The identity of Pictomancer is being destroyed

[Carighan]

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.

And if the stark nerf to potency in fights with waits is meant to be kept, they could always do "tricks". Like how if you paint the motif with a target, using the muse against that target gets a bonus, that way damage can be moved back (not a whole lot, it's okay if Hammer is just a slight upgrade for example since it's mobile!) from the filler into the muses without inherently causing issues in FRU etc again.

[Zaytex]

Copy/Paste from another thread:

I completely agree that these changes are bad for PCT's design and gameplay flow, since the painter job's best optimisation being...... do less painting and just spam your filler ad nauseam is hilariously counterproductive to what feels good to do with the job. They should definitely buff hammer, but this is SE so I have little faith I'll see that done on Monday/Tuesday.

However, playing standard picto (i.e changing absolutely nothing and playing like its 7.1) is a 1% DPS loss (according to the balance discord) in comparison to fully optimising the job. Such little variance will not matter in prog, nor even in reclears. As such, I recommend people to not fuss and hyper fixate on such an inconsequential min-max issue and just play how they want to play. I'm sticking to playing standard, because hammers feel good to use, as does painting, and I'm not going to lessen the fun/experience of the job for a ONE percent increase in DPS.

Yes, they should change it, but nothing's stopping you from just playing standard unless you're only goal in this game is to parse 99/100's.

[Carighan]

Oh it's actually 1%? I had assumed it's on the order of 0.2%-0.5%. But even then you are of course correct, random crit-variance will easily be more meaningful than whether you do standard vs optimized.

[MrJPtheAssassin]

Copy/Paste from another thread:

I completely agree that these changes are bad for PCT's design and gameplay flow, since the painter job's best optimisation being...... do less painting and just spam your filler ad nauseam is hilariously counterproductive to what feels good to do with the job. They should definitely buff hammer, but this is SE so I have little faith I'll see that done on Monday/Tuesday.

However, playing standard picto (i.e changing absolutely nothing and playing like its 7.1) is a 1% DPS loss (according to the balance discord) in comparison to fully optimising the job. Such little variance will not matter in prog, nor even in reclears. As such, I recommend people to not fuss and hyper fixate on such an inconsequential min-max issue and just play how they want to play. I'm sticking to playing standard, because hammers feel good to use, as does painting, and I'm not going to lessen the fun/experience of the job for a ONE percent increase in DPS.

Yes, they should change it, but nothing's stopping you from just playing standard unless you're only goal in this game is to parse 99/100's.

Though I agree if it's only that small of a diffenets ppl shouldn't worry that much about it and play it as normal unless they want to get 99s and 100s, BUT Im personally going back to RPR because Im tired of playing a role that is consistently being mishandled and misbalanced. As a pre-rework smn main, Im tired of SQ devs not able to balance and act clueless when it comes to casters in their game. It's not just smn, it's blm as well(look at blm this patch) and now pct. I feel melee is the only role that is semi-safe; there are some outliers, but as a whole, I feel melee is always consistently treated better in this game than the other roles. For years, Caster has had the most unbalanced role among the jobs themselves, mostly because of the rez tax.

I came back to caster this expac bc of pct, since it looked like a caster that is actually a caster that had decent dam and had a clear identity. Unlike smn who was turned into a phy range job with bright shiny lights and has as much depth as a kiddie pool. I feel things will continue to get worse for pct as the years go by, just like BLM and SMN.

[Lanntis]

I'm not a min/maxing ultimate, savage raiding player...I don't have the time. However, I like to do my extreme trials and I like to play my solo and "mid tier" content (which there's always a lack of) and since the patch I feel useless. I go through my pictomancer rotation and I'm in my craft 740 gear and I'm lagging behind others in our required daily expert roulettes. It feels pointless to paint my motifs, I just should hit 11111 for my RGB, and then subtractive, and throw holy in white. Everything else including our very feel good button that is hammer stamp feels awful. Pictomancy is the one thing that has brought me a lot of joy since it was introduced last year. Summoner hasn't felt right to me in 14 years of playing this game, and they created something great that fit my persona perfectly in PCT -- and now they're taking it away. After making a huge fuss about "we're not going to take it away". Find a way to nerf us that doesn't feel awful. Currently it feels awful to bother painting and I'm just WHM casting dia. No need for the rest. And frankly, it's crap. I'm very frustrated.

We don't have a rez, and per Yoshi-P we are the other greedy caster next to BLM, so our damage should be higher. VPR walks into parties and tears it up in 2 seconds and I'm just painting my gimped paintings now. Feels terrible. Feels like not logging in.

[Carighan]

I'm not a min/maxing ultimate, savage raiding player...I don't have the time. However, I like to do my extreme trials and I like to play my solo and "mid tier" content (which there's always a lack of) and since the patch I feel useless. I go through my pictomancer rotation and I'm in my craft 740 gear and I'm lagging behind others in our required daily expert roulettes. It feels pointless to paint my motifs, I just should hit 11111 for my RGB, and then subtractive, and throw holy in white.

Interesting, what you describe there would be strictly inferior to just doing the same rotation as before the changes. Plus the overall nerf is only ~3%, unless you do sub-optimal changes like your "just hit 1111 for my RGB, then subtractive, and those in HiW", then yeah your reduction will be 10% or more, definitely.

Quoting from the actual FAQ about the changes: Standard is ~3% nerf compared to before. Optimizing can claw back about 1-2% of that nerf. Choosing to play old standard is fine if you do not want to bother, ~1-2% loss.

To paraphrase the next part from that FAQ, the only time hammer is actually worse than not painting it is in a vacuum, in an infinite fight (meaning target dummy). For any actual fight, four situations just need to arise ~once to make hammer a gain:

* Start of the fight (you start with a hammer).
* End of the fight (since you can finish with a hammer but could not, say, generate another subtractive combo).
* There's mechanics during a burst window (hammer makes for a more lenient and stronger burst window).
* There is any even brief downtime at all (see for example the ~3 seconds during EX4).

The only definitely skipped element is 1 hammer motif paint every odd minute, which is now strictly a loss. But even then, only a minor one.

Also keep in mind that even given all of this, we're talking about a 3% overall nerf to Picto, of which you can claw 1%-2% back by hyperoptimizing this hammer/rotation stuff. Just doing what you did before results in a 3% nerf, playing new-optimal (see above) results in an ~1% nerf.

Boo...hoo?

And don't get me wrong, I think the interaction with hammer was definitely unintentional (see how it just barely is a net-negative in the odd minute? They seemed to have wanted it to just barely stay net-positive). But yeah if you feel like you're not contributing or being worth now, sorry, that's on you. Change has been mathed, in any fight with downtime you're still massively ahead of everyone else, and you have exactly 0 need to change your rotation.

[Supersnow845]

It’s not about what’s optimal it’s about how the class feels.

The class was explicitly built around the style of play that painting a muse was never the wrong decision. You could arguably make it more optimal by painting it in downtime if the opportunity arises compared to painting it in uptime but the uptime painting would still be a gain

Now there is (common) situations where painting is an active loss. Painting hammer in the off minute is a loss, painting hammer for the burst can be a loss if you aren’t in a buff heavy comp and in light parties, painting a creature part if you won’t complete the creature before the end of the fight or a downtime long enough to cap its CD is also a loss

PCT’s filler was designed around being able to ignore it whenever you want to paint. Optimising filler often at the expense of painting is just a hammer to job identity who the only people “fine with it because it’s still overpowered in FRU and it’s only a 1-3% nerf” are people who only see a job as a representation of numbers or people who don’t play PCT using their PF/static’s FRU PCT as a crutch to cover bad performance

[Carighan]

You can play exactly as before and then it's a 3% instead of a 2% nerf that even the actual pros agree was most likely unintended. Plus you cannot "feel" a 1% difference, anyways. Random crit variance has a bigger impact than whether you paint that odd minute hammer or not.

Again, not saying they shouldn't fix it but the way people make a mountain of tears out of such a tiny molehill is quite absurd. It's important to keep opinions nuanced IMO. This is a very details only problem. For about 100% of Pictomancers (rounded), nothing changed and they don't have to lay any different at all. And it's important to keep that in mind. It's still good of course to reiterate that the net should have been mechanically different to avoid having to reduce muse potency too much (bad) to shift damage away from downtime gains (good). But that is a very different game from "aaaah so rubbish now".

[SalamanderIX]

I'd be pretty certain that they don't want any motifs to be a loss, since they designed the job around using those motifs in the first place.

So I would have to believe they will fix the job as time goes on, the balance team hates non-optimal play, for better or worse. It's likely the balance changes were just a crowbar before they'd get out the scalpel, or they just made a mistake.

[Carighan]

Yeah plus they seem to have just narrowly missed the mark. I think shifting ~20 potency from Holy/Comet into Weapon and like 10 into creature should actually be enough already? That'd make them always net-positive, independent of circumstances?