Status of the Balance of Defense-centered Jobs

[Raydeus]

Re: Status of the Balance of Defense-centered Jobs

Well, Utsusemi definatly needs a nerf in some form, why becuase this game has become so increadibly dependant on it (and by what it says in your information Corthaemus your a prime exapmle of this), nearly everytime someone plays Warrior/anythingotherthanninja this comes up.

"Do you have /nin"

Utsusemi doesn't need any nerfs.

For a WAR being /NIN is more about Dual Weild than about Utsusemi. Granted, Utsusemi let's them deal more damage while reducing the risk of dying but after WAR get's Rampage (pretty much the strongest WAR WS) /NIN becomes a great sub because of dual weild.

Before Rampage other subs (like MNK or THF) work good, specially if the WAR is using a Great Axe.

Also, WAR only gets Utsusemi: Ni until lvl 74 so is it's not like they are invincible if they pull too much hate in a TP-burn while they are leveling up.

[Maju]

Re: Status of the Balance of Defense-centered Jobs

There's nothing wrong with a WAR/NIN or any /NIN being a mini-tank, burn parties are a good thing because they allow many melee to get an xp party, if they get nerfed then you'll see all those melee looking for parties for days again.

Burn parties are not a good thing. Sure, melees (well, warriors, ninjas and monks) get lots of party invites, great. Now what do we do with the rest?

BLM? No PT unless you find more of them for a mana burn (very rare).
PLD? So out of luck mate.
WHM? No luck, RDM is better.
THF? Can't SA or TA reliably, no go.
DRG? What?
SAM? WAR and MNK have better DoT and you can't SA reliably in a burn PT.
DRK? We need steady but high DoT, not spike damage!
BLU? Can't take a job that needs MP. They only slow you down.
PUP? lol
COR? BRD pulls faster and has better buffs. Pulling hate with a ranged attack sucks.

Basically you have to be MNK, WAR, RDM or BRD to be the popular choice end-game. And of course everyone subs NIN because it's broken enough to make tanks obsolete.

Yes, TP burns need to go. Anyone who defends them only does it because they want a slice of the godly exp. I doubt anyone honestly thinks they're ok.

Also, nerfing has to be done. Everyone have been buffed up so many times that the game has become too easy. Further buffing would only make things worse so balance has to be attained by nerfing.

[Raydeus]

Re: Status of the Balance of Defense-centered Jobs

Burn parties are not a good thing. Sure, melees (well, warriors, ninjas and monks) get lots of party invites, great. Now what do we do with the rest?

BLM? No PT unless you find more of them for a mana burn (very rare).
PLD? So out of luck mate.
WHM? No luck, RDM is better.
THF? Can't SA or TA reliably, no go.
DRG? What?
SAM? WAR and MNK have better DoT and you can't SA reliably in a burn PT.
DRK? We need steady but high DoT, not spike damage!
BLU? Can't take a job that needs MP. They only slow you down.
PUP? lol
COR? BRD pulls faster and has better buffs. Pulling hate with a ranged attack sucks.

Basically you have to be MNK, WAR, RDM or BRD to be the popular choice end-game. And of course everyone subs NIN because it's broken enough to make tanks obsolete.

Yes, TP burns need to go. Anyone who defends them only does it because they want a slice of the godly exp. I doubt anyone honestly thinks they're ok.

Also, nerfing has to be done. Everyone have been buffed up so many times that the game has become too easy. Further buffing would only make things worse so balance has to be attained by nerfing.

Don't be so selfish, you rather have all those melee looking for a party for days just because you don't get a slice of "godly xp".

All those jobs you are mentioning can form a conventional party, the excess of melee can form TP-burns.

I'm leveling PLD (72 right now), and I've seen people preferring NIN over PLD. And you know what? Some times I felt like I was gimping the party rather than helping (after lvl 60+) because of the way PLD's defense works. But that doesn't mean I want NINs to be nerfed, on the contrary, I want SE to enhance PLD so I can be as good tank as a NIN.

What SE needs to do is to look for a way to make Conventional parties as efficient as burn parties, if TP-burns get great xp then good for them, I'm glad some melee are able to get good xp without depending too much on mages, and at the same time I want conventional parties (which I really enjoy) to be enhanced so we can play at the same lvl.

And even then the XP/Hour difference between a conventional party and a TP-burn isnt that great. Just because some lucky party gets to have a camp with plenty of mobs for themselves from time to time to get 15k+ xp that doesnt mean all Burn parties are that lucky.

Most camps are overcrowded and all parties regardless of the setup have to crawl because of the competition.



Edit > As a side note, the same way there are so many mobs in the new areas that are strong to magic and weak to physical there also has to be mobs who are weak to MB and strong against physical.

So a conventional party with a SC and MB would work better than TP burn, maybe we just need to find those camps.

[Macht]

Re: Status of the Balance of Defense-centered Jobs

Also, nerfing has to be done. Everyone have been buffed up so many times that the game has become too easy. Further buffing would only make things worse so balance has to be attained by nerfing.

Exactly remember when balancing it, they are not just doing between players. They are doing in comparison to mobs as well. If you've gotten strong enough that you can cover 80 out of the 100 mobs something is wrong, your abilities are impeding another jobs supposed talent and what a portion of that 100 mobs should be weak to.

That's the blending of this, that's why you get flying types that have hard shells and other variations. It's because every monster in the game should have a set of jobs that can take it effectively, are mid performance, and poor at taking. If you got a job that's making you good against almost everything it's overpowered.

[Raydeus]

Re: Status of the Balance of Defense-centered Jobs

Exactly remember when balancing it, they are not just doing between players. They are doing in comparison to mobs as well. If you've gotten strong enough that you can cover 80 out of the 100 mobs something is wrong, your abilities are impeding another jobs supposed talent and what a portion of that 100 mobs should be weak to.

That's the blending of this, that's why you get flying types that have hard shells and other variations. It's because every monster in the game should have a set of jobs that can take it effectively, are mid performance, and poor at taking. If you got a job that's making you good against almost everything it's overpowered.

Check my edit on the post above.

I think that's one of the problems, we as players try to fight the same mobs regardless of the setup, when in reality different mobs have different strong and weak points that can be dealt by different party setups.

But rarely anyone (including myself) ever takes the time to reseach camps for different party setups.

[Macht]

Re: Status of the Balance of Defense-centered Jobs

Check my edit on the post above.

I think that's one of the problems, we as players try to fight the same mobs regardless of the setup, when in reality different mobs have different strong and weak points that can be dealt by different party setups.

But rarely anyone (including myself) ever takes the time to reseach camps for different party setups.

Yes, you are "Brute Forcing" your way through. Something that SE has before demonstrated dislike of, they want you to build stratedgy and use that mind. Brute Forcing doesn't do that, so building monsters with more unique functions as well as targeting those jobs or abilities that are just too strong is a necessity.

[dirtyclown]

Re: Status of the Balance of Defense-centered Jobs

Shield Mastery only gives extra TP but does nothing about damage taken sadly. We need something that helps PLD be as efficient as a NIN in terms of damage taken/down time.

Can I have some of what you're smoking? I seem to take about 65% less total damage per party than I used to. It's a nice TP boost as well and allows me to actually participate in Skillchains, something I had a harder time doing before. Do you even play Paladin, or are you just repeating something somebody said? I'm not trying to start flames or anything, but seriously, how the hell can you say that with a straight face?

As far as TP burns are concerned, I'm not high enough level to comment on whether or not it's broken or needs to be changed. I have a static party anyway, so we're not going to need to worry about this sort of thing. One thing I do know though, is all of my friends who had melee jobs who were struggling to get invites can finally get their jobs leveled up. My best friend ingame finally got his DRG to 75 via TP burn parties. He's been leveling the job for the last 2 years now. It's about damn time.

Throughout this thread (all 2 pages I read, sorry had to open my mouth about the above quote) only a few people have suggested changes to shields. I just had this idea for more JAs for Paladins that involve the shield, or possibly even Shield WS. We do already have Shield Bash, but most of the time I'm forced to lol at my 16 damage and the failure of interrupting long casting magic or gobbie bombs. The Dark Knight can Stun far better than I can ever hope to. If we're such masters with Shields, why can't we use Shields agressively? I'm not going to try and make a comparison to real life, but since this is a game, why can't we uh..do a multi hit shield combo? Paladins have this amazing skill right in front of them, but we can't do anything with it. Even if SE just added in different defensive stances to take (Not counterstance exactly, but more like a trait that you can just switch on and go) we could see some enhanced performance from Paladins. In my mind the stances would be similar to the "formations" in older RPG games, and could even be adjusted to every class. It would make for an interesting addition to fiddle around with. Wall of text x.x

As an example, here's a few Shield WS.

Shield combo - Unleashes a 4 hit shield strike combo that deals bludgeoning damage (similar to H2H damage). If all hits connect, causes a stronger Stun effect no matter what. If misses occur, Stun effect occurs on %chance. Let's tie it to thunder for laughs.

Shield Charge - A single hit Shield attack that causes critical damage based on TP and a chance to Blind. (The idea here is that the enemy gets smacked so hard that they black out, or something similar) Uh...lolfire?

Two examples off the top of my head for expanded shield use. I'm gonna go back under my bridge now.

[Maju]

Re: Status of the Balance of Defense-centered Jobs

All those jobs you are mentioning can form a conventional party, the excess of melee can form TP-burns.

You can't form a conventional party because anyone who isn't MNK, WAR, RDM or BRD is leveling up one of the mentioned jobs so they can merit with those instead. Well, it's an exaggeration of course, but when lots of people start leveling new jobs only because they want to merit, something is wrong and that's what's happening right now.

Job balance changes can never ever make conventional parties as good as TP burns. A PT that has an extra DD instead of a tank will always have a higher damage output than a PT with a tank. Surely choosing to go that way should come with a drawback? Nope! The tankless party in fact mitigates damage better than a PLD tank party while dishing out superior damage. TP burns wouldn't see balance even if it kicked them in the nuts.

Either you remove TP burns completely by nerfing /NIN or change the way exp is calculated. I support the nerf /NIN option. Everyone are too dependant on Utsusemi because it's just so good. It's completely overpowered.

Now about Shield Mastery, you get 4 tp from shield blocks, which is hardly noticeable but that still helps indeed. And most PLDs save that for Spirits Within instead of wasting it on crappy dmg WS unless there's no one else to open the SC.

This is completely off-topic, but if you have any idea of how to gear your PLD and what food to eat, Vorpal Blade or Swift Blade will always outdamage Spirit's Within by so much it isn't even funny.

For me at L69, Spirit's Within at 100% TP, 100% HP deals slightly over 100 damage. A Vorpal at 100% against a typical exp mob (read: imps) will sometimes break 500 and never deals less than 150. A Swift Blade will similarly almost never deal under 150 damage, but max damage is lower than for Vorpal.

[Raydeus]

Re: Status of the Balance of Defense-centered Jobs

[Edited pointless discussion]

Paladin needs to be at the same performance lvl as a NIN, but not at the expense of nerfing NINs (or any job for that matter).

So either enhance PLD's defense so it means more than it does now, or enhance the way PLD shield tanking works so we can take even less dmg and can compete with Shadow tanking.

[ikkleste]

Re: Status of the Balance of Defense-centered Jobs

Not an expert on this by a long way but just have question to ask...
(kinda to Raydeus and people agreeing with him)

Do you think it's the case that if they could come up with a way to make conventional parties comparibly efficient to burn parties at meripo levels, that we wouldn't see those conventional parties looking for NIN tanks and MNK and WAR Damage dealers?

The way i see it, if conventional parties (skillchain, MB) became better, that suddenly all the NIN tanks would move to that (unless something drastic was different about these parties 0 damage is still going to be better than some damage, in most peoples eyes), which would still leave PLD's out in the cold. DD's would be fighting for spots as it was a few months back, leaving which ever jobs aren't optimum out in the cold (the lolDRG syndrome, with so many DD jobs competeing for so few spots theres always going to be one who's last pick).

So now instead you are left with the "worse" DD's and plds, as all the nin tanks, "optimum" DD's are off playing in the new skillchain parties only this time they took all the mages with them too.

It'd have to be a very tailored setup (as in a IT, fast hitting mob with a shadow stripping move, weak to magic, weak to whatever DD jobs are out of favour). This however is itself just waiting to be broken next time any of those jobs gets a buff, anything that somehow makes this more efficient, will bump up their exp above the burn parties, then we'll quickly have all those left in burn parties asking for a nerf of jump or whatever is being abused as Utsu is now, either that or they will be asking for buffs themselves "don't nerf jump, you need to make our setup more efficient instead" then you end up with an ever increasing power level and an ever easier game.

[dirtyclown]

Re: Status of the Balance of Defense-centered Jobs

If you wanna play that card... I'm PLD lvl 72 right now, what lvl are you? I've been partying with PLDs for a long time on merit parties and other endgame activities for a really long time too, so I kinda know how a PLD plays.

56 PLD. Speaking of cards, you're playing the "I'm higher lvl so I know far more than you ever could" card. I didn't read the entire thread, as I had mentioned in my post. I felt I had to say something about what I quoted, because it sounded like a completely biased, blatant exaggeration. Base level means what in this game? Nothing as far as I can tell. So please, quit while you're ahead.

Since when Shield Mastery cuts 65% from damage taken? I thought that was the shield alone. Any job that has Shield skill can do that.

Does it proc nearly as often with other jobs? Hmm. Nope. I personally noticed a greater frequency of shield blocks directly after the Shield Mastery patch. If that isn't a direct improvement to our damage mitigation then I don't know what is.

Paladin needs to be at the same performance lvl as a NIN, but not at the expense of nerfing NINs (or any job for that matter).

So either enhance PLD's defense so it means more than it does now, or enhance the way PLD shield tanking works so we can take even less dmg and can compete with Shadow tanking.

I can agree with this, and even offered an idea in my post. Guess you ignored that though. I'd guess it's because I'm not lvl 75 in at least 3 jobs, so I don't know any better right? :D

[Raydeus]

Re: Status of the Balance of Defense-centered Jobs

You can't form a conventional party because anyone who isn't MNK, WAR, RDM or BRD is leveling up one of the mentioned jobs so they can merit with those instead.

(Lie)s, are you telling me you can't form a party without MNK, WAR and RDM or BRD, or that only MNK, WAR and RDM or BRD xp now?

I'll give you that its a pain to be so Refresh dependant but I've been in conventional parties that have worked good without Refresh (albeit a bit slower). But there's always a bunch of jobs looking, my point is it's better to have more options while creating a party (regardless if it is burn or conventional).

The only problem I've found has been the lack of either WHM or support looking. It might be true a lot of RDM and BRDs prefer burn parties now but that doesn't mean it is imposible to create a party without them.

PLD has Auto Refresh now, and we have Sanction Refresh too, if PLD took less dmg than it does now those 2 MP per tick would be more than enough to keep the xp flowing. Before ToAU people worked good with only 3 mp per tick, how is it that 1 mp is doing such a difference now? Because xp is faster nowadays.

So PLD needs to either catch up with the times or SE could just get rid of fast xp altogether so we can all go back to be surprised about a chain #6.


There are two ways of solving this:

1) Impulse jobs so they are more efficient xp/hour wise (enhancing tanks, making parties less dependant of Refresh/Ballad etc.).

2) Getting rid of fast xp so parties go back to the way they were before (making mobs in the new areas stronger to physical attacks, nerfing Utsusemi, making mage jobs more of a necesity so melee can be looking for a party for days again, etc.).


It's a matter of opinion I guess, but I choose #1.

[Edited pointless discussion]

[Macht]

Re: Status of the Balance of Defense-centered Jobs

About Shield Mastery... if there's a higher proc. rate on shield I haven't noticed it at all, I play as both pld and rdm and I haven't found any difference in the shield block rates. Neither in the damage blocked really.

Actually the higher proc rate was mentioned in the release notes to the trait.

[Aeni]

Re: Status of the Balance of Defense-centered Jobs

I suggested also changing ONE JOB'S coponent, namely pld. Job specific trait for them and them alone.

What your suggesting would obliterate melee burns (not just because of less shadows, but by not having another utsu to alternate with).

This also wouldn't help pld any, because if melee burns can't happen, people will still prefer a ninja tank over a pld tank.

NO, because you're a RDM (Like myself) that do not want to lose a second tier utsu. What you posted above about TP burn is really off the mark. PLD can grip hate way better than a NIN can so you don't need more than 4 shadows (+8 if the recast is up by the time the 4 is down which is usually the case when you "prep cast" before every fight anyway)

[Maju]

Re: Status of the Balance of Defense-centered Jobs

(Lie)s, are you telling me you can't form a party without MNK, WAR and RDM or BRD, or that only MNK, WAR and RDM or BRD xp now?

Please read my post again. I said it's an exaggeration. Yes, you can form a conventional party but compared to TP burns the exp will suck and you can forget invites to that kind of parties as a PLD. However, my point was, that when people believe it's faster to level another job from L1 to L75 and merit with it instead of trying to merit with their already L75 main job, something is seriously wrong.