Phantom Jobs are a step in the right direction but need iteration.

[Altina_Orion]

IS there any point in running OC beyond getting the mount and weapon? I've got both, and haven't been back.

Achievements and completion.

[Shurrikhan]

Well if they just balanced phantom jobs so that they didn’t do one or the other then it would be more fair even if in this situation the extra sustain on high DPS jobs would be stupidly excessive for the tanks but yes it’s also arguable that it could be fixed by making tanks not overpowered

Like using a super basic example (I’m not saying I support this change just using it to prove a point), if starfall worked more like moon flute where it caused massive damage and in exchange it cut your damage for the next 10 seconds by 20% then it doesn’t disadvantage any role besides tank using starfall. However you can also fix starfall in the other direction by simply making it as dangerous for tanks to use as the other 2 roles

Wouldn't this do the opposite? You have more to lose from the 20% damage loss as a DPS and, as DPS, less to gain from a single individual hit relative to your existing available potencies.

..Heck, Starfall already costs the party more healing to recover from if used by a tank than a non-tank, as it consumes 90% of the users max HP, and is subject to the tank's 20% Attack Power reduction affecting even "true"/unalterable potencies (i.e., those unaffected by buffs). The HP loss can't even be mitigated by Magic Defense or %DR -- only potency barriers (better in this case on non-tanks against %maxHP damage) or %HP barriers (ToB/TBN, equal on tanks and non-tanks against %maxHP damage).

Edit: Or so I had thought. I guess it's not quite so intuitive.

I guess my suggestion then, would just be to make it work as above:

• Do NOT scale Phantom Job potency with any buffs (passives like Maim and Mend, actives like Shifu, No Mercy, or raidbuffs, etc.).
• DO inherit or emulate the Attack Power loss tanks normally face (and Weakness / Brink of Death).
  
  And while we're at it...
  
  
• Don't let pJob actions break combos (as not everyone has them, imbalancing job synergy).
• Scale spammable pJob actions with innate haste (-15% GCD use = -17.6% damage, for the same overall DPS). This retains their flow but only faintly buffs potential utility rather than acting as, say, an indirect 17.6% DPS increase from them).
• And, on that note, do NOT be affected by (and do NOT consume) any single-use buffs like Life Surge. (Others will disagree with me on this, but an extra 500 potency per Phantom skill per 40s would in any tight content mean that only those jobs should be playing the pJobs with infrequent nukes.)

Like, it's already technically aimed against tanks, so long as there wouldn't be constant/unpredictable damage that 10% of tank HP could survive but 10% of a non-tanks' HP could not, no?

If we wanted it to be even more anti-tank, we could have it inflict Sundered (removing all Defense/Magic Defense or even all passive mitigation), further disproportionately affecting tanks, but... if/when you have to specifically stack things against tanks just to make it not OP for them... that's more an indicator that the baseline is too OP, I would think.

Not saying others aren't designed in a way that, in practice, overly favor tanks, but that one is already designed to be less desirable to tanks, while adding a %damage penalty would most hurt DPS, not tanks. If it's still problematically unbalanced in tanks' favor, the cause is probably more general.

[Yodada]

Wouldn't this do the opposite? You have more to lose from the 20% damage loss as a DPS and, as DPS, less to gain from a single individual hit relative to your existing available potencies.

...Heck, Starfall already costs the party more healing to recover from if used by a tank than a non-tank, as it consumes 90% of the users max HP, and is subject to the tank's 20% Attack Power reduction affecting even "true"/unalterable potencies (i.e., those unaffected by buffs). The HP loss can't even be mitigated by Magic Defense or %DR -- only potency barriers (better in this case on non-tanks against %maxHP damage) or %HP barriers (ToB/TBN, equal on tanks and non-tanks against %maxHP damage).

Like, it's already technically aimed against tanks, so long as there wouldn't be constant/unpredictable damage that 10% of tank HP could survive but 10% of a non-tanks' HP could not, no?

If we wanted it to be even more anti-tank, we could have it inflict Sundered (removing all Defense/Magic Defense or even all passive mitigation), further disproportionately affecting tanks, but... if/when you have to specifically stack things against tanks just to make it not OP for them... that's more an indicator that the baseline is too OP, I would think.

Not saying others aren't designed in a way that, in practice, overly favor tanks, but that one is already designed to be less desirable to tanks, while adding a %damage penalty would most hurt DPS, not tanks. If it's still problematically unbalanced in tanks' favor, the cause is probably more general.

WAR goes brrrrrrr

[Aco505]

is subject to the tank's 20% Attack Power reduction affecting even "true"/unalterable potencies

Phantom Actions are not affected by the negative tank modifier.

From the Field Op Enjoyers discord:

Phantom job skills are NOT affected by 'base action damage' (Maim and Mend 30% on caster/healer, Increased action damage 20% on p.range).
Phantom job skills are NOT scaled off of main stat, so Weakness, Brink of Death and Potions do NOT affect them. This also means that tanks avoid the ~.7x STR scaling modifier from Tank Mastery.
Phantom job actions CANNOT crit or direct hit. Determination should affect it*.
Enochian only affects Phantom job actions that deal magic damage.


Phantom actions are only affected by item level (700 being the max), the special attribute and any generic percentage damage increases like Phantom Mastery or Power Surge. Tanks get more value than most jobs from them precisely because of this, which is why for instance PLD (and GNB) are very good pSAM users, since they can get easy bell stacks and line up Iainuki and Zeninage with their strong personal buffs.

*I believe it's been proven that DET doesn't affect phantom actions.

This post contains the most accurate information regarding phantom actions.

[Shurrikhan]

Ahh, my bad. I should have checked for updates since early day 1 findings. I had remembered them as not scaling with passive buffs but had thought they didn't scale with active buffs either while still using a unique but normally modified main stat and therefore Attack Power value. Such would have nipped the problems above in the bud while putting tanks in a healthier place.

Alas, guess we've since found it's not quite so sensible/intuitive.

[Aco505]

Ahh, my bad. I should have checked for updates since early day 1 findings. I had remembered them as not scaling with passive buffs but had thought they didn't scale with active buffs either while still using a unique but normally modified main stat and therefore Attack Power value. Such would have nipped the problems above in the bud while putting tanks in a healthier place.

Alas, guess we've since found it's not quite so sensible/intuitive.

What bothers me about phantom actions is how they interact with some job mechanics but not others. They are affected by innate haste from jobs such as NIN, MNK or BLM yet they are not affected by Reassemble or Life Surge. This should've been a thing to make those abilities stand out in that regard as the only way to make them crit.

The fact that phantom actions break the combo, rotation or buffs of some jobs but not others is also quite an oversight that already happened in Bozja and the developers never bothered to fix.

[Shurrikhan]

What bothers me about phantom actions is how they interact with some job mechanics but not others. They are affected by innate haste from jobs such as NIN, MNK or BLM yet they are not affected by Reassemble or Life Surge. This should've been a thing to make those abilities stand out in that regard as the only way to make them crit.

The fact that phantom actions break the combo, rotation or buffs of some jobs but not others is also quite an oversight that already happened in Bozja and the developers never bothered to fix.

Honestly, I'm on the fence regarding whether Phantom Job actions be affectable by Life Surge / Reassemble, etc. (leaning towards preferring them not to be affected), just as I'd rather not have them be affected by Shifu, No Mercy, etc. It's less absurd than Power Surge is on spammables, but getting 500 potency more potency every 40 seconds (12.5 extra pps, about a 3% buff overall) is still a heck of an imbalance that ultimately reduces choice, as then MCH should always take infrequent nukes, MNK/SAM/NIN/VPR are pushed towards spammables, and only DRG is really allowed choice of either.

I'd be fine having only innate Haste remain, as not to break flow, but with proportionate potency nerfs. /shrug

While that might sound dull, again, my preference so long as pJobs are ostensibly to be used as any main job is to, well, continue letting them be usable on any job, while making the pJob actions themselves more interesting and "synergetic" not just in terms of who can add the most effective potency over time to an otherwise dull action.

[WiccaP]

While Im ambivalent towards most of the phantom jobs and rarely use most of their kits. The Chemist mixed with the Machinist job is really fun for me. I may be a mch main and can point out a lot of the flaws with the current iteration of it, adding in the healing capabilities of chemist makes it feel like a true support Job and the combo i find to be using the most.

[Yamadronis]

IS there any point in running OC beyond getting the mount and weapon? I've got both, and haven't been back.

Uhhh... Having fun?

[Aco505]

a heck of an imbalance that ultimately reduces choice

If different jobs work better with different specific phantom jobs or actions, then that's actually better than previous iterations. In Eureka and Bozja, you mostly had fixed loadouts when it came to dealing damage. Casters, tanks and healers had extra options with stuff like Flare Star, Irregular/Blood Rage or Seraph Strike but there were caveats as, for instance, the former was mostly for BLM since FS was clearly designed with them in mind due to the prohibitive MP cost.

I'd rather have different jobs be able to choose between several options than what we have now, in which most jobs should just go pSAM if they want damage after all relevant support roles are covered. Ironically, it is tanks (and to an extent BLM again) who get more options to play with: pSAM, pBerserker and pMNK. If some jobs lean more to a specific set of actions, that's good variety. Within the tanks, PLD/GNB prefer pSAM while WAR can work very well with pBerserker.

Letting the different job kits interact with actions differently is what makes it fun, considering that the point of this content is to go wild and do things that are not possible in the main content of the game. The issue lies in how some jobs benefit way more than others, which is most obvious with the caster DPS and especially in OC. BLM tends to be the best because of its synergy with Field Operation actions while elements like caster rezz become irrelevant within BA, DRS or the Forked Tower. Only SMN is comparable at level 70 and with some holster dump meme builds at 80 using (Deep) Ordained. Lost Slash was interesting in Bozja precisely because it allowed certain jobs (DRG, MCH and WAR before the IR change) to do something different, even if the end result was just buffing a big action, but so is Flare Star on a surface level before you get into how to manage it properly with stuff like Font of Magic. Or how you had to delay or take your rotation into account when doing Double Edge L in Eureka.

Essentially, the majority of players can just play what they want and the content will be cleared just fine but I see no issue with more synergies between specific job and phantom job combinations, particularly when traditionally it has usually been the "selfish" DPS jobs that benefited the most while the others often didn't have anything special going on for them.

While that might sound dull, again, my preference so long as pJobs are ostensibly to be used as any main job is to, well, continue letting them be usable on any job

You can use most if not all phantom job or Logos/Lost Actions on any job. Of course, inevitably some will be better with specific ones. pBerserker is clearly designed to be used by WAR/DRK but luckily anyone else can also make use of them with the help of an Oracle. Optimal doesn't always mean the most used or fun in any case, as stuff like Watcher (for permanent instant cast), Breathtaker (for quasi-permanent Potion and Ether kits) and Beast (for DPS sustain and survival) in Bozja was quite popular outside of DRS due to their powerful effects, even if it meant dealing less damage.