Thread: 5.2+ Job Balance Feedback Thread

All Jobs
Abilities that rely on dealing damage to absorb HP do not restore more than 1 HP if the target is shielded. If it is intended for these abilities to drain health even from shielded targets, please fix this interaction.
e.g. Drain's "Absorbs 200% of damage dealt as HP" effect.

Revamp common actions to allow for more variety.
Revamp additional actions to achieve the same goal.
The playerbase feels like there are too many underperforming additional actions that create an environment where there is only one or two correct choices with any given Role. Diversifying, revamping and/or bringing up underperforming additionals AND common abilities would help bring more decision-making and depth to the system and giving players more tools to deal with a variety of situations.
e.g. Rampart should be a common ability shared by all tanks, therefore moved from additionals into their base toolkit, and possibly adding more additionals, to allow more choice in how players can and want to handle different situations.

Healers
Giving Healers some means of recovering MP during combat. Such as granting 500-1500MP by casting Glare, Broil or Malefic.

While under CC effects, Healers are unable to Purify their party members if their character is turned away from said member. The playerbase at large considers this a design flaw, please fix the facing requirement from the ability.

Tanks
Consider reworking and/or re-diversifying Tank Jobs to have uniqueness with their own strengths and weaknesses. Currently, each Tank's toolkit is close to a carbon copy of one another (including buffs, CC and abilities & their potencies) minus one truly unique buff or debuff.

Each Tank Job plays in a very similar fashion. There isn't a lot differentiating them, and the playerbase feels it is frustrating to play each one when mirroring what we had during 4.x. The answer with all of them to various situations is practically the same, regardless of the Job you're playing; for example as helping a party member who's taking a lot of damage or assisting your party to kill the opposing party, the way you go about it is almost exactly the same.

The playerbase is concerned with losing albeit niche but also unique and useful abilities in the past, such as Sole Survivor, Clemency and Thrill of War. These abilities gave each Tank Job flavor and an identity, which made them more enjoyable and interesting to play. This sentiment is echoed in the usage of Tank stun abilities, with unique Stun abilities of the past (Such as the old Onslaught) being replaced by a global stun ability in Low Blow for all Tanks.

Giving Tank Jobs an additional defensive ability (e.g. Rampart as a common ability, rather than optional), or alternatively their tank stance (e.g. 20% mitigation, 25% less damage dealt) back, would improve the current situation of tanks where they're often easier to kill than their own Melee party member which should not be the case.

There is also an power imbalance between the Tank Jobs, where Dark Knight is above every other Job. In this feedback thread, we'll mention a list of possible Dark Knight specific changes, but alternatively the other Tank Jobs could also be brought up to match it. As an example, giving every Tank Job a CC ability in their baseline abilities, such as adding a Stun component back into Onslaught, Shield Bash for Paladin and possibly a ranged Stun for Gunbreaker. Other ability changes and/or revamping would be needed for the other Tank Jobs to match Dark Knight, but just the CC department fix would go a long way.

Ranged/Caster
The playerbase feels Ranged Physical and Casters having close-range AoE (Enchanted Moulinet/Quick Nock/Spread Shot) is a poor design choice. The design mainly affects Frontline and Rival Wing modes, where moving in close-range to use AoE abilities often gets you killed very quickly, especially because it feels like these abilities were added with Frontline in mind.

Examples: Wide Volley for Bard, Grenade Shot for Machinist, a reworked Contre Sixte (on the GCD, gauge cost added) for Red Mage.

Astrologian
Currently, any spell that is cast under the effect of Neutral Sect will be interrupted if Neutral Sect ends before the cast is finished. This should not be the case for any important Healer cooldowns, as this can very easily lead to a party member dying simply because your own cooldown renders you actionless for a few seconds. Changing Aspected Benefic to an instant cast would prevent skill interrupts, and also increase Job identity.

Astrologians will also sometimes not get the use out of an Abridged proc while going from a Benefic I directly into Benefic II, because the proc doesn't register before you use Benefic II. Something should be changed so that this would not be an issue.

White Mage
Revert the change to White Mages' Regen spell. Bringing up other Healer Jobs was necessary, but bringing down White Mage at the same time was unnecessary.

Scholar
Often 10 second duration for Adloquium ends up being an MP deficit, because the shield effect runs out rather than gets broken. Increasing the duration or making the shield effect permanent would help out Scholar greatly.

Changing Biolysis "Reduces target's HP recovered by healing actions by 20%" effect to either not stack with, or alternatively overwrites, Dark Knight's Edge of Shadow debuff, and vice versa. Alternatively, replace the Biolysis effect with an entirely new effect altogether so that the stacking isn't an issue and allowing Scholar to contribute in some other way. Such as a pure DoT effect.

Dark Knight
Changing Dark Knight's The Blackest Night to either to not granting Dark Arts, reduce Edge of Darkness potency from 1000 to 800 or reduce the "Reduces target's HP recovered by healing actions by 20%" to reducing recovery by 10%. One of these changes would help bring Dark Knight in line with other tanks.

Changing Edge of Shadow "Reduces target's HP recovered by healing actions by 20%" effect to either not stack with, or alternatively overwrites, Scholar's Biolysis debuff, and vice versa. Or as mentioned in the Scholar feedback, create an entirely new effect altogether for Biolysis so the stacking isn't an issue.

Gunbreaker
Bring back the Draw and Junction ability to GNB: This core ability allowed for more variation, strategy, and utility that was unique to GNB that was both fun and interesting and an overall disappointment to lose.

Give GNB better utility, or more damage to compete with the other tanks: Currently GNB's damage does not make up for the utility the other tanks can bring(i.e. Vuln Up + Holmgang, Damage down + Ranged Burst + Hallowed, Healing Down at almost 100% uptime, etc.). This can be balanced by either a flat increase to GNB's damage equivalent to the utility lost, or additional utility to even out the playing field(Draw and Junction).

Don't have the Gnashing Fang combo interrupt your single target or AoE combo: It doesn't in PVE, no reason it should in PVP.

Increase the Fast Draw(Haste) max duration from 15sec to 20-25sec and implement GNB's Fast Draw buff timer onto it's job gauge: Comparing this to DRK's Darkside buff that only requires a single oGCD to maintain, with a max duration of 30sec; to GNB's Fast Draw that requires a gauge spent GCD to maintain(3 GCD's to max value at 3 stacks), but only has a max duration of 15sec, it is non-equivical in favor of DRK. Another possibility would be to make Lightning Shot an oGCD on a 20-30sec timer, keeping the same effect in order to make maintaining the buff far less of a burden.

Either make it so the shield removal from Bow Shock happens before the damage, make Bow Shock do 0 damage and decrease the cooldown, or change it to something else entirely: As it stands now, Bow Shock will do damage to the shield it is trying to remove, before the shield is actually removed, making the ability counter productive.