Please Make Pictomancer's Hammer Usable Again / Review the Potency Shifting

[Carighan]

It seems you don’t like PCT’s freeform “paint when you want filler when you don’t”. That’s fine but it’s not necessarily half baked design. If you want a class that naturally presses every button is has in succession then there is multiple classes that do just that. PCT just want designed like that. I don’t think that’s a bad thing

In fact while it's baby's first steps, between Picto's more freeform combat flow and Viper's autocombos, we're seeing very careful steps towards a less boring, staticky and samey combat design here. This needs to be perfected, augmented, and then proliferated. Most classes in an MMORPG need to be of the non-static type for combat to have any real variety and complexity. It's usually okay if one class - maybe even one per role - is of the "static rotation" type, but in FFXIV, all are, and nearly fully so. Even the proc-centric Dancer has its procs trivialized in what they mean for the gameplay of the rotation, meaning that you only swap out button A for functionally equivalent button B due to procs.

It's of course rough to balance. The biggest issue with Picto potencies is that the slow motif casts automatically imply very high per-cast potency values, which messes with a lot of established balancing trappings like interaction with downtime and movement compared to other jobs. But that's a problem mostly for other jobs and their design, in the end. Sure, Pictomancer naturally has few downsides, naturally is quite mobile and naturally loves downtime. This is fine, so long as everyone else has their own unique upside(s) that Picto doesn't share, and Picto also has unique downsides ('eventually you got to stand still and cast the motifs' might be one, but the current fight design precludes this from having meaningful impact sadly).

Of course, Black Mage just lost their unique downside, although since they had no unique upside I guess I'll let that slide. >.>

[Raikai]

This change kind of nuked my interest in Pictomancer.

It was great to have the Hammer flexibility... Now, with it being generally a dps loss? IDK...

[Kandraxx]

The big question would be around what or for what reason are they balancing this non-competitive niche game no one in the gaming world gives a rats ass about exactly. Is it balanced around Yoshidas ego his delusional beliefs that this game somehow is next gen esports? OG Picto was a breath of fresh air in the sea of diarrhea that this game is.

[Carighan]

This change kind of nuked my interest in Pictomancer.

It was great to have the Hammer flexibility... Now, with it being generally a dps loss? IDK...

I mean I'll once again reiterate that you can just play as before and you'd be losing ~1% damage total. Since movement might always be wonky here or there, probably less than that. Yeah it's not ideal but it's not worth changing your playstyle over, fights are far from being balanced that tightly.

The big question would be around what or for what reason are they balancing this non-competitive niche game no one in the gaming world gives a rats ass about exactly. Is it balanced around Yoshidas ego his delusional beliefs that this game somehow is next gen esports? OG Picto was a breath of fresh air in the sea of diarrhea that this game is.

Maybe you're not the target audience if you dislike the game this thoroughly. Which is fine, and there's plenty to critique, but at the same time you're also not going to be someone the game ever looks at, as far as design goes.

[NightHour]

Picto is where it should be power wise now.

If they can shift it without buffing the jobs power level then go for it.

[Sequora]

Picto is where it should be power wise now.

If they can shift it without buffing the jobs power level then go for it.

Hammer needs a tiny potency boost to make it a DPS gain. They can do this without moving its power too much. Truthfully PCT should be around the same power level as any non selfish DPS like MNK, NIN, DRG, and RPR.

[Xelanar]

Picto is where it should be power wise now.

If they can shift it without buffing the jobs power level then go for it.

I won't disagree with your statement, because it is not wrong. It is missing the point though.

At least one of Pictomancer's signature moves was gutted to achieve balance. This is not only bad. It is horrible.
How are we supposed to have faith in a developement team that cannot even adjust numbers on a job, without negatively affecting part of it's identity?

There is a mathematical solution that keeps PCT rotation as it was while still nerfing the Job's performance. They just either:
- are incompetent and don't know how to do it
- did what they did on purpose

It is either the one or the other. And neither of those is particularily favorable to look at.

[Carighan]

At least one of Pictomancer's signature moves was gutted to achieve balance. This is not only bad. It is horrible.

No it wasn't, and no it isn't. (or English might not be your primary language)

Hammer wasn't "gutted", it had it's potency reduced by a small amount. You know how to "gut" Hammer? By removing it. Or by making it a single attack instead of a chain of 3 or so. As plenty MMORPGs have done in the past where they throw out vast swaths of a class' entire implementation. That's "gutting".

It's also not horrible. It is barely a net-negative to play exactly as before. It is, but by so little that your random crit-variance will have a larger impact on your damage output, meaning you can't even cleanly check whether your damage is lower or not, you need thousands of parses/simulations to even find the difference in actual fights after hypothetically calculating it. "Horrible" would be, say, Mind Mastery Mentalist in DAoC for the first 10 years or so of that game.

So we get to why the devs might have done it:
- time is limited, and there's more important stuff to do

[Xelanar]

No it wasn't, and no it isn't. (or English might not be your primary language)

Hammer wasn't "gutted", it had it's potency reduced by a small amount. You know how to "gut" Hammer? By removing it. Or by making it a single attack instead of a chain of 3 or so. As plenty MMORPGs have done in the past where they throw out vast swaths of a class' entire implementation. That's "gutting".

It's also not horrible. It is barely a net-negative to play exactly as before. It is, but by so little that your random crit-variance will have a larger impact on your damage output, meaning you can't even cleanly check whether your damage is lower or not, you need thousands of parses/simulations to even find the difference in actual fights after hypothetically calculating it. "Horrible" would be, say, Mind Mastery Mentalist in DAoC for the first 10 years or so of that game.

So we get to why the devs might have done it:
- time is limited, and there's more important stuff to do

Ok then, let me specify, because English is, as you guessed, not my native language:
Players who focus on optimizing their job for whatever reason, will now attempt to avoid using the hammer, and they dislike that using it is now a loss in DPS, even if just a small one.
That is valid criticism and something worth pointing out, because something that was enjoyable for them before, no longer is. Even if you don't feel the same way, it is important to not dismiss their take as wrong. They might express it in an exagerated way, but they still have a point.

If developers do in fact not have the resources to figure out how to balance PCT for an entire patch cycle, without resorting to nerfs that change how a key ability is utilized optimally, that... would be very sad and something that should be addressed as well.

[Supersnow845]

Just because the rotation is only a small loss to do the original rotation doesn’t mean the change hasn’t butchered the entire feeling of PCT. Just simply because PCT’s core is its motifs, but the motifs now do so little damage that they are either an outright loss (hammer) or so weak they need a follow up that may not come immediately to make a gain (creature)

Like imagine being a SAM main and higanabana was just an outright loss and midare required a follow up you can only use 40 seconds later to do more damage than its surrounding filler

Like I don’t think it’s an understatement to say that while hammer being a loss is bad (and feeds into my subsequent point) the worst part is spending 5 seconds casting a muse only to see water in blue do more damage than your muse cast. It just thoroughly destroys the foundation of PCT