The identity of Pictomancer is being destroyed

[Keshigomutsuri]

I’ve been playing since Shadowbringers. I loved how rewarding Summoner felt to play — it was a job with good DPS and a satisfying playstyle.
After its rework, I switched to playing melee.
I kind of slept on Pictomancer at first, since I was focused on melee. But when I finally gave it a shot, I fell in love with how unique it was, especially with its drawing system. And now… they’ve just deleted it.

They turned it into a 1-1-1-1 mage, similar to how Summoner ended up after its changes.
It feels so heartbreaking — this is the first time since I started playing that I’ve felt genuinely disappointed in what the developers have done.

I don’t expect much from them anymore. On paper, DPS is more balanced now, but it came at the cost of losing what made Pictomancer unique and fun — long casts that didn’t deal direct damage but stored up for big oomph (paints).

I’ve also started to dislike the community.
Instead of asking for other jobs to get their own unique mechanics, it seems like people just want to tear Pictomancer down.
It’s like, “How dare your job is fun while mine isn’t? They better make your job as bad as mine.”
And then, once that’s done, those same people will probably complain that all jobs play the same and that homogenization is an issue.

TL;DR: Just stick to melee. They’ll always have the best damage and are unlikely to end up in DPS or rotation nirvana like magical or physical ranged jobs.

[Owyn_Addens]

I’ve also started to dislike the community.
Instead of asking for other jobs to get their own unique mechanics, it seems like people just want to tear Pictomancer down.
It’s like, “How dare your job is fun while mine isn’t? They better make your job as bad as mine.”
And then, once that’s done, those same people will probably complain that all jobs play the same and that homogenization is an issue.

All of the PCT backlash I saw was strictly about numerical tuning and not the kit. PCT at its worst was better than other jobs at their best, and it was a problem. All they needed to do to make people like me happy was shave off a bit of potency everywhere, not mess with the damage profile and mangle the entire job.

[Supersnow845]

All of the PCT backlash I saw was strictly about numerical tuning and not the kit. PCT at its worst was better than other jobs at their best, and it was a problem. All they needed to do to make people like me happy was shave off a bit of potency everywhere, not mess with the damage profile and mangle the entire job.

Though I think it’s also fair to say that people who were more opposed to the nerf were also worried about this sort of thing happening

Between the chance of this happening and the calls for muses to require targets to use the nerfing concept while fully justified was a mine field we all knew if they didn’t get right in one shot the best hope we had to fix it was 7.3

[Aco505]

All of the PCT backlash I saw was strictly about numerical tuning and not the kit. PCT at its worst was better than other jobs at their best, and it was a problem. All they needed to do to make people like me happy was shave off a bit of potency everywhere, not mess with the damage profile and mangle the entire job.

There were quite a bit of posts arguing that PCT had too many supporting capabilities and asking for the removal of stuff like the Star Prism heal, literally one of, if not the most, inflexible (and whatever) parts of their kit.

If it had dealt SMN damage from the start, no one would have cared about PCT's utility.

[MrJPtheAssassin]

All of the PCT backlash I saw was strictly about numerical tuning and not the kit. PCT at its worst was better than other jobs at their best, and it was a problem. All they needed to do to make people like me happy was shave off a bit of potency everywhere, not mess with the damage profile and mangle the entire job.

As Supersnow said in their reply, I was one of the ones who were opposed to a nerf to PCT bc I worried about what would happen to PCT. We've been through all this time and time again with CS3. This team simply can't nerf a job without causing some issue with either its balance or kit. As I figure, if they did end up nerfing PCT it would lead to issues like PCT doing too little damage or some of the kits getting messed up. Guess what both happened...Now you are better off skipping the odd min hammer, which means the job is now a filler spamming caster, and it's so low that it's only slightly above RDM in savage, which means you're better off taking an rdm for the rez and blm or 2nd melee for the dps.

I agree PCT was a problem, but it was only a problem in Ultimate, not savage...nerfing it just for FRU would also nerf it in savage where it was doing fine already. Either way, what happened to PCT in 7.2 is why I will never trust this dev with nerfs since it is clear that they don't know how to apply the right nerfs to turn a job down some without messing something up along the way.