Savage Alexander and the Paladin Exodus

[ananda]

And that should not be the case.

Ever.

I disagree. I feel the root of the problem here is the job specific eso gears. Remove that, and there is much less of an issue because people then can switch around much more easily.

Of course, in a perfect world, SE would be able to design varied and interesting encounters that are perfectly balanced for a wide variety of very different jobs of each roles. This is not a perfect world, however. So if we push too hard for balance, that would only result in either homogeneous classes, where every classes is more or less the same with a little bit of gimmicky unique identifying trait (see AST) or encounters that would feel very similar.

As in, they would need to follow a strict checklist when designing encounters, where each one must have something that plays to each class' strength and nothing where a class perfectly counters the mechanic of the fight. So, cannot have magic only fight (pld will be left in the dust) or phys only fight (pld will be too op), even when lore calls for such a fight. Cannot have a fight with too much movement (what about blm?), too much raid-wide damage (whm only pls), etc. I think this would only lead to boring fights that all feel samey (or, boring jobs that all feel samey). This is also not sustainable moving forward, as more jobs are added, the constraints and/or balancing act would only get worse and worse.

I would rather have both the fights AND the jobs be varied and interesting. And if that means that some jobs are quite a bit better at some fights than others, so be it. Of course, nothing as far as rendering a job completely useless like making ifrit completely immune or even absorb fire damage. But at the level of AST for a1s or a2s pre-buff is okay in my opinion, it is definetely still possible to use that class in the fights, everyone may just have to work a bit harder if they really like the class and want to use it anyway. The key here is that there should be other fights where they shine, a class cannot be bad in all fights.

FFXIV is already in a unique position to be able to deliver on the above. We are not locked into playing just 1 class, like in other games. It only needs a slight tweak to make this possible:
- Make sure that the raid-relevant gears for a given role is shared (so this means that mnk, drg, and nin should share a gear set).
- For weapon, I guess they should stay separate, but perhaps give discount for 2nd purchase of weapon for the same role group.
- Give extra armory bonus for each class at the same role that you have withing the same role. For example, leveling the 2nd tank nets you additional 25% exp boost, and for the 3rd is additional 50% boost, etc. (sch/smn complicates this, but I think they are destined to be the only exception to the rule moving forward anyway, so lets just ignore them).
- rework glamour so that they are tied to the job and item, instead of just to the item. I already hated how when I make a glamour for my pld, my war is "forced" to be glamoured the same way. This needs to be changed so that I can glamour them separately, even when they are wearing the same thing.
- AF gears can still exist, but more as a starter gear (it being the law tome gears would have been perfect) and later on for cosmetic only.

So for those hardcore players chasing whatever-first, they would need to make sure they are flexible enough to be able to play all jobs within a particular role at a very high level, so that they can optimize the fight to the max and beat them at very low ilvl. This is probably an interesting exercise of min-maxing for them anyway. For more casual groups, they can afford to let their players play their favorite classes and wait out until they are sufficiently geared to clear. PF will of course be full of people demanding only the most optimal party composition AND overly high ilvl, but not like it hasn't already happen now.

I feel rather than trying the imposible to try to balance every class and every every encounter perfectly, this is the most viable way going forward that would please the most people.

[FoxyAreku]

Astrologians took forever to be made viable and they're a new class. Dunno how much hope there is for paladin.

[Synestra]

World firsts and second guilds are trying to beat the fight undergeared. This will be a non issue in 1 or 2 months when the majorty of average FCs beat it. I am not in a world first FC wouldn't switch from Pld to a job I have no esoterics gear on.

There are other peoples progressing savage aswell besides these "WF elites" ya know? and im not fine waiting 1-2 months just for the hope of clearing content that is about to get old anyway. Now if only we had more than one raid instance then this wouldnt be so bad, but atm there is only Alex and nothing else.

[Ladon]

There are other peoples progressing savage aswell besides these "WF elites" ya know? and im not fine waiting 1-2 months just for the hope of clearing content that is about to get old anyway. Now if only we had more than one raid instance then this wouldnt be so bad, but atm there is only Alex and nothing else.

Not to mention that as people gear up they are actually moving to Warrior-Warrior teams since they are vastly superior in everything and healer potency is getting to the point that Warriors don't even need to be in defiance to tank most of Alex Savage, can hold threat just fine using their highest potency, highest hate combo, cheese through most tank busters with holmgang and their massive DPS increase they bring doesn't even allow enough time for the Limit Break penalty to even matter.

[Alistaire]

"Wait for next endgame raid and pray x class does better there"

If devs actually thought that way, WARs would still be the way they were in 2.0. The only fight they had issues with were T5.

What? 2.0 WAR was noticeably worse than PLD at tanking in any content from stone vigil normal on up.

[Nadirah]

What? 2.0 WAR was noticeably worse than PLD at tanking in any content from stone vigil normal on up.

Only when played by idiots(4 man content).

[Synestra]

When next content comes out and its all physical damage PLD will be broken.

Imo this why DRK also needs some attention besides PLD, both should be brought up to WAR's level in terms of un-clunkyness and ability synegry/utility because warriors are currenty perfect when it comes to tanking. No sane person wants WAR's nerfed in anyway, why would you want to gimp your tanking buddy?

[Ladon]

Imo this why DRK also needs some attention besides PLD, both should be brought up to WAR's level in terms of un-clunkyness and ability synegry/utility because warriors are currenty perfect when it comes to tanking. No sane person wants WAR's nerfed in anyway, why would you want to gimp your tanking buddy?

Warriors need to be nerfed if the goal is to bring them in line with the other two tanks. Bringing the other two up to Warrior level would just break the game more than it already is with Warriors sitting a few hundred DPS away from actual DPS classes while bringing a far higher level of survivability. As it stands now, bringing 6 Warriors and a pair of healers is completely feasible to clear the Faust DPS check with ease and make for a ridiculously effective Savage group on all floors. The only major thing that is likely preventing this is finding 5 other groups to give up their geared Warriors.

All the tanks should be pushing closer to current healer DPS numbers. The game is in a completely ridiculous state by having even one tank class with all of its mitigation skills even coming within 50% of the damage of a DPS focused class. Honestly, anyone that cares about the overall health and balance of the game should be looking at current PLD damage and using that as a base and nerf BOTH Warrior and Dark Knight damage down to bring it in line with current PLD damage.

I mean imagine the sh*tstorm that would have occurred if the measly healing abilities of BLMs and SMNs was brought up to a few hundred HPS of the focused healing classes while maintaining their damage capabilities?

[Synestra]

Not to mention that as people gear up they are actually moving to Warrior-Warrior teams since they are vastly superior in everything and healer potency is getting to the point that Warriors don't even need to be in defiance to tank most of Alex Savage, can hold threat just fine using their highest potency, highest hate combo, cheese through most tank busters with holmgang and their massive DPS increase they bring doesn't even allow enough time for the Limit Break penalty to even matter.

Yeah and im pretty sure you could already do A1S with 6 warriors and 2 healers(im looking at you Xeno and co :P)because they are not really far behind real DD's in terms of DPS when they can go all out in Deliverance. And yeah even my co-tank doesnt really use Defiance much anymore as its not that needed even on busters with proper CD usage and holmgang.

I actually cant wait to see when first 6(7) war 2(1) heals A1S is going to happen, it will be hilarious to watch for sure like previous ones

[Zumi]

There are other peoples progressing savage aswell besides these "WF elites" ya know? and im not fine waiting 1-2 months just for the hope of clearing content that is about to get old anyway. Now if only we had more than one raid instance then this wouldnt be so bad, but atm there is only Alex and nothing else.

We only raid like 1 to 2 hours a week and we beat alex 2 savage last week. Still able to beat stuff with me playing paladin they seem fine to me. 50 or so more dps is not really going to make or break you. Its the dps job to put out the dps tanks not so much.