SE are leaving BLM to rot by giving SMN and RDM even more utility

[Taranok]

Those are garbage actually IMO. Same with Brush and BLU. Honestly Summoner should lose the raise and physic. What they should do is allow the use of Phoenix Downs in battle but a character can only hold 1 in their inventory so in this case even if you don't have the ability inherently to raise you can do it just once a encounter.

Their tuning right now is primarily factoring that Healers, RDM, SMN can raise.

But I think SMN lore with Phoenix will guarantee that they keep the raise. But BLM given it's lore is destructive and I can't see them getting a raise in their kit.

I keep saying it. Umbral-aspected defibrilation. Shock an enemy off the ground. The only reason there's no lore justification is because no one wants to bother justifying it. If the devs decide on anything, they can turn black mage into a full blown healer and bend over backwards to justify it. I mean, they're not going to do that and purists would absolutely get mad, but it's well within their ability to do this.

[Rai_Takara]

1) Prog is what matters for game balance, not speedruns. Literally no game balances or should balance around parse runs. This is actually not relevant to the majority of players, even the majority of Savage raiders.

2) RDM (and SMN) still bring a cushion of safety on farms and weekly clears, which is what a lot of players spend a lot of their time doing in this game.

This may not be as valuable to players that only do content with their static, but once you take a single step outside that echochamber, RDM and SMN value increases significantly, even in content that you have on farm.

1) That is false. Prog is not the only thing that is taken into account for game balance. Every job has been viable for prog for most of the games life, yet people still only pick the best jobs.

The ShB LB change was made because speedrunners brought it up and SE took a look and agreed that it was broken. The AST card changes were also made with non-prog folks in mind because damage buffs being inconsistent and RNG is bad. We're even further pushing it away from RNG by removing seals requirement.

These aren't prog related at all. All jobs are good in prog, that's non-negotiable at this point for SE, but they also need to make sure jobs are competitive outside of prog and right now, the only role where that balance is broken is casters because BLM can't raise and as you said, people prefer safety too much. So the solution is simple, everyone gets it, or nobody does.

2) And that's exactly what needs to be fixed so BLM isn't left out cold. Looks like SE is taking the steps to remove raise from SMN, which means RDM will be the only job to have raise. Now if you know anything about game balance, that simply cannot stand and as such, SE is forced to rework raise for all casters or remove it altogether to make sure all casters are balanced and provide the same raid DPS contribution via self damage and, if available, buffs.

It's homogenization pure and simple and it's the last role that needs it. Perhaps if you looked at the history of the game and the mindset SE has taken, you can step out of your echochamber and realize all these changes are predictable and SE is getting more and more in tune with their playerbase, both casual and top end.

[Stepjam]

BLM has something the other two don't have.

And that is D A M A G E

Black mage is doin just fine

[Rai_Takara]

BLM has something the other two don't have.

And that is D A M A G E

Black mage is doin just fine

And the other two could lose their raises and have their damage upped to compensate so no caster is better than another in terms of damage. Plus, as the other poster mentioned, people like safety so they'll naturally skew towards RDM/SMN atm and that's bad (more so in 7.x when SMN loses their raise and RDM is the only one that'll be wanted, which is why it's likely it'll also lose its raise or it'll be heavily neutered).

[Katie_Kitty]

And the other two could lose their raises and have their damage upped to compensate so no caster is better than another in terms of damage. Plus, as the other poster mentioned, people like safety so they'll naturally skew towards RDM/SMN atm and that's bad (more so in 7.x when SMN loses their raise and RDM is the only one that'll be wanted, which is why it's likely it'll also lose its raise or it'll be heavily neutered).

Sounds great. While we're at it we can remove all damage buffs and group mitigation and turn everyone into Black Mage.

[MellowMink]

I'm not exactly sure what would be so bad about Black Mage getting a raise ability, and I still don't think it's fair that out the eight (if you include Sage and Blue Mage) Disciple of Magic jobs, it's still the only one who doesn't have that power.

It also occurs to me that there is technically one action that Black Mage currently has for party utility: Addle. That's not a very significant one, mind you, but it's technically an exception to the damage-only rule.

[SaberMaxwell]

Would a good compromise be "Make verraise not dual-castable"?

[Rai_Takara]

Sounds great. While we're at it we can remove all damage buffs and group mitigation and turn everyone into Black Mage.

I mean SE could. Damage tuning is very easy to manipulate as it's pure numbers. What a job doesn't bring in buffs, they can get compensated for in damage and vice versa. The key point is all jobs will have equivalent raid DPS contribution. For example:

If Job A has brings buffs that let the party do 100 DPS extra because of them, while the job itself does 900 DPS, that's a total of 1000 raid DPS, or rDPS.

If Job B has no buffs, but does 1000 DPS, then it also has a total of 1000 rDPS.

Job A = Job B.

As such, really, all that SE has to do is tune these numbers so that all rDPS is the same, and whether a job has buffs or not doesn't matter because their contribution is always the same. This is the end goal which is why jobs are balanced within roles (caster, ranged, melee) as opposed to altogether.

The clear issue is raise is not something you can attribute an rDPS value to. That's why balancing it is impossible. There's a reason SE like to make RDM weak at start of expansions and only buff them at the end. To ensure RDM isn't just the de facto caster for the entire expansion.

[ItMe]

I mean SE could. Damage tuning is very easy to manipulate as it's pure numbers.

I'm not sure it's as easy as you're suggesting.

In part because rotations are a community emergent thing and the devs are never able to plan for what optimal strategy their huge playerbase will find (Paladin doesn't even frickin use all it's Holy Spirits during Requiescat, and I will always laugh at MNK's unexpected tornado kick spam).

In part because when you start tweaking numbers in our rotations it can change the way we use these skills in ways they might not expect (like changing what we stuff inside raid buffs, pots, and other burst windows for an easy example, look at what a small potency tweak did to the way we use SCH's Energy Drain).

But also, if it were that easy, shouldn't the jobs be more balanced?
Balance in FF14 is pretty good, but in your average raid MNK still does thousands less damage than SAM.
Heck, the healers are even more disparate, and they only have a few buttons that actually damage.

I'm not sure Damage Tuning is so easy, but either way I think you're missing Katie_Kitty's point about homogenization.

[Rai_Takara]

I'm not sure it's as easy as you're suggesting.

In part because rotations are a community emergent thing and the devs are never able to plan for what optimal strategy their huge playerbase will find (Paladin doesn't even frickin use all it's Holy Spirits during Requiescat, and I will always laugh at MNK's unexpected tornado kick spam).

In part because when you start tweaking numbers in our rotations it can change the way we use these skills in ways they might not expect (like changing what we stuff inside raid buffs, pots, and other burst windows for an easy example, look at what a small potency tweak did to the way we use SCH's Energy Drain).

They rarely get it right on the x.0 patch at launch for this very reason but by x.05/x.07 the balance is tight as it can be. Compared to HW and SB, this expansion had the fewest balance issues at launch and throughout the expansion by orders of magnitude and showed that they are on top of things as well as being in tune with the player base.

But also, if it were that easy, shouldn't the jobs be more balanced?
Balance in FF14 is pretty good, but in your average raid MNK still does thousands less damage than SAM.
Heck, the healers are even more disparate, and they only have a few buttons that actually damage.

If you look at FFLogs statistics, MNK and SAM are only a couple hundred rDPS apart which is well within crit variance and most importantly kill time variance. One of the issues with MNK is it being a 90s job versus SAM being a 60s job. This is being rectified in EW. Healers are a bit more spread in rDPS compared to the DPS jobs but still miles better than what they were in HW and SB.

I'm not sure Damage Tuning is so easy, but either way I think you're missing Katie_Kitty's point about homogenization.

If their point is it's bad, then I disagree. Game needs certain levels of homogenization. There's many ways to do damage and contribute in damage, but only one way to raise. When there's only one way to do things, homogenization is inevitable and required. Tanks and healers being homogenized was good. DPS for the most part didn't need to be homogenized in doing damage, but some things were like their buffs (hence why in EW they are being aligned to 60s/120s).


Frankly, raise is more of a role action so if they're going to do anything, they should treat like Lucid Dreaming. It used to be that AST had Lumineferous Aether, and WHM Shroud of Saints, but they removed those from the respective jobs and replaced it with a role action Lucid Dreaming that now also SCH got access to. Similarly, just remove Resseruction from SMN and Verraise from RDM and add a new role action for casters that's a 3 min CD, 0 MP Cost oGCD that all casters can use, including BLM. Raise is now your get out of jail free card but not as powerful as it is currently. You can then also remove the raise tax from SMN and RDM. We all know BLM does lots of damage, but it's also a big misconception that they're immobile. They're one of the most mobile casters. So BLMs aren't threatened when other casters do similar rDPS to them.