My take on pictomancer no one asked for

Honestly Pictomancer should be really exciting for me, it checks or at least claims to check all the boxes I want in a job. Uses all the elements to attack and is supposed to have a strong party support focus but I just cannot deal with the manic pixie aesthetic they chose for the spell effects and animations. I don't think it's going to be a terrible job that no one will play, just personally disappointing and since we are unlikely to get another caster for 6 or more years it's going to be a long wait for another.

I think people are just salty it wasn't Green Mage or Geo.

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Originally Posted by MagiusNecros

I think people are just salty it wasn't Green Mage or Geo.

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Time Mage enjoyers also a bit miffed. We're tired of the "Astrologian is Time Mage because it has/had Time Magic" gatekeep to no end.

that party support thing is probably just code for "it has a two minute party buff" ngl

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Originally Posted by Wyssahtyn

that party support thing is probably just code for "it has a two minute party buff" ngl

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That is assuming they took the entire feedback we gave them for how much the 2min raid buff fight design and job design sucks for fun and individuality and do f***-all with it.

I'll be holding my breath until media tour/7.0 how things go. The forced 2min job design needs to die.

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Originally Posted by MagiusNecros

I think people are just salty it wasn't Green Mage or Geo.

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I personally don't mind, it was a shot in the dark when I made my thread and mostly of my concerns if it was going to be green mage (more supporty than red mage).

I think the main dislike of pictomancer at the moment is it currently suffering from Kung Fu Panda Syndrome. Basically we just had Reaper and all the more dark and edgy stuff, and then here comes this very light-hearted class. I called it KFPS because it reminds me of that time for World of Warcraft where they were announcing the new class, Monk, but the main practioners of the class was pandarens (panda bear race), and at the time the movie, Kung Fu Panda, was fresh in peoples minds. It got derided for looking too light-hearted compared to the prior class, Death Knight.

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Originally Posted by Wyssahtyn

that party support thing is probably just code for "it has a two minute party buff" ngl

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Would not surprise me. The whole "evoking such wonders takes time" implies a CD centric job which probably will mean the devs are doubling down on the 2 minute meta design philosophy. Not sure how that'll pan out with Pictomancer supposed to have middleground DPS and no Raise spell. If it doesn't have Raise it should do as much damage as Black Mage but that does not seem to be the case.

I think a lot of players agree that the 2 minute meta is terrible and needs to disappear. Makes the game very boring to play.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

That is assuming they took the entire feedback we gave them for how much the 2min raid buff fight design and job design sucks for fun and individuality and do f***-all with it.

I'll be holding my breath until media tour/7.0 how things go. The forced 2min job design needs to die.

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Honestly 2 minute meta is bad, but it feels like the only real reason why it's being discussed over poor healer or tank designs is because it effects DPS players which is the majority (for good reason). 2 minute meta should go away, but in all honesty it's not actually something im that passionate about in reality, I still think they can design fun jobs around the meta but at the same time, it's also something that limits jobs and makes them feel samey in some instances, I think most DPS still fair decently but are starting to feel the stale design.

Honestly the game would just be a lot more fun if they made healer and tanks more interesting, people talk about 2 minute meta being homogenization but when you look at tank and healer design the entire of those roles are, and it's a fact that they're designed to be doing DPS all the time, but both completely lack any sort of intresting DPS rotation. The "utility" that all these jobs bring are so interchangeable for better or worse that you'd expect at least a little bit of better design.

I think picto's support will likely be a 120 raid buff or some wacky timer like 60s who knows? but I'm really bored of party buffs honestly, I would like a caster with the dragoon/dnc/ast sort of target single target buff instead.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

Honestly 2 minute meta is bad, but it feels like the only real reason why it's being discussed over poor healer or tank designs is because it effects DPS players which is the majority (for good reason). 2 minute meta should go away, but in all honesty it's not actually something im that passionate about in reality, I still think they can design fun jobs around the meta but at the same time, it's also something that limits jobs and makes them feel samey in some instances, I think most DPS still fair decently but are starting to feel the stale design.

Honestly the game would just be a lot more fun if they made healer and tanks more interesting, people talk about 2 minute meta being homogenization but when you look at tank and healer design the entire of those roles are, and it's a fact that they're designed to be doing DPS all the time, but both completely lack any sort of intresting DPS rotation. The "utility" that all these jobs bring are so interchangeable for better or worse that you'd expect at least a little bit of better design.

I think picto's support will likely be a 120 raid buff or some wacky timer like 60s who knows? but I'm really bored of party buffs honestly, I would like a caster with the dragoon/dnc/ast sort of target single target buff instead.

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Deleting the 2min meta and improving tank & healer playstyles and enjoyment aren't mutually exclusive to be had, this isn't a zero-sum game. They can happen in tandem, just unlikely.

The 2min meta affects literally every role. Not just DPS. Tank and Healer abilities are literally designed around it nowadays as well.

Every class is designed around 2 min meta so every class at a meager glance plays the same. Leaves little room for optimization or improvement. Everyone just pops all their CDs at every 2 minute mark. Occasionally delaying to maybe every 3 minutes. But I think it's just a symptom of a larger problem which is class design philosophy to where everyone is the same and no one is unique. Very prominent with Tanks/Healers where damage is either close or Healers have 20 insta-heal buttons and only 1 or 2 DPS buttons. Very boring.

It's great for casual play but more skillful players wanting to improve their class kinda can't.

I don't find the standardization of raid buffs/burst as offensive as some, but I do think potencies, and substats could be rebalanced as well as adding more points of interest like every 30 or 40 seconds to job rotations. I think such changes could make standardization a bit more tolerable. It's Fine™.

Anyway, Pictomancer looks super fun! I don't get the hate for it.

I take bigger issue with Warrior being a Tank/Healer/DPS. And Monk's Dragon Kick still being as busted as it is. It's so funny to me.

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Originally Posted by SieyaM

Honestly Pictomancer should be really exciting for me, it checks or at least claims to check all the boxes I want in a job. Uses all the elements to attack and is supposed to have a strong party support focus but I just cannot deal with the manic pixie aesthetic they chose for the spell effects and animations. I don't think it's going to be a terrible job that no one will play, just personally disappointing and since we are unlikely to get another caster for 6 or more years it's going to be a long wait for another.

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Agreed. I love the idea of it and I think in terms of gameplay it sounds great, but the visual and audio effects are so jarringly cartoony, they don't fit the aesthetic of the other jobs or indeed most of the game itself... It feels more like a novelty/joke thing than anything. I think that may be appealing to some people because it's different and they like the silliness of it but personally for me it's very off-putting.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

Time Mage enjoyers also a bit miffed. We're tired of the "Astrologian is Time Mage because it has/had Time Magic" gatekeep to no end.

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I wished for Time Mage (or whatever form of "Arcane neutral non-elemental magic" mage), but I was convinced it wouldn't happen (the time mage part).
However I'm really glad it isn't geo or green mage.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

Honestly 2 minute meta is bad, but it feels like the only real reason why it's being discussed over poor healer or tank designs is because it effects DPS players which is the majority (for good reason).

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Ehh, I feel there's a separate issue here. DPS and tank design has been awful since ARR. The problem is a fundamental design principle of the game. The meta to which encounters handle damage, I.E. busters. When you design every fight about spiking damage all at once and then giving a rest period before spiking again, then there's only 3 tools that can effectively deal with this. Mitigation, barriers, and raw burst throughput. It's why I've long held the opinion that all healers are the same and all tanks are the same, because they effectively do their job the same way, sometimes with literally identical skills.

To fix healer/tank design, they'd need to massively overhaul every single fight in the game, severely drop the power and throughput of every healer, and create room to bring back more styles of healing and tanking, such as sustained healing tanking, HoT healing, deferred damage tanking, smart healing, and so on. And as if that wasn't enough of a cliff to scale, it has to be done in such a way that console players can handle the spot healing indicative of better meta designs without the controls getting in the way. Which is definitely doable, but the devs have no interest in it.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

That is assuming they took the entire feedback we gave them for how much the 2min raid buff fight design and job design sucks for fun and individuality and do f***-all with it.

I'll be holding my breath until media tour/7.0 how things go. The forced 2min job design needs to die.

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Nah, they chose to give us pretty graphics instead.....

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Originally Posted by MagiusNecros

I think people are just salty it wasn't Green Mage or Geo.

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Yes and no for me. I'm just salty it's not a job I could get excited for. Pictomancer could still do that, mind you, but what they chose to showcase just did nothing for me.

I like the direction they took aesthetically, and I don't want the goal of painted spell effects to change, but there's such a disconnect between what we see in the CG trailer and what we see in the game footage. You wouldn't really second guess the effects in the trailer, as they look pretty much like what you'd think in-game effects would when translated into CG. They just look normal. Most of the flashier skill/spell effects in-game use 2D visuals in a way as to make them appear 3D, and lots of particle effects that exist entirely in 3D, and nearly every effect gives off the illusion of luminance. They all look bright, like you'd expect magic to look, and the way you see Krile's effects look in the trailer. It all looks as it should, and looks good.

But Picto's effects in-game don't appear to have any of that. The effects are entirely 2D, and there's no simulated luminance or particle effects. While I don't see this as entirely a bad direction to try to take, it's incredibly jarring when you put it next to everything else we've ever had in the game. We're painting with magic or aether, but it doesn't really look like it at all to me. I fear it's going to stick out for the wrong reasons.

Honeslty the design of pictomancer is great, to me it jsut lacks something diverse. And no "it using paints o its diverse" argument doesn't work very well. I have tried pictomancer after I grabbed it and I think i won't level it until the very end or just only use it with friends.

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Originally Posted by Mercury_Grey

Honeslty the design of pictomancer is great, to me it jsut lacks something diverse. And no "it using paints o its diverse" argument doesn't work very well. I have tried pictomancer after I grabbed it and I think i won't level it until the very end or just only use it with friends.

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It would become cool once future expansions go about the way that the only thing they change is giving us more Motifs for each canvas, sharing the Muses. That'd be fantastic. Similar idea to how Summoner should have multiple options for each Minor summon, classified into three types, and getting a random setup after each Major so that you have to make due with what you got. Pictos could have multiple Motifs, and they have different timers, but a shared Muse and canvas. Good luck, also that's a ton of really neat complexity if anything ever drifts.