Parties need an Adjustment; are ARC's unbalanced?

[DexterityJones]

This thread is going to get flamed until the high heavens but whatever, really cant be helped when you make a post like this, so lets get into it shall we?

Parties in general: pretty pointless eh? Just grab a pile of people and roll though everything, no challenge really; Behest: 8 people plow though that (what a joke), Exp: Mow those raptors right down in a rolling ball of fury, NM: just a long fight because they have a ton of HP. No challenge in these, everyone just branch out and destroy, pull an extra who cares right? is that GLA even tankin? who cares burst that mob down and move onto the next! I'm not getting optimal SP/hour!

Why? is the damage dealt in this game out of wack to the monsters we fight? Is there no need for proper party dynamics when all you need to do is burst damage, rinse, repeat and call it a day? DD seem to be king in this game, and the whole party dynamic needs to be looked at.

ARC's ring the bell for me when it comes to being unbalanced its breaking well into the realm of over powered damage dealers. (aside: every bloody MMO has issues with ranged eh? funny.)

Maybe because I see them everywhere (everyone likes to flock to the large DD), or maybe its because if you put one in the party with me, I'm instantly useless and everything is dead before I can put on my knuckles, put two in and I feel like I'm leeching.

And that I think that's the problem, the massive amount of damage they can do in such a foolishly short time frame. We've all seen them "one shot" (which is really 3 hits) mobs higher than them, while the rest of us just stand there blinking. How is that balanced? because of it, it is also breeding a bad line of players with no regard to proper aggro managment "Lulz I'll can just kill everything", pull mobs and then get all bitchy when they sometimes die, (that aspect is fine by me...and a bit beside the point) on mobs that require a tiny bit more finesse, such as zombies AoE poison cone.

Party dynamics go out the window and all you need is a couple of ARC's some form of meat shield and a mage. Game over you win. everything. Those of us who dont want to play ARC's, or don't have one leveled yet, will never see a full chest Darkhold run, let alone just get invited into a basic one because why would anyone want to put together a party and waste their time with "sub-par" DD?

Can't really blame the players for taking ARC and grabbing all the best abilities across the classes ( or any DD that is ) making them beastly and just plow through everything, but as it stands right now ARC's are kings and everyone else and sits center bench.

So what needs to be done? do mobs need to actually be tanked and spanked for fear that they will flatten everyone? does the armoury system make everyone far too beefy (saw an ARC tanking crabs in LL, with 2 mages)? Do people just do far too much damage?

I'm don't really know what the answer is and since I saw no posts on this in a long time, I figured it would be useful to raise this topic get some input and see what people think.

Tl:dr

DD rule this game and because of it distrupts party dynamics
Archers are king.
Discuss.


So,thoughts? discussions? comments?

/flameshieldup

[Betelgeuzah]

So,thoughts?

Well, one came to my mind right off the bat.

The patch that changes the damage and other algorithms considerably is few weeks away.

The patch that changes all actions on all combat classes is few months away.

The patch that shifts the emphasis on party content from classes to jobs is also few months away.

All that said, I can't really figure out what the point of this thread is? It's like making a thread about the current claiming system and it's problems, or lack of chocobos. Sounds like a meaningful discussion..

[Rinsui]

I never undestood how an arrow can do more damage than a two-handed axe either. With the archer usually hiding from retaliation a few miles away, I don't even think it's good balance. Sure, archers can't tank like marauders; but since there's usually just one tank needed anyway, parties not filling the remaining slots with optimum DDs that are completely out of harm's way are gimp.

[Azurymber]

Personally i don't think arc is strong enough. Having weak defence and having to pay for ammo I think that it should do considerably more damage than it currently does.

That being said, I'm an ARC

[Griss]

Yea archer is a little on the strong side right now. It's the only class that can do a fully buffed triple attack at will and then dump the hate at will (timers are a given here). but like bete pointed out were on the cusp of major changes in the underlying math magic and reorganization of the native skill pools of the weapons.

this discussion is one that should be resumed on the other side of said changes.

[Arondight]

Personally i don't think arc is strong enough. Having weak defence and having to pay for ammo I think that it should do considerably more damage than it currently does.

That being said, I'm an ARC

O_O

You think you don't do enough damage? that's just crazy!

Archer is kind of over-powered. Not enough to completely disrupt the game, but still it's quite bothersome. If I want to raid, not using my archer closes some doors. Archers have everything that matter with current donjons: huge DPS, range. Their low defense doesn't matter in a party so yeah.
That's a problem for me because I'm bored to death after 30 minutes using a bow ^^.

To be fair though, Archer are only over-powered because the current raid favors range a lot. In party, they sure are very useful, but as soon as they get aggro they'll have to run away if they don't know how to play.
Since 1.18 my lancer is very good at what it's supposed to do: awesome damages and tp control. But that's useless if some Darkvoid Slave almost one-shots you with its ws or if you have to stop hitting it every 30 second.

Let's wait for 1.19 first before going any further, okay?

[Ilean]

on the cusp of major changes in the underlying math magic and reorganization of the native skill pools of the weapons.

this discussion is one that should be resumed on the other side of said changes.

[SIZE="7"]QFFT![/SIZE]

/moarchars

[Mahayana]

I think all the people who actually wana party "strategically" are waiting for them to fix the seek and invite options. I think it should be fixed soon before we all get so antisocial to even care.

[ChiefCurrahee]

Yea archer is a little on the strong side right now. It's the only class that can do a fully buffed triple attack at will and then dump the hate at will (timers are a given here). but like bete pointed out were on the cusp of major changes in the underlying math magic and reorganization of the native skill pools of the weapons.

this discussion is one that should be resumed on the other side of said changes.

Yeah if Yoshi holds true to his word he said to kill a same level mob it'll take about 45 seconds. Will this be across the board depending on skill sets? I hope so.

so if it takes an archer 40 seconds to kill a mob and a lancer 45 fine. But it shouldn't be archer 20 seconds lancer 45.

[Konachibi]

I've played Archer on both my characters. That being said, although it does seem a tad on the easy side to kill things, I do miss a hell of a lot. I am only a low rank with archer though so that's probably why.

They are trying to balance out the classes though whilst changing the core game systems so I wouldn't be surprised if one of the upcoming patches knocks them off their peg a bit.

I find Pugilists do a heck of a lot of damage right now too. If you stack enough evasion you can spam off moves like Jarring Strike almost indefenitely and since those moves only take 250 TP you'll have no problem keeping up with the TP requirement to use them. That only works if the PUG is tanking in the party though, and most parties don't like PUG tanks due to their lack of defence in comparison to a GLA.