Patch 6.48 PvP Balance Changes

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Sources: https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...c74f7637b13b67
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/jobguide/pvp/#pvpaction

Paladin

• Blade of Faith - damage increased from 4000 to 6000 (Holy Claim potency: 6000 to 9000)
• Blade of Truth - damage increased from 6000 to 7000 (Holy Claim Potency: 9000 to 10500)

Basically streamlines the Blade of Valor combo from your LB to have more weight in each hit rather than just the last hit especially with Confiteor used at the start.

Gunbreaker

• Draw and Junction - Action can now be used to target self and party members. (The additional effect Powder Barrel will only be granted when targeting an enemy.)

About damn time. Gunbreaker Junction consistency is absolutely solidified and gives you more agency. Also less need for enemy tanks to now hide from sight of a Gunbreaker to avoid giving them Tank junction. All in all good change, long expected.

Black Mage

• Soul Resonance (LB) - Now grants the effect Apocatastasis. (15s Duration, effect: -10% damage taken)

WHY.

Why would they bring this back? We are literally just the 2 charges of Paradox away from the broken kneejerk buff over a year ago. Was this truly necessary?

Addendum to personal thought - I may have reacted a bit harshly, going over the change history of BLM it still isnt quite the same given the changes to ice stacks. I will remain somewhat skeptical over this change as I was not a big fan of being at the receiving end of BLM meta. I'm open for healthy job performance, I just hope it wont make it a "BLM or bust" situation.

White Mage

• Miracle of Nature - Recast time has been increased from 25 to 30 seconds.
• Afflatus Purgation - Cure potency of the Regen effect granted by Temperance has been reduced from 4,000 to 3,000.

I mean, it "is" a White Mage nerf and I am appreciating it but it still doesn't address the elephant in the room - namely that Miracle of Nature is unPurifyable and unResilience-able. The only other crowd controls with those attributes are Limit Breaks (Meteodrive, Tenebrae Lemurum, Contradance). Increasing the cooldown just basically keeps it in "2nd LB" territory. Lower the cooldown, change the effect is what would be a better change.

As for Temperance - it will depend how much this matters, but a general sustain nerf is welcome.

Astrologian

• Aspected Benefic - Cure potency of Diurnal Benefic has been increased from 1,000 to 2,000. Effect duration of Diurnal Benefic has been increased from 12 to 15 seconds.
• Aspected Benefic (Doublecast) - Barrier potency of Nocturnal Benefic has been increased from 4,000 to 5,000.

Questionable buff on their direct heal. The burst healing remained same, but the regen and shield got boosted. Regen from 4000 total to 10000 total and the shield from 4000 to 5000. Leaves to be seen how impactful it will be, but I didn't think Astrologian needed this buff - they were already fairly strong given their buffs and I'd not be surprised if WHM would be overtaken by AST as the most popular PvP Healer - AGAIN.

General

• Guard - To prevent players from accidentally disabling the common action Guard when repeatedly pressing the action button, the time until it can be manually disabled has been increased from 1 to 2.5 seconds. (The time until other actions can be disabled has not been changed.)

This is either a genius change if you can still easily cancel it with other actions (Recuperate) or one of the worst changes to this action if you can't.

2.5s is a seriously long time and without another action to cancel it out without the manual press it will feel clunky as hell. An increase to 1.5s or 2.0s I could've dealt with, but 2.5s is longer than your GCD on long-GCD jobs (2.4s).

If "accidental repress" is such a worry, give us our selectable scalar for such actions.

Feel free to discuss, I gave my takes in italics above.

[VentVanitas]

thank god in heaven they actually changed junction. it was incredibly annoying to play without nebula and being able to start matches with it is going to make playing GNB way more bearable.

[Llynethil]

Why are they so hardheaded on making MoN be able to be cleansed?
You can even tone it down back to 20 or even 15s if it was, such a tonedeaf change.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Why are they so hardheaded on making MoN be able to be cleansed?
You can even tone it down back to 20 or even 15s if it was, such a tonedeaf change.

I don't understand it either - I think making it cleansable / a silence would still be very much in line of a typical naturalist or priest-type Mage (aka White Mage) and they could finally release this job from the job budget chains that is "Miracle of Nature".

Not the only job with this problem as well btw - some jobs just have so much power or potential to swing momentum that the rest of their kit actually hurts from it. Paladin for example has most of its power in their LB + Cover, the rest is "okay". I wish it was more active rather than a Cover-bot trying to find uses for Guardian.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

thank god in heaven they actually changed junction. it was incredibly annoying to play without nebula and being able to start matches with it is going to make playing GNB way more bearable.

Genuinely good change, I agree. Now GNB can still be switchy on their playstyle (more reliably so) but have more agency over what Junction they want to use. I may honestly play a lot more GNB this season next to DRK.

[Cidel]

Black Mage

• Soul Resonance (LB) - Now grants the effect Apocatastasis. (15s Duration, effect: -10% damage taken)

WHY.

Why would they bring this back? We are literally just the 2 charges of Paradox away from the broken kneejerk buff over a year ago. Was this truly necessary?

It was a meme then, but I think it's probably accurate from the fanfest:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...e_pvp_matches/

Black mage has long held a below-average win rate in higher tier matches, and because they can be easily countered in custom matches, they often go unused. To help remedy this without making the job too powerful, executing Soul Resonance will once again grant players the effect of Apocatastasis. We believe the added defense of this effect will help players capitalize on the use of their limit break.

Yoshi-P be looking at his main and probably not pleased with it.

Astrologian

• Aspected Benefic - Cure potency of Diurnal Benefic has been increased from 1,000 to 2,000. Effect duration of Diurnal Benefic has been increased from 12 to 15 seconds.
• Aspected Benefic (Doublecast) - Barrier potency of Nocturnal Benefic has been increased from 4,000 to 5,000.

Questionable buff on their direct heal. The burst healing remained same, but the regen and shield got boosted. Regen from 4000 total to 10000 total and the shield from 4000 to 5000. Leaves to be seen how impactful it will be, but I didn't think Astrologian needed this buff - they were already fairly strong given their buffs and I'd not be surprised if WHM would be overtaken by AST as the most popular PvP Healer - AGAIN.

Again, taken from their 6.48 adjustments explanation:

...because their win rates in ranked matches are relatively lacking compared to other healing jobs, we have decided to bolster the additional effects of Aspected Benefic.

It seems win rates tends to be king in their decisions to buff/nerf jobs overall. I don't doubt ASTs are on the lower end; I found it harder to "carry" on AST than WHM, due to how quickly WHM can simply delete people under less specific circumstances than AST and doesn't require as much team synergy. While I'm not savvy on how a 5 second extension on MoN's recast will be all that impactful, the addition of shaving off the potency on Purgation's Regen in addition might actually tone it down. They at least acknowledged AST's strength in custom matches though where teams are expected to be cohesive. Unfortunately, its a different story with randos.

I wonder how much of what they saw at the Fanfest had any influence in these adjustments. Nobody ever really talks about the results of the tournament. Just DRK Frontline abuse and why I can't stop hitting SAMs and why that is everybody else's fault.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

[...]

Interesting notes. Might not fully agree with Yoshida-san's takes especially on being overly focused on winrates as they could be a byproduct of other jobs being picked due to larger buffs and ease of play recently (Dragoon for example) and therefore pushing the pickrate of BLM out. Those that remain may not be particularly skilled Black Mages either.

So while I see the reason, I think it is a bit odd how they reason it without taking more data into account. The AST changes I am a bit less concerned about though, Ill wait and see for them.

[Esmoire]

Seem to be extremely stubborn about taking away the uniqueness of MoN. They have nerfed it about as far as they reasonably can without just changing the classification. That said, until the imp is classified as a silence or given something to make it less oppressive, WHM will have 100% participation rate in scrims. Ability is on a job with decent damage and a nice LB you have often.

[ThaCa]

Gunbreaker change is long overdue, WHM nerfs are barely slap on wrist. Rest are kinda odd.

It seems like they are really holding back on anything bigger until 7.0

[Eastwall]

I don't have to sigh anymore when l play Gnb and the enemy team is all dps!