November 2019 FINAL FANTASY XI Digest

[Voidstorm]

I remember a BST party actually killing Vrtra after she was patched to be basically unkillable with a ton of dawn mulsum.

[Seish]

Glad someone does and the fact they had this ability to safely do it, with time not being an issue, is why SE took action.

Edit: while the need to act was justified. The way they did it wasn't.

[Alhanelem]

Glad someone does and the fact they had this ability to safely do it, with time not being an issue, is why SE took action.

Edit: while the need to act was justified. The way they did it wasn't.

If you actually saw one of these, you'd know it was far from safe. Mainly because they had to use charmed antlions and not call beast pets (not enough HP). These fights were a cluste*&#^$ of chaos with the wyrm constantly changing targets, doing AOEs in practiocally random places every time. They tied up legitimate groups who were capable of doing it normally for hours whilst waiting to see if they would wipe or not (more often than not, they did)

And this usually took more than a full alliance of BSTs- people would swap in and out as others got KO'd. It wasn't easy or optimal, they just had something to prove.

[Seish]

If you actually saw one of these, you'd know it was far from safe. Mainly because they had to use charmed antlions and not call beast pets (not enough HP). These fights were a cluste*&#^$ of chaos with the wyrm constantly changing targets, doing AOEs in practiocally random places every time. They tied up legitimate groups who were capable of doing it normally for hours whilst waiting to see if they would wipe or not (more often than not, they did)

And this usually took more than a full alliance of BSTs- people would swap in and out as others got KO'd. It wasn't easy or optimal, they just had something to prove.

I have and it was very safe for a lot of content and the testimonials of what BSTS did is out there. You had one BST already explain they understood what I said giving weight to the claim SE is leveraging. But at the end of the day, they addressed it wrong. Regardless of my argument, I still agree with you all that they could have done this better.

[Nyarlko]

Thank you for the large number of feedback responses.
We understand that there are many requests to increase the range of beastmaster abilities, such as Ready.
However, upon careful discussion with the Lead Job Designer, we have decided that the range of these abilities will not be adjusted.

Please reconsider this stance. As many have said before, the current range is insufficient for stable gameplay and is the source of what are in practice, bugs. Increasing the range of BST job abilities does not have to be an all or nothing case. Increasing the range to a barebones minimum of 9y-10y should be enough in most cases to prevent failure due to being "out of range" during reasonable gameplay while meleeing with your pet on the same target. 11y-12y should be enough to totally fix this aspect of the job without enabling the master to command the pet from total safety. I'd like to note that even with the old 18y+ range, using the pet-only playstyle included the demerit of 0dmg from master, and while other jobs have benefitted from impactful gear improvements over the last several years, BST pets have not so the concept is fundamentally going to be slower than just about any other job.

▼ Beastmaster is designed as a frontline job.

I would genuinely like to know what parts of the job design have ever indicated that BST is intended to be a frontline job other than our highest weapon skill rating being a 1h axe. Objectively speaking, there is nothing in the job trait list, nor in the job ability list, that would point players in that direction. If we were truly intended from the beginning to be designed as a melee, then why is there nothing in the job's implementation to encourage doing that?

Monsters were now able to participate in skillchains and magic burst, making them an overwhelmingly powerful source of damage.
While this method required some preparation, the changes allowed beastmaster to easily catch up and deal high damage more effectively than any other job.

This is no longer the case by any measure, and already was not the case by the time that Escha-Ruan was released. SMN was already quite capable of 99,999 Blood Pacts plus 99,999 skillchains with minimal buffs even back then. I witnessed this firsthand in late 2015 when a friendly SMN in my linkshell steamrolled thru all of the T1 caturae for me (which none of the parties that I'd been in had been capable of defeating,) using Apogee, Trusts and with me on my somewhat functional GEO. In the current day, we are already in an era where any delay-capped damage-dealer job is capable of self-skillchaining nearly non-stop for considerably more damage than BST's master+pet is capable of.

I feel the need to ask at this point.. Have you not seen the damage output of every other job in the current game? ._.
I'm not being facetious, I'm seriously asking this question because as it stands currently, I would not be surprised if a WHM with a proper melee set will output higher damage than BST can currently, even compared to combined master+pet damage. I am absolutely certain that "support jobs" like RDM and COR are quite capable of demolishing our DPS numbers. Then there is simply no contest when compared to any job that's classified as a damage dealer, and that's not an exaggeration, it's verifiable fact. We might beat PLD sword/shield potential output? That's a pretty sad state when the only job we have a reasonable chance to naturally outdamage is fully intended to be little more than a wall.

Player skill was not involved in this version of beastmaster, since no matter what attacks enemies had, they could be defeated by endlessly sending out powerful pets.
This was even more effective in parties with multiple beastmasters, which created some extreme cases where pets did all the fighting and players didn’t battle at all.
Battles were streamlined into a monotonous process, and enemy mechanics became meaningless.

Sounds like SMN except Blood Pacts hit harder than Ready moves, and unlike BST's 5min Call Beast timer, SMN pets can be resummoned at will. :/ I honestly don't see what the perceived problem here was/is when a stronger version of the exactly described playstyle exists on another job already and is considered acceptable.

▼ Corrective Measures and the Future
To address this, we kept beastmaster’s strength while making sure its equipment and traits were used to fulfill a frontline role, and shortened the range of commands to bring back a sense of risk to the job.
While these adjustments lowered beastmaster’s capabilities, it was compensated for with the continued implementation of various meals and equipment, and that brings us to today.

Again, I must ask, what traits are used to fulfill a frontline job role? The bit of Fencer that we get from Job Point Gifts is far from enough to qualify as supporting the proscribed playstyle. Where is the equipment that compensates for the lack of any actual job-based melee enhancements? As is, a BST who is perfectly geared for master melee is comparable to a poorly geared WAR who has no job abilities. Even WHM has combat support abilities and buffs! Let's also not forget that any gear that's tailored for master melee will almost certainly be at the expense of pet performance due to the way that augments work, nor the fact that being expected to gear both master and pet implies roughly double the cost and effort and inventory space, nor the fact that we are constantly resetting TP to 0 due to frequent weapon swaps with every Ready (and often several other pet-oriented job abilities like Spur and Reward.) Food items being included in job balance decisions is simply absurd. Last time I checked, there aren't exactly any job-specific foods that improve BST performance more than any comparable job/role, so the end result is that we remain just as weak in comparison to others, food or no.

Have you considered the burden on player inventory space to accomplish master+pet peak performance versus other "frontline melee" jobs? I regularly carry 100+ equipment for BST, and I am geared solely for pet-only playstyle. Do you genuinely believe that it is acceptable for any "melee" job to require a minimum of two full bags of inventory space?

As we’ve often mentioned, these job adjustments aren’t final, and we’ll continue making adjustments to improve its frontline capabilities.

Please, for the love of Altana, include this statement when releasing minimal patches! If something like this one sentence had been included in any of the official statements regarding the November "job adjustments", it would have gone a long way towards preventing player anguish. A simple "This is not all that is planned for adjustments to JOB" when releasing very small updates like this past month's would be very much appreciated going forward.


I don't understand how it's possible that you believe in the stance that BST is in a good state unless there is something flawed in your testing methods. There are just far too many inconsistencies between the official stance on what BST should be when compared to what players are telling you that BST actually is, and it's been this way for the last several years.

• Have you verified that all of the results you are seeing during testing can actually be achieved on the live server version of the game?
• Have you confirmed that, with actual equipment swaps and macros and client/server latency, (and preferably with a subjob that does not grant Dual Wield to ensure proper evaluation of the job itself,) that the job plays and performs on par with other frontline jobs the way that you envision that it does? What damage output results are you expecting from the other jobs that you are comparing BST to?
• What buffs and debuffs are you assuming are in play and are they feasible to achieve for players in groups that are not specifically tailored to support only BST at the expense of the performance of other melees?
• What families and level range of targets are you testing against?
• Furthermore, have you actually tested BST performance in current endgame content such as Dynamis-Divergence where monster levels are very high?

Before dismissing these questions, please remember just how many years monster magic evasion was bugged for before the bug was caught...

[Seish]

I am geared solely for pet-only playstyle.

BST has and always will be a front line job. It was seen when BST dual wielded Juggy and Man eater and with the pet "in era", produced some massive damage. The issue wasn't that BST couldn't do dmg with the pet, and it hasn't been today. Be careful what you say about history, you are only talking to the lead person for Final Fantasy XI. I am sure he knows more about this game than we do from the backend and the history of this game. The issue BST had back then was that if they charmed a pet or used a jugg, the EXP would drop. They later fixed this and because they did, enough BSTS were no longer front lining, as well as some people pointing out that they would pull back to a safe distance when things got rough, to the point that SE took action.

As far as the gear is concerned, that goes with how dedicated one is with their gear. I know melee players that have a ton of augmented gear for different situations. But what I hear coming out of this, is that your backline strategy was impacted. Good! This was what SE wanted to stop and your complaining on here, showing this no less, is why I support it. You were fed a low risk job for too long and I think the adjustment is forcing you to put yourself at risk which you do not like.

They explained briefly the history of BST to give you a rationale. As a person that played since 2003, I agree with their statement and all I see here are players that are wanting an easy button. Some of you have came with nice suggestions, while others just want what other jobs have. To those that came with suggestions and had civil dialogue, I applaud you and I hope SE listens. To those that just want that easy button, I am sorry but this game was never meant to be easy.

I promise you, if this nerf holds, abet adjustments that slightly increase range, then the sad truth is that the jobs mentioned by other players--SMN and PUP--will likely be nerfed for similar reasons as to return the game to a proper balance. SE cannot do that if everyone still has easy buttons. When you can do Omen, where the alliance makeup is made up of SMNS, tank and a healer with the rest of the ally leeching, there's a problem. A big problem with party balance. And BST seemed to be first up on the chopping block. I felt nerf--oh boy trust me I did. When I returned a couple years to see my MNK was nerfed made me angry. So I get the problem. But if they nerf BST, they better do it with first player input, as well as looking at other jobs who do the exact same thing. And I am for it. I want there to be a risk in this game. I don't want to sit AFK watching SMN's clear an entire zone for me. That's not fun for me at all.

But I hope in all honesty, that SE makes the suggested changes and later opens a test server for us to test new things. The devs need to understand how we perceive the game when trying to adjust the game. It's why I keep saying that we need SE to give us a roadmap again. I also think they need to adjust the difficulty and bring back mechanics that are gone. And it seems like that's what they are trying to do.

[Beastorizer]

But what I hear coming out of this, is that your backline strategy was impacted.

Pretty much..

That is why the heat against me is very....... personal.......lol.....

I have nothing against them really, nor the devs. I just want to see effort from the devs regarding the job. That is all....

[Seish]

They're just trying to fix an issue that exists. It impacts some players, but case in point. I was in Reisemenja and I remember getting a ton of CP with my friend using the grasshopper to AOE kill mobs. To lv, they need to be in the front lines putting him in danger. What other people need to remember is that front lines doesn't necessarily equate to fighting. But it does put you in the danger. Now I remember BSTs fighting in retail and I completely think that they have in the past and they could now and be enhanced in the future. But what I am happy is it seems SE is finally taking a stance on this game and is ready to finally make it a bit challenging.

[Alhanelem]

My issue predominantly was and is people who were already duoing with their pet having their quality of life compromised by needing to stick to their pets like glue instead of being able to stand on opposite sides of the mob or even just a short distance apart. The people already playing SE's way have had their experience degraded by SE's attempt to punish pet kiting.

[Seish]

And I think we are all on the same page. The way they did it impacted the people who weren't abusing it is sad. I don't think SE will reverse their decision on trying to let the master play from afar without some risk being associated. But something needs to give so they can be more enhanced near their pet. Like idk a trait to enhance their axe dmg if they are close to their pet. Or a defense trait or hell, give the pet a cover trait to cover them? There's so many ways they could do this.