The identity of Pictomancer is being destroyed

[Zakuyia]

Boy imagine making this thread but being that one person to think.

" There no way SE would ever touch my class....."

Funny part is your arrogant enough to think your job wasn't going to be touch. Mch, drk, let's see astro, ooof sum and many more were effected.

Yet guys we have to remember papa SE says 8.0 will bring back job identity.... mofo your taking it away how the hell u gonna give identity when your the one stripping it to bare core in order to streamline said job.

[AndoenSaido]

All I can say is "Omph" now that 7.2 picto live - it feels terrible overall, doubly so if trying to use any motif in battle (the major theme of the job). I'm going to wait and see what The Balance says overall, but from play experience through more than a few runs of the Jueno raid this week, I went from a solid damage dealer to a fraction of what I was before because trying to use anything beyond my RBG rotation followed by the occasional CYM burst or the occasional landscape/holy/comet feels terrible (rough number crunching in my head, I'm guessing my damage is only 70% of what it was pre-7.2). Beyond ripping away the uniqueness of the class, I now feel if I'm holding back the entire raid and/or dungeon if I want to go in as picto. If SE wanted to kill the bursts, they did it in such a hard way that it erased the entire identity of the class and made half of the picto-toolkit useless or detriment to the other players we want to game with. Combine this with the major buffs that melee dps and blm did get this patch, they massively over-corrected picto for extreme end-game and severely impacted the fun for the other 99% of us who play more casually with our friends. Overall, 7.2 makes it feel bad to play picto with others because you know that you're holding back the group if you want to use your core identity and play with motifs.

If my previous main, mch, hadn't been so abused throughout this entire expansion, I would go back to that (between the disjointed AOE abilities, off-global ability bloat, and lack of party support tools while other ranged dps do similar-or-more damage with party utility, it has been rough), but at this point I'm considering spending the next few months casually leveling up and having to learn another job just to get through MSQ with how the 7.2 patch has mangled picto (and I don't want to be deadweight to other players who don't deserve the grief of trying to drag me along).

I'm hoping for a hot-patch soon about this, but my MSQ at this point is done until I level something else up instead (which is massively disappointing because I fell in love with the picto on reveal and haven't looked back until now).

[Supersnow845]

All I can say is "Omph" now that 7.2 picto live - it feels terrible overall, doubly so if trying to use any motif in battle (the major theme of the job). I'm going to wait and see what The Balance says overall, but from play experience through more than a few runs of the Jueno raid this week, I went from a solid damage dealer to a fraction of what I was before because trying to use anything beyond my RBG rotation followed by the occasional CYM burst or the occasional landscape/holy/comet feels terrible (rough number crunching in my head, I'm guessing my damage is only 70% of what it was pre-7.2). Beyond ripping away the uniqueness of the class, I now feel if I'm holding back the entire raid and/or dungeon if I want to go in as picto. If SE wanted to kill the bursts, they did it in such a hard way that it erased the entire identity of the class and made half of the picto-toolkit useless or detriment to the other players we want to game with. Combine this with the major buffs that melee dps and blm did get this patch, they massively over-corrected picto for extreme end-game and severely impacted the fun for the other 99% of us who play more casually with our friends. Overall, 7.2 makes it feel bad to play picto with others because you know that you're holding back the group if you want to use your core identity and play with motifs.

If my previous main, mch, hadn't been so abused throughout this entire expansion, I would go back to that (between the disjointed AOE abilities, off-global ability bloat, and lack of party support tools while other ranged dps do similar-or-more damage with party utility, it has been rough), but at this point I'm considering spending the next few months casually leveling up and having to learn another job just to get through MSQ with how the 7.2 patch has mangled picto (and I don't want to be deadweight to other players who don't deserve the grief of trying to drag me along).

I'm hoping for a hot-patch soon about this, but my MSQ at this point is done until I level something else up instead (which is massively disappointing because I fell in love with the picto on reveal and haven't looked back until now).

You can at least be safe in the knowledge that you aren’t doing bad damage. new PCT played optimally does only about 2-3% less damage than old PCT and new PCT played like old PCT (ie going stuff it I want to hammer in the burst) is only about a further 2% loss from that

[Absurdity]

You're technically correct, it makes sense to reward jobs that require coordination of their party buffs to perform at their best, and if this were still Shadowbringers party buffs I would 100% agree.
Unfortunately they have made the actual coordination part so braindead that there is barely an excuse anymore for them to be above the selfish jobs.

[Aco505]

Non-buffing jobs dealing more rDPS than buffers would make the former overpowered. It's happened in the past (e. g. ShB SAM). "Selfish" jobs already do more personal damage and more damage in general in most situations such as 4-ppl content, solo content, or disorganized environments. Only in organized 8-ppl content do buffer jobs tend to perform better rDPS-wise.

[brinn12]

Non-buffing jobs dealing more rDPS than buffers would make the former overpowered.

This is a common misconception. What truly matters is how much damage they deal under buffs, not their entire rotation. If a NIN and a VPR have the same rDPS in a party, NIN contributes more because its 2-minute burst is significantly stronger. The same logic applies to PCT and BLM.

In FFXIV, raid DPS jobs tend to perform better — not just in terms of rDPS, but in total damage contribution. This happens because SE tries to balance their median rDPS equally to the pure DPS, which results in rDPS jobs excelling in optimized groups while still being slightly ahead or tied in average groups.

[Aco505]

In FFXIV, raid DPS jobs tend to perform better — not just in terms of rDPS, but in total damage contribution. This happens because SE tries to balance their median rDPS equally to the pure DPS, which results in rDPS jobs excelling in optimized groups while still being slightly ahead or tied in average groups.

This is inevitable. SE cannot balance for 95+ percentiles. They have to balance for a more average number. Otherwise, buffing jobs would always be worse except at very high levels of play, which is already the case in most content.

cDPS is the metric that will, theoretically, measure the absolute balance of jobs but it's far from perfect because it's comp dependent. They all are but aDPS/cDPS even more so.

Absolute perfect balance is probably impossible to achieve numbers-wise using the metrics at our disposal, but extreme cases such as MCH shouldn't be a thing either.

[Carighan]

Yeah that's not really a sensible argument. Look at any game that did not grow organically into a purely-e-sports game, and you'll see that forcing pros-focus by balancing for the top 0.2% or so breaks balance in your game and ultimately bleeds you a ton of players.

That's of course something to keep in mind, but it also means that these 0.2 at the top or so aren't the people who you should look at for balance input. Yeah you want to look at "good" players, but more the top 5%. The top 10%. A large enough pool that you still get a wide spread of play performances and play styles, just all near the upper end.

[Owyn_Addens]

There are some complications with the fact that buffing jobs have that rDPS lead because selfish jobs are putting lots of potency into their buffs. Ideally, the theoretical Best Team Comp™ should have a mix of both. PCT was kind of an outlier because it both had a buff and put the most potency into buffs, but the abomination of a changelog that they got this patch was an enormous overcorrection.

[Absurdity]

Even the overcorrection isn't necessarily an issue, it's just in the wrong places to a point where the new rotation makes the job "feel" bad to play.