Do you think that Picto needs a nerf?

[Supersnow845]

I really need someone to actually provide a valid method you could balance PCT in ultimates that doesn’t

A) make it totally useless in full uptime savage
B) completely guts how the class functions

Saying “ultimate easy nerf PCT btw” doesn’t fix anything because balancing it in ultimates isn’t an easy task

[brinn12]

I really need someone to actually provide a valid method you could balance PCT in ultimates that doesn’t

A) make it totally useless in full uptime savage
B) completely guts how the class functions

Saying “ultimate easy nerf PCT btw” doesn’t fix anything because balancing it in ultimates isn’t an easy task

Well this is the issue, reworking a job is no easy task. Especially a recently released job, which had no plans of a rework before. Dawntrail has more content than Endwalker, with longer patches. Pushing PCT's damage lower than melees in Savage, but still a bit higher than SMN/RDM, might be the only feasible solution right now. It would still be strong in Ultis, but not game breaking, to the point where we can't have any meaningful DPS checks. Unfortunately, I don't think the developers will realize this until 8.0.

[Realfoxy]

I really need someone to actually provide a valid method you could balance PCT in ultimates that doesn’t

A) make it totally useless in full uptime savage
B) completely guts how the class functions

Saying “ultimate easy nerf PCT btw” doesn’t fix anything because balancing it in ultimates isn’t an easy task

1. Remove party buff from Starry Muse
2. Nerf motif damage

That should tap its power down a little bit. Then you buff the other casters by A LOT.

Oh yeah, and you'll want to buff the other underperforming jobs like VPR and MCH so that you're not actually the ultimate that much harder to clear.

People also seem to be under the impression that PCT isn't overpowered in Savage as well, because it is, just not by as much as in Ultimate.

[Supersnow845]

1. Remove party buff from Starry Muse
2. Nerf motif damage

That should tap its power down a little bit. Then you buff the other casters by A LOT.

Oh yeah, and you'll want to buff the other underperforming jobs like VPR and MCH so that you're not actually the ultimate that much harder to clear.

People also seem to be under the impression that PCT isn't overpowered in Savage as well, because it is, just not by as much as in Ultimate.

Doing that would put it below RDM in savage and still above everyone else in ultimate

So you’ve basically just made it useless in savage and don’t change its dominance in ultimate

That’s what I’m saying, people are quick to go “just do x fourhead” but then don’t really think through what x does

[Realfoxy]

Doing that would put it below RDM in savage and still above everyone else in ultimate

So you’ve basically just made it useless in savage and don’t change its dominance in ultimate

That’s what I’m saying, people are quick to go “just do x fourhead” but then don’t really think through what x does

90th Percentile PCT does 29.5k aDPS (looking at FFlogs Arcadion stats for 7.05). Removing its raid buff makes its aDPS the same as its cDPS (making it like any other selfish DPS). 29.5k cDPS puts it just below the melee jobs. Then shave off a little bit of motif potency and you're roughly the same as Black Mage in 7.05 (28.5k cDPS). With the BLM buffs in 7.1, BLM would be only very slightly ahead, which would be an acceptable tradeoff for PCT party mit. Could maybe increase the filler potency a little to compensate.

Alternatively, if you'd prefer your caster jobs to be competitive with melees, you could nerf Starry Muse from 5% to say, 3%. Then we'd just need to buff BLM by a good 8-10%. And of course we'd want to buff RDM and SMN a lot as well, they'd probably need a good 10% buff too.

[Supersnow845]

90th Percentile PCT does 29.5k aDPS (looking at FFlogs Arcadion stats for 7.05). Removing its raid buff makes its aDPS the same as its cDPS (making it like any other selfish DPS). 29.5k cDPS puts it just below the melee jobs. Then shave off a little bit of motif potency and you're roughly the same as Black Mage in 7.05 (28.5k cDPS). With the BLM buffs in 7.1, BLM would be only very slightly ahead, which would be an acceptable tradeoff for PCT party mit. Could maybe increase the filler potency a little to compensate.

Alternatively, if you'd prefer your caster jobs to be competitive with melees, you could nerf Starry Muse from 5% to say, 3%. Then we'd just need to buff BLM by a good 8-10%. And of course we'd want to buff RDM and SMN a lot as well, they'd probably need a good 10% buff too.

So to solve PCT’s 7.05 uptime balance you’ve created multiple problems

1) you are bringing it down to just over RDM levels (that was my bad I thought it was a bigger nerf because you mentioned starry, motif reduction and buffing RDM) who has rezz
2) this doesn’t remotely fix how PCT dominates in ultimates
3) starry muse is now a useless button you actively don’t want to press below 92

Do you see what I mean, your suggestion sorta works for balancing it on full uptime savage assuming you are balancing based on cDPS (which the developers decidedly don’t do) but it doesn’t fix its dominance in ultimates and it breaks old skills and how they function

How would you apply this to someone who wants to break PCT’s dominance in ultimates but doesn’t really care it’s just barely at the top in savage

Also just as an aside I’m not arguing for the sake of arguing i genuinely want input on this I’m just trying to work through every step of what people suggest

[GartredZW]

Maybe just have Muses require a target to paint.

It's a rough solution that doesn't make a lot of sense, but it would at least eliminate how well it uses downtime.
Of course, this wouldn't help it a lot in savage since you're targeting the boss most of the time, so nerfs are still necessary, but until they can think of something that doesn't break Picto at it's core, that might be the best solution.

[Supersnow845]

Maybe just have Muses require a target to paint.

It's a rough solution that doesn't make a lot of sense, but it would at least eliminate how well it uses downtime.
Of course, this wouldn't help it a lot in savage since you're targeting the boss most of the time, so nerfs are still necessary, but until they can think of something that doesn't break Picto at it's core, that might be the best solution.

Requiring a target to paint would break PCT pretty badly in almost everything besides full uptime savage

However this thread is about ultimate so let’s use an ultimate example. Right now PCT gains 12 seconds of uptime during downtime, now let’s make its muses require a target, it now has to convert 12 seconds of a previous phases uptime into downtime to properly align

Can you imagine the balance nightmare of trying to align buffs and one of your highest DPS dealers is actively doing zero damage during the limited uptime of a previous phase so it can burst properly in a phase that cares about burst

It would just be unworkable balance in the opposite direction

Another thing they can do to put some limiters on muses is like cut their potency in halfish, but make them auto direct hit crit.

Force crit capping is something I suggested as well. If star prism, the starry induced rainbow drip, and any hammer and creature parts cast under the effects of starry muse were halved potency but auto direct critted then PCT’s potential to burst as hard as it does would be massively neutered

[Carighan]

Maybe just have Muses require a target to paint.

It's a rough solution that doesn't make a lot of sense, but it would at least eliminate how well it uses downtime.
Of course, this wouldn't help it a lot in savage since you're targeting the boss most of the time, so nerfs are still necessary, but until they can think of something that doesn't break Picto at it's core, that might be the best solution.

But there's nothing inherently wrong with "Picto, the caster that loves downtimes". That's a unique identity, that's good. It should just not get this on top of getting all the other goodies like okay mobility (granted, they're the least mobile caster right now which really goes to show how broken and weird BLM is now that they're virtually-all-instant-casts), solid overall damage, strong burst multiplier, raid buff, raid shield, mobility tools, etc.

So just:

* Nerf their damage output, in particular of the burst skills like muses, and the instant casts.
* Keep the mechanics.

Tadaaah, a quite unique approach to caster that is slightly weaker to make up for their extreme flexibility.

[Owyn_Addens]

I really need someone to actually provide a valid method you could balance PCT in ultimates that doesn’t

A) make it totally useless in full uptime savage
B) completely guts how the class functions

Saying “ultimate easy nerf PCT btw” doesn’t fix anything because balancing it in ultimates isn’t an easy task

Frankly, it's probably impossible to make PCT not be the strongest job in Ultimates just because it checks every possible box for benefitting from how they tend to be designed.

1. It's damage profile is burst-oriented, with the bulk of its damage being in cooldowns that will keep ticking, while the filler GCDs that it loses are comparatively weak
2. It has GCDs that can be spent during downtime to create a little bit of extra uptime for itself
3. It has a lot of incidental cleave on its most powerful abilities, giving extra benefit against 2 targets
4. Swift -> Rainbow Drip is a strong option for right before the boss goes untargetable because its long GCD is completely negated

The problem is that Pictomancer isn't some middle-of-the-pack job that then becomes strong, suddenly matching or slightly exceeding the heaviest hitters, that would make DPS checks slightly more lenient if you brought them along.
Instead, they go from being the strongest job to the even-more-stronger-est job, completely eclipsing everyone else and making the job balance go from bad to embarassing.

How would I nerf it? I would walk back all of the potency changes that they gave it after the media tour that they were too proud to admit were a massive overshoot.
Creature Muse 1000 -> 1100
Mog 1100 -> 1300
Madeen 1300 -> 1400
Rainbow Drip 900 -> 1000
Star Prism 1300 -> 1400
Hammer 520/580/640 -> 560/620/680
RGB(W) 400/440/480 -> 440/480/520
CMY(K) 700/740/780 -> 800/840/880

If they'd just admitted they messed up and reverted all of these to their previous, more sane numbers, they wouldn't have needed to add all of the other potency bloat that we've gotten since 7.0. Would Picto still be the strongest job in Ultimate with those numbers? Almost certainly. But it would be close enough to the realm of mere mortals that taking a BLM instead of a PCT is like taking VPR instead of NIN, or SAM instead of MNK: a slightly suboptimal choice that a player can make for comfort or enjoyment, not a difference so stark that it's essentially griefing.