Do Relic, Mythic, and Empyrean staves lack utility?

[Razushu]

You guys need to understand that it isn't about being 'elitist'. I'm going to say this because BG gets a bad rap by people who don't understand the culture. It's a community based on learning how to play FFXI better, and a big part of that is understanding game mechanics and how they work as part of a strategy. It's not a community for elitists, it's a community for people that understand that they need to change in order to be more successful. There are very few people who post on BG who have 'perfect' gear or always make 'perfect' parties. If they were perfect, there wouldn't be much point in playing anymore, right?

So this is it. When you discuss game mechanics, and specifically job performance, you need to understand how the job can perform at it's absolute peak. You have to remove player 'skill' from the discussion. It is hugely varied and impossible to quantify, and for practical purposes it has no place in an unbiased discussion. At the same time, comparing A to B when A is perfect and B has no idea how to gear a job properly doesn't make sense, either. Comparisons like that aren't going to get you any useful information.

This is what is going on right now, in this thread. There are people who are showing you that SMN can not perform it's 'duties' on the same level as any other job in the game, period. At best it is tied for healing capacity with other jobs that only have healing due to /whm or /rdm (COR). Aside from a few niche buffs (EA, PD) the buffs it does have are either not unique to the job (Haste, Stoneskin) or are significantly weaker than alternative job buffs, to the point where even if you add up the entire potential a SMN can add to a party, any other job capable of a similar role will perform better. This isn't a failing on either of you as players, it is a failing of the design of the SMN job. No matter how much you enjoy the job, no matter how good you are playing the job, it is still a sub-par job.

Firstly I have no problem with the BG crowd(don't even know who you are really or what you guys do, if you're even one of them).

-I'm not using the following to try further my point please don't waste time yours and mine responding to it as so-

You can't really ignore skill because it works both ways. You could have a player on a 1st pick job who doesn't know a real thing about the job and isn't going to perform well at all or you could have a player on a 2nd-3rd pick job who geared the hell out of it and knows exactly what they're doing. In this case the 1st pick will perform poorer than the 3rd stringer. Individual skill will always be a large factor in the jobs performance, it's why finding people worth running with can be trial and error. I'd party with Al because he seems intelligent whereas I wouldn't party with Dallas because.. well he's Dallas and this is regardless of job selection, this shows that skill is an important factor in any pick.

-end-

I wouldn't compare a super A to a gimp B, because that just skews the numbers and invalidates the test. This is true most of the time other jobs in a support role will out perform SMN I've been saying that all along. But SMN can still perform the role well enough that the differnce is negligible(in normal setups not talking about the top 1% groups that cap haste etc. and most jobs aren't welcome in those anyway) the party will still run very smoothly.

[Cream_Soda]

You can't really ignore skill because it works both ways.

When comparing players, no

When comparing jobs, yes.

When we do comparisons, we're looking at the job's capabilities.

After that point, it's up to the player to fill the potential of the job.


So when I say x job is better than y job, it's because that job has a higher potential.

If you as a a pup for example are out dding a ukon war, then you're comparing players at this point, not jobs. and you would say I'm a better player than Xsephirothx, not pup is a better job than war

[Razushu]

When comparing players, no

When comparing jobs, yes.

When we do comparisons, we're looking at the job's capabilities.

After that point, it's up to the player to fill the potential of the job.


So when I say x job is better than y job, it's because that job has a higher potential.

If you as a a pup for example are out dding a ukon war, then you're comparing players at this point, not jobs. and you would say I'm a better player than Xsephirothx, not pup is a better job than war

Fair enough, I would still argue that unless you're sticking to theory skill will have to be considered at least at some stage.
then I guess the point I'm trying to argue(as immodest as it sounds) is on SMN I am a good enough player to close the gap in potential between SMN and the other support jobs to the point where the party doesn't suffer much from the difference will not be immediately noticable

[Sparthos]

Serious question; BST is that bad?

Probably seems like a trollbait question, but I really have no interaction with any BSTs, nobody in my group has it leveled (except for Maat's Cap maybe), I never ever do pickup groups for anything and I have had no reason to ever look into the job. I know BST is certainly non-optimal, but I didn't know it was that bad. :x

If you look at every job in terms of what they can do solo and in a party, BST has the capability to solo most of the "old" content using the ladybug using access to "infinite" pet restoral items (dawn mulsum) and reward. It's solo ability is well documented yet nothing that at least 3 other jobs couldn't do. Therein lies the problem with BST: it's an incomplete job.

Pets cannot keep up with real DD because they cannot be buffed, hasted or enhanced anywhere near as much as an actual DD occupying the slot. The BST itself is susceptible to the same failings as any DD (get too close, you die) yet cannot fall back on the pet for respectable damage because quite simply the tools do not exist.

BST is meant to be played in a way where the pet and master both are dealing damage yet SE fails to realize on anything difficult, the master doesn't want to be up front because BST isn't that good of a melee.

Besides TOTM weapons, pet DD gear is few and far between and unlike SMN or PUP which get attacks that scale up to HNMs, the BST is stuck using an unbuffed pet which most often will eat a ton of damage and die leaving you stuck waiting on the Call Beast timer. Even if you manage to keep the pet alive through Reward/Mulsums, the weaponskills the pets get are pathetic.

SE really doesn't care to buff pet classes and while SMN could use work, the job is functional on harder mobs and often used when mobs have strong AOEs. BST on the other hand is just a completely forgotten about class.

As much as people attempt to rewrite history post-Abyssea, SMN has always been a desired class at HNMs. Go back as far as Kirin '05 or Tiamats and you'll see people using Summoner.

[TybudX]

Fair enough, I would still argue that unless you're sticking to theory skill will have to be considered at least at some stage.

You need to apply 'player skill' to whatever your specific situation is. It has no bearing on game mechanics or job potential. The 'elitists (as Al puts it) have no way of knowing if the guy who plays MNK in your LS tends to go afk, or if your WHM doesn't know which TP moves cause what status effects on a player. They don't know if you have a PUP who regularly comes in tops in your parses. All of those comes down to 'player skill', and all of them are going to vary by an unlimited margin from one group to the next. You can not gain useful information about how the game works or where each ob actually stands in relation to one another if you try to apply 'player skill' to the base of information. you just end up with a bunch of useless data that is hugely flawed by individual performance.

Look at it this way. Say you have somebody who is awesome at SAM. Sure, he can out play other DDs in his LS, but if he leveled WAR, he would perform even better. The same holds true for you and SMN. If you applied what you know to playing BRD or playing COR your group as a whole would perform that much better, because those jobs provide stronger buffs, better damage (including from buffs), and are at worst tied with SMNs healing/support potential. We know this because we understand that SMNs maximum job potential is less than every other job's maximum job potential.

Another way to look at it is like a formula.

[(A + B + C) = D]*E

Where E is player skill. You need to understand D before you can find the true value of E.

[Greatguardian]

Soloing. Certain. Notorious. Monsters.

Maybe not fast, but at least a lot safer than others, but you know what, you never look at that because most of you guys have at least 2 other mules to tri-box with, probably with your own versions of bots. So you can say you can "solo" anything.

But when you have nothing like that, SMN shines. We don't have to depend on anyone or anything except our abilities and our avatars.

Oh, definitely. I know SMN can solo pretty darn well. That's where it shines, for sure.

I was talking in the implied context of a group/party situation, though. I guess that implication was missed, my mistake. For the record, I've never denied SMN being a great solo artist. Merely their contribution to party play.

[Cream_Soda]

You need to apply 'player skill' to whatever your specific situation is.

Which is why you use both potential and the player you're looking to invite as factors.

Again though, this has bearing on which person to invite, not which job is better.

Only potential is needed to see the better job.


Sooooo, for example, there were people I was out DD'ing on corsair while lv'ing it. Those people, regardless of jobs, are people I would never invite to anything I was leading.


Ok let's say we're looking at the same player who knows how to play all of their jobs well and has good gear for their jobs.

This person has smn vs X job.

Should he come smn or X job?

This is the kind of comparison I'm making, not a good smn vs some scrub other job.

[Korpg]

Oh, definitely. I know SMN can solo pretty darn well. That's where it shines, for sure.

I was talking in the implied context of a group/party situation, though. I guess that implication was missed, my mistake. For the record, I've never denied SMN being a great solo artist. Merely their contribution to party play.

I think most people have accepted SMN's limitations in a party, a few would rather think otherwise.

In this age, if anyone wishes to not level another job, only have one job, then they have to realize that they won't be asked to do most anything they want in a party situation.

[Byrth]

Wait, stop now kids. I believe we've come to a consensus. Quickly lock the thread.

Also, I don't have that much of a problem with BST DD. If I had two changes I would make to the job:
1) Allow pets to receive party-wide buffs (including Samba). This also indirectly encourages pet burns, as Hastega is the only party-wide form of the spell, barring AoE'd Refueling or something.
2) Give BSTs a "Stance" that basically makes the pet auto-assist them like an avatar. As lame a complaint as this is, I'm really tired of hitting "Fight" all the time when my pet's damage is shitty compared to my own.

[Sparthos]

Wait, stop now kids. I believe we've come to a consensus. Quickly lock the thread.

Also, I don't have that much of a problem with BST DD. If I had two changes I would make to the job:
1) Allow pets to receive party-wide buffs (including Samba). This also indirectly encourages pet burns, as Hastega is the only party-wide form of the spell, barring AoE'd Refueling or something.
2) Give BSTs a "Stance" that basically makes the pet auto-assist them like an avatar. As lame a complaint as this is, I'm really tired of hitting "Fight" all the time when my pet's damage is shitty compared to my own.

My problem with BST DD is that the job is grossly underpowered. Buffs would be a start to making pet jobs more sturdy and able to keep up with more basic melee but right now the job feels and plays like a class still being developed even though classes like BLU, DNC and COR are far younger than it and have more intricacies.

The familiars 76+ chew through weak mobs but even with their huge HP pools, they get wrecked by (H)NMs and are susceptible to being crippled by multiple debuffs. While it's amazing to see stuff like a Byakko solo using Yuly or doing the old add-on missions pet-style, that stuff is 75 content and it's no surprise a lvl90 pet can crush old content.

The class needs some kind of JA that gives the pet haste/acc/att/crithit rate in exchange for weakening the master. A reverse JA for the more DD oriented BST could easily a secondary option. The class has a serious lack of attack oriented gear for the pet and the "Ready" abilities are currently pathetic. What's the current max haste a BST can give their pet? 9%?

Separating roboront/poultices from the Reward timer would also make healing the pet of status afflictions less of a pain in the ass. Having to choose between healing or status cures is the same issue plaguing DNC so I see no reason why there even should be a choice as you have to pay for Roborants/Poultices in the first place.

Finally, giving the pet small sphere effects that benefit anyone in range would help to bring some variety to using different familiars. Im not even going to touch Charm because outside of an event friendly to Charming mobs, a party-oriented BST would be tied down to using jugpets.