Discrimination of certain jobs - your opinion

[HyoMinPark]

Hey guys, I was always in a static until I gave it up and I started to pug my savages.

Especially since they lifted the restrictions on the savages (which also means the overall quality of pugs is declining, especially for o2s+ in my opinion), I found it increasingly hard to get into groups as SAM.

A lot of them requested NIN/DRG as melee, I'd say 80% at least on the EU datacenter, and it frustrates me. Sometimes I even sent a tell, today I just got the answer 'BL ' back. It almost seemed discriminating. I can still do my Savages of course, that's not the point, the point is that I don't find it particularly fair.

I want to ask about your opinion, your experience, and I would like start a discussion in a decent manner. I don't want to bash on other jobs.

I am just asking myself, why is there not a raid wide buff for every class like in WoW?
Is there a way to make a BLM and SAM (and I guess MCH?) more valuable to the party without having to cut the dps of SAM?

I can’t really speak on EU PF, but a lot of the groups I see on Aether that have locked party slots have either done it for speed/parse runs (so they want the meta, which SAM is not a part of due to its lack of utility), or they locked it to “role”, and a MNK already joined in the MNK/SAM spot (they do this for DPS to prevent multiple DPS from needing on role gear, and usually do the same to RDM/SMN/BLM and BRD/MCH—NIN and DRG are lucky since they don’t share any left side pieces with other jobs). But that’s Aether.

It could be that they want the meta for supposedly fast/clean clears, but locking a PF to the meta comp will not necessarily mean you’ll have a fast/clear clear; it’s the same as when people lock the item level to 335 or 340; higher ilvl doesn’t mean better players, and the same applies to the meta comp unless the party leader “asks a little birdie” about the people that join their group and their performance.

I know it’s probably not the best solution, but you are always more than welcome to create your own PFs without any role locks. Sadly, the party leaders of PF parties are entitled to set whatever requirements they want for their PFs, and there isn’t anything that can be done about that. (The “BL. :’)” attitude however, is unnecessary.)


With regards to SAM and its lack of utility: when SAM was first announced, the developers said outright that it would be a selfish DPS with no raid-wide/party utility outside of its high damage. Which, to be frank, isn’t really that high since MNK can keep up with a SAM, and MNK offers raid-utility (Brotherhood/Mantra). MNK was in the same boat in HW, which posed a lot of issues because raid comps did not favor MNK due to it’s lack of contribution to a raid as a whole (same with BLM, and the fact that BLM was difficult to optimize in any fight that required a lot of movement). MCH does have utility, and it is still part of the meta, though it will sometimes be subbed out for SMN because SMN is just monstrous right now in terms of DPS, and it can Raise party members (RDM is usually only used for prog because its personal DPS pales in comparison with SMN now, and BLM is just in a very bad spot in general right now). It (MCH) just doesn’t offer the same amounts of support a BRD does, but BRD has always been the king of support when it comes to raid comps.

Honestly, the only way to really break the “meta” would be to do something with NIN (NIN isn’t part of the meta solely because of Trick Attack, but because of it’s aggro utilities Shadewalker/Smokescreen) and to do something to break the DRG/BRD/MCH meta, which would involve addressing the piercing resistance down debuff.

Since SB did not introduce any new job that gave piercing resistance down (and did not just let BRD/MCH apply it themselves), BRD/MCH just shrugged their shoulders at the other jobs and continued to cling to DRG, because their damage is so directly affected by a DRG’s Disembowel (and BRD benefits A LOT from Battle Litany, but not as much as from Disembowel). To give a bit of insight, I main, and raid with, BRD, and with just Disembowel alone, I consistently do 400~500 more DPS for the entirety of the fight than if I don’t have Disembowel. Combine DRG’s Battle Litany with a SCH’s Chain Strategem, and my opener can easily burst for 8k to 9k DPS; without, it can sometimes break 7k if I get lucky with Pitch Perfect procs/if their’s an AST and they Expanded a Balance or gave me a Spear. And that’s fairly significant.

NIN has consistently been in the meta since it was launched in 2.4, and the job has never received any sort of significant nerfs to it. I really do like the utility NIN brings, but if SE wants to discourage the physical DPS meta (which I think is one reason why they nerfed Disembowel from 10% to 5% in SB), they need to give other jobs equivalents of Shade/Smoke. But such can be really difficult, because it may destroy the identity of NIN as a whole. And, not to speak ill here or anything, the developers have proven that they struggle with true job balance several times in the history of this game (see: BRD/MCH buff wars in HW, AST in general pre-3.4 and post-3.4).

I believe that the developers are planning to address a lot of the issues surrounding BLM right now, but I think the purpose of jobs like BLM and SAM are that their personal DPS serves as the “utility” they bring. But, unfortunately, a lot of groups much prefer the types of utility from jobs like NIN and BRD/MCH (hence why those three are meta), and the buffs from NIN and DRG (so, again, meta). And it’s fine if the devs want BLM/SAM to just be these godly, monstrous DPS machines, but, as it stands now, they really aren’t. Like I stated earlier, a skilled MNK can easily keep up with an equally-skilled SAM (there isn’t a terrible difference in the two’s personal DPS), and SMN just stomps all over BLM in terms of damage AND utility right now.

[NolLacnala]

People were actually complaining about SAM having the highest DPS? That's pretty ridiculous.
SE should put their foot down about some things... some obviously stupid things. Weren't people QQ'ing for months/years about how MNK needs to do more damage because it has no utility?

I, personally, was complaining that they're creating a slippery slope job design creep. MNK was the greedy DPS. Then, they decided to make SAM the greedy DPS, and gave MNK a thematic cooldown. What's to stop them from implementing another Job, saying "This is THE greedy DPS" and giving SAM a cooldown. People who played MNK wanted to be the greedy DPS, and SAM stole that from them. What's to stop X from stealing it from SAM?

[Tridus]

Yup, happens all the time. Mostly because people don't realize it was the RDM and not the healers getting people up. Even with my macro people tend to say thanks to the healers for all the res. Though, last night(you can find the story in the Tales from Duty Finder thread) I did get a comm, not sure who from, but mine went to the SAM, the only other person that didn't die during the whole thing aside from the wipe because Roofie got 100% on his bar.

You could be describing a Rabanastre I just healed, except that RDM got at least one comm (mine). The healers know who is doing the ressing. Other people don't tend to pay that close attention to it.

The comms aren't always a fair reflection of what's going on in the group. But keep up the good work, we appreciate our RDM helpers.

[Tridus]

Tanks for example. Paladin was highly defensive with no offence. But balance meant warriors and later darks also had to be able to tank well enough but those jobs bought more dps to the table and As a warrior/ dark could tank well enough. The extra defence of a paladin was useless and that's why they were shunned and given so many offensive buffs.

But that's a game design issue. The tank has to have enough defense to be able to do the encounter. If they don't, they can't tank it. More defense is nice for us healers, but if you're brushing up against enrages (not uncommon when pushing new content), more offense is better once you have the necessary defense.

A fight that can fully tax the healers to the limit is going to reward more defense because it creates a margin for error, but it's pretty hard to get that right without pushing it to "PLD is required".

Healers. Whm was raw healing power but again sch and later say had to be able to heal well enough for the sake of balance the result again was whms got left out as the extra healing power they bought was unnecessary. More offence was better.

Same problem. Any healer incapable of healing through the damage on a given encounter is fundamentally unable to do the encounter. If SE designed a fight where say AST is fundamentally incapable of doing the required healing, people would be very unhappy because the job is effectively incapable of doing its role at that point.

In a multiplayer game you can't have classes so imbalanced that people simply can't use a bunch of them. That's a great way to get angry customers. You can do that in a single player game because people can do whatever they want, and you can do it in things like tabletop RPGs because the DM can adjust and a veteran player might want to play something weaker when paired up with newbies so as to not overshadow them. In a multiplayer game like this? It doesn't work to have some jobs that can't do their primary role.

And with dps it's the same. That's why many took a drg over a monk because balance says drg damage must be comparable but dragon also had utility with litany and such. Which trumped the ever so slightly higher dps a monk offered.

DPS has it the worst because you've got ten jobs, four slots, and lots of people trying to fill them. That math doesn't work very well. Inevitably people will want the strongest ones they can get because they want a clear, and frankly the tanks & healers are more capable of being choosey. You always want a better player over a given job, but it's pretty hard to tell that in PF.

Balance is the problem. They need to really make jobs unique and less samey so they all bring something to the table.

If they all bring something to the table and they're all equally useful, they're balanced. If they're not all equally useful, this happens. If there is a wide disparity in their usefulness, some of them will be told to go level something else before being allowed into the party. Unless you want a bunch of jobs to never be played anymore, I don't see how encouraging that is going to accomplish anything.

The extra healing power of a whm for example should be powerful enough a group only needs one healer. Maybe a smn or redmage for a secondary raise. Should the worst happen. Or the extra defensive power of a old might mean it can survive mecha wars and drks might have to swap for. Meaning 1 pld could be enough. Or 2 of either war and dark.

So you bring one WHM, one PLD, and 6 DPS... or any other comp and 4 DPS? I guess if you want to obsolete four jobs and lower DPS wait times, that's an excellent idea?

But as long as they try and balance everything the system will never work. Utility will always be king because pure fps jobs just don't offer enough extra dps to male them worthwhile.

The system doesn't work because they're trying to balance it, implying it's not balanced. So the solution is to give up and make it more imbalanced? Seems legit.

Same with healers. Utility will always trump more unneeded healing power. And tanks fps will always trump extra mitigation that just isnt necessary

WHM seems to be doing just fine unless you're trying to inflate your logs, in which case you don't want one. The healers are in a pretty good spot right now, balance wise. All three are clearing stuff and there isn't a lot of exclusion (outside of parse runs, of course).

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I think you nailed it.
I doubt that SE is not seeing the problem - so my hope is that there will be some kind of change.

I wish I could be as optimistic, however Monk suffered an identical issue throughout all of Heavensward and they did absolutely nothing to alleviate it because "monk can clear content." Sadly, this has been their continual excuse—even citing it outright in regards to the DRK complaints. Now I will say as someone who switched to SAM for half this tier—during prog no less—every job can clear content without a problem. That won't stop the "meta" comp from being preferred. And until the devs except that large sweeping differences like we're seeing now will impact how people choose jobs, those preferences won't change. That isn't to say we need perfect equilibrium, just a closer balance so certain jobs (BRD/MCH, for example), don't suffer to the extent they do without DRG or that bringing a SAM/BLM makes up the difference for not having Litany and Trick Attack.

[Vhailor]

I'd wager a couple of deep-seeded design issues are also contributing to this.

The first is group size. Looking at FFXI, as an example, the hardest content typically had at least one, and often multiple, alliances. When you've got 18+ people, there's a role for most everyone (well, except the designated solo job in FFXI, BST). That's not to say people were entirely free to bring the jobs they wanted - there had to be enough of X type of role to handle the mechanics - but there was more flexibility.

In FFXIV, SE has stuck with a relatively small 8-person setup for the hardest content. This is an awkward middle ground; it's not so small that groups are close-knit and very familiar with each other, and it's not so large that people don't much care. It practically guarantees that groups will adhere to whatever the 'meta' happens to be at a given point in time.

There's also the nature of difficulty in FFXIV. The dodge-heavy and mechanic-heavy approach creates a scenario where every individual player is a potential weak link - which leads people to (rightly) mistrust a player's skill unless they've partied with them beforehand.

This lack of trust naturally lends itself to wanting every bit of margin available in a fight, i.e. attempting to adhere to the commonly accepted strategies and setups.

All in all, I'd just chalk it up to a natural downside of SE's decisions in regards to difficulty and party size. There are also, I'm sure, other components at play, many of which have been mentioned already.

I do know, however, that this isn't an issue that can easily be fixed by balance tweaks. Even if SE somehow managed to perfectly tune the balance around the end-game content at a particular moment in time, the balance would be broken by the next update cycle.

The best we can hope for, I think, is a sort of 'balance rotation' that ensures each job gets their time in the sun every so often. I wouldn't hold my breath given SE's past performance on this front, however, even going back to FFXI.

[Bobs]

I don't really have much sympathy really. This is how raids have been in all MMO, MOBA, any team game.

I'm forced to play SCH in my static not because I love healing but because I don't suck at it. I'd rather play RDM but no one wants a RDM right now and that's just how it is.

If you want to gear up a class you like sometimes you have to play a class you don't like. It's always been that way.

And please don't tell me "Oh I don't like to heal." Level up BRD then. No one is going to say no to brd, it will always be meta.

[HyoMinPark]

And please don't tell me "Oh I don't like to heal." Level up BRD then. No one is going to say no to brd, it will always be meta.

As an aside, please play BRD well if you’re going to level it. Running into way too many BRDs that level it because it’s “easy” or to be “meta” and they don’t even cross-role the two most basic BRD skills (Refresh/Tactician). It hurts me.

That being said, you can always form your own static to clear content with, and your static doesn’t have to be meta. Neither of the statics I’ve been in this tier have been meta (I’ve suffered all tier with no DRG), but they managed to clear content. My first made it to v3s and the one I’m in now has Neo on farm and our comp is DRK/WAR (DRK goes PLD for v4s), SCH/WHM, NIN/MNK/SMN/BRD (me). So it can be done, and there are a lot of groups out there that aren’t meta—meta is more for world-first/speed kill/parse run groups.

[ChloeGrace]

SE is horrible at job balancing, and I think it's on purpose. No one could nerf jobs that badly for that long and not be oblivious to it.
Case in point: WAR 2.0, PLD 3.0, BRD 3.0, DRK 4.0, SMN 4.0
There is plenty of documented evidence that certain jobs perform worse than others, and are thus shunned by the player base as not being viable (which is not true).
SE can't control how the player base reacts to their changes, but they could be much more proactive in balancing in the first place to avoid such problems in the first place.
I'm guessing there's little or no money in the budget for proper testing. It's no wonder they enrage many of their users nearly every major expansion.

[Paladinleeds]

snip

And to add to this, the pseudo-static I'm in decided to go really off the beaten path for O4S (mostly as a joke, but we figured we'd try it and see what went down). 2 PLDs, 2 WHMs, 4 BRDs. We tried a few times then decided "Hmm, let's try and get as close to a traditional party setup as possible" (we still had 2 BRDs because they both only had BRD levelled and we don't like excluding people). Still struggled, but the party synergy was there. This is all people who we've previously partied with (or are trusted friends of people we've partied with), so we know what we're getting in for. Because of this, it also enables us to just go off the beaten path, because it's a more friendly environment.