Thoughts on the Purify changes?

[Esmoire]

Back when they made the guard changes, they also included paladin nerfs. It's clear they didn't consider that changing guard affects paladin more than any other job, because of how guard + cover is a core part of paladin performance. It was a mistake, which is why they had to buff paladin again this patch. Now this patch, they buffed bard, but they also increased the importance of MP. Everyone interacts with MP, but bard and white mage interact with MP more than anyone else. Regardless of whether or not this purify change was good, I don't think this was sound logic. Increasing the important of MP is inherently a bard buff. It feels like with the paladin change, they made it in isolation without considering the patch as a whole. I could be wrong, but I think they're making a mistake.

I don't see a problem with people getting their purify baited, it wearing off, then they die. That's just a fact of any competitive game. Get people to spend resources, and punish them. It's a fact of life. Think, overall, the most common cause of death is running out of MP and not getting away in time. If it's not that, it's a sudden blowup, or a crowd-control you can't Purify anyway. This will still happen. Dying with MP will still happen. It will happen in any kind of game where you fight multiple enemies and the total potential damage they can do in a second is mathematically higher than your total HP. Ultimately, it's still a situation where, if multiple people arrange their resources well to kill you, the only way you will survive is if multiple people use their resources to help you, whether it's defensive CDs, or killing the enemy before they kill you.

What did change is they reduced the duration of guard, which was the best staunch against damage taken, even in a DT world with so many actions that diminish or ignore guard, it was still effective. And it still is, but it buys you one less second of time, which is one less second for your teammates to support you either by using their defensives or punishing attackers. As a reminder, they nerfed the duration of guard because chaining guards kept games going for too long in overtime. I rather they have continued to tune up sustained, non-burst damage, to make games end more frequently, or alter the mechanics of overtime, than the decisions they made around the start of DT.

Anyway, I'll play it and give it more time, but worth considering.

[Loggos]

Does anybody know how the Japanese player base feels about the purify changes?

Back when they made the guard changes, they also included paladin nerfs. It's clear they didn't consider that changing guard affects paladin more than any other job, because of how guard + cover is a core part of paladin performance. It was a mistake, which is why they had to buff paladin again this patch. Now this patch, they buffed bard, but they also increased the importance of MP. Everyone interacts with MP, but bard and white mage interact with MP more than anyone else. Regardless of whether or not this purify change was good, I don't think this was sound logic. Increasing the important of MP is inherently a bard buff. It feels like with the paladin change, they made it in isolation without considering the patch as a whole. I could be wrong, but I think they're making a mistake.

This is what a lot of their balancing decisions feel like tbh. Short-sighted and not thought through.
It comes across as if they take ideas they have at face value and implement them if they seem good at first glance without making the effort to look beyond that. As if they might not check how that change is connected with the game as a whole and what implications it would have on a broader level.

"This looks like it should be good. It should be logical. No need to waste time on thorough testing. It feels like it makes sense, so let's do it."

That's the impression I'm getting.