Job Adjustments: Samurai (09/29/2006)

[Macht]

Re: Job Adjustments: Samurai (09/29/2006)

I think it's kinda silly on SE's BST move. BST has already established themselves as the solo job for 4 years before SE decided to slap them on the face and say "no you can't solo. That's not what we want."
To bend a tree you need to do it when it's young. Do it when it's already grown and you're chopping it down.

Lol, I can understand that. Though I hardly see that stratedgy used outside of gardening in businesses. I fact my work place the #1 things they pride themselves on is their "Culture of Thrift" and "Always changing". Hell our moto for 1 year was "Changing to succeed in '03", now for those viewing the big picture I'm sure they just see change after change don't care if something that's changed has been that way for 4-5-6 years. Hell I myself changed a 10 year old business practice in the company, started with mixed views on it.

Currently now it's completly accepted and funny listening to new people come in and you tell them stories of how that practice was before. It's funny because they give you this surprised look and comments along "Wow, that was such a primitive method."

BSTs that been around longer may not like it but if they can't accept the change all they are hurting is their job's view of it's usefulness among other players and new players.

[little ninja]

Re: Job Adjustments: Samurai (09/29/2006)

I think it's kinda silly on SE's BST move. BST has already established themselves as the solo job for 4 years before SE decided to slap them on the face and say "no you can't solo. That's not what we want."
To bend a tree you need to do it when it's young. Do it when it's already grown and you're chopping it down.

very nicely put.


I dunno can we really afford to have another DD job to invite. as it is we have far to many DD jobs, 14 DD jobs if u include nin an bst. 2 tanks, one of which some hate. 2 healing mages... so now you have a part setup 1 tank, 1mage, 1 brd or rdm if a party wants one., so now we have a viable 14 jobs looking for 1-4 spots??

Honestly the role of bst when it came out was as a solo job. 1 bst charmed pets in party reduces exp. 2 jug pets reduced exp in parties. 3 normal exp capms are surrounded by IT- IT++. so charming a lower lvl mb to use isnt feesable. Thats one of the biggest reasons why i feel bst was solo oriented.

[LilithAngel]

Re: Job Adjustments: Samurai (09/29/2006)

Wow, how ironic. I can see the resurgance of the DRG/SAM after this update, prolly not in the form it was before, but certainly now as another premium sub for the job. Funny how, after all the updates the job has been recieving, it's comming full circle.

[seq]

Re: Job Adjustments: Samurai (09/29/2006)

Macht, IF BST was intended to party and not solo.... why there is no charmable mobs near party camps? why charming T-IT effects everone's EXP?
no, BST was made to solo.
look at Kuftal tunnel for examble, does EM or DC pets pops near the camps?
Call Beast? it used to cut the BST's EXP... even now, it isn't that much of an ability if you'll waste 100K+ each time you use it (and the pet lasts for 15 minute?).
uncap the called pets, everyone will be happy (oh what's that new BST meritable trait for if that happened?)

[Liquidedust]

Re: Job Adjustments: Samurai (09/29/2006)

Lol, I can understand that. Though I hardly see that stratedgy used outside of gardening in businesses. I fact my work place the #1 things they pride themselves on is their "Culture of Thrift" and "Always changing". Hell our moto for 1 year was "Changing to succeed in '03", now for those viewing the big picture I'm sure they just see change after change don't care if something that's changed has been that way for 4-5-6 years. Hell I myself changed a 10 year old business practice in the company, started with mixed views on it.
Currently now it's completly accepted and funny listening to new people come in and you tell them stories of how that practice was before. It's funny because they give you this surprised look and comments along "Wow, that was such a primitive method."
BSTs that been around longer may not like it but if they can't accept the change all they are hurting is their job's view of it's usefulness among other players and new players.

The problem then really is that the solo BST is already a job adapting to changes, as well as the original design, SE made to the BST in the past.

And it is not that we have had to adapt to experience points parties, it is more that we have been more and more phased out from experience points parties and instead been given the ability to solo from this phasing out.

1. Beginning
   A BST by design has the same base physical stats of a BRD of the same level, but with a slightly higher DEX then the BRD (BRD and BST actually has the same Stat growth in all stats but DEX and CHR. BST have higher DEX then BRD and BRD have higher CHR then BST).
   
   Physical stats of a mage-type job is not something that will help any of your damage output while in a party where you try to be as efficient in killing the mob with melee damage as possible as well as taking not being able to take as much damage as for example a tanking Warrior or Paladin.
   
   And BST doesn't have an A+ rating in any weapon as other melee which makes it a job defining choice over other jobs when you set up an exp pt to head out.
   
   BST share WARs A- rating in Axe and they also have access to all the same Weaponskills which makes a BST, when it comes to DD potential and skillchain options, a Warrior without an innate:
   
   
   • Attack Up Trait
   • Berserk
   • Double Attack
   • Aggressor
   
   
   
   And in the choice between a BST and a WAR the WAR is the real superior choice. While BST can sub /WAR they still get access to the abilities later, doesn't have Aggressor while still performing the exact same role as a WAR when it comes to Damage Dealing and Skillchain options.
   
   At this point however BST were still accepted in experience party play though since Charm were on a 10 minute timer (same as BST Tame ability) and they couldn't efficiently solo since it were a long time between you could charm monsters.
   
   Solo play weren't feasible. BST did have the option to to charm monster types that today are uncharmable though and bring to a party for some extra damage (such as but not limited to Cockatrices, Rams and Morbols).
   
   Also Killer effects gave you an Haste bonus against the mobs you had the Killer Trait effect of and all in all BST were a pretty nice choice for a party slot when you fought the right mobs and when the BST grabbed a beefy monster with them to a party.
   
   
2. Before and around NA Release
   Monsters that were charmable were changed not to include monster types we today are used to not being charmable (such as but not limited to Cockatrices, Rams and Morbols).
   
   The Ability Charm was also modified to a 15 second recast timer instead. (This and the charmable type update for this change happened before the current update history listing on POL site so cannot find and link and official source for it if you wonder why I have omitted this).
   
   In addition a 30% experience point penalty was imposed on BST if he had a pet charmed or active via Jug when a monster died.
   
   Originally Killer Traits gave you a Haste bonus against monster types of which you had a Killer trait of. This gave BST a lot of application in exp pt due to large amount of monsters they were efficient against thanks to their Killer Traits.
   
   (See: http://www.playonline.com/comnewsus/200312162201.html for the Killer Effect changes)
   
   Then this were changed so Killer effects only had a chance to intimidate the mob if you had hate and if you successfully made a check of a Monsters Charisma and Level vs. the Players Charisma and Level. (This seldom happens against Very Toughs and above but triggers a lot on Tough and below monsters)
   
   This made BST all of a sudden a slightly weakened party choice since BST now didn't have a job defining trait in which helped the overall efficiency of the exp party they joined apart from charmed pets.
   
   They did no longer do extra damage towards basically every mob type in the game depending on level of the BST. And they were also penalized for having a jug pet or Charmed pet with them at the end of each fight and got less experience points.
   
   This lead to more and more people not inviting the BSTs to experience point’s parties and in a sense alienating the job from the rest of the jobs in FF.
   
   Still people enjoyed BSTs and found their new recast on Charm to be quite efficient and successfully managed to exp together with other BSTs as well as solo on their own.
   
   Other BSTs still managed to party in regular parties by grabbing Even Match pets with them to the experience parties in question.
   
   This however were most of the time a little problematic task since finding an Even Match pet in the same area as potential exp party prey usually involved dragging a monster all over a zone.
   
   Sometimes you didn't even have a choice since the zones themselves had no suitable monster to charm and bring to an exp party.
   
   
3. Around COP Release
   BST charmed pets (not jug pets) were now imposed with the penalty of their accumulated TP over time decreasing while not in combat.
   
   This made charmed pets which had been taken with BSTs from across a zone no longer retain their TP between battles while someone pulled a new monster for the next fight.
   
   Instead their TP were lowered just as if they had been put in a /heal mode, and they still couldn't regain hp without the use of the Reward ability from the BST that had initially charmed them.
   
   (See: http://www.playonline.com/updateus/040914gs7tr3.html for details on a charmed pets TP decreasing over time)
   
   The BST could however still Leave the pet and let it be uncharmed for a few moments to regain its hp to full, but still lost most of its accumulated TP while doing so.
   
   So it were essentially easier to find a new fresh pet and start anew with a pet that had full hp and just Leave the other one to heal up while fighting the next mob.
   
   This weren't too easy in a regular party though since dragging a pet with you were usually a quite time consuming task and people in general didn't look to well on a melee that didn't perform full 100% of the time.
   
   This made solo play more efficient then bringing 1-2 pets to an exp pt to keep them around for 100% of the time. Essentially while bring the pets to the prey when you can fight prey at the pets.
   
   Also at this time the Gaudy Harness were introduced for BST (as well as BRD) from Brygid the Stylist Returns quest and removed one of the biggest problems when soloing for BST.
   
   The BST/Mage no longer had any downtime where he had to rest for mp while conducting solo play and could solo quite efficiently thanks to this newly introduced piece of gear.
   
   All of a sudden SE had given BST a major nod towards BSTs that played solo as /WHM or /RDM and improved their ability to do so.
   
   Also some new jug pets were introduced for BSTs, while the jug pets did have quite a nice performance in an exp party environment (hit a lot harder and more accurate then previous jug pets) they had some big downfalls.
   
   The new jug pets were either very very overpriced on AH which made them essentially useless to bring out in a regular experience points party (prices of 100,000 to 150,000 per jug pet were then, and still is, not uncommon to see).
   
   Well you could probably farm the items and have a friend synth them for instead to save gil. Sadly the items needed to be farmed up for the synths took around 1-2 hours to farm up for 12 synths (even if you bought the cheaper items off AH).
   
   And the high crafting caps on the synths in question meant you got around 1-3 HQ jugs if lucky (the NQ jugs were nothing spectacular but the HQ jugs were very strong)
   
   
   • Mole Broth http://ffxi.somepage.com/itemdb/7443
   • Blood Broth http://ffxi.somepage.com/itemdb/7445
   • Antica Broth http://ffxi.somepage.com/itemdb/7447
   
   
   
   Well you just invested time after all nothing really lost so lets bring the jugs to an experience points party and try them out.
   In an experience party environment against high VT and low IT mobs they do perform well (and still do to this date) however after just 15 minutes you notice they despawn.
   
   All the new HQ jugs introduced with CoP have a 15 minute limit imposed on them. So for your 100,000-150,000 gil or around an hour spent farming to get a single jug you get a total time in experience of 15 minutes worth.
   
   These jugs could have been something that would have taken more BSTs into Party play since they perform very well against low VT and high IT monsters.
   The hardship and gil cost involved with obtaining them coupled with the introduction of Gaudy Harness made solo play much more exciting compared the the cost and time involved to obtain and use consumables in an experience points party.
   
   Basically solo play for BST had gotten a lot stronger and the costs involved with actually performing well in an exp party were absurd.
   
   On top of the same gear as a typical melee use and the food a typical melee would use you had to spend 400,000-600,000 gil or hours farming per hour worth of an experience points party. All of this just to try and be at the same level of performance as other melees.
   
   This is still unmatched in FFXI including Rangers and Ninjas and made a lot of BSTs choose the less expensive solo route once again.
   
   Fewer and fewer BSTs now played with regular exp pts, but a few still persisted in doing so since a good experience points party would still gain experience at a faster rate then a solo BST.
   
   
4. D-Day or December 12th 2005
   This were the update that killed the experience party BST, while solo BSTs were outraged for a while we found a way to work around it and in some cases even make solo play a lot more efficient.
   
   The all and mighty despawn patch which made docile mobs outside their spawn area despawn. While this weren't aimed at BSTs, but instead a way to counter MPK (Monster-Player Kill), we were the collateral damage from it.
   
   (see: http://www.playonline.com/pcd/update...e1/detail.html for the update notes considering this new monster behaviour)
   
   First all BST were very saddened about it since all of a sudden our Leave'd pets just despawned on us. BSTs that soloed got in a state of shock we no longer could gather Even Match pets and have a collective Zoo in which we could draw from when fighting and chaining monsters.
   
   Some weeks passed and people however noticed while some camps were destroyed others have been made a lot stronger. Pets you wanted to keep you just fought with inside their spawn area and nothing really changed in play style.
   
   Pets that had gotten debuffed so they couldn't heal up to full, or if you had an abundance of pets in the area, you just leave'd outside their spawn radius and they came back 2 minutes later fully healed and had all their debuffs completely removed.
   
   For party BST however this were a very big nail in the coffin, a BST that had in the past brought a pet with them to the experience party location could no longer let it heal or be Leave'd in order to gain full experience points.
   
   This since their pets despawned just 2-3 seconds after Leave and it just weren't feasible to track a new pet from across the zone for 8-10 mobs killed and let your exp party wait for you.
   
   While they got the boost in that jug pets no longer imposed the 30% exp penalty upon them there were no decent jug pet to use unless you wanted to spend millions of gil per level gained in just consumables (see above at the CoP information).
   
   Even more BST by this process were alienated by experience party play, the solo BST however did find a way to work around this and even get a better solo experience then before (since we would Leave Heal pets to remove all debuffs as well as get them back to full hp in just 2 minutes time).
   
   Solo BST adapted and found a way to work around this, while the BST that did join experience parties sadly suffered and were heavily penalized by this change since they could no longer use their main ability to bring something to an experience points party.
   
   
5. Beast Affinity
   SE tries to phase back BST into the experience points parties again by giving us the abiliy to merit Beast Affinity so that jug pets will become stronger.
   
   While this is a good choice if we had good and affordable jugs to use in an experience points party enviroment this merit abiliy lose some of its usefulness since this is at 75. Most people just use this merit to get FunguarFamiliar (Seebed Soil) up to level 71 (73 with monster gloves) in order to have a decent pet with them while they are merriting.
   
   A BST still has to live its career 1->75 with the old system which favours the BST in solo and basically phase out the BST from parties since other melees can do what they do better.

Well that is basically how I sum it up . . . .
BST have always adapted to change, and the updates from S-E has up until recently just phased BST out more and more from experience points parties in favour of solo play.

[ikkleste]

Re: Job Adjustments: Samurai (09/29/2006)

neighbourtaru

the difference i see between Utsu tanking and bst soloing is the first simply changes party tactics, and the way a job is used within parties. teh later changes the entire way a job plays the whole game. That is why the two aren't really comparable.

That said however, i don't think SE has been straight up with us on how they envisaged BST. They may say "BST was never meant to be a solo job" but some of the decisions they have made (as laid out by liquidedust above) clearly concede that at times SE has done stuff to strengthen BST solo capabilities, while letting their party play fall to an afterthought.

My personal belief is that they allowed teh BST solo thing to go on as long as it wasn't a problem. Then while developing ToAU they found that BST soloing was restricting what they were wanting to do. Imagine old school BSTs in the new areas... They needed to nerf BST before ToAU came out. They also didn't want to come straight out and say, "we're nerfing BST" because then people would ask "why?" and figure out that it was to facilitate ToAU. So they passed it off as an MPK fix (which was a notable side effect/second reason), even better, they got the players to suggest it, taking some of the blame away from themselves.
Maybe i'm just cynical of big business, but it seems to me that if the damage to BST was indeed "collateral damage" then it should of been anticipated, and either noted (i.e. "we're fixing MPK, but this may hurt BST soloing a bit") or worked around/fixed. They wouldn't ransack a jobs total playstyle by mistake and not fix it/acknowlege it. It had to be intentional to my mind

It seems that following 12/12 they anticipated BST falling back into parties, but hadn't realised how neglected the party BST had become, maybe thats what they will look to fix shortly.

[Anaki]

Re: Job Adjustments: Samurai (09/29/2006)

i remember SE saying something about wanting wars to use weapons other then axe and for drks to use scythes and not great swords. well this sam update looks like a hint at how other JA for those jobs will be. an ability that gives the drk a boost while using a scythe and such things right?

[little ninja]

Re: Job Adjustments: Samurai (09/29/2006)

Honestly since S.E tried to get us to pt more with the 0 penalty for jugpets. i had exactly 1 invite for exping an meriting. Of course i never made my own pts cause i was always curious of outside the box peeps would invite me. I had a friend who made pts with his bst. but alot of times he got turned down cause he was a bst.

Why S.E wants to push bsts into a pt role os beyond me. Its been 5 yrs of players misconseptions of bst. An a Brady guide only fueling the image. Can you believe i still get asked if pets reduce partes exp, if jugpets reduce parties exp. An when you tell them the rules, they still dont believe you..

Its funny but the only time a bst is invited to a party id if they need something from ya.

[Karinya]

Re: Job Adjustments: Samurai (09/29/2006)

Well, for several years whenever I invited BST, they refused because they wanted BST party only. Regular parties with a tank were too gimp for them. (You can see a very similar attitude in a certain person's sig on this very thread...)

Some people may be taking revenge for this (although not me; you'd almost certainly be hurting a different BST than the one who snubbed you, which makes it pointless), while others may just be unaware that it has changed at all and that BST are willing to join a regular PT now.


But anyway, wasn't this thread supposed to be about SAM? It's a little early to bitch about the changes to BST when we don't even know what they are yet.

[little ninja]

Re: Job Adjustments: Samurai (09/29/2006)

Well, for several years whenever I invited BST, they refused because they wanted BST party only. Regular parties with a tank were too gimp for them. (You can see a very similar attitude in a certain person's sig on this very thread...)
Some people may be taking revenge for this (although not me; you'd almost certainly be hurting a different BST than the one who snubbed you, which makes it pointless), while others may just be unaware that it has changed at all and that BST are willing to join a regular PT now.
But anyway, wasn't this thread supposed to be about SAM? It's a little early to bitch about the changes to BST when we don't even know what they are yet.

My point was why try to givea Bst new abilities that make them more party friendly, when we already have 14 other DD jobs. MAke there solo play strong like ti once was. make jugburns more worth it by giving us better cheaper jug pet options. make their durations longer then 15mins.

NAA my sig was made the day i made a harmless jooke about pld, an even refered to it as a playful joke, an a bunch of crybaby pld rated me down from 30 rep power to 0.

To go back to sam, i used to sub sam for my drk, an i used to eat alot of dirt. i rather let someone else deal with it an trick onto them still... But thats just me.

[Lmnop]

Re: Job Adjustments: Samurai (09/29/2006)

Very nice timeline, Liquidedust. Just a few things to point out:

There is exactly one job in the game that has an A+ in a one-handed weapon, and that's Paladin. Also, WAR has the same VIT growth as WHM, yet they've tanked for years.

The other thing is about charmed monster tp-loss. I didn't see that anywhere in the patch notes, just this:

The macro command <pettp> can be used to view a pet, wyvern, or avatar’s current TP.
The charmed pet’s TP decreasing, while it is not in the combat mode, is by design.

Which would indicate that tp loss always happened, but that they wanted to take the time and say "hey, you're not bugged. Mobs have been losing tp like that for years. We just didn't tell you."

Anywho, good stuff.

Unfortunately, my opinion on this Samurai update was already posted in the Samurai forums and I don't feel like retyping it all. I'll just give you a handy link.

Basically: They did this update not just to give Samurai needed individuality, but to give 2-handed weapon users an equivalent to /nin. Now if only Mnks had a JA that uppped Guard rate or something... alternate with Chakra...

[Liquidedust]

Re: Job Adjustments: Samurai (09/29/2006)

Very nice timeline, Liquidedust. Just a few things to point out:

There is exactly one job in the game that has an A+ in a one-handed weapon, and that's Paladin. Also, WAR has the same VIT growth as WHM, yet they've tanked for years.

Yes in one-handed but both Warriors, Monks and Dark Knights for example has had an A+ option in Great Axes, Hand to hand and Scythe. Which makes for greater versitality. And then Warriors and Dark Knights have their secondary weapons at an A rating.

BST on the other hand has it secondary weapon (Scythe) at a B- rating instead which does not indicate options but instead restrictions.

Which would indicate that tp loss always happened, but that they wanted to take the time and say "hey, you're not bugged. Mobs have been losing tp like that for years. We just didn't tell you."

The <pettp> tag existed before actually, but only applied to Charmed Pets as well as Jug pets. In this update it were introduced for the wyvern as well as the Avatars themselves (there had been no reason for them to have their tp show before).

This were in the same update as Avatars got the option to skillchain with other avatars as well as weaponskills (and on top of that MB). BSTs have always had access to the <pettp> tag (at least for as long as I can remember) and we've seen what our pets TP have been.

Anywho, good stuff.

Thank you.

[Jei]

Re: Job Adjustments: Samurai (09/29/2006)

Wow Liquid. I just saw your post. Those are aspects of this game I've never known before. Sounds really depressing to be BST : /