The Chimera, the Monk and the Guard

[Shiggysonson]

The problem I have is how they make range stacking so easy for a lot of the fights. They need to make it so no one can stand in the same spot for the whole fight like you can now in Chimera.

I'd like to see them be more creative with incapacitating bosses. They had a great opportunity with Chimera, but the fact that you can just have ranged jobs sit in one spot the whole fight pretty much killed it. Also, some boss fights with multiple stages would be cool. One stage being strong against magic, another stage being more AoE focused, etc.

Hopefully the new battle regimen will also be designed to favor having different jobs in the group.

[Roaran]

The issues that are a direct result of SE's poor ability to create a balanced battle environments need to be addressed. And coming from a player who has been playing FFXI since NA release and FFXIV since beta, players deserve a response (preferably a WELL thought and meaningful post from Yoshi - this topic would be an excellent place to put such response), and reassurance coupled with specific examples in what the battle team plans on doing. Anything less is rather insulting.

btw good post OP.

[Yves]

The problem I have is how they make range stacking so easy for a lot of the fights. They need to make it so no one can stand in the same spot for the whole fight like you can now in Chimera.

They did this. The result? Ifrit lag. Until the new client is up I suspect we won't be seeing this kind of thing.

[Lux_Rayna]

The issues that are a direct result of SE's poor ability to create a balanced battle environments need to be addressed.

This is the problem. I think its hard to realize but SE are complete newbs when it comes to making and balancing an MMORPG. They have one game under their belt, sure, but even that game had a lot of fatal mmorpg flaws. All in all, this is an area SE is not well practiced in. The majority of content SE ever had to balance was single player content. Thats pretty easy, since every character/role has precise and defined limits, will be standing in precise places, and will have precise abilities. So if SE wants to make a difficult single player fight, the solution is easy: lots of AOE's.

Unfortunately, this does not translate into the MMORPG universe very well. For one, the range of possible positions is much much larger than in a single player game. The space is not nearly as well defined, and there are far too many variables that don't exist in single player games. So now the question, if you're SE, is how to balance the fight and make it difficult. Your natural inclination is to say "AOE's!". This is, of course, a problem: how big exactly do we make these AOE's. Well we want to challenge healers so we have to make them big enough to hit all melees, and they have to do lots of dmg. But sir, why can't they just hit everyone? Well if they do enough dmg to really hurt melees, all the mages will be one-shot, making the fight impossible. I see, so lots of big aoes to challenge healers, but not big enough to hit everyone at max range? Correct!

The result is what we have now, class-stack ranged classes and spam heal the tank. This is what we call rookie mmorpg combat balancing. SE just hasn't figured out how to develop fights that provide difficulty without resorting to the same old AOE spam. It will take time, but they'll learn.

[DeadRiser]

the community cries for class/job identity, and they get it. Job X performs better than Job Y in situation A. Job Y performs better than Job X in situation B. and it makes sense. except...

then they cry for everything to be homogenized again, because they want to be able to do alllllll the things every other job does just as well as those other jobs, in every single situation.

nice vicious cycle the community is perpetuating....

I love that they did that, but when you are denied entrance to a dungeon because of the class/job you have leveled and the community resorts to class stacking, it becomes just an easy go through of content.

I will go crazy when they implement something to deter people from class stacking. So many times a random group wanted me to go as a thm for ifrit and I stayed as mrd and kept up dps almost as much as the rest.

[Zdenka]

Ant boss can be beat with nearly every set up imaginable other than straight MNK or WHM stacking. Even then MNK is fine in the fight.

BLM, DRG, WAR, and BRD to some degree are all capable of handling the add waves.

We do WHM, BRD, 2x BLM, 1x DRG, 3x WAR for example and kill Princess right when the 2nd Guard pops ~2m kill (I think Geo said they kill before 3rd guard was sub 2m but I think he means sub 3m? since the 2nd Guard pops right before 2m mark.)

We've subbed the bonus WAR or BLM for MNK before etc, its quite a diverse fight that allows for many grouping options.

The same with Mistress (non-burn methods) allow you to use a very diverse set up of classes.

Chimera its pretty harsh on some classes, and Coincointer is just not efficient with others but I'll take 2 / 4 boss fights this patch where all classes are equally useful.

[StateAlchemist]

The only problem is the speed run requirement for all 5 chests. I love playing BLM, but I too have 50 MNK and the only thing I ever use it for is Miser. What a waste of coding. I better get some MNK love on Garuda/Garlean content/whatever. What's the point of having some of these classes if no one ever needs them.

[DeadRiser]

What's the point of having some of these classes if no one ever wants them.

I fixed that for you. They aren't useless on bosses, people haven't found an efficient way to use them for chimera and people prefer the easy way out as usual.

[Majidah]

Monk isn't a viable class in the two new dungeons because of BLM, WAR, their AOE, and people's inability to try new setups for dungeons / invite people who aren't those classes.

I took PUP to 75 on release.

BOOHOO. Make your own parties. (directed to the OP, not to you doctor :P)

[AlphaDragoon]

I took PUP to 75 on release.

BOOHOO. Make your own parties. (directed to the OP, not to you doctor :P)

This isn't terribly helpful at all considering you "making your own party" would still have you trying to convince people to join a group that isn't doing it the "efficient", speed run easy mode way. So you'd still be sitting there with no bites unless you played only with LS members who weren't jerks.

What would be helpful is if A: Community stopped wanting only the easy mode way of doing things and were willing to actually try new setups and strategies and B: SE stopped promoting class stacking, AoE and ranged class spam.