And once again.... NO Avatar!

[Malacite]

Re: And once again.... NO Avatar!

So, you're not in one of those super-melee-power LS, and the argument that SMN is useless as damage source in zerg fights is completely irrelevant to your day-to-day play in FFXI?

Not anymore. I've been in some before, though never for very long (I had to quit my Einherjar shell due to the extreme hours but they rocked some of the harder fights with ease)

---------- Post added at 10:15 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:08 AM ----------

So, you're not in one of those super-melee-power LS, and the argument that SMN is useless as damage source in zerg fights is completely irrelevant to your day-to-day play in FFXI?

I said it's irrelevant in a Zerg scenario because of how stupidly powerful fully hasted melee jobs are. Hate-free damage is not going to matter when the mob is dead within minutes or even seconds if you have enough K Club DRK.

Shit even in Dynacore we never seem to have many (if any) SMN at our runs. It's largely SAM & BLM, with the odd MNK/WAR/DRG here & there (either because they don't have SAM leveled or they have a relic, etc.) and we smack shit gewd. I think we've only ever lost to the Dynalord twice and both times we were undermanned far as I know, but hate rarely seems to matter in that fight. We have a few PLD trying to (fruitlessly I might add lol) hold hate while the melee Zerg him and the RDM chainspell stun * the BLMs Freeze/Burst II.

I didn't mean to say SMN is useless entirely; the hate-free no level penalty damage is great in some situations, particularly long fights where you need to be careful.

[Aksannyi]

Re: And once again.... NO Avatar!

For a lot of linkshells where your members are highly idiotic, SMN is great because of the hate-free damage. You don't have to worry about your shitty PLD losing hate or your shitty WHM forgetting how to cure. And these are the types of fights that take a fucking year, too. SMN is pretty useless if you have people who know what they're doing and don't need to hide behind an avatar to do damage.

That sounds harsh, but it's true.

[Darkhound]

Re: And once again.... NO Avatar!

Well well said!!!

[jenova_9]

Re: And once again.... NO Avatar!

at least a brand new shiny Avatar would make SMN worth using again.

if Siren was added as an avatar people would be all over SMN. lol :p

[Raydeus]

Re: And once again.... NO Avatar!

The moment I saw Shiva wasn't VIII's Shiva I pretty much stopped caring about SMN. Not to mention just how freaking boring the job is for me.




PS > The Tribune stories were pretty neat though. SE should bring the Tribune back instead of adding bells or that roleplaying crap they label event support.

[Karinya]

Re: And once again.... NO Avatar!

Why does it matter? As much as Malacite annoys the hell out of me, if something is stupid it's stupid regardless of whether it affects him/me/anyone else specifically. Like the fact that BRD being poorly designed bothers me even though I've never played the job (and probably never will.)

For instance I've never done endgame, but I have a terrible hatred for the formulas that dominate meleeing. The TP system was poorly thought-out - Attack is completely irrelevant to TP gain, and TP doesn't scale with multi-hitting or attack speed, so everything is "Haste Haste Haste" "Accuracy Accuracy Accuracy" "Multi-hit weapon!". Likewise I've never been in a situation where it's been a matter of life or death but I find it equally stupid that mob TP gain is directly proportional to the number of people smacking it, when two people already feed a mob TP rather quickly.

If it's stupid, it's stupid. Too bad it's too late to change most of these things.

No, it isn't (too late to change, that is). SE could make TP gain calculated after Haste (the way it is already calculated after Dual Wield) next update, if they wanted to. Making multihit weapons return 1/N times the tp when they proc an N-times attack (and possibly DA/TA too) would be a little more complicated, but quite possible. Or extra hits could return 0-1 TP instead of full - they already don't activate enspell IIs, so there is code to determine which hits are "extra" even in normal melee rounds.

If SE actually wanted to do it. People who had invested hundreds of hours or millions of gil in their ridills and haste gear would be pretty pissed off when they only worked for dealing more DoT and didn't also give them a zillion TP per minute. Improving game balance is always unpopular with the people who are currently overpowered. ISTM that one of the main problems with this game has always been that SE isn't willing to nerf things that clearly need nerfing. People whine about nerfs, but sometimes they're just necessary and avoiding them makes the game worse.


Monsters gaining most of their TP from being hit is, I think, an attempt to make them not pathetically easy when being ganged up on - if they had to rely on TP from hitting, having them outnumbered would practically guarantee you'd get a lot more TP than they would. On the other hand, if they just had so much Store TP they could get TP at a similar rate to what they get now when being attacked by 3-4 people, they'd get *much* more TP when soloing than they do now, and I don't think we really need soloing to be more difficult in general.


As for BRD, I think situational songs like resists should either be *much* stronger so that they're worth using over a generic "more damage" buff, or take up a separate slot that doesn't conflict with generic buffs, but aside from that, using the same songs most of the time is primarily a matter of the "forget normal damage, how often can I WS?" mentality combined with the weakness of exp mobs so there is no incentive to do things like Pianissimo+Mambo on the NIN. (They could have a wider variety of buffs like COR, but even more than RDM, BRD is a job that clearly doesn't need new toys in a party context. I wouldn't be surprised to see a solo/small-group-oriented update for BRD, but they clearly do just fine in full parties as they are.)

Or maybe you just think a job that focuses on buffs is poorly designed for that reason alone? Very few, if any, other games have a job that is as buff-focused as FFXI BRD; it's common to see hybrid buffer/healers, or buffer/DDs, or whatever, but a job that focuses as much on buffs as BRD requires a game that is as strongly oriented toward party play as FFXI - because, as we all know, BRDs are not very good soloers, and with their job design, can't possibly be.

On the other hand, if your main concern is just that you personally find them boring to play, then maybe that isn't really a problem. Not every job will be ideally suited to the personality of every player, so as long as *someone* enjoys BRD, what difference does it make if *you* don't? (I frequently make this argument about SMN, too, against people who want it to outnuke BLM, or be a clone of BST without the mischarms, or anything other than what it is.)

[Armando]

Re: And once again.... NO Avatar!

Don't misunderstand - it's not that I don't think it'd be easy to change the formulas. It's just that at this point if the game, if they haven't done so already, I honestly don't think they care enough that we'll ever see the change. I guess I worded that poorly.

Monsters gaining most of their TP from being hit is, I think, an attempt to make them not pathetically easy when being ganged up on - if they had to rely on TP from hitting, having them outnumbered would practically guarantee you'd get a lot more TP than they would.

I don't disagree entirely with the notion of "more people = more TP for the mob." It's just that having it be unregulated is a stupid idea. The system would be a lot less stupid if there was some scaling factor dependent on the number of people on the mob's hate list (or better yet, number of people that've damaged the mob, if it's possible to track that) such that the relationship isn't strictly linear. Something like 3 people = each person contributes only 85% of the TP they'd give if the mob was being soloed = x2.55 TP gain for the mob instead of x3, and so on. A single person already feeds the mob TP faster than he himself can get it. When you have 10 people ganging up on the mob, the results are asinine. This shit really shows in areas like Campaign. The scaling could be handled in a similar way to BLM AoE spells, with the scaling factor bottoming out after a certain number of people (6-10?)

On that subject I also dislike the fact that the mob gains extra TP in an additive manner when hit (Player's TP gain +3) instead of by % (say, Player TP gain x1.25). This skews TP feeding in favor of 2-handed weapons which are already at an advantage against hard targets due to their raw Acc and Attack advantages and their ability to exploit Sneak Attack.

Or maybe you just think a job that focuses on buffs is poorly designed for that reason alone?

No, not at all. It's not that I think that a job dedicated solely to buffs is inherently boring or poorly designed. I just think it should take some degree of competence to play, and that monotony/repetition should be kept at reasonably low levels. Repeating 3 songs at regular intervals is not my idea of fun or skill or player involvement. The positioning factor is a nice little filter to separate the truly retarded and lazy from the people that actually try, but it's not very hard either and does nothing to relieve the boredom of the job. There needs to be more thinking and skill involved than simply being able to stand at certain distances, and remembering how much time left until you reapply the same old tired buffs.

On the other hand, if your main concern is just that you personally find them boring to play, then maybe that isn't really a problem. Not every job will be ideally suited to the personality of every player, so as long as *someone* enjoys BRD, what difference does it make if *you* don't?

Naturally. A solid argument. But in this case I think there's enough people that find the job rather awful to not make it relevant. With SMN, you have some footing to use this argument, but with BRD...

I think the problem, besides certain stats having too much weight (Haste, Accuracy) and others scaling badly (Minne) is that ALL songs are competing for 2 slots, and that all buffs are permanent. You could make exceptions for situational buffs such that they don't take up either of the 2 song slots, but then you don't have much of a reason not to keep those buffs at all times in addition to the other 2 songs in every situation where they would be helpful. In my opinion it really would've helped if there had been a separate category of songs that had potent but temporary effects and didn't take up a song slot.

Etudes, Anti-status ailment spells and perhaps even Carols would've been great candidates for such a song category. These buffs are usually not needed 24/7 - in many encounters they come into use, say, once every 20-40 secs when the mob does a certain TP attack, and the rest of the time they're dead weight taking up a song slot. For example, Scop's Operetta could give 30 seconds of potent silence resistance on a 2:30 timer, and Etudes could give 15 secs of high stat-ups (say, +25) on a 1 minute timer timer for things like Skillchains and Magic Bursts (could be changed to close range AoE and give them quick casting times to facilitate usage - run up to the melees as they approach 100 TP and nail them all with a STR etude at the same time, then run back to the nukers and nail those with an INT etude.)

[Yellow Mage]

Re: And once again.... NO Avatar!

On the other hand, if your main concern is just that you personally find them boring to play, then maybe that isn't really a problem. Not every job will be ideally suited to the personality of every player, so as long as *someone* enjoys BRD, what difference does it make if *you* don't?

The problem with this argument is that *everybody* wants to have a Bard in their party. Not everybody wants to level Bard (to understate the obvious). This causes situations where the "if you want one in your party so badly, level it yourself" arguments get thrown around, and the player gets screwed in to playing a mind-numbingly boring job by the laws of supply and demand.

At least with Summoner, the supply and demand are pretty much at equilibrium - people only want them once every two hours, and people only want to play them once every two hours.

(I frequently make this argument about SMN, too, against people who want it to outnuke BLM, or be a clone of BST without the mischarms, or anything other than what it is.)

Summoner is the Mage of the Pet jobs. It stops casting native Magic the moment its Summon is out. I still take issue with that.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: And once again.... NO Avatar!

It's not that I think that a job dedicated solely to buffs is inherently boring or poorly designed. I just think it should take some degree of competence to play, and that monotony/repetition should be kept at reasonably low levels.

[...]

Naturally. A solid argument. But in this case I think there's enough people that find the job rather awful to not make it relevant. With SMN, you have some footing to use this argument, but with BRD...

Er, that goal of requiring some competence to play (well) is already reached, IMO. While I like to go as BRD to events sometimes precisely because it has a much more relaxed rhythm (certainly less demanding than RDM or PLD), it's not quite as brainless as many people make it out to be.

Repeating 3 songs at regular intervals is not my idea of fun or skill or player involvement. The positioning factor is a nice little filter to separate the truly retarded and lazy from the people that actually try, but it's not very hard either and does nothing to relieve the boredom of the job. There needs to be more thinking and skill involved than simply being able to stand at certain distances, and remembering how much time left until you reapply the same old tired buffs.

Though it's no rocket science, there is more to BRD than just three songs. Actually, the majority of Bard work fall under three general patterns:

1. BRD/WHM: Buffer and backup healer. This is probably the pattern most non-BRD players think of, and in exp parties it tends to be fairly low stress and undoubtedly many players skated by on auto-pilot mode--I think we've all seen the lazy BRD/WHM who never cast a single MP spell while still let buffs drops way too many times.

At level 75, though, the BRD/WHM may be assigned to remove status effect from specific people, and the trick there is to time the buff songs to minimize chance of missing debuff removal, and actively off-load as much curing from main healers as possible without wasting the limited MP from the small pool.

In a way, this is similiar in spirit to WHM's game; resource (time and MP) management, and intelligently weighing which option has the best balance of benefit vs. risk at any given time. (The WHM's game is much deeper, of course.)


2. BRD/NIN: The puller. The second most well known pattern, this is all about keeping up a good rhythm unfailingly--it's DDR light, without the sweat. You generally know what is coming if you pay attention, but the work never ceases and never waits.

Song buff, rebuff Utsusemi, pull, stage--all done correctly, and in time. And, that time is about 32 seconds or less on average for a decent merit party, and much less for a great one. That means sometimes things die in 15 seconds, and the BRD has to accommodate that as well as the occasionally 45 second kill time--no matter the distance or direction of the pull.

Party may be roaming or drifting. Repops are not always where you expect them to be. When I'm buffing song, I'm constantly panning around to see if any has spawned within view. I check my HP while on the run, to see if healers have overcured and if I need to trigger macros to shrink HP to activate Minstrel's Ring. Right as I run in (to where the party is) I check the HP of the current target, to see if I need to lullaby or should just tank the one I just pulled. Sometimes I just go by WS sounds--if I hear them going off while coming in, I tank the incoming on Utsusemi and recast song buff, then run off as soon as Provoke goes off and song finishes.


3. BRD in a running game. Probably most people don't notice this one; can't blame them, since I myself haven't used it much, mostly just witnessed. This also the most ill defined pattern, as it covers anything involving running monsters, party members, and sometimes even the BRD himself.

It can be argued that having players running around is the worst thing for a Bard. Often, though, monsters are kited in a loop. It then becomes a matter of chosing where to stay, whether to move between differnt spots, and timing the song buffs so kiters and the healers chasing them will be hit with the song. (Even Piassimo/string instrement can be frustated by out of range error if the timing is bad.) That's the simple one.

Harder are the situations like Nyzul Isle, where the BRD constantly has to make the choice between buffing/curing party or skip them to run back to start to move to next floor faster or to take off to pull the next critter.


* * *

Not to say there are no problems with the song designs, but the a good BRD's game really isn't as shallow as repeat three songs.

Oh, and you've all met the people who hate BRD because they think it's only about brainlessly repeating three songs, but leveling/leveled it to get into an HNM LS or merit parties. Those are the BRDs who make you groan in parties and alliances, and show up to Dynamis as BRD/NIN, land in the BLM party w/out a string instrument, and go to Imp parties without Echo Drops.

* * *

If people can't tell yet, I happen think SMN is more boring than BRD. lol. I may change my mind if I start playing SMN, though; Carby is pretty cute.


* * *

at least a brand new shiny Avatar would make SMN worth using again.

... You need to re-read the thread.


* * *

The problem with this argument is that *everybody* wants to have a Bard in their party. Not everybody wants to level Bard (to understate the obvious). This causes situations where the "if you want one in your party so badly, level it yourself" arguments get thrown around, and the player gets screwed in to playing a mind-numbingly boring job by the laws of supply and demand.

For a merit party, BRD is viewed as essential, but I've not ever seen anyone whining about not having a BRD in exp levels.

Even for the ridiculous song-and-dance routine of endgame LS entry, I don't think I've seen much pressure to "Go level BRD". WHM and RDM, yes, but BRD? It's more like "Would be nice to have, since our BRDs want to play other jobs" these days.

Summoner is the Mage of the Pet jobs. It stops casting native Magic the moment its Summon is out. I still take issue with that.

You tend take issue with the aspects of jobs not matching your imagination of how those jobs are supposed to be played, rather than evaluating the jobs on their own terms and in specific context of FFXI as is. Better make a lot of money and create your own game company and make an MMO exactly the way you want it--and see if your customers agree with your vision of how a job/class should be.

[Armando]

Re: And once again.... NO Avatar!

Stuff about BRD.

All solid points. But the argument still holds if a large part of the interesting work is limited to endgame and events. The pulling aspect of BRD isn't even really all that integral to BRD itself, it's just that the job happened to have the ability to fill a niche role that merit parties wanted (a puller that can keep a bunch of mobs on standby next to the party.)

If the gameplay is only interesting post-75 there is a problem. Gameplay is almost universally more interesting post-75 because you find yourself in much weirder situations at events. At least it is when your job is in a position to contribute.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: And once again.... NO Avatar!

All solid points. But the argument still holds if a large part of the work is limited to endgame and events. The pulling aspect of BRD isn't even really all that integral to BRD itself, it's just that the job happened to have the ability to fill a niche role that merit parties wanted (a puller that can keep a bunch of mobs on standby next to the party.)

This is getting to be a really long derail, but:

I started pulling on BRD around Lv.30 or so? And, backup cured before that and anytime not pulling--sometimes did both. (Just because some players do jack with /WHM and just have it for display doesn't mean all BRDs do that.) The first two patterns I described are heavily utilized for the entire exp climb. At least, they should be.

Anyway, pulling really is a core duty of BRD now, as far as I'm concerned.

[Armando]

Re: And once again.... NO Avatar!

This is getting to be a really long derail, but:

I started pulling on BRD around Lv.30 or so? And, backup cured before that and anytime not pulling--sometimes did both. (Just because some players do jack with /WHM and just have it for display doesn't mean all BRDs do that.) The first two patterns I described are heavily utilized for the entire exp climb. At least, they should be.

Anyway, pulling really is a core duty of BRD now, as far as I'm concerned.

I have no objections to the usage of /WHM to aid in BRD's supportive position. At the same time, it's a bit peculiar that BRD ends up with /WHM for the same reason as SMN: they had nothing to sub that would allow them to be better at what they did, so they defaulted to the most useful thing. Just a funny observation. But so we're clear I have no objections to the fact that it's used; the more useful a job can be, the better.

Likewise if the job can pull, that's fantastic. But at the same time it's not the role that people invite it for, any more than people invite BRD specifically for backup healing - it's just an added and welcome benefit. It's not like the pulling role of a BRD can't be replaced with other jobs pre-merits since no matter how melee-oriented they are, pre-75 parties won't be able to pull off infinite chains like a true burn, and thus merely require a fast puller, not one that can start a zoo.

Uh, I guess what I was trying to point out is that while it's good that the class has those capabilities, and they should definitely be used, they're not the bulk of what a BRD brings to the table in most cases, and are not always duties that are required or used (a BRD pulling as /NIN can't backup heal.)

[Karinya]

Re: And once again.... NO Avatar!

Regardless of whether they're what the BRD is invited for, though, duties like pulling will still make up part of the BRD's gameplay experience in those parties.

There's a difference between the experience of playing a job and what the job brings to the party. For example, Protect and Shell have a significant effect on a party, but since they are only cast once every 30 minutes, nobody would say that what they did most of the time in a party was cast Protect and Shell. If bard songs had 30 minute durations, bards would be able to do something else with most of their time - even though they would still be contributing the full power of those songs. That hypothetical job would obviously be even more powerful in a party than BRD as it exists today. The necessity of repeatedly singing those songs is a *cost* - paid in time spent singing and moving into position to sing - to maintain them, which interferes with other things the BRD could be doing. BRD gameplay revolves around that kind of time management, and it limits the power of the BRD compared to fire and forget buffs like Protect. The same need for recasting that limits BRD's power also defines its gameplay - you can't contribute full-time buffs unless you renew them regularly.

THF is an even stronger example of the difference between gameplay and usefulness - one of the things they are invited for in some endgame situations is a *job trait*. That's not something they do on a regular basis or on any basis - THF *gameplay* is primarily about melee, SA, TA, and WS, and sometimes pulling. But THF's *usefulness* includes TH, even though its gameplay does not.

Whether or not having the BRD pull really does anything more for the party than having the THF pull (below 70 or so), the fact remains that the BRD that is pulling is doing more than just singing the same songs over and over again. Even if it's a duty that other jobs could have done just as well, it's still part of the gameplay experience for that job.


Particularly in light of Itaz's post, I'm inclined to the view that anyone who thinks BRD is excessively repetitive either hasn't played it much, or didn't fully appreciate what they could have done with it when they were playing it. I think it only needs tweaks to particular underutilized songs (carols and the status-resist songs in particular). If indeed it needs anything at all - it's not facing the kind of problems that BST, PUP, or even THF have to deal with today.

[Aksannyi]

Re: And once again.... NO Avatar!

You underestimate the usefulness of Collaborator/Accomplice in a lot of high pressure situations. You're not the only one, many people forget about their existence, but plenty of DDs who skate dangerously close to the hate line have lived through fights because of the THF stealing their hate. A smart THF will realize this and utilize this, and a smart linkshell will keep their THF in the fight to help maintain the hate of some of the heavier DDs, even BLMs. Linkshells that use their THF only for TH are the reason people think THF has no usefulness.

I like Armando's idea of Bard, (think it was his, didn't check) where there could be more slots available for songs, but that only certain songs could be used in this extra slot. Not really a visible slot, but a slight tweak where you could have three songs, for example, but certain songs couldn't go into that third song slot so as to keep from getting an extra march/min/mad or whatever. The job isn't that bad to play, but I did only get it to 47. Considering I play WHM at an extremely high pace, I would welcome the slowness of BRD when I was leveling it. I don't think I could stand to play it full time, but the change of pace was welcome sometimes. I don't think any job should be like a "vacation" job though. For some BRD wouldn't be (because they play little else) but for me, it was like slowing down and taking time off because my WHM is always switched to "HIGH."

I would like more jobs that require fast-paced thinking and reaction time. There isn't much on BRD that requires it. Finale is really the only thing you need to have a good reaction time for, so it doesn't give me much of a reason to pay attention if there's a RDM or /RDM. Basically BRD and SMN suffer from the same problem. I could do my BP or sing my songs (if I wasn't pulling, that is), and then I could tab out for thirty seconds, read a couple of posts, and then come back and repeat it. There was no reaction-based things I needed to worry about, it was all just action. I wasn't involved in the fights really at all. I want to be somehow involved in the battle. With BRD and SMN there's no real involvement, just standing back, doing one thing - maybe two - and then hanging back again.

They just need more. Something to keep these jobs more active in the battles, something that doesn't rely on their subjobs, so they don't feel like they're just sitting there waiting on timers. Which is all either of those jobs seem to do.

[Armando]

Re: And once again.... NO Avatar!

Whether or not having the BRD pull really does anything more for the party than having the THF pull (below 70 or so), the fact remains that the BRD that is pulling is doing more than just singing the same songs over and over again. Even if it's a duty that other jobs could have done just as well, it's still part of the gameplay experience for that job.

Ok. That's a solid point. But the point that a BRD can still make a tremendous difference to the party just standing there repeating its buffs, with minimal active involvement or regard for the current battle situation is still troubling. That a job can be played so half-assedly, hell, two-boxed so easily, and still yield such favorable results is troubling and disturbing. Like I said, the job's side aspects like pulling and backup healing can easily be replaced and are not critical to success in many situations, so for most purposes, and as disconcerting as it may be, the bulk of the job's contribution is the brain-dead portion of it. The portions of the job that actually do require thought and skill are nowhere near as rewarding as putting up Elegy and two buffs on the melees.

Where did the effort/reward consideration go there? Even a COR that doesn't shoot (not that I endorse this) has to work a little harder than a BRD (at buffing, so we're clear) simply by having to play the numbers. Yet the job still has something to do when not buffing on top of that. AND it can still make use of the backup healer role with /WHM or the puller role with /NIN. Just because it's playable that doesn't mean it's properly designed. The disparity between the two doesn't seem like the sort of thing one would actually want to produce, and I think it's no coincidence that the more interesting job of the two came years later.

Particularly in light of Itaz's post, I'm inclined to the view that anyone who thinks BRD is excessively repetitive either hasn't played it much, or didn't fully appreciate what they could have done with it when they were playing it.

I beg to differ. Bard makeover due? - Order of the Blue Gartr Make of that what you will. I know people here are often quick to whip out the "lolBG" or "lolAlla" cards. EDIT: Credit goes to Yellow Mage for showing me that thread in the first place. The topic kinda came up randomly some weeks before this thread.

Perhaps you are content with the current state of affairs. I'm pretty critical about the games I play and sometimes it's pretty disappointing how they could've done better in soooooo many areas with just a little bit more of critical/creative thinking. That doesn't mean I "QQ" about it constantly but when the topic comes up, I do bring those points up. At any rate I certainly don't think making ANY job more involved/entertaining to play is a bad thing. God knows our jobs are bland when the bulk of what a WAR does is pop Berserk and Aggressor when the timers are up. I'd say hide behind Utsusemi or Seigan too, but that's something all DDs do =P It's not like WAR is agonizing to play but no one would cry if it were made more interesting.

I think almost all of the non-mage, non-tank RoZ jobs could stand to be given a more modernized and interesting approach to gameplay like the ToAU and WotG jobs, but obviously that's a shitload of work and it'll never happen as long as they also have to continue releasing new content. To expect otherwise would be ludicrous and absurd. But BRD and SMN, at the very least, could/should be touched upon, I think. No two jobs generate as much controversy or general outcry. Regardless of what you think the source of the bitching is, I think that says something.

Well, there's BLM too but that's a deeper problem and generally more of a collateral damage issue due to the best ways of making EXP excluding them, than something inherent to the job itself.