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

[Sunako]

I think you only lose 3% if you use hammer, the problem comes with the motifs, there is no reason to use them unless you have maidden/mog, in my opinion it is a bigger problem than the hammer.

How that is "bigger" problem? You only skip one last motif in entire fight, if you can not get madeen/mog proc

For hammer you skip multiple of them, if you don't want to lose dps. That 3% is 900 dps, if you have around 30k dps which is pretty big dps loss.

[Carighan]

For hammer you skip multiple of them, if you don't want to lose dps. That 3% is 900 dps, if you have around 30k dps which is pretty big dps loss.

It's not 3%, or rather, you can recover ~300 DPS (of the 900 DPS that was the total nerf to the job) by optimizing hammer and not using it unless absolutely required for mobility.

300 DPS over a 12 minute fight is 216000 damage. That's an absolutely marginal amount, in particular comparing the 21.4 million damage you've already dealt. 21.4 -> 21.2 by using the hammer as before. If that wiped your group, they never deserved to defeat the boss to begin with. (Of course are correct in that the motif is even less, it's in the order of random crit variance on a single Rainbow Drip)

[MrJPtheAssassin]

Depends what you mean by "half baked" I personally think the better way to describe picto right now is "broken" not as in overpowered but functionally broken with one of it's muses not really being useful anymore.

On the topic of other jobs, tanks and healers are very half baked and rushed designs that barely work in modern FF14 the current state of non dps jobs is a joke so thats already 8 other jobs alongside summoner, while some other DPS jobs maybe more functional then summoner a lot of the time they function the same as any other DPS practically this game has very few unique designs to begin with and the ones they do like current pictomancer doesn't even function properly due to bad potency tuning.

I also would describe picto right now in the game as "broken" for the same reason you said. That said, the person I was commenting to was saying picto was half-bake or unfinished at the beginning of DT, and that was what I was disagreeing with. 7.0 PCT felt wonderful and felt like a complete full job, and then they broke it with the 7.2 nerfs. All for the sake of balancing the job for FRU, which I disagree with, and knew if they were going to nerf picto something like this would happen. That's why I was so against it in all the "plz nerf picto", "plz delete picto, and "Picto is ruining FRU" threads that were made months after FRU came out.

As for the other jobs, I take your word on that. I don't touch tank or healer, so I can't have an opinion on those jobs. I do know ppl are not happy with the state of healer for a while now. I just know my previous main(smn) was ruined for me in EW and still feels like the most incompetent job in the game. The job plays like it's a lvl 50 job....

[Supersnow845]

It's not 3%, or rather, you can recover ~300 DPS (of the 900 DPS that was the total nerf to the job) by optimizing hammer and not using it unless absolutely required for mobility.

300 DPS over a 12 minute fight is 216000 damage. That's an absolutely marginal amount, in particular comparing the 21.4 million damage you've already dealt. 21.4 -> 21.2 by using the hammer as before. If that wiped your group, they never deserved to defeat the boss to begin with. (Of course are correct in that the motif is even less, it's in the order of random crit variance on a single Rainbow Drip)

It doesn’t matter that the loss is less than crit variance of some of the bigger skills it matters that you can tell from the way basically every skill in the kit is designed that it’s completely unintentional and makes the class less fun, more janky and more focused on a boring filler loop

[fulminating]

Hammer combo already was a fairly marginal gain at the prenerf potencies. Will it now have to be buffed above that to make it usable again given the rbgcym buffs? This just seems like more bother down the road.
With the current state of black mage, there’s no real justification for that to be top dog anymore. Fully revert the changes to pct and say it is working as intended in fru.

[Taranok]

Why was PCT in any way half baked?

Simple.

One, it launched with an exploit to toggle off a buff to gain a not insignificant dps gain from fast-cycling to more comets in black.

Two, holy in white has an entire gameplay element implemented for it for a mechanic that can be used once every 4 GCDs, and is lucky to be used once a minute by most PCT mains. That's right, holy in white is literally as bad as scholar's faerie gauge. And it launched with it.

Three, the entire painting gimmick feels tacked on and barely interacts with the rest of the class. Starry Sky is an interesting exception but doesn't affect other paintings and is a 2m cooldown, hammer stamp is just triplecast with extra steps. I'm still trying to figure out why creature motif has 3 charges, and the only thing I can think of is preventing it from having Monk's masterful blitz problem of starting desynced from the burst.

Four, I can remove 7 buttons from the class without changing any optimization, decision making, anything at all short of the texture of pressing a button on a separate keybind.

Five, of all the things to merge down, why is tempera grassa determined to be unimportant enough to not need to be rapidly deployed? Imagine designing short duration party support that needs a double weave on a class that only has ad hoc access to single weaves.

Six, the devs didn't even bother to think about just how much damage PCT could gain from casting its 3 paintings during boss downtime. To say PCT completely broke ultimate fight design is a gross understatement.

Seven, bereft of the paintings, the class is basically a badly designed gunbreaker rotation. The majority of the class can be played with 5 buttons, and 1 of those buttons is a combined blizzard in cyan 2 and fire in red 2.

You might think I'm being dismissive of the paintings, but the only painting that actually interacts with the core kit is starry sky. Every other painting is a direct interrupt and doesn't really flow with the rest of the class. Some people may love that, but I'd like a little more substance behind the arbitrary nature of the paintings. Nevermind how bloated the paintings are in button count for the sake of it. Ignoring creature, since those 3 buttons have very interesting optimization options if you want it regardless of how tacked on they ultimately are.

Hell, holy in white is the most damning "We half baked this class and don't care that it's half baked." It's an entire gameplay mechanic that most PCTs ignore because it's a DPS loss. It's the functional equivalent of a gunbreaker not using cartridges because it's a DPS loss or a scholar having faerie gauge because that mechanic never should have been put on scholar to begin with.

[Supersnow845]

I feel like you are completely misunderstanding the design of PCT, muses are the core of PCT, not the filler, the filler exists to fill the gaps between the muses, that’s why it can basically be dropped whenever you want to. As for your points specifically

1) no arguments here, that was stupid dev oversight, doesn’t really contribute to class design though. Magenta skipping is still actually possible but it requires hammer and a few other things now. I honestly would prefer aetherhues just not be timed but I also don’t think this is moving the dial for anyone

2) holy in white is designed as a slight loss movement tool. I don’t really see this as a bad thing, SCH has ruin 2, SGE has toxicon, BLM has paradox etc. a movement tool being a DPS loss but having a lot of it isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I can understand difference in opinion. I do think holy could be a little bit more but again I don’t think it’s actually a flawed mechanic. Comparison to the fairy gauge I don’t think is particularly valid though as union was always a wonky replacement to you being able to manually target embrace in HW, that particular mechanic has simply been powercrept. Holy in white still has a valid niche

3)like I said the muses are the core of the kit, the filler is the filler. Creature parts have 3 charges and 40 second CD because it forces you to constantly change which creature goes in your burst because the parts naturally drift, it’s just a small bit of engagement. Hammer being a bit one dimensional is fair though again it’s still better than filler. I also think hammer is an easy target for a muse expansion but i can’t give it points for what it might get in the future

4) I don’t see that as good or bad, the game should have condensing options but it’s not like PCT needs button space. A class having few buttons isn’t necessarily bad

5) similar to 4 I think this is more squares uneven application of action condensing more than it is PCT’s design, physically absorbing self mit to generate AOE mit isn’t a bad design

6) true PCT broke ultimates but that’s not a design flaw of PCT’s design, hell it’s a pro for PCT’s design, a class can finally do something in downtime, it’s just no other class has that

7) saying “if you remove half the kit the rest is boring” is ultimately a pointless statement

It seems you don’t like PCT’s freeform “paint when you want filler when you don’t”. That’s fine but it’s not necessarily half baked design. If you want a class that naturally presses every button is has in succession then there is multiple classes that do just that. PCT just want designed like that. I don’t think that’s a bad thing

[Sunako]

It is interesting to see how speed runners use hammer now. It is only used during opener and dance phase for mobility in m5s

[Supersnow845]

And it’s only used in the opener because since it’s pre-painted it’s a gain on one to use it