Pictomancer Appreciation Post

[Celtazar]

Hi. This post is primarily for SE’s benefit, as I’m sure they’re reading a lot of different posts about the state of Pictomancer. I want to say right off the bat, this is not a defense of Pictomancer’s damage numbers. I’m not a numbers nerd, I’m not a multi year Ultimate hard core raider, and I don’t know what goes into building a job for an MMO. Perhaps I’m “mid-core,” however people want to describe that. I’ve been playing for about four years, I’ve cleared current content Savages and Extremes, done old Ultimates, and I’ve played a variety of jobs, mainly Tanks and Casters.
To the job dev team at SE, I want to say how much I appreciate the existence of Pictomancer. You guys nailed it in terms of job design. Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I feel like you haven’t released a well designed dps job since Dancer in ShB. Dancer was superb with a solid job identity throughout its leveling process. And with Pictomancer, I feel the same way. When I sync down to older content, even as far back as ARR, I’m not just playing a “1-2-3-repeat” dps. If I have motifs, then I know that I’m a Pictomancer, just like a Dancer would with Standard Step. Painting is core to the identity and it is present throughout. The variety and style, having different mechanics such as RGB combos and CMY combos seamlessly mesh together, skills allowing movement and skills requiring stillness, it all blends together so well. You guys did an incredible job with this.
As a player, thank you. I really like this job because it’s fun to play. That’s what good job design should be. When I do roulettes, I know that Pictomancer will be a good option at any level, because it has identity at every level, unlike many dps who don’t have certain skills or defining characteristics when synced down. It really feels like a job designed by people who play this game, who understand that a job not only needs to feel good to play on release or even max level, but also when it is synced down to level 50 or level 60 or level 70.
I hope that in the coming patches, you will receive a lot of useful feedback from your player base, not just concerning Pictomancer, but also concerning other jobs and how they might develop from the lesson learned in Pictomancer. I’m also hopeful that in 8.0, we might see a lot of sweeping job changes that allow other jobs this feeling of identity and completeness, whether high or low level. It will be a lot of work, and I do not envy you the task. But from a very grateful player, thank you for Pictomancer.

[Supersnow845]

This is kinda the state I’m in

PCT NEEDS a DPS nerf but for gods sake do not change its internal design. The job flows like water no matter the encounter type and has an incredibly strong identity

You can tweak its numbers but its core kit should not be tampered with

[Carighan]

PCT NEEDS a DPS nerf but for gods sake do not change its internal design. The job flows like water no matter the encounter type and has an incredibly strong identity

Yeah it's one of only two casters (the other being Red Mage) that actually tries to have something unique in their design right now, whereas Summoner and Black Mage not only feel like a wash (they're both static rotation DPS with cycles to their DPS and virtually 100% instant casts for full mobility) but also feel like they might as well not be a caster in the first place.

[HikariKurosawa]

Yeah it's one of only two casters (the other being Red Mage) that actually tries to have something unique in their design right now, whereas Summoner and Black Mage not only feel like a wash (they're both static rotation DPS with cycles to their DPS and virtually 100% instant casts for full mobility) but also feel like they might as well not be a caster in the first place.

Lots of people really enjoy static rotations. I am all for unique jobs that play like WoW classes, but the moment they start to turn existing jobs into WoW classes I'll just stop playing.

If you want something new and different, try making suggestions for that specifically instead of coming after existing jobs and acting like there is something wrong with them just because you don't enjoy their playstyle.

[Supersnow845]

Lots of people really enjoy static rotations. I am all for unique jobs that play like WoW classes, but the moment they start to turn existing jobs into WoW classes I'll just stop playing.

If you want something new and different, try making suggestions for that specifically instead of coming after existing jobs and acting like there is something wrong with them just because you don't enjoy their playstyle.

Nobody is, people are saying don’t ruin PCT’s design because it just works better in this game than classes that have static rotations, nerf its potency sure but don’t change it

[HikariKurosawa]

Nobody is, people are saying don’t ruin PCT’s design because it just works better in this game than classes that have static rotations, nerf its potency sure but don’t change it

The person I responded to was asking for dragoon to be changed too in another thread, then in this thread they criticized black mage and summoner's job design for having static rotations.

I get wanting new jobs to have a different formula, but I think it is important to push back against people asking for them to change existing jobs into less static. Static =/= bad if it is complicated and engaging enough, which most if not all static jobs are in this game.

Even summoner's difficulty is extremely understated in this community. It is good that the game has something that is relatively straightforward, almost everything else is extremely complicated. Most longterm players are absolutely out of touch with how complicated jobs are in this game because it's almost all muscle memory to them.

[mallleable]

They release a completely broken job that just destroys all fights, and basically invalidates a lot of jobs -- even an entire role, and they're like 'wait til 8.0 for job stuff.' No. Please start making bigger changes now, we cannot wait.

[Supersnow845]

They release a completely broken job that just destroys all fights, and basically invalidates a lot of jobs -- even an entire role, and they're like 'wait til 8.0 for job stuff.' No. Please start making bigger changes now, we cannot wait.

As much as PCT is overpowered and needs to be nerfed PCT isn’t the reason why every ranged job except BLM and SCH have been in toilet since ShB

[Carighan]

Plus it's genuinely as simple as a potency nerf. Nothing mechanical about Pictomancer is problematic, stuff is just ridiculously overtuned in raw numbers, for absolutely no reason.

[Rithy255]

I think they need to reduce how effective down time is but not too much because that's also a lot to do with Pictos skill expression, the reason why your seeing Picto outperform other jobs in the ultimate's is how it uses that downtime.

Honestly I do hope they don't see this as a reason to change how it plays but going by the track record of viper, ninja and dragoon changes I wouldn't be surprised if we got random questionable changes.

At the end of the day this relates back to the 2 minute meta and how sanitised and safe job design is that a job like pictomancer existing sort of breaks the balance and shows the major flaws yet again with how it limits job designs (similar to how Early EW paladin also didn't fit because it had two seperate weaker bursts per minute), The game is designed around only having burst jobs that can burst inside the 2 minute window.