SCH / WAR getting changes to not be so dominate in EX-pac

Famitsu Interview

Q5. Now we'd like to get into job balance. Thanks to your careful balancing, there isn't a single job that can't clear all content. We think that is marvelous, but i feel warriors and Scholars are a little..you know?

Y. Not a little...I think they are sticking out when it comes to utility. I'm not comparing jobs with their personal potential, but when you look at the wide range of utility WARs and SCHs can offer, they are just outrageous.

Q. By that, you mean in an 8 man party?
Y. Not specifically an 8 man party. In any sort of party composition, WARs and SCHs can slip themselves through most situations and their seats are guaranteed. When you compare WARs and SCHs to other jobs, you can say there is a bigger container when it comes to playerskill where the job can carry you and that is what troubles me.

Q. Are you going to touch them in the future?

Y. Not before the expansion and we aren't going to just snipe those two jobs. With the next expansion, we will balance all jobs as a whole including new actions to balance them out. Basically, we'd like to push the other jobs up there, but it's not as simple as buffing the other jobs will equal their strengths so we are still struggling. Systemly and having a pet is what makes it complicated, so we are trying to be careful.

Credit to totoro572 - of reddit
Original Mag scan in reddit post.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme..._needs_to_ask/

I cant wait to see all the threads that are bound to appear if they do take away war/sch's guaranteed spots

http://i.imgur.com/NMq3bqW.gif

Of course War is no longer going to be the best

because in Final Fantasy the bandwagon always rolls to Samurai...

Ya, the changes that will come are going to be interesting to think about. Like Yoshi-P said, it's kind of too late to balance the healer and tank classes this late in the game but it will be interesting to see what sort of adjustments will come to the two classes. Will the war's survivibilty be decreased or any other aspects of the job? Will sch's aetherflow abilities be changed or will be the fairy be nerfed even more so? Of course this is like 6-8 months from now so this is a bridge that should crossed later down the road.

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Originally Posted by Maltothoris

Ya, the changes that will come are going to be interesting to think about. Like Yoshi-P said, it's kind of too late to balance the healer and tank classes this late in the game but it will be interesting to see what sort of adjustments will come to the two classes. Will the war's survivibilty be decreased or any other aspects of the job? Will sch's aetherflow abilities be changed or will be the fairy be nerfed even more so? Of course this is like 6-8 months from now so this is a bridge that should crossed later down the road.

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For my part, I hope they do more to make other classes equally effective rather than nerfing WAR/SCH. Those two classes are so elegantly designed that it would be a pity to ruin a good thing. Since I main AST, I will speak to it - make both stances affect heals and DPS, and create "Time Bend" ability to reset CD on Draw/Shuffle to help reduce RNG nightmare that is, Draw.

If they are not touching war / sch until next expansion but if rumors are true we are getting new tank and healer for next expansion, what if the new tank and healer gives war and sch the shaft. Will there be outcrys to buff war and sch?

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Originally Posted by Supersun

Of course War is no longer going to be the best

because in Final Fantasy the bandwagon always rolls to Samurai...

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I'm not sure one game being heavy on the SAM is a trend setting event. Even so Most melee got the shaft in recent FFXI from what I have heard. Would be nice to see SAM as a tank though, if it goes to DPS I agree, we won't be seeing much DRG/MNK. They won't let their baby fall behind for months on end like they did with DRG.

Bad memories of what happened to RDM in XI are coming back to me. It's nearly the same thing. You don't change the job itself per say, but rather change the content around the job(s). What happens is their OP is not only taken away, they become nigh ineffective as a result. How powerful these jobs are, is a big part of their appeal... and perhaps even distaste by players who know what these jobs entail and are like, "Oh hellll no!"

Yes, they have massive utility and survivability, but they are also arguably the most difficult to play to their optimal potential due to that utility. Not everyone can, and those that can are the freakin heroes and heroines that can carry a whole group, and save a raid that would have otherwise failed. What on Earth is wrong with that?

This is atrocious to even think about.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

What happens is their OP is not only taken away, they become nigh ineffective as a result.

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To be clear, it's not a discussion about nerfs. Warrior and Scholar can remain as effective as ever. The issue is needing to increase the utility of other jobs so they can be balanced well against warrior and scholar, increasing the amount of viable choices for savage raid progression groups instead of there just being certain ones which are so obviously necessary. Balancing is a job that is never finished.

I remember a time when everyone wanted a PLD and not a WAR.
I hate how long the period is already going on in which WAR is OP in everything.
In Newbie chat we literally have people telling the newbies that WAR is the best tank, healer and dps in the game, and you can't even really argue with them because it's mostly true.
Yes, it takes some skill to pull that off, but to me, that is still broken class design.
But for some reason, both SE and the players seemed oddly alright with that for the longest time, so I'm glad to see that SE is planning to bring all classes back to the same table again :)

Screw SCH and WAR. Those are the only 2 jobs I haven't bothered to level at all for anything except cross-class skills. I hope they get some attention during the expansion. Not much, just enough so everyone isn't looking for a SCH for raid groups. Balancing the classes a little better would be awesome if you ask me.

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Originally Posted by Valknut

we will balance all jobs as a whole including new actions to balance them out.

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So multiple new actions basically confirmed? Not sure what to feel about this.

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Originally Posted by gehrtalert

Screw SCH and WAR. Those are the only 2 jobs I haven't bothered to level at all for anything except cross-class skills. I hope they get some attention during the expansion. Not much, just enough so everyone isn't looking for a SCH for raid groups. Balancing the classes a little better would be awesome if you ask me.

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http://www.arcadequartermaster.com/c...vs/win_dan.gif

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Originally Posted by Rufalus

To be clear, it's not a discussion about nerfs. Warrior and Scholar can remain as effective as ever. The issue is needing to increase the utility of other jobs so they can be balanced well against warrior and scholar, increasing the amount of viable choices for savage raid progression groups instead of there just being certain ones which are so obviously necessary. Balancing is a job that is never finished.

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I know it isn't about nerfs. I just don't want their attempts to bring balance to all classes to end up tipping the scales the other direction. I've seen this happen. They take the unique aspects of a class that makes them so powerful and disseminate them to the other classes, and they go from the most needed in endgame to the least, or their role is severely reduced taking away the challenge of playing the job. This is what happened to RDM in XI. I don't want to see the same thing happen to SCH or WAR in XIV.

I'm holding them to it when they say they are trying to be careful.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

I know it isn\\'t about nerfs. I just don\\'t want their attempts to bring balance to all classes to end up tipping the scales the other direction. I\\'ve seen this happen. They take the unique aspects of a class that makes them so powerful and disseminate them to the other classes, and they go from the most needed in endgame to the least.

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Oh I see. Well for what it's worth, they never stop balancing this game. If the latest adjustments made warrior or scholar into the least desirable job somehow, they'd see it in the data and adjust things again until we're at a place of no jobs being significantly more or less popular than the others. They've tried adjusting DRK's PvP performance like 5 times and they are still trying to get it right.

Will be interesting to see how they'll buff other classes to compete. With WAR it's fairly straightforward if you don't mind homogenizing classes, you could just give the other tank classes path and slashing debuffs and give them new cooldowns while tweaking DPS a little. Yoshi-P admitted though that it's difficult to balance around SCH because of the fairy.

I hope they bring out a 4th tank and healer. It would be easier to balance 4 jobs with one another because they wouldn't have to make sure everyone is compatible with everyone, as they could just balance "main" tanks/healers and "off" tanks/healers to be equal to their counterpart (like WHM and Diurnal AST). They could use new party buffs, overwrites or some other mechanic to discourage the use of two "off" tanks/healers in an 8 man for their dps. This way WAR and SCH would have to compete with another job for the "off" tank/healer role in a party unlike now.

I do also hope that they get ride of the whm stacking regen which is fairly unfair when you got double whm vs double AST

I'm frustrated to see diurnal being overwrite while medica II stay

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Originally Posted by Nekotee

I do also hope that they get ride of the whm stacking regen which is fairly unfair when you got double whm vs double AST

I'm frustrated to see diurnal being overwrite while medica II stay

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I'd rather they allow stacking AST regens/buffs instead of removal. People that want removal generally want it out of spite.

Yeah of course just like gender lock on clothe
It's either remove both or lock both

In that case I would love to have stacking AST buff (not card, i do find it normal that card overwrite)
But... Poor whm it might kill him XD

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Originally Posted by Nekotee

I do also hope that they get ride of the whm stacking regen which is fairly unfair when you got double whm vs double AST

I'm frustrated to see diurnal being overwrite while medica II stay

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You just want all WHM to burn don't you? 2white mages using Med 2 isn't any different from you scholars running around having a fairy do all of your healing. Don't hate us for double regens. Why you trying to take away my Medica 2? I can't spread all of my DoTs like Bane does so get rid of it. I can't throw out buffs like AST can so get rid of those too. I don't have a Wind Sprite following me around healing everyone in my party so get rid of your stupid fairies. And no... Double regens is nothing like gender-locked clothing.

Double WHM is the worst combo in serious high-end content, it's not even a debate. It's even worse without a SMN, and maybe without MNK/DRK. There won't be anything to double regen when everyone is dead without some fancy mitigation.

Now when you outgear the content it's a different story. You just soak up the additional damage because of higher HP. But you still heal more instead of less with a SCH/AST, which is also not efficient.

I always liked forcing the Double AST to be somewhat efficient on the healing side. Just you get these people in casual content who say they just don't like the stance, or refuse to budge and they just suffer. (This isn't to say N.AST is anyway acceptable in early progression savage content over SCH, it's still not there.).

Of course they say that after a raid tier with massive chunks of Darkness damage.

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Originally Posted by gehrtalert

You just want all WHM to burn don't you? 2white mages using Med 2 isn't any different from you scholars running around having a fairy do all of your healing. Don't hate us for double regens. Why you trying to take away my Medica 2? I can't spread all of my DoTs like Bane does so get rid of it. I can't throw out buffs like AST can so get rid of those too. I don't have a Wind Sprite following me around healing everyone in my party so get rid of your stupid fairies. And no... Double regens is nothing like gender-locked clothing.

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What he's saying is double white mage shouldn't be able to stack when double scholar doesn't stack shields.

Double white mage isn't a viable comp in hard content anyway so making it fair in the easy duty finder stuff wouldn't matter.

When two WHMs are paired together in DF, they have no choice but to use their identical toolkits, so having one medica II overwrite another is just penalizing them for bad luck. In the case of AST, they have two sects for a reason, and the fact that they don't stack is meant to encourage one of them to use noct. There really is no content in the game in which two medica IIs ticking at once is really needed...usually just leads to high overheal. One shielding healer and one HoT focused healer will always be ideal. So I think this should be left as-is.