Do you think that Picto needs a nerf?

[Supersnow845]

The thing is that there are jobs that need reworks to be able to do what PCT does before number buffs. A job like VPR would pretty much need to be able to enter Reawaken just by doing a Vicewinder combo plus making Serpent's Ire like a 60 second cooldown. This would absolutely leave it's full uptime rotation completely out of whack. So like we can go for these game breaking, expansion launch level buffs, and reworks to multiple jobs or like stop eating lead paint, and nerf PCT.

“Just nerf PCT” is an empty and vapid statement because it ignores the 10,000 nuances of the way the job is designed. The way you are talking about VPR’s numbers implies you are discussing PCT’s ultimate balance. Okay how would you fix its ultimate balance? Make it motifs only castable in uptime? Anyone who has been within 10 feet of PCT can tell you that’s a horrible idea. Nerf it to only slightly ahead in downtime. Yay it’s worse than SMN in full uptime

PCT presents a crossroads for this games job design. It cannot be nerfed into a position that works in both downtime or uptime without changing its design but people are so sick of homogenised slop of the other jobs they are willing to defend PCT’s design in spite of its balance issues

So how would you nerf PCT?

[mallleable]

So how would you nerf PCT?

See my edit for the snarky spiteful answer. An actual answer would be to make Starry Muse a 3% buff instead of a 5%, and make all muses 600ish potency auto direct hit crits to bring them more in line with like MCH tools, and Midares. Though maybe there is some truth to my snarky answer, and they could increase the CD of Living Muse charges by a bit. They could also remove a charge of Steel Muse, and make it 55 seconds, but that might be too spicy. Maybe even reduce the time of Hammer Time stacks to 15 seconds to you can hold on to them forever.

[Valence]

See my edit for the snarky spiteful answer. An actual answer would be to make Starry Muse a 3% buff instead of a 5%, and make all muses 600ish potency auto direct hit crits to bring them more in line with like MCH tools, and Midares. Though maybe there is some truth to my snarky answer, and they could increase the CD of Living Muse charges by a bit. They could also remove a charge of Steel Muse, and make it 55 seconds, but that might be too spicy. Maybe even reduce the time of Hammer Time stacks to 15 seconds to you can hold on to them forever.

The reason muses are so high in potency is because of the GCD time, much like ninjutsu or dances. If you nerf them that far then they become not worth using, unless it's auto cdhit like hammers, but then you end back up at the same numbers above 1000 effective potency anyway.

The real problem with PCT's design and which makes me say that PCT's is NOT a perfect design of a job, is precisely because muses follow the exact same pattern than MCH tools (but worse), being that they do NOT interact with anything in the kit at all. They just stand there as additional tools that not only break the current game model (which I actually applaud because the current game model needs to be shown for the sham it has become), but also don't even build anything in the kit. You could actually reduce their potency a lot more if they were required for other things to happen in the job's toolkit, but alas, they don't.


Edit since people seem to be repeating the same mathematical mistake: the way to nerf PCT without changing the motif design is to force down the motifs to interact with the rest of the kit, which could for example mean removing the cdhit on Hammers and turn it into a movement tool more than a full burst damage tool, but more importantly move the unlock of Holy/Comet behind creature motif casts rather than RGB filler completion (which would still grant palette gauge though). Increase Holy/Comet potency accordingly, reduce motif potency quite strongly, they'd still be required in order to build up to Comets. Comets would become the de facto highest burst tools of the kit. Perhaps alternatively motifs would unlock Holy stacks, and using Holy stacks under RGB would grant Comet stacks to use under CMY.

That would incidentally probably make the job a lot harder to play, that's for sure. Open to suggestions there.

[Supersnow845]

The reason muses are so high in potency is because of the GCD time, much like ninjutsu or dances. If you nerf them that far then they become not worth using, unless it's auto cdhit like hammers, but then you end back up at the same numbers above 1000 effective potency anyway.

The real problem with PCT's design and which makes me say that PCT's is NOT a perfect design of a job, is precisely because muses follow the exact same pattern than MCH tools (but worse), being that they do NOT interact with anything in the kit at all. They just stand there as additional tools that not only break the current game model (which I actually applaud because the current game model needs to be shown for the sham it has become), but also don't even build anything in the kit. You could actually reduce their potency a lot more if they were required for other things to happen in the job's toolkit, but alas, they don't.


Edit since people seem to be repeating the same mathematical mistake: the way to nerf PCT without changing the motif design is to force down the motifs to interact with the rest of the kit, which could for example mean removing the cdhit on Hammers and turn it into a movement tool more than a full burst damage tool, but more importantly move the unlock of Holy/Comet behind creature motif casts rather than RGB filler completion (which would still grant palette gauge though). Increase Holy/Comet potency accordingly, reduce motif potency quite strongly, they'd still be required in order to build up to Comets. Comets would become the de facto highest burst tools of the kit. Perhaps alternatively motifs would unlock Holy stacks, and using Holy stacks under RGB would grant Comet stacks to use under CMY.

That would incidentally probably make the job a lot harder to play, that's for sure. Open to suggestions there.

If the motifs generated resources within the aetherhue combos that would reduce a lot of the flexibility of the job because it would basically be required to say always paint a creature part before moving into a reversed combo

MCH could benefit from PCT’s design honestly if the tools had more stacks (now that drill drift as a skill check is dead) and more internal interaction similar to how every muse plays into the optimal starry window

[Valence]

If the motifs generated resources within the aetherhue combos that would reduce a lot of the flexibility of the job because it would basically be required to say always paint a creature part before moving into a reversed combo

MCH could benefit from PCT’s design honestly if the tools had more stacks (now that drill drift as a skill check is dead) and more internal interaction similar to how every muse plays into the optimal starry window

You could still store a crapload of holy/comets like you can right now, but I do see your point. Perhaps you could have an already existing ability giving you some of those for free especially to help with the start of the fight, or after specific shenanigans or downtime. Either way, perhaps it's not good, perhaps it is, but I still do think that is the way to make it fit into the mold, else they can also well... make every job in the game behave like PCT with strong downtime tools (and probably trivialize every already existing encounter ever in the process). But I do believe that having some parts of a toolkit, especially important ones that are strong like motifs, not interacting with the rest of the kit, is... not great. I've seen it on MCH and even on MCH some of them somewhat do with battery (which is bland and boring but they do).

Or you know, just kick over the whole battle system and start from scratch but that's 8.0 talk and it's not gonna happen anyway.

[Carighan]

“Just nerf PCT” is an empty and vapid statement because it ignores the 10,000 nuances of the way the job is designed.

Well then, what are those 10k nuances? Go on...

So how would you nerf PCT?

Oh it's good that you ask.

Goal:

* Leave the entire design as-is. The job will be intentionally too weak in full-uptime fights, an acceptable compromise given that it brings strong self and group shielding, a raid buff and a mobility tool.
* Heavily curb the paint skills. Take ~20% potency off of Creature and Weapon Muse, including the entire Hammer combo and the completed creatures.
* Take the same 20% off of Star Prism and Rainbow Drip, potentially 22%-25% off the former. As an example, that brings Star Prism from 1400 potency to 1120, which is still quite high for a skill used in the prime damage moment and being instant cast. Hence I'm unsure whether it doesn't actually need a stronger nerf.
* Holy and Comet also need a nerf, but a smaller one, probably ~10%.
* The main filler rotations both stay the same.
* (Potentially, the only mechanical change) increase motif paint time by 1.0s. Remove the weaving window on motifs, basically. But I'm unsure about this, it feels too big a change to gameplay flow for "just a nerf".

If currenty statistics serve, this would result in about a 6%-7% total loss of Pictomancer damage output in most non-Ultimate situations, scaling a bit up and down with how many raid buffs your group has: the more, the stronger the nerf, but it goes down to ~4% if there are essentially no other buffs.

For most fights this would put Picto on par with ~Black Mage, Reaper, Monk and Samurai, with a similar reaction to raid buffs as both Reaper and Samurai have, and a nearly inverse one to Black Mage, which is good for differentiation.

Again I'm not sure the potency reductions are enough, and that really shows just how bonkers out of whack the numbers on Picto are. Their combat flow is unique and damn cool, but also highly resistant to nerfs via potency reductions, more so because due to scaling with burst windows, you really need to take ~all potency you want to take off from burst skills not the main filler.

[Kabooa]

Goal:

Frankly I think Motifs in uptime need to be able to be painted faster. Give a purpose to White/Black Paint and have it so Holy and Meteor provide a unique but stacking buff that each reduce cast time / recast of Motifs by 25%. "Prepping the canvas" so to speak.

With this you're able to safely siphon away potency from Motifs and reallocate it as necessary into the filler combo without worrying about hitting their full uptime too badly. It does not make downtime painting better, but makes uptime painting less penalized.

[Carighan]

Frankly I think Motifs in uptime need to be able to be painted faster. Give a purpose to White/Black Paint and have it so Holy and Meteor provide a unique but stacking buff that each reduce cast time / recast of Motifs by 25%. "Prepping the canvas" so to speak.

Conceptually interesting, but IMO:

* Too big a rework for something as "simple" as a potency nerf goal.
* It's good design to have separate mobility tools that aren't used rotationally.