Thread: Please balance casters in 7.0 or split role up

Magical Ranged DPS is the most poorly balanced subrole in the game currently. You can't solve a utility imbalance by creating a dps imbalance.

Can you imagine if WAR's dps output was reduced relative to other tanks on the basis of its absurd self-healing capacity? Or if SCH's dps output was reduced relative to other healers on the basis of its unique access to Expedient? If other roles actively push back against this mindset, then why is it acceptable to give BLM the privilege of being in its own special category?

If access to Raise is a big deal, then you just limit the number of times a non-healer Raise can be used in a fight, subject to fight difficulty. Variant and Criterion Dungeons have already experimented with this concept. The alternative is that you put it on a party-wide shared recast and give more jobs access to it. But you can't balance utility against damage output. You have to balance utility against utility and damage against damage.

Originally Posted by Lyth

Magical Ranged DPS is the most poorly balanced subrole in the game currently. You can't solve a utility imbalance by creating a dps imbalance.

Can you imagine if WAR's dps output was reduced relative to other tanks on the basis of its absurd self-healing capacity? Or if SCH's dps output was reduced relative to other healers on the basis of its unique access to Expedient? If other roles actively push back against this mindset, then why is it acceptable to give BLM the privilege of being in its own special category?

I really do wonder why casters (and physranged) have always seemed to be stuck in this 'damage<>utility<>complexity' triangle of HELL, and what the obsession with keeping them there is all about. I know other roles have their fair share of balance issues, but maybe outside of healers recently, it feels like it's always been loudest with the ranged roles.

I don't think any of that actually needs explaining; we all know why BLM always seems to come out fully cooked to perfection, but the fact that every other job is seemingly stuck in a purpose-built limbo for so long feels weird, and also that recently reworked jobs feel half-baked on purpose as if to make future additions or tweaks feel like "upgrades." My biggest concern going into Dawntrail is that this kind of thing will just continue and be compounded upon.

Oh, and I do agree with the idea of removing, or at least lowering, access to raises by non-healers, and trimming raid-wide heal/mit tools from DPS.

There is no answer.

Because you can't balance on savage content for the 1% who play it without hosing up all the stuff below. This has been the problem throughout the game whenever it was done.

To be fair magical ranged DPS is easily the role that has the largest discrepancy between the difficulty of its easiest and hardest job (and thus was true before they made SMN a crayon eater of a class) so I can understand it having the largest discrepancy in the damage between BLM and SMN but the discrepancy is currently too much and is being blamed on the caster rezz

However it is totally fair to say this problem is also being caused because of how disgustingly biased square is to making BLM perfect at the expense of near every other class, which is probably why it’ll never be fixed, BLM is never allowed to be bad so the other casters have to suffer to compensate

Raise is really a simple solution. Remove it from Magical Ranged DPS jobs and make it a Role Action with high recast timer, like 5 mins.

As for the OP original thoughts. Like other job categories, it should be a sliding scale from pure DPS to DPS support. However, dividing into two categories, DPS and DPS Buff, does offer another approach.

Honestly, they should have focused on revamping the combat system over graphics in 7.0 because it's become a mess. From 2 minute meta to tank/healer issue, boss encounters the take up 1/2 of the area to materia stats that are just worthless.

Remove caster res or change the way it functions so that it can only be used pre-emptively like an excog. This would reward players that are paying attention and stops caster res being such a crutch in prog without completely taking it away from people that like it for lore or job fantasy instead of for mechanical reasons.

That feels like a pointless line of thinking. You could strip down every individual job mechanic in the game to their bones and point out their imagined flaws, but there's no real point in taking away a core mechanic just for the sake of it, least of all when doing so would objectively impact a job negatively. The game is in dire need of the exact opposite of that right now. Jobs need more core mechanics to make them unique, not less.

Look at what they did to healers. Rather you think it’s a success or not. Soon as we got a 4th healer they split them up to pure/barrier. Now that we have a 4th caster I’m sure they will do something as res is such a clutch spell on casters. My guess is they are gonna remove it from summoner and nerf it on rdm so they can’t spam it so often.

Yoshi P did say res survived on summoner by the skin of its teeth. I feel it’s definitely going bye bye in Dawntrail.

Originally Posted by SieyaM

I would argue that the whole white and black magic thing comes down to just recolors of spells, since they don't do any different kind of damage or play into anything other than raising your black and white mana. In the end they could just have a single mana bar that was raised every time you cast a spell and the job would feel no different.

I mean that’s a gross oversimplification of the job. The job is all about the balance. You could say most jobs play the same and that it really just cokes down to pressing 1 2 3, and that they could just be consolidated into a button.

The procs play a huge role in how the job plays. It’s just enough randomness that it isn’t just 1 2 3, press everything in on CD.

I’m hoping pictomancer has some interesting mechanic as well.