what in the world just happened?!?

[Devaking55]

why did they "fix" the halved casting time on your second fire or blizzard spell? you were still on a GCD when casting your second fire/blizzard spell :/. i miss seeing that faster cast.

[Umero]

because they love paladin/warrrior more than blackmage. Instead of leaving the already adapted mechanics that have nothing harmful to the game itself alone, they just love to mess around with it. Unlike paladin case in binding coils, they buffed warrior.

[AunaYuuki]

Any Caster dps got screwed along with bard. Melee dps just out blows them by a lot now when running coil. It isn't them "loving" tank classes, warrior needed fixed I think we all can agree on that. The DRG casting times seem to be "better" atleast.

[RyuDragnier]

Any Caster dps got screwed along with bard. Melee dps just out blows them by a lot now when running coil. It isn't them "loving" tank classes, warrior needed fixed I think we all can agree on that. The DRG casting times seem to be "better" atleast.

Looking at the changes, it was done for PvP most likely. Leave it to fixes to balance PvP to ruin the classes in PvE...

[Tilgung]

No ranged classes were ruined. At all. The hits you took were relatively small. SMN is still a ST/Cleaving monster. BLM annihilates every other class in AoE and still has great ST damage.

Bards took the biggest hit. Mostly in utility I suppose, losing RoD's damage reduction. The CD nerf (the only damage nerf, Heavy Shot and Straight Shot 'nerf' are toolkit errors) was figured to be ~7% damage loss. You've still got the best uptime and utility.

[RyuDragnier]

No ranged classes were ruined. At all. The hits you took were relatively small. SMN is still a ST/Cleaving monster. BLM annihilates every other class in AoE and still has great ST damage.

Bards took the biggest hit. Mostly in utility I suppose, losing RoD's damage reduction. The CD nerf (the only damage nerf, Heavy Shot and Straight Shot 'nerf' are toolkit errors) was figured to be ~7% damage loss. You've still got the best uptime and utility.

A shame they changed out RoD's effect, because now I'm never really using it unless it's for the free proc. I never really use my songs either, because the TP one is worthless unless I myself need it (I can't see people's TP bars), the MP one is really only for WHM, and the Requiem is only for BLM. Some utility class we are, all our utility is worthless for helping except in really specific circumstances.

[SirGazuntai]

It was done because we BLM gained an unfair advantage. Sure, Fire I kept you within the GCD, but what about everything else? The bug allowed abuse of Flare, which wasn't what Flare was supposed to be. Fast-cast Flares while under the influence of Astral Fire were extremely overpowered. Before I got my Relic I was doing over 500 DPS easily with just an Ifrit weapon with only 3 monsters. There were relic tanks that still found it hard to keep agro from me.

We were overpowered, no matter how you look at it. We're still extremely strong and when it comes to AoE, we're still king. We just aren't stronger than the game intended for us to be.

The reason the change came now, of course, is because it would make PvP extremely unfair. It was going to happen and anyone that didn't see it coming really shouldn't be mad because you don't seem to have a good idea of what balancing should be. Go make a Monk if you want to be the strongest ST and stay BLM if you want the strongest AoE class.

As for Bards, I'm still finding it hard to figure out why they're still complaining... The only way they should be mad is if the changes to the tooltips of a couple of skills is correct and not a mistake, which is what a lot of people believe from testing. You're still the only class that's impossible to swap out and you're still the DPS that is almost required for the entire end-game content. No one wants to run without Bards.

Also, tanks often run out of TP in long fights. Tell them to inform you when they need more TP and you're fine. There's also the fact that you can still attack fine while moving. If they nerf your damage to 50% while moving, then be mad, but until then you can't really complain about such a small difference to your play-style. The Bards I run with can't figure out what the big deal is as they play almost the exact same without having to cast RoD, which they're happy about.

I do, however, agree that balancing PvP shouldn't ruin PvE. Instead of ignoring PvE, clone the skills and move them over to PvP and THEN balance them. PvE skills don't have to be effected to make PvP better (and let's face it, PvP is a huge mess right now).

[Umero]

I don't mind they fix the double flare thing or whatever you name it. But not when they ruined the mp tick while fixing that.

[Sleigh]

I could forgive the lack of burst damage we took from losing double dip Fire III > Fire III or Flare, and the losing ridiculously high damage free double Flare, but the MP regen being tied to the cast of Fire III is simply an annoyance I can't stand. It's a quality of life change for the worse. If they were so worried about double Flare, they could have just changed Flare to have a form of recast beyond the GCD, one which would reset upon use of Convert or a potion.

[Viridiana]

and the Requiem is only for BLM.

Requiem is for BLM, SMN, and any healer that has time to DPS.