SAM changes - I don’t mind it

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Samurai is a selfish job. rDPS is largely irrelevant to use as a solo metric for it. You need to look at aDPS, rDPS and how much damage it does under raid buffs. The latter is especially important. This video explains it far better but he highlights the difference between Warrior and Dark Knight and why the latter is overwhelmingly better. Under raid buffs, Dark Knight contributes nearly 1,200 rDPS under buffs whereas Warrior only contributes 500. Hence the gap between them is far higher than the 350 difference the rDPS tab suggestions. Their respective aDPS shows a staggering 700 difference.

All this aside, if you look at the speed meta, Samurai completely dominates with a whooping 36.4% amongst Melee in P1S.

When factoring in everything above, Samurai is, indeed, the strongest DPS since 6.08. Black Mage is competitive with it as are Ninja and Dragoon.

Then clearly things have changed because the last time I cared to check, rdps was what mattered for everyone, and selfish jobs were looked down on even if they brought high dps to the table.


Not that it ever stopped my static from playing what it wanted

[Kira_Yaeger]

Whoo as long as I can do my treasure maps while button mashing and praying I'll be fine! Sucks to all those raiders who liked job philosophy in HW, make way for the casual Limsa AFKer!

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Whoo as long as I can do my treasure maps while button mashing and praying I'll be fine! Sucks to all those raiders who liked job philosophy in HW, make way for the casual Limsa AFKer!

Most of the limsa afkers i see have ultimate weapons. In fact, most of the time I saw people afking in the past, it was showing off raid weapons, gear, etc...

Plus, HW raids basically broke the raid scene for a lot of players. I rarely meet anyone who wants to go back to that, outside the small group of hardcore raiders that seem to all post on the forums remembering things with heavily tinted glasses lol.


I've raided every expansion since the game released. I haven't cleared every tier, but much of that was static issues. I cleared every tier last expansion, and i cleared all of coil.

[ThivraK]

Most of the limsa afkers i see have ultimate weapons. In fact, most of the time I saw people afking in the past, it was showing off raid weapons, gear, etc...

and they paid quite well for those, too

[AnotherPerson]

Amusing how one of the most engaging jobs with one of the highest skill ceilings (BLM) has one of the lowest actions per minute.. more buttons does not mean more engaging..

That's mainly because all of Black Mage gameplay revolves around managing their gauge and their long cast times, with Leylines being the most important factor to when they can best cast consistently without moving much at all. Their movement is heavily restricted to super burst mobility windows (Triple cast, Aetherial Manipulation, Xenoglossy, Sharpcast proc, Thunder III proc, Paradox Ice Proc), but their entire rotation is flexible enough that they can always create those windows when necessary to best increase their damage. Basically, all their skills all contribute in some way to balancing their Job Gauge and mobility in combat, so there's never a "useless" skill (other than scathe). Even transpose, as much as it is a DPS loss to use, can still help contribute to managing the gauge to keep Polyglot generating for Foul or Xenoglossy. This feature of transpose also gets fleshed out as you can now also transpose and use Umbral Soul or transpose and use Paradox. Everything in the toolkit somehow builds up to becoming useful in some form of way, making it gratifying and highly skill based even if the APM and ideal job rotation is simplistic.

Thus, Black Mage gameplay is engaging and complex, even if their APM is much more lower than other jobs. There's always something useful in the toolkit.

Most jobs don't get that complex decision making at all because of their static rotation while doing mechanics. You just press whatever's on cooldown to do damage because the skill itself is not very innately interesting or has complex synergy to the toolkit. Instead, their APM is the flavor (Ninja in this case). People like the aspect of quickly attacking the enemy in an relentless flurry during their burst window (and partly why players miss assassination being a combo action from Dream within a Dream).

Samurai has a fairly decent and static rotation, but their gauge and buff management is what makes them fun to play. Kenki is one of their major skills in managing their DPS skill. It's not very complex, but it's still a decision they have to actively make, which gives the engagement. Otherwise, it would have just been the Shinten gauge and something they press on cooldown or save until a burst window. There's not as much thought involved.

Healers do not have any kind of decision making involved, but that's mainly due to how 90% of their toolkit is for healing and damage is scripted / binary (you either survive the attack or you don't) - so healers who look to create better ways to play end up just pressing their 1 damage skill for 80% of the time. That's the main issue with healers. They have nothing to keep them engaged.

APM is one of the flavors for engagement, but it's not the end-all solution as long as the toolkit is engaging. Black Mage is very much an outlier for that reason.

[Soge01]

I mean, you probably weren't here in 2.0 then.


And it is relavent. People keep acting like this is new. It's not. They've simplified and made changes to every job ever since the game came out.


Remember when gierskogul took 10 seconds off blood of the dragon? Man that was fun and engaging...

Oh, I was here back in 2.0! While I vaguely remember things, I do remember Warrior only had a slightly difficult learning curve. Well, at least for myself. Just needed to read the tool tip and do some practice to properly memorize which thing did what.

The thing I've always thought to myself is that the devs need to let the players learn how each job functions and go with the ones they feel that best suits them. Not everyone is going to be ridiculously good at this game, but them coddling the player base like they have for years will not help improve those players struggling with certain jobs or the overall game better. It'll only make them worse. Last year they added a freaking east and very easy mode to instances! That's the average level of your playerbase and you think making things simpler will solve your problems!? smh...

Meh, that wasn't really bad. No different than how BLM functions right now with its umbral and Astral management. If you don't like managing what makes a job class tick, there's always another job right around the corner that'd better suit you and the playstyle you desire. :/

[IdowhatIwant]

Then clearly things have changed because the last time I cared to check, rdps was what mattered for everyone, and selfish jobs were looked down on even if they brought high dps to the table.


Not that it ever stopped my static from playing what it wanted

Nah I don't think that has really changed. You think people that play this game can comprehend the difference between rDPS and aDPS?

[Kira_Yaeger]

Plus, HW raids basically broke the raid scene for a lot of players. I rarely meet anyone who wants to go back to that, outside the small group of hardcore raiders that seem to all post on the forums remembering things with heavily tinted glasses lol.

I said HW job philosophy. Minor adjustments to the raids and the jobs would have made them not only more accessible but also diverse and have a higher skill ceiling. Casuals could still clear eventually like they do now and more hardcore gamers could have more fun doing the content to its fullest potential.