Pictomancer Appreciation Post

[Supersnow845]

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.

The thing is the modern jobs sans PCT ARE stale because they all follow the same formula and they all have the same downsides and upsides in the same design space and that’s why PCT dominates in a downtime fight

Again ignoring PCT every single job in this game is

1) builder spender- we have no sustained jobs (BLM and VPR aren’t sustained anymore they are just builder spenders with bad bursts, no rampers, no DOT’ers and no buffers
2) hates downtime but has some form of partial mitigation for it
3) only works to its design intention on single target 100% uptime fights
4) has upwards of 90% of their rotation be completely static

A static rotation isn’t necessarily bad but the modern job design is severely hampering the ability for jobs to break to mold. Even in these PCT threads after years of the same stale mush PCT finally does something different and the most common suggestion to fix it is “motifs only with a target” which turns it into the same “only works during full uptime one target” mush the other jobs already are.

If we have to break the old jobs to get some form of job diversity back I’ll take it

[HikariKurosawa]

The thing is the modern jobs sans PCT ARE stale because they all follow the same formula and they all have the same downsides and upsides in the same design space and that’s why PCT dominates in a downtime fight

Again ignoring PCT every single job in this game is

1) builder spender- we have no sustained jobs (BLM and VPR aren’t sustained anymore they are just builder spenders with bad bursts, no rampers, no DOT’ers and no buffers
2) hates downtime but has some form of partial mitigation for it
3) only works to its design intention on single target 100% uptime fights
4) has upwards of 90% of their rotation be completely static

A static rotation isn’t necessarily bad but the modern job design is severely hampering the ability for jobs to break to mold. Even in these PCT threads after years of the same stale mush PCT finally does something different and the most common suggestion to fix it is “motifs only with a target” which turns it into the same “only works during full uptime one target” mush the other jobs already are.

If we have to break the old jobs to get some form of job diversity back I’ll take it

I don't agree that jobs are even remotely similar in this game so I can't really respond to that. I understand that pct is overtuned for downtime, and yeah it probably should just be nerfed to need a target to draw motifs. Logic would be "lacking artistic inspiration"/"inspired by their enemies".

There is just nothing wrong with jobs being static rotations mostly. It makes the game more balanced and is why jobs are so well balanced in this game for the most part.

[Supersnow845]

I don't agree that jobs are even remotely similar in this game so I can't really respond to that. I understand that pct is overtuned for downtime, and yeah it probably should just be nerfed to need a target to draw motifs. Logic would be "lacking artistic inspiration"/"inspired by their enemies".

There is just nothing wrong with jobs being static rotations mostly. It makes the game more balanced and is why jobs are so well balanced in this game for the most part.

So I’m confused. We shouldn’t be saying that the old jobs should be changed because some of us think they are stale and locked into limited job design but because of the imbalance the solution to is to……..take away what makes PCT unique. Making the motifs need targets would completely ruin PCT at every level of play

If you like static rotations that’s fine but same as you not liking people using PCT as an excuse to change the legacy jobs the legacy jobs aren’t an excuse to change PCT

[HikariKurosawa]

So I’m confused. We shouldn’t be saying that the old jobs should be changed because some of us think they are stale and locked into limited job design but because of the imbalance the solution to is to……..take away what makes PCT unique. Making the motifs need targets would completely ruin PCT at every level of play

If you like static rotations that’s fine but same as you not liking people using PCT as an excuse to change the legacy jobs the legacy jobs aren’t an excuse to change PCT

If what makes PCT unique makes it break the game then unfortunately it's not congruent with good game design.

The person I responded to wanted to make dragoon have jump GCDs that made the job invulnerable to damage during the animation. Very unique but also absolutely broken. Or we can give paladin a manual block button and it can mitigate everything when you press "raise shield" at the right time. That's unique right so it must be good?

PCT is plenty unique regardless of whether you can paint motifs without a target or not. Just like every other job in this game. Getting a little tired of listening to people say homogenization is an issue in this game. It's like a buzz word they use to gaslight the devs.

I'd like to see you make a thread where you specifically explain how jobs are homogenized in this game with real examples and clear reasoning. It's good that the devs know better than to be gaslit though, because it's really immature how this community tries to get their way. If you like jobs playing like WoW classes, that game exists. Go play WoW.