Thread: WAR 4.0

I like all jobs right where they are: balanced. You have 8 people in a party each one bringing their own strengths with which to compliment each other's weaknesses. I'll listen to anyone who can tell me how a job with no definable weaknesses is balanced. For balance to happen you have to have strengths in one scale, weaknesses in the other. That's what balance is. Right now WAR's scales are on the floor after having tipped over 7 months ago and a vocal minority of them are like "uhh this is where all jobs should be sorry you're not l33t like us, just go to SE's table and beg for scraps until they give you all this stuff we have". You can't give a job strengths and then in the slots where its weaknesses or shortcomings would go, just put more strengths. That's categorically unbalanced, by definition.

"Well-designed" isn't how I'd put it either. It doesn't fit in with the design of the rest of the job system. Its an island unto itself that needs the least input from others. WAR as a job values other jobs less because it has no weaknesses that need to be covered by the rest of its party. It doesn't fit into a team mentality really. That's poor, unbalanced design.

But no, lets remove all weaknesses from all jobs to make them more like WAR and make the need for any one job or role completely obsolete. That's logical? I'm open to reasonable argument to the contrary but really most responses just come down to a simple "NO U."

Imagine NIN/DRG/MNK. Give all of them the utility of NIN and the DPS of MNK. Just all 10/10 across the board, no deviations, no peaks/troughs. Doesn't sound balanced to me. Give SCH/AST/WHM each their own Bene, fairy, and deck of cards. Balanced?

Balance
noun
#2. a condition in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions.

I don't want Fell Cleave/Equilibrium/Storm's Eye for my job. I'm happy with my job where it is. Its balanced. Its not perfect and those imperfections are balanced by synergy given to me by the rest of my group, and I like that, I like being part of a whole, a team. I like balance.

Originally Posted by Syzygian

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The WAR is well balanced on its own. It has well tuned mechanics and is perfectly viable everywhere. I do think however that its dps numbers are a bit too high considering it has a nearly guaranteed spot in every team. Look at the poor paladin, which has less dps AND less survivability than WAR. I'm not sure Hallowed Ground can make up for the difference alone.

WAR is also well balanced in the focus of FFxiv : all jobs have to be viable everywhere and totally interchangeable (idea being, you can go in anything with any "no double" composition and get a clear). While it does great at being viable, the fact that nearly every other job doesn't work as well as WAR does botches the balance. It then leaves only 2 options :

=> improving the other jobs to restore the balance by finally making them all equal in all situation (which is but a dream, but a dream we should strive for nevertheless)
=> botching the way WAR works now to get a weakness which will be overcome by someone else's strengh, creating a general balance BUT making it impossible to go with wahtever party composition and still clear everything, because some compositions won't be able to overcome the weaknesses that have risen.

One is unattainable, the other isn't something we should aim for. What to do ?

Originally Posted by Kuwagami

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How would WAR's hypothetical weakness be so much more detrimental to raid groups for bringing one than the weaknesses that every other job in the game has? How would WAR dealing with a *single* meaningful shortcoming make it impossible to clear fights with any party composition? I'm not following. I see logic like this everywhere. Like the lifeblood of the game and its player-base's ability to clear content hinges on WAR staying where it is. It says to me that we really don't actually understand what balance is.

Here's the thing. All jobs ARE viable in every situation. You can clear anything with anything, with the exception of the first few weeks of Alex Savage which SE already admitted was a mistake. I remember when Thordan first came out people were saying DRK wouldn't be able to take it because of the high physical damage, and youtube was littered with DRK MT clears within the first week. The issue is that although any job is viable and any content is doable, WAR just does it BETTER. There's no need for better. Viable and doable is enough. That's balanced. WAR being inherently better than every job in the game is unbalanced. The rest of the jobs in the game have distinct strengths and weaknesses yet -some- (not all) WAR mains seem to think the onus is on the rest of the playerbase to see their mains as flawed and poorly designed and plead for buffs. It isn't that WAR works in any situation, that part is fine. Almost all jobs work in any situation depending on party composition. Its that its BETTER in any situation.