Black Mage - the solution for everything?

[indira]

people use parsers and parsers dont count amount of attacks done and how much per hit they only count totals all BS data people also die in fights dont mean there there weakest.

all the DD's do about the same damage. BUT people only want 1 thing in the party.

i hate being a BLM and im not the only one thats number seven in my list of jobs i want to play. i had more success in /sh party with anything in it than a LS party with mumble @_@.

[Enfarious]

people use parsers and parsers dont count amount of attacks done and how much per hit they only count totals all BS data people also die in fights dont mean there there weakest.

all the DD's do about the same damage. BUT people only want 1 thing in the party.

i hate being a BLM and im not the only one thats number seven in my list of jobs i want to play. i had more success in /sh party with anything in it than a LS party with mumble @_@.

A good parser does count every single hit and/or spell that's cast. It'll also keep hit/miss/crit %s as well as running totals.

Even w/o parsing one can see that BLM out dmgs any other job. It's imo a problem more w/ hate mechanics than it is w/ BLM dmg output, because a WAR can basically generate hate faster than any job can DPS up hate, assuming they use Chameleon and what have you to shed some, so BLM doesn't ever really get into trouble. If there were a real threat to going all out all the time then BLMs would die more often than random mistimed AoE dodges. But because of the current hate decay/loss for tanks, or lack there of, if you give them 30 seconds ~ 1 min chances are if they're decent they won't lose hate unless it's to a reset ability or death. Essentially when SE was struggling to fix the hate control mechanics back around beta/release they went a little overboard.

I know how you feel though, I have no plans to finish BRD WHM or BLM I'll get them far enough to have the useful abilities from each and never touch them again. Sadly for now at least that means I'm going to be pushed into the tank or don't come pile.

[urhryu]

skill chain solve everything

[Velhart]

Honestly, you can blame the Armory system for the difficulty in balancing and preventing stacking.

In other MMOs, the reason parties are diverse is for a few reasons:

1. You can't switch jobs. You can switch your role, but they are for completely different purposes (Healing/DPS/Tanking). Sure someone will say something like "Unholy spec is better than Frost", but overall, you are not being forced to a whole other class in general.

2. Other MMO's are more gear dependent. In these fights, a well geared player will survive and perform substantially more DPS than someone without as much gear. In FFXIV, besides BLM, stacking up stats are truly minimal at most and FFXIV overall is more ability/skill dependent.

3. Requirements to win the fight add difficulty to ranged, mage, and melee. Other MMOs (If you can't tell by now, I am mainly referencing to WoW) make conditions that make it difficult for the whole party, not just people near the boss. Right now, FFXIV only punishes players who are too close to the boss. Chimera is an example. He is hard enough without the poison being applied and that one large thunder attack people had to find a small exploit to avoid.

4. FFXIV simply makes other jobs more convenient than others. BLM and WAR have access to many AoE abilities while DRG and MNK only get one real AoE attack that is on a large timer. You either need to tone down AoE on those jobs by making the AoE powerful, but the damage number divides by how many enemies you hit, or you need to give DRG/MNK more AoE usability. The first option makes it so DPS is on par with the other jobs, but it is hitting all enemies at once. Like WAR takes everything down slowly with AoE, but DRG and MNK take one by one down faster, matching the speed it takes for a WAR to take all of them down.

Not exactly the best idea, and a bunch of flaws I know, but just an idea that could be twisted around to possibly work.

5. All classes bring something to the table. In WoW, all classes have some special buff or debuff that really benefits the party. Rather it be a Paladin's King buff, a Hunter's Mark of the Wild, a Death Knight's Horn of Winter, and so on. These buffs being a lot to the party, and why most raids have people seeking at least one of every class in a group. Bard is FFXIV's answer to this, but other jobs should have passive traits that benefit the party in a way that doesn't affect the Bard.

6. Other MMO's push you in the right direction on what to do. They give you dungeon journals and tell you what ability mobs use and how you can avoid them. Bosses are still difficult despite this, but your group has a better idea of what is going on and work with it instead of constantly dieing to the next surprise. SE throws you in completely blindfolded and because of this, people just watch the forums and sees how the first LS to beat it does it, and does it exactly like that. I am not saying give us a full strategy, I am saying give us a push in the right direction. Class stacking happens to the ignorant.




Said as much as I could. FFXIV can't make something out of everything I said, but they need to find a real balance and solution to influence diversity. Hopefully they will find a semi-solution by 2.0, but who knows.

[Duelle]

2. Other MMO's are more gear dependent. In these fights, a well geared player will survive and perform substantially more DPS than someone without as much gear. In FFXIV, besides BLM, stacking up stats are truly minimal at most and FFXIV overall is more ability/skill dependent.

From what I've seen, this is a two-fold problem. Firstly that gear still has small numbers in terms of stats unless you're double/triple melding materia. Secondly, stat scaling is not what it should be for melee and ranged to be on par with each other.

3. Requirements to win the fight add difficulty to ranged, mage, and melee. Other MMOs (If you can't tell by now, I am mainly referencing to WoW) make conditions that make it difficult for the whole party, not just people near the boss. Right now, FFXIV only punishes players who are too close to the boss. Chimera is an example. He is hard enough without the poison being applied and that one large thunder attack people had to find a small exploit to avoid.

Very much this. That's why I mentioned stuff like Shadow Crash that singles out ranged without affecting melee at all. You can have mechanics like this alongside with any risks for melee being tossed in. WoW bosses also have AoE that hit everyone, but by the same token healing a group in WoW is a lot easier than healing a group in FFXIV because of burst heals, HoTs and smart heals.

4. FFXIV simply makes other jobs more convenient than others. BLM and WAR have access to many AoE abilities while DRG and MNK only get one real AoE attack that is on a large timer. You either need to tone down AoE on those jobs by making the AoE powerful, but the damage number divides by how many enemies you hit, or you need to give DRG/MNK more AoE usability. The first option makes it so DPS is on par with the other jobs, but it is hitting all enemies at once. Like WAR takes everything down slowly with AoE, but DRG and MNK take one by one down faster, matching the speed it takes for a WAR to take all of them down.

This goes back to my comment about paradigms and how classes and jobs that are vying for the same role should be balanced around the same paradigm. WAR should not be this AoE beast of a job because it hurst the melee DPS as well as PLD since it has higher AoE capability. So you neither tone down WAR AoE damage so that it can be used frequently but for less damage per use, or up everyone else's AoE ability (or grant AoE ability in the case of PLD).

5. All classes bring something to the table. In WoW, all classes have some special buff or debuff that really benefits the party. Rather it be a Paladin's King buff, a Hunter's Mark of the Wild, a Death Knight's Horn of Winter, and so on. These buffs bring a lot to the party, and why most raids have people seeking at least one of every class in a group. Bard is FFXIV's answer to this, but other jobs should have passive traits that benefit the party in a way that doesn't affect the Bard.

If I were designing things, I'd make it so BRD has the short-duration but decently potent buffs, and give the other jobs something either passive (like giving PLDs an equivalent to Heroic Presence), or short-cast and long duration buffs that are less potent.

The problem is obviously very complex, but I agree that it can be solved.

[darkstarpoet1]

really if you wish to get rid of the class stacking a good way would be going back to the way the original 5 nm's were put in game with drops and incorporate incaps back into the battles. use ifrit for example instead of dropping his regen by breaking his horns it would be the only way to get x drop. use incaps for the mele classes to be needed to get into the groups because the drop could only come if a certain part of the mob was broken.

let's say it takes blm spells to break the tail of ifrit and it's the only way to get the blm weapon to drop.
it takes mnk and war to incap his head and it's the only way to get the mnk and war weapons to drop.
takes drg and brd to incap the body and the only way to get their drops.
takes pld and whm for the legs and that makes those drop.

this would make it to where you would be more viable to go into a party with a party of each job because it takes skills from each one to incap the parts. it would take 4 complete incaps to get the chances to get the drops for the class you wanted. if you are wanting to run drg then why would you want to run blm burns if the drop for your main had no chance to come that way?

it gives an incentive to go in with all jobs in the party, but you could still kill the mob if you wanted to stack. to me people are more about the rewards so it would be a good way to get more variety in the parties.

[Wevlum]

I think another issue is that even if attacks can be avoided, a DD has their DPS affected by having to dodge all the time whereas for the most part BLM and BRD are free to continue unleashing hell on mobs. It might be possible to do content without blm and brd but it's a bit naive to think that it's entirely a community issue and that certain jobs don't experience some pretty harsh penalties.

mnk and drg have some pretty awkward positional combos to use whereas brd and blm have very very simple combos. blm only has to avoid being resisted (which is kind of present in mnk and drg's combos in the form of physical accuracy) in order to combo. brd in order to combo has to just use their first ws more than 8 malms from the target. While it isn't exactly hard to do the mnk and drg positional combos in normal situations, current endgame has mobs moving around a lot and require close range jobs to run out of range a lot, the latter of which hurts DPS without even taking into account combo positioning.