The Unofficial "Why is this still a thing" Thread

[HyoMinPark]

That's very debatable; their burst is high, the enmity generation overall isn't nearly as high as many other jobs. Anyway, both bard and machinist have 2 enmity-halving skills exclusive to them.

Hello, a BRD here. o/

While I can’t speak for others, I would take Diversion’s 90% reduction in enmity generation over Refresh’s/Tactician’s 50% aggro dump. They rarely serve to be sufficient, because I always end up crawling back up to #2 before one (or both) are off cooldown, since a BRD bursts every 80 seconds when they enter Minuet+Raging Strikes. Diversion would serve much better for these burst phases, since it will reduce your aggro generation by 90% for 30 seconds, rather than just half it. Especially since Refresh/Tacitician should be used first and foremost for resource replenishment, not for me to save my own skin. :x I’d happily trade the dumps for an enmity queller.

About the second part, both dark knight and paladin depend on a slashing resistance down capable job. Casters are a whole different can of worms.

The difference with DRK and PLD is that there are options for the slashing debuff: WAR, NIN, and SAM. BRD/MCH have 1 option for piercing, and one option only: DRG. In addition, all other DPS jobs can apply their own resistance down debuff (slashing, piercing, blunt); BRD/MCH are the only ones who do not have that ability, and they lose out on 400~500 DPS because of it. Casters’ damage is calculated without having to rely on a “magic resistance down” debuff; they don’t have the same problems BRD/MCH do.

Honestly, the developers need to either give BRD/MCH piercing resistance down, or remove it from the game (and buff potencies accordingly for DRG, BRD and MCH; because DRG will die if they don’t buff its potencies). Honestly, all the resistance down debuffs need to go. Considering all DPS jobs can apply their own save two, there’s no reason to have them. There’s the “they offer synergy” argument, but the only “synergy” piercing has created is the physical meta of DRG/BRD/MCH that has been present since Creator. People love to hate on the meta, well the easiest way to break it is to remove piercing. Because that’s what’s holding together DRG/BRD/MCH.

Stoneskin has a much longer duration, can be applied out of combat, and had an aoe form that could be used prepull. It also can be used on someone outside your party. Benison is not superior, not by a longshot.

The issue with Stoneskin’s duration is that you rarely benefited from the full 30 minutes; most Stoneskins were broken pretty quickly upon entering combat, especially on a tank where they are more useful. Stoneskin II could only be applied outside of combat, thereby limiting its effectiveness. It would have been far more effective as an AOE shield/mitigation option if WHMs could have used it during combat. But, since they couldn’t, it was essentially worthless.

I would take Benison over Stoneskin. It costs nothing to use (other than it will still eat your lilies to reduce the CD timer, but it doesn’t cost MP like Stoneskin did), is an oGCD I can weave between GCDs, and it mitigates more (15% of a target’s max HP as opposed to Stoneskin’s 10%).

[DarkDedede]

Oh I think I'm going to like this thread. Here are a few things, off the top of my head.

The Crafting Log being poorly organized, with very limited options for organizing recipes ourselves. Outside or level range, and text search, all new recipes are just dumped in groups. If we had the option to reorganize the recipes into custom categories, I would spend a night or two sorting out the whole thing.

Mastercraft recipes not recording completion. I know it's a cheap and easy way to save server space, or some such nonsense. However, I just find it very inconsistent with the rest of the UI that Masterbook recipes do not record completion status.

The retainer UI. I've said this before, one would think that for a part of the game that is generating potential additional revenue for this game, the UI wouldn't be so neglected.

Retainers not being able to join GC squadrons. Random npcs, that I'm sure are also in other squadrons, just don't do it for me. I made the retainer characters myself. Let me adventure with them.

Also, not being able to check if a retainer name is taken until the very last step of the retainer creation process. I'm sure I'm not the only one that spent a good amount of time creating a retainer character, with a specific name in mind, only to find out that the name is taken after going through the trouble of going through the entire process.

The fact that there are over 700 fish in this game, and an overwhelming majority of them are completely useless.

Fireworks not having a crafting recipe.

Fireworks being in forbidden magically sealed sacks

Minion Guide not having a search or sort function, yet the Verminion window does have a sort feature.

Mini Cactpot not increasing its payout since being introduced.

Deck restrictions on Triple Triad.

Needing an npc to "sell" duplicate cards. It would be much easier to just have the ability to convert them to points wherever, or the option to trade them.

Shards

Rubber

No alt-friendly features.

"Polar" bears in Coerthas.

[Tanathya]

Hello, a BRD here. o/

While I can’t speak for others, I would take Diversion’s 90% reduction in enmity generation over Refresh’s/Tactician’s 50% aggro dump.

On BRD, I would too, I was just pointing out how BRD and MCH both have 2 skills that reduce the enmity by half. In fact, both Refresh and Tactician should have some sort of enmity generation reduction attached to them on top of the dump.

It makes little sense Bard and Machinist are forced to burn utility abilities to half their aggro when a skill exists purely to accommodate that problem. Say a scenario occurs where the group needs Tactician. Oops, the Bard used it to cut their aggro or they'll rip from the tank. And a good Bard will rip before a Caster, though Black Mage moves close. None of the melee remotely touch Bard or Machinists aggro burst.

What is the likelihood you will have a group without Samurai, Ninja or Warrior? Three jobs provide Slashing yet only one provides Piercing despite three jobs benefiting from it. Casters are irrelevant since their damage isn't reliant on a utility like range and melee.

Refresh and Tactician, especially the first, is usually used on CD (note the "usually" there), and Tactician is normally up there on demand. Again, I would attach an enmity generation reduction to them on top of that. The burst is high, the enmity generation after that isn't. And I can tell you as a samurai, whose burst isn't exactly brilliant, as I struggled not to grab the hate off a tank shortly after the fights began when Diversion was crappy, on Deltascape Savage.

The likelihood of having a SAM, a NIN, or a WAR has nothing to do with the fact that PLD and DRK don't have it. DRG isn't only invited for their piercing resistance down, but also for their decent damage on top of Battle Littany and Dragon Sight. So, by that logic, the likelihood of having a DRG is quite high. It's as if they gave BRD and MCH their own piercing resistance down and the next step would be to ask for a Battle Littany kind of skill for themselves.

I would just take these resistances down away, they're not interesting in the least.

[Miste]

i am not too sure if it was a good reason... SCH and AST would still had the physical protect and on top of that super virus, disable, fey covenant, sacred soil and collective unconscious (the bubbles do stack, don't they?). enough tools to cover the lack in magic defense for those raid busters...

Not denying those were all great abilities, but we no longer have some of those and even if we did some fights have a high amount of magic AoE raid damage.

Have you been in O6S or O8S? The amount of AoE magic damage going out is high so the tools right now wouldn't cover it all.

You also have to take into account SCH using all their stacks on Sacred Soil means they can't use it on Lustrate/Excog/Indom/Energy Drain. So yeah they can pop a Sacred Soil every 30s to try to make up for the fact they don't have Proshell, but they are losing other tools and/or MP/DPS.

Collective Unconscious has a 90s cooldown not nearly short enough to handle all the AoE damage in some of the savage turns. It also has a server tick issue to proc the mitigation/regen which can cause ASTs to loose up to 3 GCDs trying to proc it. So it is a clunky ability and has downsides of being forced to channel it and unable to cast or move and also losing GCDs for other healing and/or DPS.

Also none of these tools are a cast it and forget it type thing like Protect is (minus death and having to recast once in awhile). So other healers would have to use more resources and waste healing and DPS uptime to mitigate.

If AST and SCH no longer had Proshell (which we have right now) then likely any comp without a WHM would be at a pretty big disadvantage since the group as a whole would take a lot more overall AoE damage throughout the fight.

They could just make Protect a spell every healer gets instead of it taking up a role skill slot tho....but then again Esuna really needs that too.

[VanilleFang]

Stoneskin has a much longer duration, can be applied out of combat, and had an aoe form that could be used prepull. It also can be used on someone outside your party. Benison is not superior, not by a longshot.

Lmao. You're joking right?

The duration on SS was generally pointless since the shield was usually destroyed long before it would expire.

It being applied outside combat was more a nuisance than anything. I had never seen SS save someone at the start of a fight.

SS2 is not the same as SS so using that as a reason that SS was better is laughable.

What does DB bring instead? It's oGCD and costs 0 MP. SS had a cast time of 3s, meaning it had a longer cast time than the GCD. It was also fairly expensive to cast, in terms of MP. DB also has a stronger shield.

So yes DB is superior to SS.

[KaivaC]

You know how I'd fix Protect? Move protect to WHM-only. Bring Stone Skin back, Scholar and AST don't get it at all. They have their own shields. Now make stone skin overwrite regen/medica II.

While I am under the opinion that all healers should have their own versions of the basic 'required skills' such as Protect and Esuna, this is a bad idea. It's already bad enough when I use AST and I cannot be sure if my co-AST or co-SCH will cooperate with me to not overwrite whatever buffs I have up. Adding Stoneskin II into that mix with WHM will just make this needlessly complicated. Also...while we have our own shields, yes, it's not a long-lasting defensive mitigation. Honestly, I'd prefer if all three jobs had their own protect version, and they each brought something different to the table instead. Not sure how you justify removing protect from AST/SCH because 'they have their own'. It's not the same thing.

[ImDingDing]

Protect. It just takes up cross role space. I'm certain they could have done some math and edited damage taken so protect would no longer be necessary.

It punishes death in battle.

[MoroMurasaki]

The likelihood of having a SAM, a NIN, or a WAR has nothing to do with the fact that PLD and DRK don't have it. DRG isn't only invited for their piercing resistance down, but also for their decent damage on top of Battle Littany and Dragon Sight. So, by that logic, the likelihood of having a DRG is quite high. It's as if they gave BRD and MCH their own piercing resistance down and the next step would be to ask for a Battle Littany kind of skill for themselves.

I don't plan on doing the exact math but the likelihood of having one of 3 jobs in your comp for slashing resistance down which benefits 5 jobs (two of which you are guaranteed to have) seems a lot stronger than the likelihood of having one of one jobs in your party with piercing down which benefits 3 jobs (which are almost never triple stacked) and gives a mild buff to a fourth.

To put it bluntly any static thag doesn't have a NIN in it is shooting it's self in the foot. Trick + Shadewalker/Smokescreen + Slashing debuff is amazing utility. No one is going to ignore slashing resistance down because it always buffs at least the user of the debuff and both tanks.

I don't underatand how you're comparing those two things or how you made the (huge) leap to the idea that BRD/MCH would ask for some form of Litany as well - this isn't a discussion about killing DRG just about making resistance down debuffs remotely equitable.

Stop comparing apples to potatoes.

[Tanathya]

I don't plan on doing the exact math but the likelihood of having one of 3 jobs in your comp for slashing resistance down which benefits 5 jobs (two of which you are guaranteed to have) seems a lot stronger than the likelihood of having one of one jobs in your party with piercing down which benefits 3 jobs (which are almost never triple stacked) and gives a mild buff to a fourth.

To put it bluntly any static thag doesn't have a NIN in it is shooting it's self in the foot. Trick + Shadewalker/Smokescreen + Slashing debuff is amazing utility. No one is going to ignore slashing resistance down because it always buffs at least the user of the debuff and both tanks.

I don't underatand how you're comparing those two things or how you made the (huge) leap to the idea that BRD/MCH would ask for some form of Litany as well - this isn't a discussion about killing DRG just about making resistance down debuffs remotely equitable.

Stop comparing apples to potatoes.

I'm not comparing crap, I'm enforcing the idea of having them resistance down effects gone. Looking at the bigger picture here, pointing out how this isn't about "since I don't have it, you shouldn't either", but rather mentioning that many jobs depend on others just for something that shouldn't exist, such as those. And me being a SAM speaks volumes, as it's literally the only piece of support I could possibly bring in to a party.

[Ghishlain]

Stoneskin has a much longer duration, can be applied out of combat, and had an aoe form that could be used prepull. It also can be used on someone outside your party. Benison is not superior, not by a longshot.

I was a proponent for Divine Benison being better than Stoneskin even before the Lily change and it's even better now that is has no Lily cost. A 0MP oGCD that provides more mitigation than non-traited Stoneskin meant it would be used significantly more often than Stoneskin. Stoneskin suffered from being inefficient when Cure II would cast faster and provide more HP than Stoneskin's eHP - especially if the target was a non-tank. Duration of Stoneskin means nothing when most of the buff wouldn't even last beyond 10 seconds on a tank.

Divine Benison fixed everything that made Stoneskin horribly inefficient and gave a very powerful tool to the WHM kit in the process. I believe that Divine Benison is miles ahead of the old Stoneskin iterations.