Is there an unneeded hostility towards regular classes in this game?

[Kellauchia]

How did XI get into this?
isnt this XIV....?

[Huntington]

I had a big long post typed up, further recanting the obviously bad information you are spewing, but I'll boil it down to this:

Your experience in XI doesn't matter. If you can't see the benefit of weapon damage, you simply don't understand how damage in this game works. In the end, ACN pidgeon-holes you into a single set of gear, SMN has more diversity. You shouldn't need to heal yourself, ever, and a minor amount of damage reduction in a non-end game instance is unimportant to overall balance. Swapping IR and B4B gives a very minor boost to overall DPS, and even when mixed in with Aero, is easily outweighted by the 20 INT, 10 potency on pet attacks and Fester.

Stop thinking that since you know XI, you know XIV. It is plainly obvious that you don't.

This statement alone is enough for anyone who understands _this_ game to basically ignore everything you have to say on what is "good".

i90 weapons are the single most potent, and cost effective way to increase damage over the i80 alternatives. If you can't recognize that, you really don't understand how damage works in this game.

The game that came before this and played a significant part on helping to influence and shape XIV had no part at all huh? What gives you the crystal clear authority to be able to look to someone else and say that just because they might have played for less time than you, that they themselves don't know anything? As far as it seems now, I'm being lectured by someone on an argument that comes off as heavily elitist-like. You've thrown your own results and information at me and I've given mine, yet throughout the whole thing I haven't seen any slight recognizing of what was said. You shrug off what I give as my side of the argument and ridicule and say I don't understand any concepts like weapon damage and the like simply because I may base experiences off of a previous MMO. Which when made by the same company with differences only in age and staffing, means that at this point, you've only played XIV.


If you haven't, feel free to speak up and say what experiences you have give such a clerical advantage to your words, you've thrown walls of DPS stats at me, but who saw you do them? Do you have other people that could be contacted on this site and asked to give witness testimony? Or are you just going to keep holding whatever cache of knowledge you think you have over me and then use that as the deciding factor in why your words mean more than mine.

3 damage does not make a difference, you can file it under "more DPS" as much as you want, but with gear and Jobs and Classes made as they are, the system is already set up to make whatever you say fall to your side just because of how SE incorrectly made it work, admitted by them in one of the recent Live-Letters. If you're going to count a faulty mechanic system as a pro to your side, you're already arguing from slippery slope, and this is no a longer fun nor creative conversation. It's just a waste of time at this point.

[T0rin]

XIV isn't XI. What was good in that game, isn't necessarily good in this game.

Nothing gives me authority to say anything by default. I've spent very significant time working on data collection, helping reverse engineer and prove out existing, known damage formulas. I've taken hypothetical work and combined it with real, in-game data to create a set of findings that can and has been proven, not only by myself, but many others. I've done very significant analysis of SMN potential, gear, rotations, damage, etc. etc. and many many hours later, have come to a level of understanding on how things work, and shared all of that with the community at large. Nothing I've said is something you have to take my word for. Feel free to read through historical posts on this forum about SMN damage, gear, etc. and you'll see very lengthly discussions about all aspects of the class. You'll also see my role in those discussions. You'll see all the work I've done and conclusive proof I've offered.

You? You come here, having played XI a lot, saying that conclusions you've made from XI exprience apply directly to your ability to accurately analyze what is good in XIV. I've offered you proof to the contrary. You make statements like "3 damage does not make a difference", when it makes a really big difference. But please, don't take my word for it. Read all the many threads on SMN in this forum, and you'll see hundreds of people attest to the same reality.

You know why I can so easily shrug off what you say, make statements that appear to be elitist (and they may be, but they are accurate), is because you say stuff like "3 damage does not make a difference". It is an obvious sign that you simply do not know what you are talking about. I do wish you would go about informing yourself, it would save me the trouble of trying to prevent the community at large from taking you seriously.

[Ryuko]

OP, you lose Fester, Enkindle, Spur, and pet damage potency. Keep in mind that all of your pet's attacks automatically do less damage when you are an arcanist instead of a Summoner (they are lesser potency). Go ahead and equip Arcanist, summon Carbuncle, and look at the tooltip... then equip Summoner, summon another pet, and look at the tooltip. The functionality of the abilities are the same, but the potency is different.

i90 weapons are better than i80 weapons, period. Even healer classes benefit from the 'damage' on a weapon because it buffs their heals exponentially. (There is a formula for this, but I am too lazy to look it up right now). What confuses me is you swear you have parsed the difference between arcanist and summoner to compare the two, yet you don't see the obvious reliance on iLevel for weapons... Please ask a Summoner in full i90 gear that knows what they are doing to parse against a dummy, then ask that same person to parse as Arcanist. They will do much better as Summoner, even with all the added cross-class abilities from arcanist.

I'm sorry that arcanist is not a viable option when it comes to optimal damage. I'd be supporting you if it was -- because diversity is nice. But, SE has pigeonholed people into using using soul crystals... and the most effective way to do damage is with Summoner. A summoner that maintains 100% DoT uptime but does not use Fester at all will not likely outdo a tank on the meters. I know because I actually met a summoner in Titan (hard) one time who refused to use Fester. According to someone in the party (I don't parse), he was at around 90 dps. Granted, if he wasn't using fester, he probably wasn't keeping his dots up 100% of the time either. If your arcanist is outdpsing your summoner, either you need to reevaluate how you play summoner or your parser is very, very flawed.

Also... because it's been brought up: I played Summoner in FFXI for many, many years... even before the level 20 battles came out. I played it when people treated it like a gimped healer, and when people finally began to respect the job. I played SMN for many, many, MANY years. Now I play FFXIV, and have since 1.0 was in its beta stages. This is a different game. Yes, Final Fantasies are heavily influenced by the overall 'universe' (if I can use that term), but this is not a direct sequel. The game is very different, and follows a lot of different patterns the original FFXI did not. For example, there are some VERY tight dps checks in this game. Basically, if you don't burst something down fast... you will not succeed. This is part of the reason arcanist isn't viable... because of that lack of burst damage that summoner has. This is not an argument of FFXI vs. FFXIV, and you are doing some damage to your credibility by bringing it to that level. I will never judge you as less because you are a new player... I am just telling you how it is; sadly, arcanist just isn't viable, and you will realize that as you step into the harder aspects of the game. As you learn more about summoner, I hope you will come to embrace the job for what it is. Right now you are being stubborn. I'm sorry, but the type of diversity you were allowed in XI just isn't really viable here. Now everything is about 'best in slot' and maximizing your important stats.

[AldoVonAlexandros]

Lol, get the jib, ive seen gladiatirs trying to tabk, haha, the loose agro at the first heal, u cant pmay as an arcanist, your dps must be pretty low

[Huntington]

@Ryuko, I appreciate your reply more than what I got from someone else. Regardless, I know I still have much to learn about a lot of things, but talking down to me with sarcastic and rude replies is not the way to show someone your knowledge on a subject. If someone is going to treat me like an ignorant child, I'd at least like if they didn't be improper and downcast things to me about what they're saying in the process, I do nonetheless appreciate your reply over the other's I have gotten. It didn't seem that he could understand where I was coming from in the slightest, and it instead went the course of "you don't know anything about XIV despite your months of time played because you brought up XI." Which I do not think ruins anyone's credibility at all. The first MMO iteration of XIV was a flop that failed horribly. If we're going to pretend that their most successful and most profitable game of all time so far doesn't matter at all, which was an MMO and a clear ground-layer for a lot of things, then we should be comparing XIV to WoW instead based on what I've gotten.

I again reiterate that for Coil, and Extreme fights, that I do not use Arcanist. I recognize the limitations that it does have and with what it has, that I can't make something work. For everything else, I can do SMN or ACN and get decent results with either, I simply like Arcanist better because Carbuncle started it all really and those earlier mentioned variety moves.

Because popular opinion again dictates based on the logical fallacy "appeal to the masses", I am going to now concretely say that all I have said is my opinion and mine alone. I will not play how others want me to unless it very seriously impacts me to do the Role. I have heard others say they see the merits to using a Class over a Job, but because of the mechanics that SE put in place, this is what we have to live with now. There is no equality for all jobs, and there probably won't be for awhile. We do know however, that after XIV, we won't be seeing this feature ever again. Re-watch the recent Live-Letters if you so wish everyone else, they will not be implementing something like this again. I am also done interacting with this thread for the time being. Good night.

[Allyrion]

If you haven't, feel free to speak up and say what experiences you have give such a clerical advantage to your words, you've thrown walls of DPS stats at me, but who saw you do them? Do you have other people that could be contacted on this site and asked to give witness testimony? Or are you just going to keep holding whatever cache of knowledge you think you have over me and then use that as the deciding factor in why your words mean more than mine.

Experience is important but it does not make for an objective argument. It is by definition anecdotal.
T0rin's position on how stats work and how they affect SMN damage are all over this forum.
However, I do think he may have come off as confrontational. There's nothing wrong with trying things out.

You were asking others about their tests and how things match up.
I don't believe you need to go through every bit of theory crafting to discuss trying out ACN. You didn't deserve the ridicule you got.

On the other hand, you've fallen into bad arguments about experience based on another game (with a completely different system) and talking about the system being faulty.
If I remember correctly, SE's comment about classes not being useful didn't imply it wasn't going to be fixed. If anything, Classes will be given better solo potential, but Jobs will always be at the forefront for group end-game content.
That has always been the stated design. In fact, I'll quote it:

The foremost appeal of jobs is the unparalleled degree of specialization they offer. Their potential is best realized in party situations, where having well-defined roles is the key to success. There can be no doubt that jobs shine the brightest in the company of others.

Hence despite your whole spiel about knowing the company's MMO history by playing XI, you are speaking about going into end-game parties with a class.
Now experimenting is fine with friends or solo, but when you join a PuG then are you really surprised people give you a hard time for going against the game's design?
If you ever really did find a way for ACN to beat out SMN dps, then you'll probably be the one exploiting "a faulty mechanic".

I think this discussion could've gone more civilly and that's a shame.
Either way, your testing seems a little incomplete at a few minutes and relying on someone else to get your dps. Dps evens out at around 5 minutes. It would even give more credibility if you gave actual result numbers for each test. Of course, if you aren't doing the SMN rotation right it won't prove anything but the discussion would benefit from some real numbers thrown around. You should also use equal gear on the ACN and SMN to provide equal footing.

[jlewiss]

TBH I think yoshi needs to make an offical statement that classes are not meant to be used past lvl.29 and in fact I would love it if content lvl.30+ required you to have a job stone equipped before you could que. I think the issue is all these people running around as base classes aren't told in game/ by the dev. team that what they are doing was not intended as a viable way to play the game. The excuse of "LOOK AT ALL MY EXTRA SKILLS" is very silly when you consider that you get 5 job skills which will be more useful then any 5 skills you can cross class. Hell 99% of cross class skills are useless as a define job they are even more useless as a base class. If you as an ACN need to use foresight ever then either you or the tank is doing something very wrong.

[Viviza]

This has been both theorycrafted and tested -- the jobs simply outperform their base classes. I can't think of any examples where this is not the case. Maybe certain pvp setups. If arcanist outperformed summoner you wouldn't see any summoners and it would get patched up pretty quick. You're free to ignore all the math, but all the wishing in the world won't change the reality of it.

It's your subscription and entirely your option how you want to play. If you want to main Arcanist, all power to you. No one has any right to dictate how you spend your time. But when you group with other people, now you're interacting with their time. They get a vote in how your playstyle impacts their experience. They can refuse to group with you. Your point about playing in the manner you prefer falls flat when you impose this preference upon others.

Was it worth being kicked? Debatable. None of the given categories really fit. They may have assumed you were intentionally trolling them and reported it as harassment. I've seen people not playing jobs simply for sake of annoying others. I don't expect this attitude will change unless jobs are refined to act as options rather than upgrades.

[xEscaflownex]

I just spent like an hour doing bunch of 5 minute tests as SMN and as ACN, same exact gear sets (i87, allagan weapon), every single time I did 60+ DPS more on SMN than ACN, sorry, but the few extra cross class buffs don't even come close to overcoming loss of Fester, Contagion, 20 int, and Higher pet damage.

It's bad enough that so many people cant play their chosen Jobs proficiently, but at least they can learn and get better. You willfully and stubbornly refusing to play as SMN, and spending so much time and energy touting how you think ACN is better than SMN is so much worse, because even if you played them both to their maximum, ACN will lose everytime, so you are just limiting yourself regardless of skill.

Feel free to play however you wish, but I wouldn't be rushing to include you in any of my parties when you are willfully gimping your Damage, if it's some trivial content where group didn't need you to be doing good damage, or was some messing around group, fine, but for any content requiring all the DPS to be outputting their maximum, I would ask you to go SMN or GTFO!