Thread: BLM itemization in 5.4 is a problem.

Originally Posted by Xenitan

The issue is: traditionally the raid weapon has been BiS and in instances where it hasn't, we have historical precedent where SE will change the stats to make it BiS, see: Diamond Weapons in Stormblood.

The situation in Stormblood was a little different. The raid weapons were a whole weapon damage point lower than intended resulting in them having the exact same weapon damage as upgraded tome weapons, quite a bit more serious than simply having the correct amount of less desirable substats. To my knowledge, they have never changed the stats on properly budgeted items to deliberately nudge them into best in slot status.

Frankly, I'm not convinced the devs actually 'know' what stats are desirable for each job and plan raid weapons accordingly. Depending on the complexity of the job, often which substats that job finds desirable can be somewhat emergent and only come to light after digging by the community. Having lurked around theorycrafting spaces in the past, I do not believe the developers are 'in the know' to that degree.

I agree it's not great for any job to find out their raid weapon isn't actually best in slot, but I don't believe they explicitly try to avoid this situation, it's just the luck of the draw. I've always assumed that the process was random and that they were banking on the weapon damage difference being enough to tip the scales (evidently not so this time).

That reminds me, summoners and red mages are eyeing double tome rings as best in slot this tier too, due to the glut of spellspeed on the eden ring. There is a corresponding vitality loss there too as they are unique and one ring will have to be unaugmented. Not as big a concession as going down a tier on a weapon slot, but yeah it doesn't feel great all the same.

Well, it's only intentional insofar as the algorithm can be assumed to have been designed perfectly, right? If, going by every other tier we can assume they want a weapon damage difference to exist between tome and raid weapons, I think it's fair game for them to fix it manually. Just one of those things where it would be in line with the spirit and not the letter of the law.

Whatever the case, I think we can agree the issue of having to massage item budgets is somewhat removed from the issue of them having the right amount of stats, but those stats being suboptimal for certain jobs in practice. Like, conversely, the speed stats get a bad rep on a lot of non-blm jobs, but that's really something stemming from the rigid cooldown based job design prevalent in this game and not something that's intrinsically true. Blm is a great case study for this considering their b4-skip rotation lines came out of a literal machine learning bot (to my knowledge anyway).

And that's really the interesting part to me because it ties into the question of just how well the devs understand their own jobs and how much oversight they actually exercise over itemization in that regard. Like I mentioned, I've always assumed it's simply a crapshoot at the whims of whatever algorithm they use to populate item stats. I don't recall them ever talking about it anywhere since it's a little too niche for your typical interview or fanfest, but I'd be interested to know if they have.

Originally Posted by HaroldSaxon

Bumping this as this severely affects BLM for the upcoming ultimate, putting it at a severe disadvantage compared to other DPS classes.

When people realized how overturned SMN, they were explicitly asked about debuffing SMN before TEA.
They said they understood the problem but were leaving it.

I'm not sure we can expect them to increase/rebalance the substats on BLM's weapon (or other gear) before the Ultimate then. Especially if there is any truth to thoughts like this:

Originally Posted by Lastelli

Honestly I think this is a way to indirectly nerf the job since as it stands, after the smn nerf, it's the higher rdps caster by a not insignificant margin, at least according to fflogs data. The lower vit won't be a problem: -5 vit points won't kill you and BLM is the only caster with a self defensive skill that can be effectively and easily used during an enounter. So at the end of the day, it's just a very slight relative damage nerf to bring it closer to the other two casters I suppose. The devs probably thought it was the best way to do it. I agree that the amount of tomestones you have to spend for the sps bis is a bit excessive though.

Originally Posted by ItMe

Sorry, I might not have been clear.
I meant increasing / rebalancing the substats for BLM's weapon (and maybe other gear), not buffing the job itself.
I just said "buff BLM" as awkward shorthand because enhancing the equipment would indirectly be buffing BLM itself, even if giving them more spellspeed is more of a "fix" to some.
I revised my post to clarify.

They have previously adjusted weapon stats multiple times over the years. In fact, they actually did it with the BLM weapon way back in ARR. They've also changed weapon stats in Stormblood. Anyone that actually thinks that this was an intentional nerf to BLM and was needed... I'm sorry but they don't know what they are talking about. There have been plenty of weapons in the past that do not have Spellspeed (e.g. A12s, o4s), but the issue here is that in this expension, it is even more desired due to rotational changes, there is an ultimate patch incoming, there are a number of other slots with no spellspeed on (as I explained).

Furthermore, it isn't just a Vit nerf. Its a WD nerf, because in order to hit our needed Spellspeed to actually perform the optimal rotation, we need to drop WD. That's a pretty big DPS nerf to a class that is already outclassed by SMN in Progression content. BLM should outdps SMN to make up for all of the extra utility it has.

It is not a "buff" to give BLM that. Its a fix. Anyone saying otherwise does not know what they are talking about. In that that persons comment about Manaward shows that they do not understand how it is used and how important VIT is.