FIX GARUDA!!!

[Neurosis]

Ok.. While I do agree with some of the things they want to fix. I see a possible problem with them making this fight a little more difficult. BLM burn aside. I do not have an issue with them fixing the lack of 2hour phase and such.
BUT that being said. I have plenty of friends who are new to the game. And I have never encountered this myself. But they have been in parties where someone will pull out a parser and boot them for not doing enough damage. It happens to them constantly. Now they are able to get the best gear they can afford being new. They use full af and replace things as best they can.
But if I'm understanding the fix correctly even having one war. And having them aoe one side of the plumes and having any other class aoe others. If the weapon skills are not going through the pillars this is going to cause a few issues.
Bring out the elitist people who will complain that if you do not have triple melded gear you are fail. Blah blah blah blah
I'm beyond tired of hearing this. But I am more than willing to bet that's exactly what is going to happen.

[Duelle]

But if I'm understanding the fix correctly even having one war. And having them aoe one side of the plumes and having any other class aoe others. If the weapon skills are not going through the pillars this is going to cause a few issues.

Bring out the elitist people who will complain that if you do not have triple melded gear you are fail. Blah blah blah blah
I'm beyond tired of hearing this. But I am more than willing to bet that's exactly what is going to happen.

This depends on how the fight will be tuned at the end of the day. Though your concerns are part of the reason I am weary of the materia system. I saw this coming when I knew you could stack materia with the chance of failure on to the same item, which as I noted long ago, copies the enchant system from Lineage II. I was just thinking of the economic aspect and not thinking of how it would affect gameplay.

BLM will always outshine melee on that perspective, which is fine, you have to manage hate and MP to be efficient. However, to the extent that they completely outshine melee in the damage perspective is unsettling. Like someone said, you can't just gimp BLM, because it would be ToAU all over again. What you need to do is make melee better, simply put. Maybe not be so position heavy in melee combos, but rather do "More damage if attacked from the side.", this would keep the positioning system and make combos not such a hassle for melee.

I agree that melee has some built-in disadvantage. It is becoming quite apparent.

That being said, I disagree with the comment on BLM. TAU created magic resistant mobs, which really is no different than nerfing BLM's damage output. What killed the job wasn't that part of the change, but the fact that it was the only change to the job, so instead of balance what they got is a heavily nerfed BLM and left it to its fate. Like cutting off a bird's wings and leaving it in the middle of the forest.

You can adjust BLM's damage potential, or reduce its burst in some way, but you'd also need other changes so that the job still has controlled burst damage when called for, but not to the point its range advantage and DPS makes melee classes obsolete or highly undesired. If BLM is currently 95% burst and 5% DoT (these are made up numbers, by the way), the scales need to shift so that BLM is 60% burst and 40% DoT.

That aside, I agree that overly melee-unfriendly is not the way to go. I figured Matsui would have learned that from FFXI (if any of you wonder why I name him so much, he's the battle designer).