Korean Live Letter and Job changes (Translated)

[Ramath]

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

Seriously... I often wonder if this is the first and only online game everyone here has ever played. This is the nature of online games; they change! Sometimes in ways you approve of, and sometimes in ways you don't. That is never going to change. Being able to adapt and cope with change is a lost art, I think...

I really enjoyed the interview. While I see, sadly, a lot of homogenization coming down the pipeline, I also see many good changes coming as well. I think they are starting to realize that most of the 51-60 abilities sounded great in theory but failed to work in practice. Unless the player was in that perfect star-aligned zone of optimal opportunity, which only lasts for a few seconds at a time, the job almost always reverted back to a level 50 play style. If we are playing as a level 50 job a lot of the time, why bother adding levels 51-60? I hope they see this and want to make the play styles change from 50 to 60.

[Vexander]

Interesting.

Glad to see Thunder II and III being removed and rolled into Thunder. Thunder II was useless after you got III, and you still only ever cast Thunder, only using Thunder III on proc. I'm hoping Mana Ward and Mana Barrier will also be merged. Maybe do the same for Freeze and Blizzard II.

[Ilenya]

Interesting.

Glad to see Thunder II and III being removed and rolled into Thunder. Thunder II was useless after you got III, and you still only ever cast Thunder, only using Thunder III on proc. I'm hoping Mana Ward and Mana Barrier will also be merged. Maybe do the same for Freeze and Blizzard II.

Correct me if I am wrong, but with your natural mp regen timing Thunder II was better than Thunder for your level 50 rotation, yes?

[Vexander]

Correct me if I am wrong, but with your natural mp regen timing Thunder II was better than Thunder for your level 50 rotation, yes?

Good question. I've always used Thunder, but maybe something changed. I don't do Savage/EX content myself, so a more competitive Black Mage player would probably know for sure.

[Ilenya]

Good question. I've always used Thunder, but maybe something changed. I don't do Savage/EX content myself, so a more competitive Black Mage player would probably know for sure.

These days I believe Thunder is fine for the Enochian shenanigans since you don't need the extra time for the MP regen (Blizzard III into Blizzard IV is enough) and you just want the DoT out as fast as possible. The potency between the 3 tiers' initial hit just isn't high enough of a difference to matter.

[loreleidiangelo]

No healer changes because "all healers are viable" is a cop-out, and frankly, insanely disappointing. Nobody CARES that all three healers are fairly balanced healing-wise; what people are losing their nuts over is the OTHER stuff they bring to the table like superior MP regen, better global efficiency or sustainable personal DPS/group DPS contribution. Lack of strict healing requirements leading to the immense focus on these other areas is just soul-crushing and I'm supremely disheartened to hear that the devs are taking such a narrow-minded view on healer balance.

[Ilenya]

No healer changes because "all healers are viable" is a cop-out, and frankly, insanely disappointing. Nobody CARES that all three healers are fairly balanced healing-wise; what people are losing their nuts over is the OTHER stuff they bring to the table like superior MP regen, better global efficiency or sustainable personal DPS/group DPS contribution. Lack of strict healing requirements leading to the immense focus on these other areas is just soul-crushing and I'm supremely disheartened to hear that the devs are taking such a narrow-minded view on healer balance.

Maybe we'll get lucky and have actual healing-intensive fights again?

[Sylve]

Maybe we'll get lucky and have actual healing-intensive fights again?

Which will be healing intensive for exactly 4 weeks when everyone has used the most optimal path possible to overgear the requirements for the content and we're back to falling asleep at the wheel....

I kinda want them to add in scaling difficulties.
Pick your mechanical difficulty (Normal v Savage/EX etc) and then a literal slider that increases the power of the mobs in the dungeon. Obviously, The drops would scale their ilvls based on the difficulty bonus. For example, if it drops i300 for +0 Savage Raid, then if you do +1 Savage the items would be i310 etc, up to a maximum for that patch stage.

Be even better if there were minor cosmetic differences per difficulty tier.

I'd actually also really like it if they looked at the Occultist in Revelation for inspiration on Cleric Stance functionality.
It has a skill called "Adapt" whereby it flips its Damage Dealing skills to have the exact same effect but healing on allies instead of damage to enemies (IE, skill places a DoT with an AoE damage pop when it expires on enemies, it will Regen and AoE burst a heal at the end for allies).
The Adapt only has the Global Cooldown, and is quite fun to be juggling the Damage/Healing since the cooldowns don't reset between versions. If you dropped the AoE DoT field, you can't then Adapt and drop it as a Healing field. Makes for some interesting gameplay.

[Vorx]

No healer changes because "all healers are viable" is a cop-out, and frankly, insanely disappointing. Nobody CARES that all three healers are fairly balanced healing-wise; what people are losing their nuts over is the OTHER stuff they bring to the table like superior MP regen, better global efficiency or sustainable personal DPS/group DPS contribution. Lack of strict healing requirements leading to the immense focus on these other areas is just soul-crushing and I'm supremely disheartened to hear that the devs are taking such a narrow-minded view on healer balance.

You would think Healers would be the main focus areas, I personally feel the Healer is the most important person in the group. No one else can heal others or revive, even if someone is a Class and cross skills Cure it doesn't make up for a full Healer class. Even if RDM gets healing magic or can cross skill it it still won't be as good.

[Vexander]

No healer changes because "all healers are viable" is a cop-out, and frankly, insanely disappointing. Nobody CARES that all three healers are fairly balanced healing-wise; what people are losing their nuts over is the OTHER stuff they bring to the table like superior MP regen, better global efficiency or sustainable personal DPS/group DPS contribution. Lack of strict healing requirements leading to the immense focus on these other areas is just soul-crushing and I'm supremely disheartened to hear that the devs are taking such a narrow-minded view on healer balance.

You're reading too much into it. They said that AST is not getting nerfed because they feel that all the jobs are viable at end game. That doesn't mean there are no healer changes coming, it means AST is not getting nerfed. That should be a GOOD thing, not a bad thing. This interview gave us very little information about all the changes to come.