Regarding the current state of casters.

DISCLAIMER: This post is not meant to incentivize hate posts towards anyone (especially the designers and devs). My intention is to promote discussion as to why the jobs are in their current state, if they are ok, and what could be done to improve it.

DISCLAIMER 2: I can't write short posts.

For starters, I’d like to give a short introduction. I have started raiding from the start, first casually, and then I got more and more invested in it. During BCoB I wanted to play BLM, but I couldn’t find a group because everybody wanted to be a caster too, so I played SCH. From SCoB until now, I always played caster.

Heavensward happened and the dreaded Gordias tier. I was in a group that I stayed with for almost two years. We survived it and beat it in a very timely manner. Many people did not. Midas was, supposedly, easier than Gordias. We also survived it and beat it. By the end of our 8th week, I was going through some really dark stuff in real life and I decided to take a break from the game after that.

I played ultra casually for 6 months, then I decided to try raiding again. I couldn’t find a group because I played caster. Apparently, Creator had been so easy that people beat it really fast and their main motivation to play after progression, that in most groups I knew lasted from 2 to 3 weeks, was to do speedkills or guildspeeds. Casters were trash and didn’t have a place in that scenario.

The only groups who wouldn’t mind me play caster were really bad groups (groups that were still progressing through A11 in December). But I had no experience, so I had to suck it up and do it the hard way. Eventually I found my way into an amazing group of people that didn’t mind me playing BLM for weeklies, but with a caveat, I had to play MCH every day that wasn’t the weekly day because they wanted to speedkill. A small price to pay, I thought. And MCH was fun to learn. I wasn’t great at it but I could make do.

But Creator lasted way too long, even to me, that had caught it a little more than 3 months after its release date. I got exhausted of playing MCH for so long and it wasn’t a class that I was in love with. I believe that speedkill limbo lasted so long that the “meta composition” mentality got etched even into the minds of the more casual players. It got to the point where weeks would pass in recruitment platforms without one post looking for a caster, and every caster looking for a group was also specialized in either BRD or MCH.

Stormblood came and this is still how things are working. After beating V4S for 5 weeks, my group disbanded. I have been looking for a group for more than one month. During this time, I got close to no bites and about half of them were looking for a “flexible caster that can also play ranged”. All of the boards in all of the recruitment places are either looking for NIN, MCH, BRD or DRG (sometimes you’ll find the odd post that will be considering SMN after these crazy buffs, but no one will be looking for SMN specifically). The only groups looking for casters (especially RDM) are the ones that are still stuck at V3S or starting V4S progression.

See, I don’t blame the players for wanting whatever composition is more efficient. If I was competitively trying to speedkill I would want them too! In my opinion, the problem here is that some classes have their gameplay identity based on making progression easier, especially RDM. But if a tier lasts 6 months and progression lasts 2 to 3 weeks (some groups in Omega had it down in one week), how is that class supposed keep its place if it has nothing else to offer?

I also don’t mind learning a new job and playing it. I’ve been leveling BRD and MCH these two past weeks because I got tired of the situation I’m in. They’re fun! But they aren’t what I want. I want to play this game because I want to have fun with things that fulfill my need for fantasy. RDM gives me that. BLM gives me that. SMN gives me that. BRD and MCH are just ok to me. It’s just exhausting that more than a year has passed since Creator and we’re still in the exact same situation, except DRK got booted for PLD.

I’m coming to a conclusion now, I promise. I think that the design decisions are schizophrenic. They make easier raids, but the length of time between raids is the same. That enforces a community behavior that is perfectly understandable, but harmful to the players that don’t play the “meta comp” classes. They make classes that either deal a lot of damage on their own or have great progression utility. Then they make progression last less than a month and all these defining traits are worth nothing.

I know that the “meta comp” will always exist. There will always be a combination of jobs that will kill things faster. It’s impossible to avoid that, but there must be a more active role on the part of the designers to actually design jobs outside of their kits. Singularly, they are all amazing, but when they interact, it’s a clusterfuck of imbalance. Getting ostracized and denied entry in legit statics is not something that should be happening.

What I wanted to discuss, for real, is:

1. Are you all ok with this? Why?
2. I tried to elaborate my answer to this question with my lengthy text, but how do you all think we got to this point in job balance?
3. Do you have any suggestions to improve this situation?

I guess I just wanted someone to convince me that this is ok and that I should get over and play some class I don’t like so I can raid, but I can’t bring myself to do that.

Thanks for taking your time reading this and I look forward to hearing your opinion.

The best thing I can say is that the whole "meta" thing is a cancer in any multiplayer game, be it FFXIV, Overwatch, or even Splatoon. When people start decreeing certain party compositions to be the most "efficient", that's going to bleed into every aspect of the game and make people who aren't MLG tryhards absolutely miserable. I've decided I want no part of such a society that arbitrarily decides which of my jobs are useful or not. Worse still is when SE tries to cater to these people by throwing raid-like mechanics into non-raider content like Rabanastre.

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Originally Posted by Hayward

*Snip*

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Actually metas were a thing before multiplayer. Its just that in single player unless you had annoying friends or siblings watching you there was no one to give you crap about it. A meta is going to develop in pretty much any game with either multiple unique characters or multiple job classes. The issue is when it comes to online multiplayer games there is a huge population of sheep people that just blindly follow the meta or "X streamer's guide on how to play the game the way they want you to". Essentially any job class combination can work as long as it fits the roles needed. Its just that some combinations work easier.

Rabanstre has raid like mechanics because the 24 man content is actually presented as a raid in game. CT felt more raid like to me though than the later ones. I'd be in favor of more raid like raids even to the point of dynamis from FFXI.

Meta is the most efficient way to play but it's at the cost of fun however fun to some people is the ability to save time by being meta.

At the end of the day you have to ask yourself, do you wanna be meta and save time while having less fun or would you rather go at the beat of your own drum and have more fun?

Meta happens in solo games too.

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Originally Posted by Hayward

When people start decreeing certain party compositions to be the most "efficient"...

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Generally said declaration is backed up by facts, examples, and hard data, and originates from someone in the community who's trusted.

META itself is not a problem. The problem are the people who read a thread on Reddit and decide that is set in stone. Think back to long, long time ago of four months when SB just launched and PLDs were the new META and you had a bunch of idiots who wouldn't know their shield from a hole in the ground. And you can't help these people, they read a thread and are experts. And everyone else's fault.

However, running anything with a WAR who wanted to MT was great, because they were playing a class that was literally unplayable meant they knew what they were doing.

So what I'm getting at is: get experience in what you want to do. A skilled player is a better asset than an asshead doing whatever is META at the time. And the META is always changing with new patches and balances as well. So what's META now, won't always be.

in any game with classes or customization there will never be perfect balance and always be someone who's passion is figuring out what composition tips the scales the most given equal skill levels.

that being said, of all the raid groups i know clearing delta 4 savage none of them have a "meta" group build. They try to avoid obvious clashes like bard + machinist but outside the standard of 2 tanks, 2 healers, 2 melee, 1 ranged, 1 caster no one i know really cares too much.

I'd say your real problem is caster spots are strongly contested. Lots of good players looking for a spot and holding it tightly when they get it
You see everyone looking for ranged because they bring very desirable utility to groups and seem to be unpopular classes for raiders

How I see it:
Average group compositions can clear Savage.
Meta group composition can clear Savage.

They both can clear Savage. A clear is a win.

The only difference is how fast each group is clearing. This matters to some people because they enjoy speed kills. It doesn't matter to others because they are happy with just clearing content.

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Originally Posted by Zalleh

1. Are you all ok with this? Why?

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I'm totally okay with it. Just because your static is following meta, it doesn't mean that they can do speed kills. You need very good players to do that.

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Originally Posted by Zalleh

2. I tried to elaborate my answer to this question with my lengthy text, but how do you all think we got to this point in job balance?

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Like you said, some jobs are good to have during the first weeks then they get benched during the last ones. What they offered is not needed anymore. Only groups doing this though are ones that are going for speed kills. Aka, they level multiple jobs, and gear both in order to use one for progression and the other for speed kills.
To me, this doesn't sound very bad because both jobs were used.

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Originally Posted by Zalleh

3. Do you have any suggestions to improve this situation?

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I can't say much about this personally but ... Making all jobs equal is a bad idea.
Some jobs are harder to play than others. If they do the same dps as the easy job, why bother playing the hard one?

- SAM is easy with high dps, but it gives no party buffs.
- MNK and NIN are not as easy as SAM and deal less damage, but they make up for it with party buffs.
To me, this is balanced. But what I think it balanced and what other players think is balanced might be completely different.

The only problem with having meta this is that there are some players that think meta is a must. Which is completely wrong.
I'll quote myself:

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Just because your static is following meta, it doesn't mean that they can do speed kills. You need very good players to do that.

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If your group is meta but failing to do speed kills, why bother with it.