5.2+ Job Balance Feedback Thread

[Astryoneus]

Dragoon
Consider removing Dragon Sight, and replacing it with Battle Litany.

The playerbase at large feels like Dragoon's general at range damage and Piercing Talon in it's current iteration encourages "wall camping" because of it's considerably big potency when used at range and the ability having no cooldown. Either lowering potencies, adding a cooldown to Piercing Talon or removing the "Extends Blood of the Dragon or Life of the Dragon duration by 10s, to a maximum of 30s" effect from the ability would help to fix this issue.

[Astryoneus]

Ninja
Changing Ill Wind into Jugulate (AoE into single target Silence) from the past would help balance Ninja. No decrease in potency needed.

[Astryoneus]

Machinist
Machinist needs Between The Eyes or some other form of defnitive burst. Currently the burst window for Machinist is with Drill and Hypercharge (all of them on the GCD) which does not compare to, for example, Dancer's definitive burst window. Increasing the Hypercharge combo potencies would be ideal, if Hypercharge is to remain as the main burst window of the Job. In it's current iteration, the Job feels clunky to use and the reward to effort ratio is not in the right place.

[Esmoire]

Re: Tank
I am in favour of making Rampart baseline, yes. When they gave everyone a unified medkit with the same healing potencies the same time they boosted ranged and healer HP, they kind of flattened the overall HP pool of the jobs. The result is in, some ways, while tanks improve team defence, the tanks themselves can feel a bit flimsy for their name. Especially when we are giving melee 50% DR CDs. To make it more insulting, PLD and WAR have actions that are vastly improved when used with Rampart. It's hard to not feel a little ripped off if for some reason you don't have Rampart chosen, and it doesn't feel like a reasonable choice.

Speaking of WAR, if they are not going to let us self-target Nascent Flash, at least put self-healing on Decimate/Chaotic Cyclone. Would give WAR some much-needed sustain in FL and RW with minimal impact on Feast.

As a last note, tank adrenaline while okay for Feast and FL, kind of sucks for RW. Even if you stick with your party, the environment is frantic and you'll almost always have someone in a mech. This means the tank is suffering a self-stun for 25% mitigation on maybe 3 people in a world where we now have powerful oGCDs giving that kind of mitigation where it matters more, which is typically one target. I'd like if it could be made better here somehow.

Re: Dragoon
I appreciate what they were trying to do with dragoon in making them this sort of midranged specialist though IMO they are overperforming in FL and RW. The stickiness of a monk with half of the reach of a ranged DPS, while still getting melee damage bonus/mitigation. Not as sturdy as SAM but has a get out of jail free card on a short CD. I like having the extended reach on some of their options but yeah maybe require a little more commitment.

Re: Healing Reduction
With regards to healing reduction, I think the most elegant solution would be is to have only the highest available apply and leave it at that. On one hand it sucks because if you are a DRK being randomly matched and get a SCH, it feels like you are getting less value out of your lineup, but it's the lesser evil compared to nerfing in isolation. Not sure if they work additively or multiplicatively now (via subtraction), but the latter would be a soft nerf. Two 20% debuffs would be 64% healing received, rather than 60%

Some other thoughts
While the community didn't address monk, I do think it's fallen off in FL compared to the other melee. Pre 5.1, the burst justified their limitations, since with the +15% damage they would absolutely flatten ranged before healers could respond. Now that everyone has potions and everyone is kind of a ranged DPS in a way, monk isn't carrying their weight as much IMO. Maybe they should be given a ranged attack to maintain GL. While it's understandable DRG is better than them right now when it's broken, IMO they are a little behind NIN and SAM as well in this environment.

[Praesul]

Dark Knight
We all know DRK, and to be more specific Edge of Shadow is pretty problematic right now, but I feel like most suggestions to the skill tend to go a bit far. I don't agree that the skill should deal less damage, or be nerfed to 10% instead of 20%. 10% is basically irrelevant, at that number it's almost not even noticeable whether it's reducing any healing or not. If we wanted to keep it just as spammable, then maybe it'd be an alright path to go? But I think the bigger issue is how often the debuff can be applied more than anything else.

I think the MP cost of EoS should simply be increased, enough so that passive MP regen is not enough to fund it so you have to make conscious effort tom keep your MP pool at a good amount. With TBN being 0 MP, all your MP goes exclusively to EoS which makes it far too easy to manage. I do think TBN should be free, because now that every tank has a party support button it would be unfair for one to arbitrarily have a cost while the others are free and on the same cooldown.

I think increasing the cost to perhaps 3300 or higher would go a long way to putting the job back in line. At 3.3k the ability can only be used a maximum of 3 times in a row, and enough of a cost that you would struggle to keep uptime on the Darkside buff unless you made an effort in your MP management. The MP cost could even be a bit higher, to account for passive MP ticks (250 roughly every 3 secs). In two souleater combos you'd get back about 1.5k MP when taking into account passive MP regen, more if you had a bloodspiller held. But I feel 5k or more would be far too restrictive with the way the ability works now, so I'd say 3.3k~ is a good spot. If the MP cost were increased any further I'd say the duration of the debuff should be higher to compensate otherwise it would be too weak.

As for the debuff stacking being problematic...The devs would have to change how stacking currently works otherwise it wouldn't be consistent. Damage up and damage down effects stack, like caster LB + inner chaos + feint and whatnot, which are already strong effects than healing down. To have them not stack would be confusing and inconsistent. I think the bigger issue is how consistently available the debuffs are rather than the effect itself. When it comes to damage up effects they're locked behind cooldowns (as is the case with feint, phantom dart, caster LB etc), so if you hit the availability of EoS and Biolysis I think it'd be the proper route to go.

I really like the way EoS works and I feel like it'd be a shame to gut it or change the way it functions. More diversity is good, and if anything I feel like the other tanks should be brought up to DRK's level rather than the job be brought down.

Warrior
Honestly WAR is in a pretty good spot, it's just in comparison to DRK it's not as good. If any changes were to be made to the job, they should be small ones rather than anything major.

I like the idea of Onslaught being a stun again, that on its own would be really good (working under the assumption that all tank stuns get changed too, with low blow being removed from WAR).

I also think IC should generate some gauge again, WAR's personal damage feels lacking and I understand that it's balanced out by the fact that IC increases your party's damage, but the damage still feels lower than it should be.
Also i think most of the WAR playerbase can agree that NF should be self castable. Using it on yourself without a party member is a buff for rare situations where you're by yourself, but is actually detrimental in party play. You'd be losing out on half of the skill's effect if you use it just on yourself, so I feel like it's not really a buff but more of a tradeoff. (It should also be self castable in pve, reeee)

[snipski]

Just make the DRK Healing down debuff not stack with Scholars healing down debuff and nerf TBN abit, because TBN is stupidly powerful it migates so much damage and can save you alot compared to the other tanks version.

As a Ninja Main , Dragoon needs to be nerfed down in overall damage because holy shit Dragoons pulling 300k or even 400k with dancer just isn't right, as a Ninja im glad if i can pull 250k dmg in a match.
And the Piercing Talon needs to be nerfed down in potency or something, force Dragoon to having to be in melee range more.

Samurai, Monk and Ninja seems fairly balanced i would love having trick attack back to 20% because how hard it is to use correctly in the small Feast map you almost always end up getting it interrupted or getting hit by some aoe in there.

[LxrdKeiji]

For ninja
I believe an aoe silence feels kinda OP considering you can go invisible and shukuchi. After the duration Nerf, the silence just feels lack luster now and doesn't really have an impact as the 1 sec is partially negligible. I'd suggest giving us jugulate back in play of Ill wind and increasing the duration to its original 2 seconds. This will return ninja to being more of a single target assassin as an aoe silence is more mage like and doesn't really fit with the assassin archetype. The loss of a stun, silence and root really hurt ninja combined with increasing damage made it lose its original identity of being a utility assassin.

In general
Some classes losing CC was a major turn off in general. I feel some classes lost forms of counterplay and play making abilities because of it, along with their archetype niche/identity. There was also a bit of skill and fun when coordinating CCs and Anti CC to make a play or defend yourself. That is now lost so we only have to coordinate bursts. Also as a whole I feel like tanks and healer identities are skewed because of the cc changes as well. All combined it, I feel it messes up unique comps in Team ranked.

Tanks
To go with thee above, I believe that in pvp we have to reconsider tank archetypes again. Should only tanks be capable of CC? If so why do they all have to have the same CC across all classes. When I look at other pvp games or mobas like league, you have various tank archetypes. Bruisers, vanguards, juggernauts, etc. And now that's gone because all tanks pretty much have the same kit with just slightly varying Mitigation and damage skills. With DPS losing some of their CC it feels like tanks are literally only there to be meat shields and peel without any type of uniqueness between the 4 tanks. That's just how I feel currently. Although I do enjoy how tanks don't feel unkillable this patch, so that's a plus I'd like to keep.

Healers
After Tanks got toned down/changed. Why is this still the only class that seems unkillable, especially with the loss of CC on most classes? I would be all for making healers less of a heal bot, in exchange for slightly more damage or utility to solidify them into the support role. And, as with tanks, the homogenization of healer role abilities and loss of some cc made it feel like healers loss a bit of their individual identity.

[LxrdKeiji]

Machinist
Machinist is kind of clunky and weird as a whole. the hypercharge combo just feels clunky, with both Gauss round and ricochet, as the animation cast cause CD clipping. My solution to this would be to remove the ricochet CD reduction from heat blast and add it to auto crossbow. This would give it an aoe combo and single target combo. Also both bio blaster and blank having low range (For a ranged class) and being necessary for burst feels clunky as you would not normally go into melee range to attack. If this is for balance reasons, I would make bio blaster be an OGCD to make up for it. And with Air anchor, drill and heatblast sharing a GCD it just feels hard to grasp what would be an ideal burst phase for this class. With all of those combined MCH just doesn't flow like the other ranged dps classes. They all have some type of combo that flows with silence and a quick 3-4k combo for an execute if they have to finish off. Idk what could be done with this class.

[Sotatsu]

All jobs:

Medical Kit:

-Reduce the animation's duration, so it activates almost instantly, like the dancer action 'Curing Waltz'.

Most of the time, players have to use this action while under high pressure, when they are bursted by the enemy team. In these moments, each second and action is crutial if you want to stay alive, and in its current state, I think the medical kit is way too slow to activate.

[Waaltar]

Ranged/Caster
The playerbase feels Ranged Physical and Casters having close-range AoE (Enchanted Moulinet/Quick Nock/Spread Shot) is a poor design choice. The design mainly affects Frontline and Rival Wing modes, where moving in close-range to use AoE abilities often gets you killed very quickly, especially because it feels like these abilities were added with Frontline in mind.

Examples: Wide Volley for Bard, Grenade Shot for Machinist, a reworked Contre Sixte (on the GCD, gauge cost added) for Red Mage.

After I realized it wasn't just me, I find it funny now how often Black Mage casts their adrenaline rush and then dies. Range is based on the center of the circle and it's a big circle so you have to get pretty close to cast it on a group. Then everyone sees the aoe marker and the Black Mage gets focused while doing their long cast time and can't use medical kit etc until after. I think it's only slightly better for ranged classes with the line attack but the damage is weak and if I get hit with it, I usually have medical kit to use or I wouldn't be in range. And the real best thing about the Black Mage aoe is hitting a bunch of people with the cometeor +25% dmg for iirc 10 seconds debuff anyway, rather than the damage itself.

I certainly wouldn't mind another 10 or 15 yalms on Thunder 2 and Freeze and Foul/Flare. In Frontline Onsal Hakir, we are irrelevant fighting on a node until we move forward and spend our medical kits quickly. Even with our full burst up, we don't usually have enough to burst down non-tank melee players diving into the backlines and our aoe is mostly useless in that backline role. Keeping people from capping nodes with AOE is fun but a niche thing and again you have to run forward for that.