Please Make Pictomancer's Hammer Usable Again / Review the Potency Shifting

[Keshigomutsuri]

We all knew nerfs were coming, and I agree that Picto deserved a nerf. However, I do think the numbers were adjusted/shifted incorrectly here. Paintings feel bad to cast now, as they are weaker compared to our filler rotation (Pictomancer was turned into Paintomancer).

While this is somewhat logical, the fact that our 1-minute burst with 2 stacks (Picto Hammer) is now a DPS loss in uptime encounters does not feel logical. Even Holy in White is a better movement tool in uptime fights now compared to Hammer. This undermines the entire rotation and burst we had before.

In full uptime fights, you end up sitting on your 1-minute burst cooldown with 2 stacks because you only cast filler + Holy (up to 5 stacks) for movement + Starry Muse. Speaking of Starry Muse, it has a lot going on, so why, in order to nerf Picto, was it not reduced from a 5% party buff to a 2%-3% party buff?

We could have made the painting nerf just a little less severe and reduced the party buff instead. We see the same situation with Reaper: it does a lot of personal damage, so it was said their party buff would be weak. Why not apply the same concept to Pictomancer? Strong personal with a weak raid buff.

This would give us a better feel for paintings again while still being nerfed. (I’m not suggesting we should get the old numbers back, just shift them a bit more towards paintings again, so Hammer becomes usable and the nerf is done by reducing the party buff by 2-3%).

PLEASE

[Supersnow845]

Yeah there is 3 core problems to the changes they made to PCT

1) hammer is a loss. I don’t know a single person PCT main or hater who likes the idea of the silly bonk bonk button being a DPS loss (side note it’s even a loss in the starry window unless you have a ridiculous amount of raid buff stacking; something in the realm of like 50%)

2) creature parts being an individual loss meaning the whole “the battle is ending spam all your paintings now” phase is completely gone. The easy solution to this would have been to simply nerf mog madeem to like 500 potency and leave the creature parts

3) the starry window is a mess now as star prism doesn’t justify a hyperphantasia stack and hammer is gone

They just need some minor tweaks to potency. Put creature parts back to 1100 but nerf mog/madeen to like 500. Make hammer back to its old slight gain and then nerf CYMK slightly to bring star prism back to the front of the starry window

It’ll be a slight buff to FRU compared to 7.2 but still a big nerf from 7.1 and it won’t completely ruin PCT’s gameplay

[MrJPtheAssassin]

Tho I haven't played FF14 yet this patch, but what I've been seeing about PCT doesn't make me want to come back...Like I knew it was going to get a nerf and it needed the nerf(It being an auto lock-in job for FRU was dumb). That said the nerf the devs did has ruined the sound of the job for me. So if I do come back to raid this tier I most likely will switch back to RPR and abandon the caster role once again...It was nice to be a caster again since they ruined SMN last expac but the devs continue to make dumb changes to the role and making me never want to touch my fav role again...

[Nukro]

Agreed, the fact that picto now has to intentionally ignore part of its kit to do damage is ridiculous.

[Zarkovitch]

They need to fix this. Sure they need to toned down, but the cost of gameplay no thanks.

[Carighan]

They need to fix this. Sure they need to toned down, but the cost of gameplay no thanks.

I mean it's not a lot that is needed. Reduce the raid buff by a % maybe (a reduction to overall DPS and also specifically to downtime-friendly DPS output), which in turn allows putting some more potency into Hammer, to just barely make it net-positive. Since it's all-mobile, it's okay if it isn't a big gain, right?

[Zaytex]

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.

[KariArisu]

I'm still using hammer despite knowing it's a loss, but it feels really bad just knowing it's a loss and that I'm intentionally doing less than I could be.

I had a 0.1% wipe in the new EX the other night and while a ton of things could have gone better, it sucks knowing that if I used less hammers it would have been dead. The same can be said for any tiny HP wipes I see in Savage next week.

Maybe I'll get used to playing with less hammer usage, but it's so natural for me to play PCT this way and it's hard to break the habits. It's also just plain less fun to avoid using it.

Hopefully this is addressed at some point, because DNC had a similar issue with Standard Step early on in Endwalker and it never got changed until Dawntrail.

[Keshigomutsuri]

No fix for Savage.
Feels bad.
Disappointed that the devs haven’t even given a statement about this…..

[remiff]

No fix for Savage.
Feels bad.
Disappointed that the devs haven’t even given a statement about this…..

They almost rarely make quick statements.
The Viper after the release of 7.0 was an exception in 13 years.
Don't expect any adjustments before at least 7.21.

Some jobs have already been ignored for years, and the devs give no declaration,
so it's pure copium.