In general, the FFXIV team has done a good job communicating with the community. However, when it comes to the matter of Job Balancing, the communication feels like it falls short more often than not.

The most recent liveletter 70 caused a veritable uproar between the removal of Samurai's Kaiten, and changing Ninja's Trick Attack amoung other things. While it has been made clear that the changes listed in the liveletter slides were not extensive and exhaustive, the choice of what was presented there is, somewhat dubious. The changes they list don't quite align with the players' concerns (afaik). Some examples below.

MCH has been asking for their Hypercharge to function on the stack system, no mention of it on the slides.

DRK Living Dead main concern is the 1-HP effect wearing off when the Walking Dead status is removed, the slide made no mention of this, instead instills a fear that DRK may further screw themselves over for multi-hit tank buster now that they can heal themselves too fast to remove Walking Dead. Also no mention of Blood Weapon being stacks, nor general gameplay feel adjustments.

WHM Primary concern is the Lily system being a DPS loss. Simply making Lilies DPS neutral would alleviate its MP issue. The Cure III, Assylum, and Liturgy changes are welcome QoLs but do not necessarily address WHM's core concern. There was an off hand regard for all healer MP changes, but having it on the slides would be better.

AST faces egregious Action and Button bloat issues, but no changes could be made in time for 6.1. But the decision was made to remove SAM's Kaiten, where there was little to no complaints to Samurai's general gameplay feel.

(As for SAM and NIN changes, they are my mains and I can write a full essay on why I disagree with the listed changes, but that is not the main point of the post)



Even in patch notes proper, there were many changes that made players raise their eyebrows in confusion.

Samurai's Iaijutsu range extension in 6.05 served almost no practical purpose, as a SAM main myself I have not encountered a single situation in the current Savage tier where this change was beneficial. On the other hand GNB has been drooling over this change for their Continuation skill.

Warrior's Tomahawk potency increase in 6.08 to 150 serves no practical purpose AFAIK

Monk in 6.08 got a potency increase on Phantom Rush when they already were the top DPS before that point.

Machinist's potency buffs in 6.08 were almost inconsequentially laughable when compared side by side to Dancer in the same role.



So I would like to propose a few changes, some easier to implement than others.


1. On the patch notes, for Job Adjustments, include a few lines explaining why the adjustments were made.
This should be the simplest to do, and would serve as a more integrated reference point as opposed to having to dig through old interviews or liveletters for the players to try to discern dev's intent.


2. Have a more dedicated channel for dev communication on Job Adjustments across all regions.
There are regional differences in the feedback provided to the devs on the forums. There has been a running joke in the English speaking community that the devs do not listen to the English forums. And due to the language barrier, players of the different regions are not necessarily aware of what other region are saying. If there can be a dedicated thread where the devs can let the players know which feedback for each job is being received, it would go a long way. I recognize this will require some effort in coordination and community localization to set up.


3. If schedule allows, get the job adjustment team on a liveletter.

4. This is probably impossible, but a striking dummy only beta test server could be useful.


Regardless of what your individual opinion might be on the details of the job adjustments, having better dev communication on the subject would benefit everyone.