The positive Astrologian thread!

[TatoRazzino]

Snip

You totally misread me, dude. I'll make myself clear: I don't think there is any reason for jobs to be "competitive". What does that even mean? There's no reason for different jobs to perform the same with the same strategies. The healing strategy "1 solo healing/1 dpsing" is always going to work better with WHM/SCH; there's no reason to make AST competitive in that field. If your group wants to do that, then go WHM/SCH. There's no reason to buff any job just because it doesn't fit in a specific strategy.

[VanEinstein]

You totally misread me, dude. I'll make myself clear: I don't think there is any reason for jobs to be "competitive". What does that even mean?

Take a moment to consider the wealth of other mmorpg's on the market, and how many classes some of them have. In fact, let's look at World of Warcraft, because it's the closest example I can think of. Boo and hiss all you like if that's your gut reaction, but hold your horses. When you reach a point where the number of classes of a given "role" or "job" in raid content exceeds the minimum demanded, everyone starts to look at what they believe the most effective selection is, not that which is merely adequate, unless their approach is of a more casual nature. Of course not that WoW suffers this issue quite so much due to larger raid sizes, but it was still an isue (at least up to the introduction of variable size raiding perhaps - I don't know, I wasn't there for that). Anyhow, let's say for example you had chosen to play a particular job at a time when it was at its weakest. WoW has always had those cycles - one as king of the hill, one sitting down at the bottom crying itself to sleep, and the rest all somewhere between. It's not easy to balance so many classes.

Oh, even better yet, forget WoW. Here's one that should be a lot closer to home for a great many here. Final Fantasy XI (w/ a whopping 22 jobs). I played that game on and off all throughout its lifespan so far, and it's painfully obvious that Square has had a hard time keeping all of the jobs relevant. Red Mage was my baby, but its glory days have long been over, and even with the new toys they have given it, its desirability is nothing like it used to be. Geomancer, one of the newer jobs, has had to receive continual adjustment to make it desirable (I still don't know if it's there yet, it's been at least 6 months since I played last), because Square made the mistake of creating the insanely powerful Empyrean Weapon that made a 4 song bard irreplaceable.

Being competitive is all about being valued equally, and when a class (in this case job) is not, you see them being left out in favor of what people discover works -best- , specifically during progression where it's most important for those with a drive to succeed at the earliest possible attempt. This isn't anything new to 14 either. The DPS were victims of such scrutiny in coil.