even want to call it that) that cut its range of the pet commands down which didn't make a difference to those who actually liked the job for being more then a bandwagon. Even back in the day SMN got a nerf to Perfect Defense cause everyone was using the job for that.

Nerfs come in at times incredibly late like with RDM back in the day where something like 30-40% of the server was it. While some things do need a honest increase due to SE's failure to increase them to match current content while they were stuck in 75 caps or even 99 caps. I do see more nerfs coming in the future to expand party setups to beyond the A,B,C,X,Y,Z setup that is so copy and paste it makes endgame boring at times.

[Mithlas]

Although they did state that GEO values were incorrect, they had also stated that they had given mobs too high of macc and meva so that's the reason why they nerfed them.

I'm simply asking if that same correction of macc and meva can be applied to the areas that include high level monsters that weren't in the patch notes. Why would that be a detriment?

[Aysha]

why nerf it when you can just fix every other job to get inline, people try to master and pimp their jobs to be the best, not to be made redundant, by enhancing their job instead of nerfing another, you open up peoples favourate jobs to be used in more content, while i'm not a drg main, i'd like to see that job get its wings back, however thats not gonna happen if everyone says nerf. even puppetmaster made its way up slowly not from weakening other jobs but enhancing its own. all people say is nerf nerf nerf,

If your favourate job is geo, good on ya. not complaining about that, since SE reverted geo to its intended calculation, why not come up with another idea to make geo's macc/meva come in line again without saying nerf/get rid of every other job because this is the only job i like

How do you propose balancing something utterly ludicrous like AoE de/buffs that last 5min+ on a job that can ALSO do magic DD?

RDM can't DD in any shape, form or manner and ends up being a very MEH healer.
BRD can't DD or heal whatsoever.

How does GEO get away with not only having decent-ish melee clubs (some of the same that are available to WHM), also some decent magic DD, but also be the kings of buffs and debuffs all at the same time?

I never checked... does GEO get Hexa Strike, on top of all that? I think they have access to Realmrazer which is basically the same thing.

[Nyarlko]

Sounds like they need to just nerf things across the board to get rid of the GEO requirement altogether, then.

I know this game always had its "popular jobs", but this is getting ridiculous. One job should not be the cornerstone behind ALL endgame content. No job, not Ninja, not Paladin, not even SAM or WAR back in the day cornered ALL the content like this in the past. Some jobs were king in some areas of content, but there was no Be-All, End-All job that everybody felt was required for EVERYTHING.

This proves just how broken GEO is, and how badly it needs nerfed further.

But then, near-permanent AoE Buffs/Debuffs... I only got one question: what were they thinking!?

Did they not foresee the game balance issues this would bring? Yet they won't let RDM have >3min single-target buffs, lol.

... You never played BRD back in the day, did you? XD We literally were "required" for EVERYTHING. Entire Sky God runs of 1-3x full alliances would be cancelled/postponed if a BRD couldn't be found. I remember being extremely proud that my presence alone resulted in a 10min reduction in our Kirin kills compared to no bard. ^^ (I was one of those crazy party hopper bards that would keep songs up on 30+ others though.)
The problem BRD had until this update was that it was solidly stuck at 75cap power levels. This update appears to have brought a lot of our stuff up to modern standards, so I'm hoping we can finally come back out of the basement. XD

GEO was not likely "broken" until they got updated for the first time. I've seen some old threads that were complaining about how WEAK GEO effects were at launch, so I'm personally convinced that the formula bug was introduced at that time.. It's going to take a bit for the playerbase to adjust to the new environment for sure, but I'm expecting to start seeing more BRD and RDM out and about pretty soon.

Any MMO that has support classes will use the basic/standard group setup: tank, healer, support, enough DDs to fill... The problem we had is that one (glitched) support was overwhelmingly better when compared to the other supports in 99% of available content. (In large part due to said glitch.)

[Aysha]

Yeah, but the difference is, BRD was really nice, but yet it wasn't absolutely required either. Things COULD be done without a bard, just... not as easily.

The cries in this thread, though, make it sound like without GEO you really can't much of anything done.

And that's where the difference is. "Very nice" is one thing... "Absolutely required" is another ballgame.

And again... BRD had zero DD potential and some very weak heals and status cures with /whm.

GEO gets ridiculously awesome buffs, magic DD, and access to decent clubs for solo stuff.

[Nyarlko]

Yeah, but the difference is, BRD was really nice, but yet it wasn't absolutely required either. Things COULD be done without a bard, just... not as easily.

The cries in this thread, though, make it sound like without GEO you really can't much of anything done.

And that's where the difference is. "Very nice" is one thing... "Absolutely required" is another ballgame.

And again... BRD had zero DD potential and some very weak heals and status cures with /whm.

GEO gets ridiculously awesome buffs, magic DD, and access to decent clubs for solo stuff.

Events with 30+ ppl getting postponed til another day because a bard was missing really did happen, so I'd say we were "required" for most stuff. XD Depending on the group, it could mean a massive difference in time and difficulty depending on whether you had a bard or not. Most of the big stuff were also not really "short" fights like most of what we have now, and not everyone could stick around for the extra time stuff would take without a bard.

I tanked Fafnir (once) as BRD before the enmity nerf to songs, which was a blast to do. XD And back then, I'd help out with SC'ing as BRD sometimes (basically whenever I wasn't pulling or doing alliance+ song duty).. We DO have access to most dagger weapon skills and since most acc came from AllJobs accessories or food at the time, it wasn't that hard to do. We also have access to all REMA daggers and all related WS.

I personally call BS on GEO getting higher club skill (B+, cap@404) than we get dagger (B-, 388), but the diff is not actually that huge overall. If SE had not utterly failed on ROV gearing for BRD, or had at least given us more gearing options for meeting acc reqs, you'd probably have seen more BRDs running around stabbing things in recent years too. XD

[Jakuk]

RDM can't DD in any shape, form or manner and ends up being a very MEH healer.

Well that's not true.

[VoiceMemo]

How do you propose balancing something utterly ludicrous like AoE de/buffs that last 5min+ on a job that can ALSO do magic DD?

RDM can't DD in any shape, form or manner and ends up being a very MEH healer.
BRD can't DD or heal whatsoever.

How does GEO get away with not only having decent-ish melee clubs (some of the same that are available to WHM), also some decent magic DD, but also be the kings of buffs and debuffs all at the same time?

I never checked... does GEO get Hexa Strike, on top of all that? I think they have access to Realmrazer which is basically the same thing.

I disagree, brd native yes cant heal, but with ballads and /whm brd can main heal certain battles.

Also A REMA brd/nin or /dnc can dd, you just need alot of high end gear to do so.

[saevel]

... You never played BRD back in the day, did you? XD We literally were "required" for EVERYTHING. Entire Sky God runs of 1-3x full alliances would be cancelled/postponed if a BRD couldn't be found. I remember being extremely proud that my presence alone resulted in a 10min reduction in our Kirin kills compared to no bard. ^^ (I was one of those crazy party hopper bards that would keep songs up on 30+ others though.)
The problem BRD had until this update was that it was solidly stuck at 75cap power levels. This update appears to have brought a lot of our stuff up to modern standards, so I'm hoping we can finally come back out of the basement. XD

GEO was not likely "broken" until they got updated for the first time. I've seen some old threads that were complaining about how WEAK GEO effects were at launch, so I'm personally convinced that the formula bug was introduced at that time.. It's going to take a bit for the playerbase to adjust to the new environment for sure, but I'm expecting to start seeing more BRD and RDM out and about pretty soon.

Any MMO that has support classes will use the basic/standard group setup: tank, healer, support, enough DDs to fill... The problem we had is that one (glitched) support was overwhelmingly better when compared to the other supports in 99% of available content. (In large part due to said glitch.)

BRD was not required for sky gods .... all they did was ballad ... and more ballad. There wasn't a single "end game" event that BRD was required for, though they were used for melee zergs but melee zergs weren't the only strategy that existed.

The only set of jobs that was "required" was BLMs but that didn't last long as we soon learned how to use melee's.

The problem is that in FFXI "difficulty" is primary determined by monster stats vs player stats. The Monsters Attack, Defense, Evasion, Magic Attack, Magic Defense and so forth compared to the players Attack, Defense, Accuracy, Evasion, Magic Accuracy, and so forth. If players stats are under the monsters then it seems really hard, once the players stats can be put above the monsters it suddenly seems easy. To do this we used a combination of buffs and debuffs, but with the release of Voidwatch SE jacked NM stats to astronomical never before seen levels. Then SoA came out and they went even higher and suddenly content was impossible without someway to lower them by huge amounts. And enter GEO, GEO allows the players to lower the enemy stats or raise their own by incredibly large amounts and unlike RDM and BRD those stat reductions aren't subject to passing a ludicrous resist check. And thus GEO became necessary for every event because it essentially lowers the enemy's level while also raising the players level.

So the first thing SE needs to do is low enemy boss stats across the board by 10~20%. Things need to be brought back into the realm of realistic difficulty instead of this OMFGWTFBBQ that we then must exploit a glitch to overcome. Now SE needs to introduce some ways for all the central support jobs to raise player / lower enemy stats by decent amounts instead of the smidgen that we've been traditionally allowed to. The recent buff to Frazzle and Distract were a decent start but it's not nearly enough to balance out content. The buffs to BRD were nice for melees but they aren't nearly enough considering how OMFGWTFBBQ powerful their offensive stats are.