Are cracks in the Armoury System beginning to surface?

[AlexiaKidd]

Now that we have a bit of somewhat challenging content are we beginning to see some flaws in the Armoury System?

What I am talking about is the huge advantage that someone who has levelled every class has over someone who has not. Take GLA for example, somebody who only wanted to play as a GLA and not level any other class is at a big disadvantage over someone who has the time to level up multiple jobs and can cherry pick skill's and abilities from a range of classes.

In the R45 Dungeon I have noticed GLA's that have only levelled that class really struggle, they struggle to keep hate and they take way to much DMG on bosses. On the other side of the fence I did a run with a GLA who pretty much was invincible. They were able to run the whole length to Ogre without stopping to fight anything while getting every chest on the way, they needed hardly any healing on the Ogre and kept it solo without any cures needed until first Ghost shift. When rounding up skeletons before Batraal they walked around and gathered up every single skeleton in the room and then brought them back to us for AOE nuking only needing minimal cures on return. On Batraal again they could hold him solo no problem with only one mage needed for cures.

Now I won't take anything away from this player as they were very skilled and what they did was by no means easy but they also have every single Class at R50 and that did give them a massive advantage, no player with only GLA levelled would be able to do what he did with only the skills that a GLA can earn.

So where are we heading? Does this mean that people are going to be forced to level everything just to be able to build that godly tank class. This is something I have been worried about since the beginning and it is why I put all my time into trying to get every single Class levelled so that I too would have this advantage. However not everyone can do that so should they be penalised because of that, just because they don't have everything levelled they can never be that good?

As more and more challenging content comes certain builds for classes will begin to surface and as opposed to something like FFXI where you only had to level you main Job and a few Sub Jobs needed for that, in FFXIV you may have to level even more and level them to cap to get what is needed. What about when the level cap increases will you be expected to level some class you don't care about to cap just to get that one skill that is great for tanking?

I suppose we have the Job System coming and this may put this cross classing godly builds to rest but will Job's really be that great, will a PLD with restricted skills be as good as a GLA that has every class levelled and can cherry pick what they need to make the perfect build? Or what if even while PLD you can still cross class certain things from other classes and make it even better than your already over powered tank.

I don't know what SE will do but they really need to look at some way to balance this kind of stuff because someone should not really have that huge of an advantage over someone else just because they don't have ever class at R50 to cross class the best skills.

[Zenaku]

Job system would have there own great JA,spell,ws that only they can use so i think the jobs would be useful for only party base low manning stuff ya you need to have class to make up for the lost of members.

[DeadRiser]

Well aside from that, it seems everybody just wants ARC, GLA, and CON. I feel sorry for the higher ranked THM, LNC, PUG, and MRD... well from what I've heard atleast.

[Budi]

Is the raid casual content? No. I don't think that anyone who just leveled one class should be able to complete it (as GLA). I mean a lot of important skills are easy to get (~r20).

Well aside from that, it seems everybody just wants ARC, GLA, and CON. I feel sorry for the higher ranked THM, LNC, PUG, and MRD... well from what I've heard atleast.

without a linkshell its impossible to find a party... T_T

[DeadRiser]

Is the raid casual content? No. I don't think that anyone who just leveled one class should be able to complete it (as GLA). I mean a lot of important skills are easy to get (~r20).



without a linkshell its impossible to find a party... T_T

That stinks I'm glad my main ranks are GLA, CON, and ARC then lol. I just can't wait till there is more class uniqueness and they change the armory system around.

[Xenor]

It's likely more skills will become class specific, like what was done with Bloodletter. A GLA may lose the ability to use some of the current important tanking skills from other classes but they will make up for it by using PLD abilities from their job. At least I hope that's the direction they will be going. It would have been bad to restrict too many abilities to classes before adding the job system.

[AdvancedWind]

Well, I personally think someone who did take the time to level multiple classes should indeed be far more effective than someone who leveled just one. That's absolutely fair, considering the nature of the Armoury System, and I personally don't see anything wrong with that.

Also, you DID bring up a good point about jobs. Indeed, depending on how it's done, there's the very real chance that a GLA with multiple classes leveled end up being a better tank than a Paladin GLA with limited skill access. However, once again, I don't see that as something inherently 'bad', for two reasons

1 - Jobs won't exactly prevent you from using skills from dif classes, will just limit which ones you can take. I'm assuming that, for example, a PLD will still be able to use most skills related to their role - IE: Tanking -, regardless of the class that learns the skill. So, they would still be able to use stuff such as MRD provokes, while losing access to things that aren't really currently used for tanking, such as elemental nukes.

2 - If a vanilla, multi-leveled GLA indeed works better than a Glaladin, it still seems fair enough considering the time invested on leveling the other classes, which could turn out into something like

- Plain Gla: Regular tank, regular / good soloer, low time investment
- GLaladin: Good tank, bad soloer, mid time investment, may be improved by leveling more classes
- Heavy cross skilled gla: Very good tank, good soloer, heavy time investment

Of course, this is all speculation. Also, I do believe that, regardless of how the job system is done, there will be strategies and situations where using a regular class will be 'better' than using actual jobs.

[Sephr]

They need a better cost system with the armoury. Right now everyone can equip whatever they'd like, but in reality it should be fair more expensive to equip spells and abilities from a class other than your own.

For example, a Conjurer can equip Cure II for 3 points, but it costs a Gladiator 5 points. The reward is self-healing at the potential loss of other utilities.

[viion]

I bet this is a very delicate and tough situation to handle for the development team.

While I know it is frustrating having someone who has more time and more classes be far-far-far superior, it does make sense in a way. The aim is to allow you to cross abilities.

Hopefully Job system will even things out, so you can either be 50 GLD with lots of abilities from other classes you have levelled OR 50 PLD with GLD and PLD unique skills and hopefully some of PLD unique skills allow a more even play style.

Maybe a rep will be able to ask about the future of the Job system.

[Bethor]

- Plain Gla: Regular tank, regular / good soloer, low time investment
- GLaladin: Good tank, bad soloer, mid time investment, may be improved by leveling more classes
- Heavy cross skilled gla: Very good tank, good soloer, heavy time investment

That just made me jiggle xD

Blajurer oder Whamaturge?

Anyways... I've got mixed feelings about this as well. I don't want to be entirely forced to level all jobs. That's like lvling DRG even you don't want to =X

Of course there will be the "best" setups nonetheless. But why invent so many classes if you have to lvl them all to actually achive superman status? Then they could've just made 1 class which takes 2 years to level up.

I guess we have to wait and see how the new job system is going to be. GoGo Patch 1.20!