Picto makes the game less fun

[Altera]

If this weeks LiveLetter does not bring any good news about changes and buffs to BLM, I feel after 13+ years since 1.0, and never taken a single break from the game, to finally permanently retire my subscription :/ I dont wanna quit, but BLM is a HUGE reason I enjoy the game, but since DT and the changes has severely impacted that enjoyment. And its even made me hate the PCT Job due to how easy it is to play while being Overpowered and just removing every reason for BLMs to exist in the game sadly :/

Im praying for good news this weekend, but with how poorly the devs seem to have interacted with players this time around, I feel worried and dont expect anything good

[Valence]

If this weeks LiveLetter does not bring any good news about changes and buffs to BLM, I feel after 13+ years since 1.0, and never taken a single break from the game, to finally permanently retire my subscription :/ I dont wanna quit, but BLM is a HUGE reason I enjoy the game, but since DT and the changes has severely impacted that enjoyment. And its even made me hate the PCT Job due to how easy it is to play while being Overpowered and just removing every reason for BLMs to exist in the game sadly :/

Im praying for good news this weekend, but with how poorly the devs seem to have interacted with players this time around, I feel worried and dont expect anything good

Good luck in your endeavors. I personally can relate in how it feels as I've been left in the exact same state after the butchering of MCH in ShB. But by focusing on other things one may like it's possible to... cope with it and move on, as long as you can find some amount of fun in other parts of the game.

But it is true that seeing a job one clicked with in PVE (being the main activity of the game generally) getting that kind of treatment WILL leave a void that is hard to fill with anything else.

[PercibelTheren]

Good luck in your endeavors. I personally can relate in how it feels as I've been left in the exact same state after the butchering of MCH in ShB. But by focusing on other things one may like it's possible to... cope with it and move on, as long as you can find some amount of fun in other parts of the game.

But it is true that seeing a job one clicked with in PVE (being the main activity of the game generally) getting that kind of treatment WILL leave a void that is hard to fill with anything else.

Yeah, it really doesn't feel good when a job you loved gets everything you enjoyed about it taken away. This happened to me with Astrologian when Dawntrail came out, causing me to completely retire from healing for the first time in my 15 or so years of playing MMOs. I've found enjoyment in playing physranged, but the void of not having a fun healer class to play is still there.

[Supersnow845]

This is just kinda the endgame of their current design. Burst is everything in this game because they made it this way, jobs that don’t burst well tend to require specifically unfavourable burst profiles of the kill time in a tier to be competitive with high bursting jobs because the goal is always to end with a burst and a potion. Pretty much all fights these days are specifically designed around the presence of the burst.

If they want to rebalance this problem they need to make more fights that specifically de-emphasise the burst or redo the way the burst works in its entirety

Even taking PCT out of the equation look at the overall contribution of the remaining 20 jobs as an aggregate across the tier, MNK and RPR have higher highs than VPR or SAM and AST and SCH have far higher highs than WHM and SGE

PCT plays to the burst better than any other job in the game (except maybe AST) but the problem is much more with the burst than PCT itself. If we remove and nerf PCT who is currently 5% above VPR on the gold parse is MNK being 4% above VPR on the gold parse acceptable

[LysDusoir]

I've cleared the current savage tier on both BLM and PCT, so I guess I can posit some thoughts on caster balance between those two. I really don't think it is a problem for PCT to have higher rDPS, but only if they are in parties that perform well, as in no damage downs or resurrection sickness within the 2min burst; even with that I find that I perform nearly as well on BLM in most PF clears, while requiring a bit more effort(but that's what I like about BLM). Now, I don't personally care about my funny colored numbers, I do care about the other people I am playing with, and as it stands PCT can contribute almost double(with Crit luck) the output to party buffs during the 2min burst compared to BLM. I think instead of just buffing Enochian over and over they should instead find a way to improve BLMs burst window, something like having Manafont greatly empower your next Despair(or any fire spell) with addition potency while triggering the current Manafont effect after the empowered cast. I also think it would be nice if you could carry Astral Souls(Flare Star) into Umbral Ice as long as you don't drop Enochian, an example where this would be really helpful is after intermission in M4S where you are knocked to the new platform during a burst window where one is unlikely to fit two Flare Stars.

Besides balance in regards to just damage, I think there are some very clear discrepancies amongst DPS when it comes to mitigation and healing utility.. and this tier has made me rant about caster fragility, especially because there are so many physical raidwides. Why exactly do casters just have less HP? Why are we still using this archaic mitigation difference in armor sets? Why don't casters have some sort of Second Wind equivalent? Returning back to BLM and PCT, I think it would be really cute if BLM had some sort of Drain oGCD to bridge them a bit closer to the healing & mitigation difference.

[Valence]

You have a manaward, and the rest should sit on the shoulders of the team mitigating and shielding enough to protect the weakest members. Healers are also left in the same position with the same defense stats as well after all. If anything it's RDM that's left in the dust with nothing.

I like that kind of differences between roles and jobs actually. I'm not thrilled with the idea to make everyone the same when it comes to it and perhaps magical raid wides should hit non casters harder than they do (casters have more magical defense but less HP which ends up in similar results across all roles). The problem is that the current battle content doesn't take advantage of it.

[LysDusoir]

You have a manaward, and the rest should sit on the shoulders of the team mitigating and shielding enough to protect the weakest members. Healers are also left in the same position with the same defense stats as well after all. If anything it's RDM that's left in the dust with nothing.

I like that kind of differences between roles and jobs actually. I'm not thrilled with the idea to make everyone the same when it comes to it and perhaps magical raid wides should hit non casters harder than they do (casters have more magical defense but less HP which ends up in similar results across all roles). The problem is that the current battle content doesn't take advantage of it.

I do love my Manaward and I wish RDM had something similar since Magick Barrier is nearly useless against physical raidwides, regardless many of the melee DPS not only have a personal & party mitigation tools but they also have Bloodbath and Second Wind.. Now clearing savage content in a static with consistent players can make this a non issue, but if you have cleared in PFs then you will experience inconsistency in both healing or mits. A lot of the strats also involve ranged DPS moving further out or not being in range of at least one of the healers(out spreads on m2s as a potential example), and I have straight up died on the phase transition Impact/Cannonbolt in m4s as a PCT because one of the healers were down.. and this was with Tempera Coat + Addle, mind you I was the only one that died from that raidwide while being at full HP.

The differences between roles and jobs should be rooted in how they play, what their rotation is like and ideally having some kind of player agency.. I just don't agree that having the fundamentals balanced across the board would somehow get in the way of that. Let's look at melee DPS for example, MNK and NIN have pretty close rDPS yet MNK has a follow up heal to their personal mitigation(Earth's Reply) and they also have Mantra; not only that, they can make better use of Bloodbath since a lot of NIN damage is unaspected or elemental. An even more egregious example would be to compare DRK to WAR or PLD, Dark Mind and Dark Missionary are not exciting differences between the other tanks, they are either useful or useless.

[Valence]

I do love my Manaward and I wish RDM had something similar since Magick Barrier is nearly useless against physical raidwides, regardless many of the melee DPS not only have a personal & party mitigation tools but they also have Bloodbath and Second Wind.. Now clearing savage content in a static with consistent players can make this a non issue, but if you have cleared in PFs then you will experience inconsistency in both healing or mits. A lot of the strats also involve ranged DPS moving further out or not being in range of at least one of the healers(out spreads on m2s as a potential example), and I have straight up died on the phase transition Impact/Cannonbolt in m4s as a PCT because one of the healers were down.. and this was with Tempera Coat + Addle, mind you I was the only one that died from that raidwide while being at full HP.

The differences between roles and jobs should be rooted in how they play, what their rotation is like and ideally having some kind of player agency.. I just don't agree that having the fundamentals balanced across the board would somehow get in the way of that. Let's look at melee DPS for example, MNK and NIN have pretty close rDPS yet MNK has a follow up heal to their personal mitigation(Earth's Reply) and they also have Mantra; not only that, they can make better use of Bloodbath since a lot of NIN damage is unaspected or elemental. An even more egregious example would be to compare DRK to WAR or PLD, Dark Mind and Dark Missionary are not exciting differences between the other tanks, they are either useful or useless.

It also happens in statics, I have been at the receiving end of it for various mechanics, notably EE2 in M4S when I'm long debuff and miss a heal (and that's why all those geniuses that tell you that rphys has FULL mobility are full of s*** when it has the lowest speed across the board except for DNC). I've even had crazier similar situations in other mechanics due to fairy's smaller range. I still do believe it's not on the job but on the healers and the party and that's a positioning, healing and coordination skill issue. They even buffed mitigation and healing ranges like crazy in Anabaseios and half the things now reach for 50 yalms (which was a terrible choice for skill expression btw)... I really do like that all those constraints and differences used to bring specific skills as a player to have, notably be sure to be positioned properly to be healed (less of a thing now with the crazy ranges for most heals and mits), having sometimes healers to actually use their single target heals as well to help the weakest members and adjust for discrepancies in health and do their actual job (forgive me but glare mages I swear...), and just the party actually talking to each other. I do not like where the battle content has been going over time and I do feel that making everything a non problem anymore is literally removing what I liked about it.

However on top of Maiming jobs having even higher physical defense than the rest, melee DPS have crazy self sustain tools that they do not need more than the rest of the DPS roster, and it's ironic in a way because in pvp it's actually warranted... But for pve melees, they do not take more damage on the frontlines at melee range than ranged players do. It's a bit sad that this specificity of them isn't actually put more to contribution by all the battle content.

Which actually makes me think, perhaps that's a start of a solution to design the differences between ranged and melees while giving them an identical/more balanced damage output in the process. Perhaps ranged jobs shouldn't be able to survive well at close range. Or perhaps that's a shit idea idk.

[LysDusoir]

It may be why they gave AST & WHM another charge on their oGCD single target heal, but I agree that having the supports have more specific problems to take care of during mechanics is interesting. It still feels uncomfortable to essentially be at their mercy while it is not a problem at all if one is playing a melee. I've even seen melee eat a mechanic that would otherwise just kill a caster; I just don't understand why they even have those tools(Bloodbath, etc) when I can't recall a single raid that actually needed them.. and if casters had something similar to Second Wind then maybe they could actually design more mechanics that have intermittent damage going out. The prior raid tiers almost always had magical raidwides as you said, even though casters have more magical defense they still have less HP and HP is effectively mitigation. It honestly just seems like it is something nobody really cares about, much like the seemingly inconsistent support utility that all of the DPS have. Another funny situation I ran into on M3S was having both tanks die during a knock and then proceeding to get punched by brute bomber having it interrupt my cast, like why? Oops, don't be top aggro or just pop that Surecast I guess?

On supports having to take care of certain party members, I played tank during Abyssos savage and strangely enough one of the most enjoyable things to do was using my mitigation on the casters or ranged physical during certain mechanics, especially on DRK(hearing that TBN pop).. Yet, I can only recall one time so far this tier that a tank has been willing to do that(this is PF mind you), even if I kindly ask for a little love during things like EE2; I just don't think it is something that most tanks think about nor does the fight design explicitly ask them to manage that.

[Valence]

It may be why they gave AST & WHM another charge on their oGCD single target heal, but I agree that having the supports have more specific problems to take care of during mechanics is interesting. It still feels uncomfortable to essentially be at their mercy while it is not a problem at all if one is playing a melee. I've even seen melee eat a mechanic that would otherwise just kill a caster; I just don't understand why they even have those tools(Bloodbath, etc) when I can't recall a single raid that actually needed them.. and if casters had something similar to Second Wind then maybe they could actually design more mechanics that have intermittent damage going out. The prior raid tiers almost always had magical raidwides as you said, even though casters have more magical defense they still have less HP and HP is effectively mitigation. It honestly just seems like it is something nobody really cares about, much like the seemingly inconsistent support utility that all of the DPS have. Another funny situation I ran into on M3S was having both tanks die during a knock and then proceeding to get punched by brute bomber having it interrupt my cast, like why? Oops, don't be top aggro or just pop that Surecast I guess?

On supports having to take care of certain party members, I played tank during Abyssos savage and strangely enough one of the most enjoyable things to do was using my mitigation on the casters or ranged physical during certain mechanics, especially on DRK(hearing that TBN pop).. Yet, I can only recall one time so far this tier that a tank has been willing to do that(this is PF mind you), even if I kindly ask for a little love during things like EE2; I just don't think it is something that most tanks think about nor does the fight design explicitly ask them to manage that.

In my opinion it is precisely because we have asked the devs allowed the game to progressively lose team interplay and interdependence, that everybody just play selfish and doesn't give a crap tbh. If you die, not their problem. But when they die you can be sure they're gonna make it your problem one way or another.