January 2020 FINAL FANTASY XI Digest

[TullemoreAsuraFFXI]

A major solution for inventory and equipment torment

My theory for a combined JSE equipment evolution. This is an incredibly innovative concept compared to the status quo of FFXI from launch to present day. It would require the creation of at least one new type of a NPC. This NPC could be a stand-alone NPC or duplicates could be spread to major cities similar to how Porter Moogle are placed.

With a version update for content a new class of progression JSE item would be introduced. To obtain this new class of progression JSE a player would interface with the new associated NPC when their current job is level 99. That way the NPC selects it's dispensable items corresponding to the job the player shows. Example: a player speaks to the NPC as a level 99 DRG, the NPC menus adjust and selections are established for the DRG equipment category.

This NPC will dispense at ZERO cost a new blank piece of progression JSE (congruous to what is already established with base dispensable trial of the magian progression weapons).

Each non-weaponry equipment type would dispense a menu select-able item.

Head / Body / Hands / Legs / Feet / Waist / Back / Neck / Ammo (Satchel) / Left Ring(1) / Right Ring(2)

FFXI dev team would apply a visual skin (appearance) and a name for each of these. Appearance could be entirely new or a regenerated use of currently existing appearances (i personally would chose the abyssea class skins).

The new progression JSE equipment would require a "EX" item tag, and CAN NOT receive a "rare" item tag. This is extremely important as concerns the attribute for +/-enmity as i will explain further below.

OK! now on to the good part of how this works. I can best describe it as attribute assimilation. For fans of Star Trek, a reference would be how the Borg are conceptualized. Your new progression JSE assimilates and combines the attributes of each item a particular job can wear, {Obvious exclusions can be made for specific non-combat related attributes such as Warp and Teleport capabilities}

WHILE WEARING a currently existing item, the player trades the new progression JSE item corresponding to the item slot they are wearing to the new NPC and that new NPC has TWO confirmation dialogues. ~ 1st is apply enmity. This gives selections for "Yes" "No" and "Neutral". Selecting "Yes" will apply the enmity attribute of the item you are wearing to the corresponding JSE progression item. Selecting "No" will ignore the enmity attribute. Selecting "Neutral" will remove adjustment of +/- enmity from the JSE progression item. ~ 2nd is apply attributes. This gives selections for "Yes" and "No". Selecting "Yes" will apply the highest value of a combat attribute to the corresponding JSE progression item when compared to the item that is worn and the current attributes on the JSE progression item. Higher value overwrites lower value and lower value will never overwrite a higher value. Attribute values are stored onto the JSE progression item using the existing augmented capability display. {Reference Oseem / Nolan npc and Escha item augments}.

This innovation will not only fix the torment associated with inventory limitations, but in addition will fix the torment associated with pre-cast & potency & idle & +/- enmity & JSE capes & selective adjustments related to /equipset and macros.

Below i'll represent a brief display of a set of trades for a visualization of what i have described above.

We start with our "Blank" JSE progression item. In it's "Blank" state it would only have an associated appearance and whatever it's attached name would be. For this case we will utilize a Head slot equipment for WAR. We trade the blank JSE progression item to the npc as we are a lvl 99 WAR while we have equipped on our character a Boii Mask +1. We select our choices from the dialogue confirmations and our JSE progression item will now have these augments. ->

DEF:114 HP+43 STR+33 DEX+17 VIT+32 AGI+15 INT+11 MND+11 CHR+11 Accuracy+24 Attack+24 Evasion+36 Magic Evasion+48 "Magic Def. Bonus"+2 Haste+7% Critical hit rate +4% "Double Attack"+5% Set: Augments "Double Attack"

Now we remove the Boii Mask +1 and equip on our character a Pummeler's Mask +3. We trade the JSE progression item to our new favorite NPC and select the dialogue confirmations and our JSE progression item will now have these augments. ->

DEF:133 HP+67 STR+33 DEX+34 VIT+34 AGI+31 INT+31 MND+31 CHR+31 Accuracy+47 Attack +24 Evasion+56 Magic Evasion+73 "Magic Def. Bonus"+3 Haste+8% Critical hit rate +4% "Double Attack" +5% Enmity+12 "Aggressor" duration +18 Physical damage taken -5% Set: Increases Accuracy, Ranged Accuracy, and Magic Accuracy Augments "Double Attack".

Now we remove the Pummeler's Mask +3 and equip on our character a Agoge Mask +3. We trade the JSE progression item to our new favorite NPC and select the dialogue confirmations and our JSE progression item will now have these augments. ->

DEF:135 HP+67 STR+35 DEX+34 VIT+35 AGI+31 INT+31 MND+31 CHR+31 Accuracy+47 Attack+83 Magic Accuracy+37 Evasion+56 Magic Evasion+73 "Magic Def. Bonus"+4 Parrying skill +21 Haste+8% Critical hit rate +4% "Double Attack" +5% Enmity+12 "Warcry" effect duration +30 Weapon skill damage +10% Physical damage taken -5% Set: Increases Accuracy, Ranged Accuracy, and Magic Accuracy Augments "Double Attack".

Now we remove the Agoge Mask +3 and equip on our character a Sulevia's Mask +2. We trade the JSE progression item to our new favorite NPC and select the dialogue confirmations and our JSE progression item will now have these augments. ->

DEF:135 HP+67 MP+40 STR+35 DEX+34 VIT+40 AGI+31 INT+31 MND+31 CHR+31 Accuracy+47 Attack+83 Magic Accuracy +37 Evasion+56 Magic Evasion+73 "Magic Def. Bonus"+4 Parrying skill +21 Haste+8% "Store TP"+10 Critical hit rate +4% "Double Attack" +5% Enmity+12 "Warcry" effect duration +30 Weapon skill damage +10% Damage taken -6% Set: Enhances "Subtle Blow" effect Increases Accuracy, Ranged Accuracy, and Magic Accuracy Augments "Double Attack".


{wherever i used the acronym "JSE" this refers to Job Specific Equipment}

[Alhanelem]

I don't know why we're failing to communicate that we aren't explicitly asking for a revert, just a more forgiving range value. I get it, they want to keep BST on the front. Why can't they compromise and increase the range by just a few yalms to ease the frustration?

Just increase the current value by 3-5y and give hte master a little freedom to reposition without losing the ability to command.

[Jerbob]

I don't know why we're failing to communicate that we aren't explicitly asking for a revert, just a more forgiving range value. I get it, they want to keep BST on the front. Why can't they compromise and increase the range by just a few yalms to ease the frustration?

Just increase the current value by 3-5y and give hte master a little freedom to reposition without losing the ability to command.

I'm not going to lie - I won't be happy with anything but a full and complete reversion of the distance nerf. All these suggestions are good compromises, but the nerf is based on a flawed premise, and we shouldn't have to compromise. I am explicitly asking for a revert, because it's ridiculous.

SE, please understand that I already want to fight on the frontline with my familiar. Please understand that I will do so in any situation that I possibly can. Please understand that I have no desire to stand back and spam Ready moves from 20 yalms away. You don't need to force me to fight. But also, you need to understand that familiars move and retarget erratically, that monsters are large, that knockbacks are commonplace, that equipment that allows true master/pet synergy is still not quite up to scratch, and that having to constantly perfectly position myself relative to a familiar that has a mind of its own is NOT. FUN. AT. ALL.

It's also important to understand that sometimes I want to fight at range. Sometimes I want to kite things. Sometimes I want to solo things at a distance. These are things that Beastmasters (AND OTHER PET JOBS) have done since their introduction into the game. Sometimes it's really fun to do these things. And the same penalties have always been there - they're intrinsic to the strategy. If I'm not fighting, I'm not adding master damage. If I'm not able to safely be on the front line, managing enmity and my familiar's HP is going to be challenging. I get that there are concerns that people will just spam Ready moves to kill dangerous monsters, but... (a) that was years ago and things have changed, and (b) other jobs are still doing it.

SE, please understand that people are going to keep bringing this up whenever BST is mentioned, because it's not working. Asserting that you are not considering making changes is all very well, but you're going to have to keep making that statement over and over, because what we have now isn't fun, and it isn't working.

And, from another perspective, I want to address the fact that we've recently heard SE say they want to promote a wide range of playstyles. Beastmastering from the back lines is unquestionably a valid playstyle - there are other jobs that do exactly that, and not only pet jobs. The penalty is intrinsic - I'm not adding master damage. That should be motivation enough for me to be in melee range as frequently as I possibly can (which, I reiterate, I want to do). I don't want to backline as a standard thing, but if I can when situations are less than ideal, or when I play solo, I have more options available to me, and I can BST in more situations. That's fun!

A recent example - I run with a fairly relaxed linkshell. We don't mandate that people have to level certain jobs. We try to make sure people can come to events on jobs they enjoy. We don't demand that people log in at XPM on Someday or face consequences. Of course, we don't expect to have this ethos and also be The Very Best Like No-one Ever Was, but we work hard and do what we can. And despite appearances on forums, I suspect this is how most people play the game. Sometimes we'll not have quite enough support, or quite the right jobs, to use a given strategy perfectly; as things stand, with the range nerf, that means I can't come as BST, because I endanger the group if I have no choice but to be frontline at all times. With an acceptable pet command range, I could go back to the well-established Beastmaster emergency fallback of bobbing in and out of melee range as support permitted without standing around like a complete lemon for half the fight. A different playstyle, adapting to available jobs! And again, the penalty is intrinsic - I'm not adding master damage. We might lose; if we win, it'll be much slower that a well-formulated, draconian-job-assignment strategy.

But we all had fun.

Regarding the equip issue:

- Please just increase the Ready recast merits to 3 seconds per merit spent. We should not have to use level 75 gear at this stage in the game. Please don't forget that our shortest <wait> is 1 second.
- Also, it's really interesting to see developer discussion about precast gear. I would really love for you to look into how this works for magic - at the moment, with the granularity of <wait>, those of us who aren't cheating can't use fast cast gear to reduce the casting time of quite a lot of spells, as there's no way for us to change into the appropriate gear in time to finish the casting. Anything you can do to address this would be extremely welcome.

[Rwolf]

I'm not going to lie - I won't be happy with anything but a full and complete reversion of the distance nerf. All these suggestions are good compromises, but the nerf is based on a flawed premise, and we shouldn't have to compromise. I am explicitly asking for a revert, because it's ridiculous.

I wish I could thumbs up more than once. I won't either for the same reason. There hasn't been a reasonable explanation for the distance nerf. Monster attributes were heavily inflated at the time and doesn't exist any more. PUP is in a similar situation but doesn't have to deal with fallout because again the issue no longer exists.

It's not fun being in the heat of battle having to remind myself that I need to watch my pet like a toddler that likes to run off.

[Lucor]

The biggest thing I can't understand about the BST range issue is... Why is range an issue with BST and not PUP? PUP has better melee gear and weaponskills than BST, yet they can issue commands even further than SMN could.

[Gwydion]

This time we’re planning to make adjustments using the latter idea. Should we receive a large amount of feedback that gear swapping doesn’t work or players who prefer to use /equipset instead, we’ll consider changing it to be the same as summoner, at 75 frames. Please give it a try and let us know what you think.

Regarding ability ranges, as we’ve mentioned multiple times in the past, we are not considering making changes. The January 2020 adjustments are meant to encourage beastmasters themselves to fight on the frontline, so we’d like you to find a way to work together with your pets.

I'm unable to guess how SE will fix inconsistent gear swapping with Desultor Legs (and retain the use of full Pet Stat sets), but Reward Job Ability activation is still broken. Please consider fixing the buff priority problems as well.

A simple fix of +3 yalms would go such a long way. It would mean, that the Beastmaster and pet can fight a monster from opposite sides ..and still activate Reward consistently. This is something we have always done since 2003!

As a paying customer, my patience is wearing very thin. However, I am reserving my judgement for the next Beastmaster update. SE can sometimes surprise us and produce very good things. I am still hopeful, you can get Beastmaster right.

[TullemoreAsuraFFXI]

On amazon alone, granted the filter is spread when you seek for "Final Fantasy" in the apparel category, 488 results appear. So it's not as if Square-Enix is not exploring fashion related products. I am certain that prudent decisions are being made based upon what return on investment can be projected for. Individual aesthetic tastes are tough for even top tier fashion professionals to pin point especially when considering producing thousands of merchandise.

May I suggest a biannual fan art contest for T-shirt prints (Front & Back) where the community could vote for a winner from a offering of 24-36 contenders selected by FFXI staff?

[Spaitin]

The decision to let pets buff the master is a welcome change. It is however, a fairly insignificant improvement to the Master. Extra attack doesnt do anything in a full party situation and while the extra defensive stats are nice, the master will never be a tank in a party. So those extra defensive stats are mostly a waste. But it is at least an improvement.

The rest of the update was pretty detrimental to the job. It was actually a rather large step backwards for the Beastmaster class overall. Three solutions to fixing this. Option 1 is to make merits reduce ready to the minimum 10 seconds, this would make the most sense since no 119 gear exists for ready reduction anyway. Option 2 is to revert everything from the last update with the exception of the Pet buffing the master and the ready recast. Option 3 would be to create new gear that decreases ready time that is iLvl that also increases pet attack/acc/multi attack/ready dmg.

Even with this solution, Beastmaster job will be a TINY bit better than it was before the update. Before the update Beastmaster was widely considered one of the least effective jobs. I currently rank beastmaster as the worst job. Too bad since it is my favorite job. If you want to have Beastmaster be a front line job, then you need to have gear AND buffs affect the master and pet. If your goal all along was to have the master fight right next to the pet, then I am baffled as to why you never made gear that buffs both the master and the pet at the same time to actually encourage side by side fighting. I am also baffled that it took you 14 YEARS to realize the master was not fighting next to the pet. The gear is just not made that way, why didn't you make them both able to be enhanced by gear at the same time if you want them to do the same thing? Currently gear and buffs are segmented in a way that forces the player to choose between having a strong pet OR master, you cant have both. You can have a strong pet with a weak master or a weak pet with a strong master. "Strong" in this case is subjective, bst has by far the weakest of the pet jobs and the master is one of the weaker melee jobs.

The range issue is huge. It is completely possible to try and use "Ready" while attacking a mob and be too far away from the pet to use it. This is despite having both pet and master next to the target. This needs to have a better solution than simply ignoring it. So to compensate for this, since only the master OR pet can be enhanced by gear and buffs, players are actually just running in and using ready and then running out of range. This is because your range nerf ENCOURAGES players to keep distance from their pets. Just makes it a larger pain to do the EXACT SAME THING YOU WERE TRYING TO PREVENT. they still do it. Adding a couple yalms or making the distance for ready based on the target would be a much smarter way of doing things. I cant really think of a worse way to do it than the current distance requirements. It was a HARD fail at encouraging master and pets to be side by side.

A simple but fantastic solution to most of bst's issue would be giving it access to Job ability haste. This would at least make it a solid melee class.


Currently Beastmaster's best builds are to have a well buffed master and then have the pet sit in the corner and not do anything. The pet in those builds is so weak that it is actually a loss to use ready moves. The difference between a master + pet VS just the master is actually quite small in a party set up.

Gear for bstmaster needs a large overhaul OR you need to massively increase the Multi attack, attack, acc, crit rate, crit dmg, pDif and Weapon skill damage of pets. The second would probably be the easier one to do. Making the pets stats based off the masters stats would also be a fairly solid option.

Charm and Tame are two job abilities that have 0 use in today's game. Removing them entirely would make no difference on how Beastmaster is played. I highly suggest turning them into new job abilities that do something else.


All of the "jug" pets need to be made accessible at 119 levels. Or at least a version of each one.

Your attempts so far to get the master to fight next to the pet have been hilariously lacking. You have yet to address ANY of the big issues that make the masters not want to stand close the the pet.


We have been trying to fight along side the pets for a long time now. Unfortunately there are no gears/buffs that encourage this. You have given us zero incentive.

So my main question would be, what exactly do you think you have done to encourage the master fighting next to the pet other than the range nerf?

In a party build the master or pet wont be a tank. The extra attack and defense will be useless. The only thing that is somewhat working is the slug pets ooze, but that has been around since before you started "encouraging" us. Using pet attacks has a negative effect on the Beastmaster damage.

The recently added pets were EVEN worse than existing options.

Perhaps tieing ready moves to the master's WS similar to that of drg. DRG is the only pet job that actually has incentive to melee alongside the pet. Or maybe allowing the pet buffs to effect the entire party. BST needs SOMETHING to be good at. It currently has no strengths.


As it currently stands. completely deleting the bstmaster job would have minimal effect on the game as a whole. Nothing would change, no fights would become harder.

Unless you give bst SOMETHING to be good at, i recommend just removing the job from the game until you can brainstorm a solution to improve the job. Your constant updates that end up weakening the job are just sad at this point.

The reason you get so little feedback on the job is simple. You have wrecked the job to the point that all the dedicated beastmaster players have quite the game. Not may people play the job. You can go weeks without seeing one in the field.

[Xilk]

We have been trying to fight along side the pets for a long time now. Unfortunately there are no gears/buffs that encourage this. You have given us zero incentive.

So my main question would be, what exactly do you think you have done to encourage the master fighting next to the pet other than the range nerf?

I will give the developers a little more credit.

Some recent pieces do quite a good job at buffing both master and pet. Aymur, Guttler, Heyoka armor, Tali'ah armor, Pangu, Beastmaster Collar +2, Voluspa Tathlum, Cath Palug Ring, Shulmanu Collar, Adad amulet, Udug Jacket (if it really exists... It might be a myth:P).

Heyoka set buffs both master and pet for tp. However, the tp phase does not matter much for bst pets. The ready recast of 10s and the pet tp bonus equipment means that the pet tp phase is not very significant. its also rather superseded by Malignance set for master.

Tali'ah set is decent tp set, but realy its mostly wonderful to have good options for master and pet magic accuracy.

The reforged +3 artifact and relic gear ~kinda attempt to buff both master and pet, but its rather awkward for several pieces.

It is a turn in the right direction. I hope the momentum keeps going. It is not yet enough though.

[Lucor]

I'm gonna give the perfect solution for fixing BST, hopefully it doesn't get buried...

Change the Merit effect of Beast Affinity. Like other jobs let the pet be the master's level, ilvl matching the weapon.

Make the new effect for Beast Affinity actually match the name, have it make the pet and master stronger while they are a set distance next to each other. Each merit could give both master and pet a 2-5% attack/magic attack buff and 1-3% job ability haste. Maybe even some -physical/magic damage taken II for the master.

The relic hands augment could add the -DT effects if adding them to Beast Affinity by default is too much.

With something like this, you would give the master a reason to always be by their pet, as well as the means to not be afraid to. You wouldn't even need to limit the distance for pet commands anymore since the master would always be by the pet. And let's be fair about it, with how sporadic the pet AI is, it feels like the master is on a leash, not the pet.