Quote Originally Posted by Teknoman View Post
They are completely changing all the combat skill efficiency, possibly how the skills function, equipment stats, as well as adding jobs...and i'm sure the ifrit battle will end up taking advantage of that...so the assumptions about archers and thaumaturge ruling are shaky at best.

Lots of people told me as a Blue Mage I wouldn't be able to participate in alot of fights. Guess what, we found a way (Thief included).
I killed Ouryu with a sneak attack trick attack Viper bite distortion. Doesn't mean any other thief on the server did. 80% of thieves switched to black mage, summoner, ranger, or tank because it was either that or don't go. Very few players have the resources to fight through imbalance. The vast majority simply take it and comply.

For some reason you all think SE can miraculously design these hard fights to have something new that can't be archer'd and thaumaturge'd, in light of a game that clearly is not the flagship MMO of creativity and innovation. You'll see just how inescapable the conclusion is.

The harder they make this fight, all it will do is enforce class castes. Until they fix thaumaturge and archer, adding Ifrit is a mistake. If it's too easy a fight, it's wasted. If it's too hard, archers and thaumaturges will finally have the excuse they've been looking for to take their seat at the endgame throne.

You can't develop a solution to game difficulty until you fix the problem of what players will do when faced with a difficult situation in this game.