Please Stop saying Nerf ___

[Bourne_Endeavor]

SE still needs to make more jobs work well with others and buff skills from jobs that need it or they can remove slashing, peircing, blunt damage from all jobs and boost all jobs damage accordingly, something i fear they will do since so many jobs are left out from party compositions. we will never have jobs on a even playing field, either your bring DPS, Utility, or alittle of both. the problem is some jobs dont have enough to satisfy the group, or hardly anything helpful for the party. looking at MCH/BRD, their whole 3.0 toolkit was placed in Melee and casters role action and they never gave MCH compensation for its lose but BRD was greatly compensated. Hell the MCH/WHM got it the worse in 4.0. for losing their toolkit to help others fill role actions, the DRK is a bad design for what people have to endure just to push out damage. Hopefully they have been listening to people about WHM/MCH/DRK and what needs improving for these three jobs, i think the rest are in a good spot for now.

You fear they will remove slashing, blunt and piercing? I'm praying they finally do. Despite being a DRG main myself, I fancy bouncing jobs yet feel obligated to stay on DRG otherwise my group loses 400 damage for no damn reason. It more or less assures DRG will always be a meta lock because like I said, very few range DPS want anything to do with a group running without one.

And the jobs are in a decent spot at best. NIN/DRG still utterly dominates the melee scene because MNK and SAM simply lack any answer to Trick Attack, Litany and aggro management. If Piercing dies, this may open up the DRG spot but NIN's locked pretty tightly. On the caster side, RDM could use better support options as its still a noticeably inferior choice over BLM/SMN outside prog.

[Shurrikhan]

MNK is very powerful more so in triple melee comps. So is Samurai under the right circumstances like in M/F where Trick Attacks valued is halved.

Yet no job gets as much reliably high benefit out of NIN as SAM. Higan, Midare, and 80+ Kenki's worth of oGCD damage (including a Guren every other TA)... MCH is very close but harder to sync TA to, while BLM requires specific Spell Speeds and no downtime.

In the end, a huge amount of the strength comes down not only to pure strength (minus specific fight-based losses), but to the LCMs by which CDs can be stacked. SAM runs better with MCH, RDM, NIN than DRG, MNK, BRD simply due to its CDs.

But that 5% Piercing damn near forces the DRG if you need Refresh, which in turn forces 60/90/180 CDs over 60/120, causing MCH's general rDPS inefficiency compared to Bard to in turn nerf RDM, SAM, and their compositions.

You fear they will remove slashing, blunt and piercing? I'm praying they finally do. Despite being a DRG main myself, I fancy bouncing jobs yet feel obligated to stay on DRG otherwise my group loses 400 damage for no damn reason. It more or less assures DRG will always be a meta lock because like I said, very few range DPS want anything to do with a group running without one.

And the jobs are in a decent spot at best. NIN/DRG still utterly dominates the melee scene because MNK and SAM simply lack any answer to Trick Attack, Litany and aggro management. If Piercing dies, this may open up the DRG spot but NIN's locked pretty tightly. On the caster side, RDM could use better support options as its still a noticeably inferior choice over BLM/SMN outside prog.

That would be to apply a market-wipe solution to a problem of limited providers, though. We don't need to remove Piercing, and by established precedent Blunt and Slashing, just to deal with DRG being required. Just allow the individual ranged a way to apply their own Piercing and you'd be set, with some of the same mild coordination encouraged by other redundancies like SAM/WAR/NIN. Maybe attach it to a procced Clean Shot or any Bard critical strike weaponskill, lasting for a shorter duration. RDM is even more easily fixed: allow Embolden to affect all damage, as not to punish any second caster with it.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

That would be to apply a market-wipe solution to a problem of limited providers, though. We don't need to remove Piercing, and by established precedent Blunt and Slashing, just to deal with DRG being required. Just allow the individual ranged a way to apply their own Piercing and you'd be set, with some of the same mild coordination encouraged by other redundancies like SAM/WAR/NIN. Maybe attach it to a procced Clean Shot or any Bard critical strike weaponskill, lasting for a shorter duration. RDM is even more easily fixed: allow Embolden to affect all damage, as not to punish any second caster with it.

This makes Piercing entirely redundant. What purpose does it serve if Heavy Shot applies it? Bards always spam Heavy Shot, thus they will never be without piercing. And therein lies the issue with these debuffs to begin with. They aren't interesting. As a DRG, I very seldom think about piercing because there are exceptionally few scenarios where I won't do a Chaos Thrust combo. In fact, the only times I have to consider it this entire expansion is in M/F and UwU due to switching targets or jumping bosses. Like Lyth said, I suspect they just couldn't be bothered to recalculate potencies, though the devs have mentioned they liked this supposed synergy. Alas, there isn't any job synergy. There is one comp which has dominated since Creator.

Regardless, if they were to simply slap Piercing on BRD/MCH, then DRG needs a buff as it effectively lost 400 rDPS which immediately kills it.

[Brightamethyst]

And therein lies the issue with these debuffs to begin with. They aren't interesting.

Pretty much this. The inherent issue with maintenance buffs/debuffs is that they're just plain boring and not fun. They're either mostly passive and boring (Hot shot, Huton), or finicky and prone to falling off with the slightest break for mechanics (BotD, Greased Lightning.)

I'd rather have a short term buff that makes me feel like a god when I have it (Summon Bahamut) than a maintenance buff that makes me feel like crap when I don't (Enochian.)