CC PCT

[pecorino]

I think it's a bit of a pain to play in CC just because of how long it takes to paint your next motif. You become a really attractive target for stuns and such because not only are you a sitting duck for an extended time, but successfully cancelling the cast also postpones their next opportunity to apply burst damage. It frankly feels like PCT was balanced around Frontline and not CC. Because it's much easier to prep your burst phases in a slower game mode, you can achieve pretty insane damage output and frequently end up at #1 on the list of damage dealt to player characters.

[Esmoire]

I thought about this a lot, since I have been grinding pictomancer a lot.

For all jobs, when you are in an advantageous situation, it stands to reason that you get to access more of your offense. That said, pictomancer's design is imbalanced because it exacerbates it the most. If you are ahead, you get more time in double the DPS with subtractive palette and all the time you need to paint, and it's really punishing.

But if you are on the backfoot, you really feel it. You have nice tools with 25y range attack, barriers, heals, and escapes, but the inability to paint is poignant, and makes things feel even worse. I guess if I could ask for something, it would be Tempera Coat/Grassa breaking would give you a buff that makes your next painting instant. It would help a team dealing with pressure more than a team already winning, and still requires a GCD to capitalize on.

[Loggos]

(Edit: I used White Paint/Black Paint stance for additive and subtractive palette and I'm too lazy to change it now.)

I'm in the minority here but I really love picto's game play in CC.

It is by far my favourite job in PvP at this point.


It's precisely the slower paced playstyle in this fast paced game mode that is so enticing for me.
It makes every action a lot more deliberate. You have to really think when to cast your spells and what is a good target to use your bursts on, because if you miscalculate you waste your firepower.
But if you make a good choice you are very effective and impactful.

It took me some time to get used to it and I was underwhelmed at the beginning as well (and I have only played casual games so far, so I might fall flat on my face in ranked) but its strange rhythm really grew on me.


I also enjoy that you actively have to set up your burst. It's not just a cooldown you wait for. You actually have to put some thought into it which is quite fun in my eyes.

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I really hope they will keep the slow painting casts as picto's core gameplay and don't drastically reduce the cast time or make it possible to cast on the go.
I think one or two charges of a swiftcast effect would be very useful though, similar to black mage. The core game play would still stay intact but you'd have more flexibility.


As for the RGB paint mode, I think it's quite useful actually. I find myself switching to it it a lot.
It's not just good for retreating. It's very practical to finish off low-health targets. Often your CMYK casts take too long to successfully hit a low-health target because by the time you finish they have already escaped or left your line of sight. With RGB casts you can chase them. This helps me to secure kills on a regular basis.


The LB I came to like as well. It's no fancy attack that rewards you with spectacular PoTG kills but in terms of utility I find it surprisingly useful. Many times I've found it to be very helpful to defend a point and it can turn around games if placed/played right.


Something picto lacks is duelling power. You can be quite durable (which is also good for stalling enemies) and make escapes successfully with your skills but if you get locked in a prolonged 1v1 you'll have a hard(er) time.
I'm not sure if that is such a big negative, considering you still have good tools to remove yourself from such situations. You could also say picto's strengths just lie elsewhere, similar to scholar, who isn't the best at 1v1 duelling either.

Though I will definitely not complain if they make picto more capable in that regard.

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All in all, in terms of balancing I think picto's damage numbers and utility skills are fine the way they are.

Imo you could adjust some gameplay-related elements though to make it smoother and ensure it can put those damage numbers and utility skills to good use.


The Clawed Muse debuff is single target Frazzle but stronger with 20% reduced healing. It has come in very handy for me when you and your team focus somebody down.
The same can be said about the heavy/bind in each of your burst windows and the shield is a good party tool.

(I am surprised that the opinions are so different between player bases. A Japanese tier list from this thread shows picto as A rank at least, above ninja and black mage, which seem to be a lot more popular among English speaking players in my experience. Though I'm not sure if that tier list is only for CC or also includes FL where picto is very strong.)


I think (besides its gameplay being rather eccentric and understandably not liked by everyone) picto doesn't look very exciting because your contributions aren't reflected in statistics as much as other jobs.
You don't see the damage reduction and the increased healing buff from your LB that other players benefit from or the debuffs/binds.
Your damage numbers are generally lower than other DPS even though the focused damage may have helped your team to secure important kills (which is recorded in your kills and assists at least).

It's no screenshot job but I also think its actual ability to contribute to the team can be underrated by some players.


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Here are some ideas I have to improve picto's game play in CC (I don't know how they would affect FL though tbh, because I don't play this mode very often, so balancing it for FL would have to be taken into account as well).

From the following two points I'd say at least one would help to improve the job's core gameplay. (Though I would not complain about having both. :P But it might become imbalanced then.)

• 1 or 2 charges of "swift cast" -- I'd make it a general swift cast so you can decide whether to use it on painting or on casting a CMYK spell.
  
  I'm not sure if I'd tie it to the shield (breaking), unless the effect stays ready (till consumption) for a decent amount of time because sometimes you'll have all your muse charges on cooldown while already having painted so you can't paint again until the current muse has been used.
  Since the cooldown per muse charge is 20 seconds, if swiftcast lasts 10 seconds then you might lose it without being able to actually use it for painting.
  
  Even though it would risk button bloat I'd rather have an individual button.
  
  An alternative (and my personal favourite) would be to grant you one instance of swift cast after using Mog of the ages and/or (depending if you want 1 or 2 charges of SC) Madeen.
  That could also help with damage and kills because you could decide to use your swift cast on a CMYK skill instead of a painting to add more concentrated damage to your burst.
  
  At the same time it would prevent you from stacking/double-using swift cast because in order to get to your second charge you'd have to paint first, meaning you'd automatically use up your current charge for that (if not used on a CMYK cast).
  
  This could speed up your general gameplay loop and make the job more fast-paced as a whole.
  
  
  Decrease cooldown of Muse or add a third charge. (whatever is more balanced) -- This too would help with damage, flexibility and utility.
  
  You could get your burst up again faster which would help in situations where your team is on the backfoot, both in terms of damage but also because you'd get access to your utility skills more frequently.

The following are some individual ideas which would not necessarily improve picto's core gameplay but might be some interesting additions for more complexity and gameplay options.
So I'm not saying you should implement all (or any) of them but rather that those are possible screws that could be adjusted alone or in combination with others for more fun actions.

• Recover 1 charge of Comet (both white and black) after completing a full RGB combo (in case of balancing concerns, see further below) -- A full string of RGB casts takes about 7-8 seconds and would save you approx 7 seconds of Comet cooldown.
  
  (I made a mistake here before and wrote "reduce it by 10 seconds" (and I also misrememberd the CD time, it's 15s actually :P) but what I meant is that the current cooldown gets reset and then the next charge's CD starts running down from its full 15 seconds. Reducing it by 15 seconds would be too strong imo. If you are at 0 charges but your current CD is at, say, 3 seconds then you'd get back 2 charges almost immediately.
  The wording of ninja's "mug" interefered in my mind, my apologies.)
  
  It would give players more incentive/payoff to use their White Paint stance. You'd trade in the damage of your regular CMYK casts with more Comet damage (or healing).
  Also, it would tie in nicely with picto's PvE gameplay where your basic combo gives you stacks of white/black paint.
  
  In 1v1 situations it could help picto because they'd have access to powerful attacks more often. The comet would essentially be the finisher of their regular cast string.
  
  (Though as fun as it sounds and as much as I would personally want this, I can see concerns that a Black Comet finisher (or a White Comet heal) being available every 7-8s after RGB might overtune picto’s damage/recovery potential.)
  
  
  Re balancing:
  Since your CMYK casts (6k,7k,8k) give you an edge of 9k damage over RGB, being able to reduce the Comet's CD without a limit might make this effect imbalanced in disfavour of the CMYK combo.
  
  So if needed, you could limit it to 1 recoverable charge per X seconds (or put another condition on it).
  
  Though I think it would have to be tested in practice, since there are many situations where it's not in your best interest to use your Comets on cooldown and instead save them for your bursts.
  So in a variety of situations you might still prefer your CMYK casts.
  
  Reducing the cast time via the RGB combo could end up as more of a "niche" use for 1v1/retreating or finishing escaping low-health targets.
  
  Alternatively, you could recover one charge after completing the CMYK combo as well (also in line with its PvE counterpart) to even out the potential imbalance.
  When I test it on a dummy it saves you about 3 seconds of Comet cooldown (bc recast timers etc.). This is approx. once GCD worth of CMYK cast time.
  
  Like this, recovering a charge with RGB could be a useful niche application as mentioned above while still making CMYK casts equally useful/desirable.
  
  On the other hand, recovering Comet charges with both cast strings might again lead to overtuned damage because it would increase the usage of your 12k AoE further.
  
  Add (small) AoE healing to White Comet -- This might improve team utility and could further lean into picto's very defensive/supportive nature. It might also make White Paint more attractive to use beyond personal recovery (or running after low health enemies).
  
  Having two charges of an 8k AoE heal might be too much though (esp. if you pair it with the potential cooldown reduction and the heal-up buff from its LB).
  
  So you could keep the 8k personal heal and add 2k-4k AoE heal (whatever would be more balanced).
  
  
  Change Star Prism depending on White Paint or Black Paint stance -- This could add further value to switching between stances and add some more gameplay variety.
  
  In White Paint mode you'd get access to Star Prism as usual.
  
  In Black Paint mode Star Prism could be replaced with Rainbow Drip, a line AoE with higher potency than Star Prism but no healing effect (not sure if I would add any utility like Mog/Madeen have).
  
  As for the potency value, I'm not sure what would be the most balanced, so I'm gonna leave that point open.
  
  
  This would still keep Choco Bastion's basic utility (def and healing bonus up) but in situations where Star Prism's healing is not needed you could contribute more damage instead (with the trade-off that it's a line and might miss more targets than Star Prism's AoE), kinda like Red Mage's ability to be more defensive or offensive with Southern Cross.
  
  (Also, I just really want Rainbow Drip as a skill. :P )

[Eastwall]

I am still trying to figure out how to properly use its lb. Seems to me that l should use it like sage car and put it on point when l dee the point is stalled?

[Esmoire]

Definitely stand by feeling the stance system needs better visual feedback. The buff going up is clear enough, but when you take it down you are kind of just eyeballing your bars and looking for the icon to disappear (with the generic buff expiration sound effect) to know you are out of Subtractive Palette. After playing it for hours and hours I have a feel for it without having to look, but there should be more visual clarity to make it easier to know the input went through. Honestly wouldn't mind something like RDM has to make it easier for the PCT, her enemies, and allies to read what mode she is in, just from the standpoint of readable gameplay.