The balance of jobs in Criterion & Criterion Savage feels pretty bad

Wanted to make a thread about something I don't see discussed much, Criterion Savage seems more popular than it was before thanks to the Exquisite Tome weapons and the epic hero title.But from my experience running this content there is definitely a meta.

I've been noticing runs are going way smoother when we have a Scholar or Sage rather than a WHM or especially an Astro, I'm not too versed in healers but it seems like this content is way more geared for having shield healers rather than regen healers. I've seen way more wipes due to damage on the WHM/Astro side, and I'm curious if any others are experiencing this.

Likewise, Tanks aren't fairing that much better, Gunbreaker and Dark Knight feel like they're actively holding the party back with much more selfish and frail kits compared to Paladin and Warrior. Both of these jobs pack significantly less healing in their kits, and their defenses are also more niche, Magic only mitigation like Dark Missionary/Dark Mind and Heart of Light feel out of place here with so much focus on physical damage, and a general lack of sustain on both of these jobs makes them feel remarkably more frail.

DPS wise doesn't seem that bad, MCH seems really good compared to the rest but its not as big of a contrast as with tanks or healers.

I'm sure skilled players can overcome this, I've cleared criterion on Dark Knight and it was doable but there were times it felt very uncomfortable like I was hitting a wall that the job just wasn't designed to deal with. I'm curious if anyone else is experiencing this when running Criterion?

I actually did notice in the first criterion how a shield healer seemed quite convenient to mit everyone, but to be honest it's always been that way as well. For example, in the past you would sometimes get a White Mage and Diurnal Astrologian together in raids and notice the lack of shields, especially when vulns were used more often like in Heavensward.

I agree that Gunbreaker and Dark Knight's raid-wide mitigation... does not seem as much of an advantage as Paladin and Warrior's. In general even. It works against ALL damage types AND regens the whole party. It's at least 4x better and Warriors can buff theirs at the expense of personal mit.

I think that despite Gunbreaker and Dark Knight's lesser sustain, that they are still able to endure a lot so they would probably be able to hold on in most cases still. If anything, there has been arguments made that Warrior should be brought down to their level so that they are a little more reliant on healers than their current 0% reliance on healers.

Some dps jobs just feel very mediocre, but how the hell do you balance it without hurting raids and without doing more boring hidden buff stuff?
fflogs does not count the hidden party buffs some jobs bring as rDPS as far as I know, so those statistics are not accurate, but at the same time they are tiny and should probably be buffed to help raid buff jobs more
Some dps combos are clearly much weaker, there is huge gaps in combos like DRG+RDM/BRD vs MCH+BLM/RPR.
I wish they would've kept using extra actions to fill the gaps, obviously not exactly the variant ones, new ones made specially for crit, mostly for mitigation purposes. Something like an extra action shield spell only regen healers can pick, And some other minor personal/external defensives only some jobs can pick.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ZiraZ

I wish they would've kept using extra actions to fill the gaps, obviously not exactly the variant ones, new ones made specially for crit, mostly for mitigation purposes. Something like an extra action shield spell only regen healers can pick, And some other minor personal/external defensives only some jobs can pick.

---

I'm not a huge fan of extra actions, though reading your post it sounds like VC might be a place where some class customization is viable. Instead of, or maybe as an alternative to, actions we could have traits that augment existing skills. Since we're on the topic of shields, an example might be a trait that adds shields to Medica II for example. A customization option fits VC not only because of the need to account for atypical party composition, but also because of the nature of having multiple routes. The system could also be used by SE to explore class balance changes.