Just Nerf Picto

[Jamini]

Going off of the interview, it didn't sound like PCT was ever supposed to be dominating the DPS charts:

"If you want to have a cleaner experience when going through a rotation, you can use the Pictomancer," he says, since if you're needing to resurrect people all the time or playing a high skill job, "you probably won't be able to clear the content so quickly."

What's much more likely is that the job design team is struggling to figure out how their motif design has contributed to PCT's complete dominance. Hanlon's razor applies here.

They also kind of over-value dps raise in a lot of content. Both Anabasios and M4 had many points where a death was a wipe, much less a death that a SMN or RDM should get. (Generally you want your Healers to raise if they can so that your damage classes don't need to interrupt doing their primary job)

[Supersnow845]

Those types of fights were tried in Mid-Endwalker (P8S) and early Dawntrail (M2S and M2N). Criterion is also loaded with fights like those you describe as well as difficult add fights.

All of them have had extremely low engagement and are in general despised by the community at large.

Unfortunately, the devs are trying to make things their players enjoy rather than doubling down on past failures.

dog vs snake is not remotely an example of fights with dynamic elements.

Where is the prey markers? Where is the untelegraphed tankbusters? Where is the mechanics that are intended to be solved by physical ranged superior movement? Where is the reactive healing? Where is the mechanics that have to be solved in literally any other way than “go stand here and take 90% of your health as damage”? Where outside of ultimate is mechanics that are carried across phases? Where are the adds? (Actual add phases like T11)

P8 is the same garbage slop we have gotten for years but just has the non distinction of one path having superior buff alignment which is conveniently the only thing that matters because of these fight designs

And as far as I was aware alarm pheromones was regarded as a good mechanic, it was just frustrating in PF (like say light rampart)

[Jamini]

dog vs snake is not remotely an example of fights with dynamic elements.

Where is the prey markers? Where is the untelegraphed tankbusters? Where is the mechanics that are intended to be solved by physical ranged superior movement? Where is the reactive healing? Where is the mechanics that have to be solved in literally any other way than “go stand here and take 90% of your health as damage”? Where outside of ultimate is mechanics that are carried across phases? Where are the adds? (Actual add phases like T11)

P8 is the same garbage slop we have gotten for years but just has the non distinction of one path having superior buff alignment which is conveniently the only thing that matters because of these fight designs

And as far as I was aware alarm pheromones was regarded as a good mechanic, it was just frustrating in PF (like say light rampart)

Untelegraphed busters were and are largely despised. I had no end of complaints on them running a MINE static through Shiva.

Prey markers as well were, as far as I understand, not well received? UwU has them.

Physical ranged superior movement is a bad joke as people get better at the mechanical part of the game. Even on the least mobile healer (Scholar) it's not difficult to have near full mobility with proper slide casting. Hell, Unirionically BRD and MCH struggle to fake melee in certain fights (M3S from the current tier) because they simply lack a gapcloser.

Reactive healing would be wonderful in my own opinion, but a lot of players can't even handle topping people up a ranged player standing out for mechanics were the three mile wide healing bubbles can't reach. (This happened just last night. Died in an EE2 stack despite the party position being correct, but I wasn't topped off. It was a definite "WTF healer?" moment.) I can see reluctance if only because more reactive healing may make current healers quit healing.

And no. Alarm Pheromones 1 is considered literally the worst mechanic in the tier. M2S is also handily the most skipped fight (even over M1S) because of Alarm 1. The amount of people that specifically say "Eff the Bee" is extremely high.

[Supersnow845]

Untelegraphed busters were and are largely despised. I had no end of complaints on them running a MINE static through Shiva.

Prey markers as well were, as far as I understand, not well received? UwU has them.

Physical ranged superior movement is a bad joke as people get better at the mechanical part of the game. Even on the least mobile healer (Scholar) it's not difficult to have near full mobility with proper slide casting. Hell, Unirionically BRD and MCH struggle to fake melee in certain fights (M3S from the current tier) because they simply lack a gapcloser.

Reactive healing would be wonderful in my own opinion, but a lot of players can't even handle topping people up a ranged player standing out for mechanics were the three mile wide healing bubbles can't reach. (This happened just last night. Died in an EE2 stack despite the party position being correct, but I wasn't topped off. It was a definite "WTF healer?" moment.) I can see reluctance if only because more reactive healing may make current healers quit healing.

And no. Alarm Pheromones 1 is considered literally the worst mechanic in the tier. M2S is also handily the most skipped fight (even over M1S) because of Alarm 1. The amount of people that specifically say "Eff the Bee" is extremely high.

I mean who says untelegraphed busters and prey markers are bad, they are the cornerstone of reactive healing when it actually existed in this game. Mit plans used to go down to the GCD to account for these types of busters and it actually challenged tank kits and challenges the healers to react on the fly. It was the only weakness SCH ever had. Do we need another 10 years of SCH being the most overpowered monster of a job because people care more about planning out offensive GCD’s down to the second

Physical ranged movement is not utilised in a useful way, remember o11, it specifically has a mechanic that was intended to have the phys ranged bait the missles using their superior movement to kite them around the arena. And we solved it by having the PLD stand in the corner and hallowed ground. Or the renalds in T7. We need more of that. We need reasons for different jobs to have different niches

The “I had a bad experience” should never preclude mechanical design. We’ve all had bad experiences with every role

As for alarm that seems to be a difference in personal experience as I’ve heard nothing but praise for alarm

[Combat_Unit]

I'm ready to unsubscribe the game if they won't do anything about Pictomancer... It is so unbalanced, that I'm no longer willing to play with this class in party and since it's almost in every party, I do not enjoy playing with people anymore, so actually... offline games feels more attractive than this unbalanced shit

[Themarvin]

Bad design of new jobs, we see them with every new expansion... and it is bad that they did not do good QA on it before releasing it.

New jobs should only be attractive in the way of doing things new ways, not just a massive DPS boost compared to anything else, It would be appropiate for SE to take note it and maybe put the job on hold for being able to enter higher playgrounds from eg. EX trials to Ultimate Raids, untill it is balanced out.

[Daralii]

As for alarm that seems to be a difference in personal experience as I’ve heard nothing but praise for alarm

I've seen posts here at least get very mad over it. Needing to react to a mechanic as its happening instead of going to an assigned spot might interrupt the almighty uptime, and that's what really matters.

[Zarkovitch]

Just make other job having downtime tool so they can hit harder when the boss appears. As for the balance of this expansion. LMAO picto is breaking all the old jobs due how booty the design is for them. The balance team do not know how to upgrade jobs properly it's shows with FRU.

[Remember_The_Name]

I've seen posts here at least get very mad over it. Needing to react to a mechanic as its happening instead of going to an assigned spot might interrupt the almighty uptime, and that's what really matters.

As a melee DPS player, Alarm pheromones 1 initially was also infuriating to me, I was dying or eating Damage Down all the time during first weeks. This mechanic felt way too random and is just so out of the loop.

But after dying to it practicing it a handful of times, it actually became one of my favourites. Bob and weaving around the boss, checking for arrows and building a path in your brain, running in and out to steal another GCD and narrow escape an AoE felt rewarding. Endwalker really spoiled players with its 100% uptime, huh.

Alternatively, when tired, I just chuck spears at her from safe distance. Yeah, that ended up in a gray number on the forbidden site. That probably means, I am not a human being anymore. The horror...

[FF14Xanz]

Ultimate PFs are a polarizing experience atm because of picto
i know it isnt for everyone but for the people who actually want to do ultimates in PF, the idea that if you dont have a picto, you might actually have to not make mistakes and potentially even pot to meet enrages depending on your party composition is demoralizing when you want to play a job thats on the lower end of dps in the current standings, you feel like you're inconveniencing everyone, even when its especially not your fault because they made their own mistakes. "if we had a picto, we still could've hit the next phase even with that death".

smn and mch might as well form a duo with a picto because people will leave your party or just lock you out of their pf. even vpr is also seeing some discrimination because of its under-performance in the short uptime, resulting in people generously allowing smn/mch in at the cost of locking vpr out in the standard double melee comps.
its at least seen as a red flag by the community if someone is trying to pf an ultimate and is scared of having to actually perform instead of get carried by an over-performing job through a check they normally wouldn't meet because of not being optimized or making a couple mistakes, but the fact that this is common in any degree is just simply unhealthy for the game, and makes me question the reasoning behind not nerfing picto in the first place. Upsetting people who don't know how to maximize their jobs potential anyway? the people it would actually effect in content the least? the people who should be the least concerned with a damage nerf to any job let alone a blatantly overpowered one? People who would always pick what was best anyway? It just doesn't track.
Do they really think the casual players, the ones who are going to rp venues, doing roulettes every day, and spamming treasure maps, will really be so upset about a picto nerf they'll just quit the game because the job they liked the most got hit with a nerf, when over half of them don't even do research on how to do a proper opener in the first place, and they won't notice the difference in the content they do even if they did? Isn't that kind of insulting to the average player to think of them as that irrational or easy to upset, even if it were true?

It might have made sense if they were just afraid of nerfing it to the point that it would be excluded from content, but now in doing nothing its creating challenges for other jobs at the top end, and creates another slew of questions like if they're so worried about sub-optimal players being upset about how their job performs why are they so averse to creating actual rotation learning tools? If they're content with them being blissfully ignorant instead, then it must follow that they have to think a patch to adjust things would either go just as well ignored or that the most minor of adjustments to absolutely anything would set them off just as much anyway, so why ever change anything?