BLM Invisible Nerf

[Peptaru]

Just based on numbers alone, bards probably have it easier than either summoner or black mages.

Internal Release/Blood for Blood have a 25% uptime, which works out to somewhere between 3.75% to a 5% damage loss (counting extra River of Blood procs).

Summoners losing thunder and BLMs losing double dipping on cast times will likely result in much more of a nerf.

BLM was miles ahead of BRD anyway, so was SMN. That's why they call it balancing~ The melee buffs, which I'll be happy to reap the benefit of, seem to be the opposite of balance. I'm sure I am in the minority here, but I also like a reduction in the LB bar for doubling (or more) up on jobs. It's a neat idea! That said..... I do not like that they're punishing people who maybe just all like to play blm or drg for partying together. Just let people play. The neatness of 1x each job outweighs the "seriously?" that I feel about the second point.

[Sylari]

I'm sure I am in the minority here, but I also like a reduction in the LB bar for doubling (or more) up on jobs.

My concern with this change is that it punishes casual players who are more interested in playing what they want than group stacking and that if it's significant enough to really matter it seems like it'd be more of a bandaid to class balance than. Sort of a "well the classes aren't balanced that well but you have to bring one of everything anyways"

Hoping it's a relatively minor sort of perk rather than a significant detriment.

[Peptaru]

My concern with this change is that it punishes casual players who are more interested in playing what they want than group stacking and that if it's significant enough to really matter it seems like it'd be more of a bandaid to class balance than. Sort of a "well the classes aren't balanced that well but you have to bring one of everything anyways"

Hoping it's a relatively minor sort of perk rather than a significant detriment.

I think they did an acceptable job of balancing, for now. The one fear is that melee are going to be -too- strong now when coupled with the ranged nerfs. Everyone does a similar (similar enough) amount of damage that bringing one of everything should work just fine.

Say mnk is 5-10% better than drg, but the LB builds fairly slower with two monks, having one of each leads to the same damage for the party. I'm okay with that. Too many people get hung up on personal DPS.

[Sylari]

I think they did an acceptable job of balancing, for now. The one fear is that melee are going to be -too- strong now when coupled with the ranged nerfs. Everyone does a similar (similar enough) amount of damage that bringing one of everything should work just fine.

Say mnk is 5-10% better than drg, but the LB builds fairly slower with two monks, having one of each leads to the same damage for the party. I'm okay with that. Too many people get hung up on personal DPS.

People get hung up on it because otherwise it leads to tokenism. People tend to like to contribute in a big way. The dragoon wants to be there because he's an awesome DPS, not because he's 'the token dragoon who we need to bring along because otherwise we don't build limit fast enough'.

That's all theoretical of course.

[Peptaru]

People get hung up on it because otherwise it leads to tokenism. People tend to like to contribute in a big way. The dragoon wants to be there because he's an awesome DPS, not because he's 'the token dragoon who we need to bring along because otherwise we don't build limit fast enough'.

That's all theoretical of course.

It is indeed, and I addressed it when I said that everyone [I'll rephrase] should be doing similar enough damage after this stuff that it will not be tokenism to bring one of everything. People do not get hung up (edit: on DPS) to avoid tokenism, just to be clear; that is a fallacy. People get hung up on it cuz it makes them feel good to be the big dog. Nothing to do about that, it's in human nature. There are exceptions to that, you may well be one, but be sure the main reason is to feel superior.

[Kiokin]

People get hung up on it because otherwise it leads to tokenism. People tend to like to contribute in a big way. The dragoon wants to be there because he's an awesome DPS, not because he's 'the token dragoon who we need to bring along because otherwise we don't build limit fast enough'.

That's all theoretical of course.

Before these changes melee was relegated to being the token class brought just to use the melee LB.

[Norondor]

Say mnk is 5-10% better than drg, but the LB builds fairly slower with two monks, having one of each leads to the same damage for the party. I'm okay with that. Too many people get hung up on personal DPS.

... You might well be ok with that, but you shouldn't be! This is a terrible change, as a fair number of fights are designed to lean heavily on LB as a core part of the group's strategy -- Ifrit and Garuda and potentially Titan depending on group composition, as well as portions of coil and dungeons where it might be a big part of how you want to approach the fight, even if it's not critical to success. I'm assuming you've seen the 2.1 trailer -- i doubt that the tactical use of limit breaks will be less essential on Ifrit extreme than hard.

This change doesn't eliminate the problem of groups playing favorites with flavor of the month classes -- it either exacerbates it, or at best, just complicates it. In the case that a class is really broken by changes (hi SMNs!) this means that they'll now be an albatross in otherwise-viable groups on fights where limit is a concern. How awful!

[Vortok]

My concern with this change is that it punishes casual players who are more interested in playing what they want than group stacking and that if it's significant enough to really matter it seems like it'd be more of a bandaid to class balance than.

I kinda view it the opposite way. Most casual players aren't going to care too much about how fast the LB builds. At worst they'll stand around in an early phase to build the LB bar (like how many did for Titan to LB the heart if dps couldn't burn the heart without a LB anyway). The hardcore players will care much more about how fast the LB builds because they'll be paying attention to not only when they can use it the first time, but also their subsequent uses of it later in the fight. They're the ones you had to worry about class stacking and benching other jobs anyway. I feel that casual players are also more likely to get more gear before doing a fight and thus outgear it, so more room to play with.


I seem to recall them mention class stacking impacting how fast the LB builds awhile ago - around when they talked about content up through Ifrit HM being balanced without cross-class abilities in mind. Maybe they were referring to the upcoming change, or maybe it was already in and the patch is just making the difference more pronounced if you class stack.

[ChickensEvil]

To the issue of the timing of umbral and astral ticks/buff/whatever, the video has been pulled from youtube, however if what you are suggesting is true then this is good news