Thoughts on the removal of skills

[tdb]

just like Fire 2 replaces Fire 1 for instance.

Bad example since Fire 2 does not replace Fire 1. In fact BLM retains all four numbered fire spells and they all serve different purposes.

For a better example look at WHM which has probably the longest skill upgrade chain in the game: Stone -> Stone II -> III -> IV -> Glare.

[Grann-Goro]

Oh ok, thank you for this piece of information.

I changed it in my previous message.

[Wolwosh]

I find it weird that they remove fun skills like eye for an eye, stone skin, the caster magic resistance up buff(nice for tank busters), granted they were not super strong but I liked using then, and instead of those we get sleep..
When do we ever need to use sleep?
I still miss bane on Scholar :/

[Bright-Flower]

Upranking spells (like the white mage stone to glare chain) is one way to do it without impacting gameplay. Some jobs will probably change more than others. Monk for exmaple they seem to struggle with so wouldn't be shocked if it got a more substantial remake at some point. New jobs lik dancer or red mage seem less likely to get major changes since they're largely in a good spot.

Paladin was an underwhelming job given new toys until it finally started to feel complete so I have a feeling it may not change dramatically in 6.0 now that it's in a good place rotation wise.

[Silverquick]

How they handle job changes has always been questionable,

Summoner is probably a big offender when it comes to job changes..*snip*

Yeah I really don't know how to even describe the SMN changes, Half of the Button Merging for SMN turned into large nerfs. Pre Stormblood the SMN used to have Bio, Bio II, Miasma, Miasma II, and Shadowflare (which no longer exists) and they all stacked with each other. Here was the original potencies....

60th level
Bio: 40
Bio II: 35
Miasma: 35
Miasma II: 10
Shadowflare: 25
Total: 130

Post "button merge"
Bio II: 30
Miasma: 20
Total: 50

owww... mega nerf. Sure it was a pain in the rear to cast all of that AND kick in Contagion from Garuda, which you had to do because past 3 targets after Bane, the duration was halved. But... you know, we were expecting like... Bio II to be like 65 potency and Miasma to be 65 potency or somesuch, instead they got nerfed into the ground. And Contagion was completely removed.

It was already bad enough because they removed Subjobs so everyone took a major hit in damage as the Subjob added stats. So not only did you lose a ton of INT from BLM sub, but you also had your DoTs hammered. Summoner got crushed at the outset of Stormblood. Plus lost Blizzard II from BLM which added another 50 potency you could spam on top of your 130 potency in DoTs.

Eventually they did make up for all this...
I do not remember Slipstream (Garuda) being there at the outset of Stormblood but was a 50 potency per tick DoT, and I DO know they eventually changed "Tri-Bind" which was only a 25 potency AoE Bind (stop movement) (basically useless in this game) into what is now known as Outburst which is a 90 potency AoE to make up for the loss of Blizzard II.

But it was just brutal to be a SMN in the beginning of Stormblood because of all that.

Ruin III used to be like 300 potency back then and got nerfed down to where it is now. Painflare used to be 200 potency... post Stormblood it became 130. And used to have 3 Aetherflow stacks... nerfed down to just 2 Aetherflow stacks we have today. It was really Brutal to be a SMN at the outset of Stormblood.

BUT at the same time they did make some changes that were... about 50/50. They removed the Provoke feature from Titan Egi and changed that into a 30% of your health Stoneskin. The big knock on Titan Egi back then was always that it was only a solo pet because it would steal agro from the tank. When they changed it, it meant for once this pet could be used in both Dungeons and Raids to give you a highly effective defensive shield that allowed you to withstand even the nastiest of Room Wide AoE or AoE Mechanics. Allowing you to do a full Demi-Bahamut with Ruin 3s without being disturbed and having to use Ruin 2s on the move to get your Wyrmwaves off.

[linay]

Yeah I really don't know how to even describe the SMN changes, Half of the Button Merging for SMN turned into large nerfs. Pre Stormblood the SMN used to have Bio, Bio II, Miasma, Miasma II, and Shadowflare (which no longer exists) and they all stacked with each other.

...

Sure it was a pain in the rear to cast all of that AND kick in Contagion from Garuda, which you had to do because past 3 targets after Bane, the duration was halved. But... you know, we were expecting like... Bio II to be like 65 potency and Miasma to be 65 potency or somesuch, instead they got nerfed into the ground. And Contagion was completely removed.

It was already bad enough because they removed Subjobs so everyone took a major hit in damage as the Subjob added stats. So not only did you lose a ton of INT from BLM sub, but you also had your DoTs hammered. Summoner got crushed at the outset of Stormblood. Plus lost Blizzard II from BLM which added another 50 potency you could spam on top of your 130 potency in DoTs.

Eventually they did make up for all this...
I do not remember Slipstream (Garuda) being there at the outset of Stormblood but was a 50 potency per tick DoT, and I DO know they eventually changed "Tri-Bind" which was only a 25 potency AoE Bind (stop movement) (basically useless in this game) into what is now known as Outburst which is a 90 potency AoE to make up for the loss of Blizzard II.

But it was just brutal to be a SMN in the beginning of Stormblood because of all that.

Ruin III used to be like 300 potency back then and got nerfed down to where it is now. Painflare used to be 200 potency... post Stormblood it became 130. And used to have 3 Aetherflow stacks... nerfed down to just 2 Aetherflow stacks we have today. It was really Brutal to be a SMN at the outset of Stormblood.

BUT at the same time they did make some changes that were... about 50/50. They removed the Provoke feature from Titan Egi and changed that into a 30% of your health Stoneskin. The big knock on Titan Egi back then was always that it was only a solo pet because it would steal agro from the tank. When they changed it, it meant for once this pet could be used in both Dungeons and Raids to give you a highly effective defensive shield that allowed you to withstand even the nastiest of Room Wide AoE or AoE Mechanics. Allowing you to do a full Demi-Bahamut with Ruin 3s without being disturbed and having to use Ruin 2s on the move to get your Wyrmwaves off.

Going from Heavensward to Stormblood and now to Shadowbringers, I have not noticed any significant nerf. If anything, most duties have gotten easier to complete even when synced. So I don't think comparing potencies across expansion is all that meaningful as I would think the fights would be rebalanced with the new values.

(And personally speaking, I loved Summoner at the beginning of Stormblood. I think it was my favorite between late Heavensward to early Shadowbringers.)

[Silverquick]

Going from Heavensward to Stormblood and now to Shadowbringers, I have not noticed any significant nerf. If anything, most duties have gotten easier to complete even when synced. So I don't think comparing potencies across expansion is all that meaningful as I would think the fights would be rebalanced with the new values.

(And personally speaking, I loved Summoner at the beginning of Stormblood. I think it was my favorite between late Heavensward to early Shadowbringers.)

It wasn't... and they didn't

And it was hell on everyone too at first because of the loss of subjobs. I remember taking BLM and RDM up too. I actually had to use Enochian on normal mobs in Stormblood because the loss of Subjobs hit BLM too making soloing a major effort on even just normal mobs which would have been unheard of prior to that. RDM was much easier surprisingly than either of the two to bring up in Stormblood. At least until they got around to rebuffing everyone.

I left SMN behind back then because it was such a chore just to do anything. I can't even imagine bringing the thing up from scratch again because that even brutalized lower levels in the ARR MSQ for SMN. Some of the MSQ fights from ARR were balanced around that potency just making them brutal on new players too. The things that got nerfed on SMN were all of its base level abilities and you weren't going to see Bahamut Demi until 70th level.

EDIT: Oh I noticed you are talking about NOWADAYS... I am talking about when they first did this. Since then they have rebuffed and rebalanced things later into Stormblood expansion, but back then it was brutal because they hadn't done that yet.

[linay]

It wasn't... and they didn't

And it was hell on everyone too at first because of the loss of subjobs. I remember taking BLM and RDM up too. I actually had to use Enochian on normal mobs in Stormblood because the loss of Subjobs hit BLM too making soloing a major effort on even just normal mobs which would have been unheard of prior to that. RDM was much easier surprisingly than either of the two to bring up in Stormblood. At least until they got around to rebuffing everyone.

I left SMN behind back then because it was such a chore just to do anything. I can't even imagine bringing the thing up from scratch again because that even brutalized lower levels in the ARR MSQ for SMN. Some of the MSQ fights from ARR were balanced around that potency just making them brutal on new players too. The things that got nerfed on SMN were all of its base level abilities and you weren't going to see Bahamut Demi until 70th level.

EDIT: Oh I noticed you are talking about NOWADAYS... I am talking about when they first did this. Since then they have rebuffed and rebalanced things later into Stormblood expansion, but back then it was brutal because they hadn't done that yet.

No, I was talking about back then.

I started playing FFXIV in January of 2017 and Arcanist/Summoner was my first class/job and my main until around 4.1 when I switched to Red Mage. And I had no issue making the transition from Heavensward to Stormblood even at low levels.

If you have a different experience, then I don't know what to tell you. I loved Summoner back then (beginning of Stormblood), especially at max level, but also at low levels.

[Silverquick]

Its not a "different experience" Linay.

There is simply no way you could not notice a 60% DoT nerf like that, not when combined with the loss of stats from Subjob.

I think you are intentionally trying to minimize this. More importantly I actually went out back then and tested it on the HW mobs as well to see if there was some kind of reduction in mob strength to correspond with the loss of subjobs.

...There was not.

[linay]

Its not a "different experience" Linay.

There is simply no way you could not notice a 60% DoT nerf like that, not when combined with the loss of stats from Subjob.

I think you are intentionally trying to minimize this. More importantly I actually went out back then and tested it on the HW mobs as well to see if there was some kind of reduction in mob strength to correspond with the loss of subjobs.

...There was not.

I don't use a parser, so I can only say that I didn't notice the runs taking any longer to do and I'll leave it at that.