Do you think that Picto needs a nerf?

[Realfoxy]

I wonder what some FRU world race caster players have to say...



While I don't think we should balance jobs entirely on the opinions of top end raiders I think it's telling that pretty much every single high end caster player thinks PCT is disgustingly OP to the point where it's trivializing the fight.

We've had certain jobs do better in ultimates for a while, but not to this extent.

[brinn12]

Yes. Square thought pushing Picto to the top of their DPS charts would be equal to having BLM there.

1 - PCT burst is comparable to SAM's
2 - Downtime heavily favors PCT, compared to BLM
3 - PCT has a raid buff, and more utility than BLM. Jobs with raid buffs are going to benefit from having the same median as jobs without raid buffs, provided the party is good enough. Because of this, a job like MCH has been paying a tax within the physical ranged role for 3 consecutive expansions.

It honestly feels like Square hired a bunch of developers who never worked with balancing FFXIV before, and they came up with what we have now. It also doesn't help they skipped the .08 patch, which could bring even more buffs to the other jobs. As a result, we have an Ultimate with easy DPS checks. This could all be solved if they simply nerfed PCT, btw.

[Supersnow845]

I really need someone to actually provide a valid method you could balance PCT in ultimates that doesn’t

A) make it totally useless in full uptime savage
B) completely guts how the class functions

Saying “ultimate easy nerf PCT btw” doesn’t fix anything because balancing it in ultimates isn’t an easy task

[Tigore]

One thought could be to do an overall nerf to all damage spells by a small percentage. This still wouldn't change how bursty the muse cooldown spells are though.

It does look like the other players are suggesting ways to simmer the burst spikes down a bit without removing it. Would the longer casting subtractive combo be a good place to move some of the damage to if we need a counter nerf buff so to speak?

[brinn12]

I really need someone to actually provide a valid method you could balance PCT in ultimates that doesn’t

A) make it totally useless in full uptime savage
B) completely guts how the class functions

Saying “ultimate easy nerf PCT btw” doesn’t fix anything because balancing it in ultimates isn’t an easy task

Well this is the issue, reworking a job is no easy task. Especially a recently released job, which had no plans of a rework before. Dawntrail has more content than Endwalker, with longer patches. Pushing PCT's damage lower than melees in Savage, but still a bit higher than SMN/RDM, might be the only feasible solution right now. It would still be strong in Ultis, but not game breaking, to the point where we can't have any meaningful DPS checks. Unfortunately, I don't think the developers will realize this until 8.0.

[Metricasc]

short answer: yes.

Long answer: it should had been nerfed in 7.05, clearly buffing up all other classes to make up for PCT has little to no effect on how strong the class is. in FRU rn, PCT has been used in almost every single group either in place of a melee or as the sole caster in a groups comp. in 80 and 90 ulti's it was also sitting as the most powerful class damage wise by a good margin compared to others.

[Realfoxy]

I really need someone to actually provide a valid method you could balance PCT in ultimates that doesn’t

A) make it totally useless in full uptime savage
B) completely guts how the class functions

Saying “ultimate easy nerf PCT btw” doesn’t fix anything because balancing it in ultimates isn’t an easy task

1. Remove party buff from Starry Muse
2. Nerf motif damage

That should tap its power down a little bit. Then you buff the other casters by A LOT.

Oh yeah, and you'll want to buff the other underperforming jobs like VPR and MCH so that you're not actually the ultimate that much harder to clear.

People also seem to be under the impression that PCT isn't overpowered in Savage as well, because it is, just not by as much as in Ultimate.

[Supersnow845]

1. Remove party buff from Starry Muse
2. Nerf motif damage

That should tap its power down a little bit. Then you buff the other casters by A LOT.

Oh yeah, and you'll want to buff the other underperforming jobs like VPR and MCH so that you're not actually the ultimate that much harder to clear.

People also seem to be under the impression that PCT isn't overpowered in Savage as well, because it is, just not by as much as in Ultimate.

Doing that would put it below RDM in savage and still above everyone else in ultimate

So you’ve basically just made it useless in savage and don’t change its dominance in ultimate

That’s what I’m saying, people are quick to go “just do x fourhead” but then don’t really think through what x does

[Realfoxy]

Doing that would put it below RDM in savage and still above everyone else in ultimate

So you’ve basically just made it useless in savage and don’t change its dominance in ultimate

That’s what I’m saying, people are quick to go “just do x fourhead” but then don’t really think through what x does

90th Percentile PCT does 29.5k aDPS (looking at FFlogs Arcadion stats for 7.05). Removing its raid buff makes its aDPS the same as its cDPS (making it like any other selfish DPS). 29.5k cDPS puts it just below the melee jobs. Then shave off a little bit of motif potency and you're roughly the same as Black Mage in 7.05 (28.5k cDPS). With the BLM buffs in 7.1, BLM would be only very slightly ahead, which would be an acceptable tradeoff for PCT party mit. Could maybe increase the filler potency a little to compensate.

Alternatively, if you'd prefer your caster jobs to be competitive with melees, you could nerf Starry Muse from 5% to say, 3%. Then we'd just need to buff BLM by a good 8-10%. And of course we'd want to buff RDM and SMN a lot as well, they'd probably need a good 10% buff too.

[Supersnow845]

90th Percentile PCT does 29.5k aDPS (looking at FFlogs Arcadion stats for 7.05). Removing its raid buff makes its aDPS the same as its cDPS (making it like any other selfish DPS). 29.5k cDPS puts it just below the melee jobs. Then shave off a little bit of motif potency and you're roughly the same as Black Mage in 7.05 (28.5k cDPS). With the BLM buffs in 7.1, BLM would be only very slightly ahead, which would be an acceptable tradeoff for PCT party mit. Could maybe increase the filler potency a little to compensate.

Alternatively, if you'd prefer your caster jobs to be competitive with melees, you could nerf Starry Muse from 5% to say, 3%. Then we'd just need to buff BLM by a good 8-10%. And of course we'd want to buff RDM and SMN a lot as well, they'd probably need a good 10% buff too.

So to solve PCT’s 7.05 uptime balance you’ve created multiple problems

1) you are bringing it down to just over RDM levels (that was my bad I thought it was a bigger nerf because you mentioned starry, motif reduction and buffing RDM) who has rezz
2) this doesn’t remotely fix how PCT dominates in ultimates
3) starry muse is now a useless button you actively don’t want to press below 92

Do you see what I mean, your suggestion sorta works for balancing it on full uptime savage assuming you are balancing based on cDPS (which the developers decidedly don’t do) but it doesn’t fix its dominance in ultimates and it breaks old skills and how they function

How would you apply this to someone who wants to break PCT’s dominance in ultimates but doesn’t really care it’s just barely at the top in savage

Also just as an aside I’m not arguing for the sake of arguing i genuinely want input on this I’m just trying to work through every step of what people suggest