Constructive opinions on job balances for 5.0

[Aikaal]

Hello! I didn't seem that kind of thread, maybe I am wrong to make one but I will anyways

Little background about myself. I mained BLM for a long time until 3.x where I switched to Dragoon. Then I went Samurai 70 at SB to quickly revert to Dragoon. My favorite job? SAM > BLM = DRG. Unfortunately, there's really just one I can play seriously.

Job balancement is something that everyone has a different opinion on... Some people feel Samurai is fine because they have those 40k Direct Hit Crit and it's fine to think that. However, I have a different opinion and I feel certain things need to change. "Meta" is a curse which top tier groups find the most suitable group to clear content and most casual follow the "Meta" which top tier groups use. I'll avoid mentioning tanks and healers since this is a main DPS thread.

To me, 4 DPS comp should always be, 1 Melee, 1 Ranged, 1 Caster, 1 Wild Card. The Wild Card could be anything. However the "Meta" disagrees with that for various reasons which are valid. The "Meta" is like this. NIN - DRG - (BRD/MCH/SMN) (pick 2 of the 3) You could rep DRG for MNK or a ranged for RDM. It still would work.

The very first problem is raid utility synergy. A buff multiplies a buff. What I mean is that on my Dragoon. I have Heavy Trust (+10% buff) and Piercing Debuff (+5% buff) which means I have 15% passive damage buff. It is wrong. The way it is calculated is like this: 1 * 1.1 * 1.05 = 1,155. Take note that DoT tick aren't affected by weapon type debuffs. Now... Trick Attack doesn't add my Dragoon 10%. It gives 11.55% Because I always have a multiplier of 1.155 and if I stack my Dragon Sight, it now gives 12.705%. Raiders line up cooldowns because of that. Unfortunately for Samurai and Black Mage, they do not possess a raid utility meaning they do not help the raid unlike the "Meta" group. Someone can argue that Samurai bring Slashing Debuff, unfortunately for the "Meta" Ninja is a staple.

Ninja is a very big issue. Not Trick Attack but Shadewalker. At 4.0, SE stripped the utility toolkit from BLM and WHM to benefits all casters and healers. However, Shadewalker is mandatory in raid. It is so potent and strong, that a group who plays with a ninja and suddenly rep a ninja with another melee wipes on farm content. Shadewalker completely changes tank rotation and gives them a 1000 DPS. It is that silly. It is very simple in my eyes about Shadewalker. It should have become a role action! If the goal of SE is to make all fights tanked outbound of a tanking stance then they should bloody give the action to all melees. They also could just remove it which would force tank to adjust but would make Ninja less mandatory.

Weapon type debuff should also dispensary. I deeply apology but Piercing Debuff, at 5%, is still too strong on Ranged DPS. The only caster that trumps a ranged DPS is Summoner because they got absurdly buffed to the point they are viable. Now think of it. Why would you bring a selfish DPS class like BLM or SAM when you have a SMN which simply outdps then and provides a 2% raid DPS buff. Even if they buff them to match SMN DPS. DPS + 2% raid buff > DPS.

I am aware it is very likely we'll see true job balancement in a future expansion but the meta hasn't changed in the slightest since 2 expansions. Monk is a bit more viable but DRG utility still trumps Brotherhood.

Finally, this is purely my opinion but balancing with buffs only is bad in my book. Yes, nerf does make it feel to most people that it's an undeserved punishment for a casual stand point. Unfortunately the community follow the hardcor prog. 3k viewers stream happened during UCoB. Despite not playing as dedicated as them, most people aspire to be like them. What originally motivated me to be doing hardcore prog back in 2.x and 3.x was admiration from that community. When that community rules out a job is mandatory such as Ninja. Then it is too strong and must be balanced down or clip some of their personal utility toolkit.

But yeah... I like playing Dragoon. I wouldn't mind being able to play Samurai but it's just not viable. Especially in content like UCoB. I'm better off being useful to my group lol.

[Sylvain]

Well, Wow struggled with that for years.
They made a simple fix, no raid buff.
Everyone is self sustainable.

The first thing that would need to go are the weapon type debuff.

They're just too potent.

Buffs like trick attack are imo less of a concern. While they play in the balance, everyone benefit from them, so there is no job specific synergy.

If they'd keep raid buff to these the balance would be much easier to attain. Even pure dps could work better.

But as long the weapon debuff exist, the current meta won't change unless SE apply to insane buff to BLM and RDM

[Lina_Slayer]

I agree with you Shadewalker should be a role action (tho it will probably make agroo too easy) I even said it in other thread to me it makes no sense SAM/MNK give less total dps but are a tank nightmare (only diversion to control their agroo), while NIN is a tank dream.

Also TA should just drop to 8% next patch, SE should not be afraid to nerf OP jobs, I also would easily trade the 1% buff Hypercharge got last patch for 1 more second of Overheat on MCH, it is crazy that SB was supposed to lower the floor of the classes and MCH has some kind of technical floor that make it just impossible to play properly in my (and many others) ping.

For me BRD/MCH/SMN are the most balanced jobs (MCH clunkyness aside) in the game right now because they are interchangeable, people like to call SMN OP but they are just an option over the 2 ranged physical jobs, in an ideal scenario any job that is weaker than those should be buffed to their level while the stronger and mandatory jobs (DRG/NIN) should be nerfed so nothing is mandatory and everything is truly viable (not viable in the sense of being able to clear content but being able to actually justify their spot in a raid), I know the thread is about 5.0 but I really fell most of the changes could happen now in 4.2 since just a couple of number tweaks should be enough to make the situation leaps and bonds better.

[Karshan]

Agreed with most stuff, but just to correct : devotion is 2% dps buff now that it's AoE, a lot of people seem to have only seen the "becomes multitarget" part, the heal buff remained but dps buff got nerfed. The rest of SMN got overbuffed though, yeah.

There should either be equivalence of synergy or ridance of it

[Aikaal]

Woops, not Summoner expert here. Kinda of glad I'm not crazy

[SpeckledBurd]

Allow Bard and Machinist to Provide their own piercing debuff or do away with physical damage debuffs in their entirety. Change the effect of Diversion to that of Shadewalker and make Shadewalker a targeted Shade Shift so Ninja doesn't have a super-monopoly on aggro shenanigans. Stop making Greased Lightning management be infinitely more terrible than other job buffs. Also in general, rework the major cooldowns such as Brotherhood, Aetherpact, Leylines, etc. that don't come in 60 second intervals so they align better with the majority of major raid buffs.

[wereotter]

Melee DPS have been pretty shafted for several years now when you look at the DRG/NIN meta that exists, and this is largely because healers want a BRD/MCH for refresh, which means you want a DRG for piercing debuff and NIN for enmity management and slashing debuff (in case you don't have a WAR).

I think one of the biggest changes they could make that will help open this up is eliminate damage types. Make it so that there's just physical damage resistance down and magical damage resistance down. Maybe that resistance could be divided something like DEX jobs like NIN/BRD/MCH apply magic resistance down and MNK/DRG/SAM apply physical resistance down. This still will make certain roles dependent on others, but it opens it up to one of each of those three jobs.

Party buffs should also all be brought in line with each other. Right now we have some that are clearly better (Battle Litany and Trick Attack) and some that are pretty party composition dependent (Brotherhood and Embolden) and some that are just worse versions of ones that already exist (Hypercharge and Devotion). These buffs need to be balanced out in such a way that they're all more or less even and perhaps only make a difference on things like, you want a Dragoon for crit up if you're taking a bard and a monk, but maybe you want other buffs if you're using a samurai and machinist.

I think the talk of shade walker being moved to a role action would be an overall bad move for the game. Tanking enmity would become way too easy if all four DPS are able to dump their agro onto you. Honestly if you wanted to balance things out, eliminate the skill entirely and maybe just leave ninjas with smokescreen. Also allow the ninja to apply that to themselves.

[Llugen]

I feel like I remember reading a BLM guide by you back in the day, or a calculator...? I forget. You and Puro Strider. Anyway, good to hear from you!


So I definitely agree that the passive weapon damage increases should either go or be more accommodating. DRG is the only piercing and MNK is the only blunt, and that's just poor design. I was really expecting RDM to have piercing up at 4.0 launch, but I digress.

This "locks in" DRG+BRD and by extension DRG+BRD+MCH, and it's been an issue for quite a long time. I like the idea of class synergy, but there should be many options for it: Consider that Ifrit should have blunt down so that monks in the group don't have to use dragon kick. RDM could have piercing so you could run RDM + BRD and not suffer from no disembowel. Slashing... is pretty fine. There's been talk of providing BLM with magic vuln which would be great caster comp incentive (down with the physical meta!), especially if in 5.0 they release Rune Knight or Blue Mage (tanks).

The dilemma is that there are things that only come from one class that should come from at least two if not more. The same thing with Shadewalker; there was a thread recently discussing how the "weakest" melee gets the enmity skill while the strongest (SAM/MNK) suffer from enmity issues with basically no assistance. This seems backward; let NIN keep trick attack (and maybe something else new) but Shadewalker should be a melee role pool ability.

Furthermore, what I don't like is a big separation between physical and magical damage from things like embolden and brotherhood and radiant shield/contagion. This gives large incentive to stack a fully physical party (so BRD+MCH), particularly since we have no tank currently that is purely magic damage (only PLD's burst). This is something that should be addressed.


I generally agree with your "sometimes nerfs are needed over buffs" stance, but I currently believe that nothing needs to be nerfed from a damage standpoint, only BLM and DRK need buffs (and a reconsideration for shadewalker/trick attack/disembowel, I guess if that counts as a "nerf").

[Aikaal]

I feel like I remember reading a BLM guide by you back in the day, or a calculator...? I forget. You and Puro Strider. Anyway, good to hear from you!

I did make something like that back in 2.x / 3.x. I'm not Puro Strider lol.

If Shadewalker feeling would be too op as a role action. Removing it / nerfing the ability and put it as a role action would be better. (30% threat let's say) It could literally replace Diversion for melees.

I like the idea of a general physical vuln down and magic vuln down. Magic vuln down could comme from T3 let's say. Something that should always be up anyways

[Sunako]

Consider that Ifrit should have blunt down so that monks in the group don't have to use dragon kick.

Ifrit was blunt/slashing physical damage until 3.0. Ifrit auto attacks was slashing and skills blunt, but they changed it after 3.0 and it become 100% magical damage. Now only physical damage skill summoner have is Shadow Flare.