Job Adjustments and Additions Part I (07/03/2009)

[Aksannyi]

Re: Job Adjustments and Additions Part I (07/03/2009)

Actually under the recent amendment to the ToS, this would be considered griefing since that mob is a TW to a 75 and drops nothing anyway.

Yeah I've gotten people jailed for it. They think they're funny until they have strikes on their account.

[Karinya]

Re: Job Adjustments and Additions Part I (07/03/2009)

The only thing you really NEED BLMs for in Dynamis is time nuke -gas for some of the pulls.

Well, technically, I guess. If you had lots of BRDs and SCHs for horde lullaby and manifestation sleep2, you wouldn't *need* Sleepga II. But those are inferior substitutes in the first place, and in addition, both of those jobs are quite rare.

Anyway, if you already need 5 BLMs for time nuke (compared to the 2 you would have if all jobs were equally represented in a 40 member run), you might as well use them for CC, they're better at it than those other jobs.

I bet most shells would be much more willing to do a run with only 2 PLD, 2 NIN, and 2 WHM than one with 2 BLM, even if you're lucky enough to also have 2 BRD and 2 SCH. (Or to put it another way, if you actually had 2 of every job showing up to a run, your main concern would be getting more BLM, and some shells would cancel the run rather than go with only as many BLMs as every other job.)

If you don't have the BLMs for it, you can sac pull, as well. You don't really need them, it's just easier to have them.

Sac pulling takes time and getting the sac puller back up and unweak takes more time. There's a limit to how much of that you can do and still win, even in a large LS. And it doesn't work at all on some pulls (like the 3 statues on a balcony in Sandy, or the 3 eyes that pop a bunch more eyes in Xarc).

The fact that BLMs use a ton of MP and have to rest constantly in order to keep up is what keeps them balanced. If BLMs had some crazy MP regeneration ability they'd be incredibly broken.

You mean like Sublimation? The tradeoffs are extreme precisely because SE knew how broken BLM would be if they got it without giving up a ton of survival tools.

MP isn't enough to practically limit them in many situations, which is why SE chose to also limit them by enmity and vulnerability to physical attacks. (Even that, in most cases, only applies to monsters that manage to get into melee range.)

They're *still* overpowered in short fights (which is exactly what those time-nuke strategies are all about), and in kited fights, and in situations where mass CC is necessary.

[Neverslip]

Re: Job Adjustments and Additions Part I (07/03/2009)

Cool.. might convince me to take NIN to 40 from 37 to check that stuff out. Would proly cap my Ninjutsu for my Dnc that way too (^.^)d

I see people getting confusseldized by "shared timers" vs "mutually exclusive". I think it's merely gonna work like the Dnc Merits Saber and Fan Dance. Each have their own timers but once you use Fan w/ Saber going, the Saber is over-written... and vice versa. Basically this is the Fan/Saber for Nin... Dnc chooses to either DD more or Tank more. This is pretty cool and I'm looking forward to how much of a Eva boost Nin will get... XP partiable?? ... or just for solo??? Seems like they are already set on solo'n imHo.

---------- Post added at 09:15 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:11 AM ----------
lol... double post... wake up!!!!

[Malacite]

Re: Job Adjustments and Additions Part I (07/03/2009)

You mean like Sublimation? The tradeoffs are extreme precisely because SE knew how broken BLM would be if they got it without giving up a ton of survival tools.

Do you even play BLM @75? No one uses /SCH at events, especially in Dynamis because it's a death wish. Losing Blink, Stoneskin Aquaveil and Phalanx is akin to bending over with your pants down. The only time I BLM/SCH is in campaign or when I know I'm not going to be pulling hate (occasionally if we have a SMN handy for Earthen Ward etc)

Sublimation works fine for WHM since they can sub SCH without worry much the same way WAR can sub NIN and get nothing but benefits. WHM doesn't lose any defensive buffs, and it's MP expenditure is far lower than BLM's on average. BLM has DoT Spells, but nothing that will lower it's MP use to deal damage the way Regen can lower a WHM's need to Cure.


The job has MP endurance issues big time. I would actually say that enmity is a far more limiting factor in general, but it's MP that people tend to notice most (and what will make or break an emergency situation).


Finally, as far as Dynamis goes... at least in Dynacore, things can get ugly fast if we don't have enough BLMs for a run/they're all dead. They die, we die with them simple as that. It's not just the crowd control, but you need them for statues and the bosses, safely taking down hoardes of Eyes in Xarc etc... For a job that is so central (along with PLD) to end game strategies it's a ridiculous and downright insulting double-standard that BLMs get the shaft for EXP and Merits at end game. The people who just tell us to go solo or manaburn do not know what they're talking about at all.

[Aksannyi]

Re: Job Adjustments and Additions Part I (07/03/2009)

We haven't had more than four BLMs at our last six Dynamis runs, and we've been doing Xarcs with as little as 19 people. BLMs aren't a necessity, you just need to make sure that everyone who CAN crowd control, DOES. This means BLMs of course, but also RDMs, BRDs, and WHMs. We've not had any major troubles, even the huge eye wall in Xarc has been taken down with only a few dying in the process.

Everyone has to be focusing, not afk, not goofing off, but it can be done. BLMs are great and help a lot, but they are not necessary, even for the success of Dynamis. In most linkshells, I will concede that BLMs are needed, you typically have the RDMs who don't know how to sleep and the people who just think it's a big zergfest. You need the firepower there. But in linkshells that have a lot of skilled members, no. You don't need walls of BLMs to be successful.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Job Adjustments and Additions Part I (07/03/2009)

The job has MP endurance issues big time. I would actually say that enmity is a far more limiting factor in general, but it's MP that people tend to notice most (and what will make or break an emergency situation).

Funny you should mention "MP endurance issues" because BLM has tons of access to Clear Mind gear, elemental skill gear and Refresh gear. For all those big nukes they dish out, they should be sitting down after a while and its not really SE's fault BLMs are simply too chicken to apply /SCH to their job. They just want to spam, spam, spam their nukes with no reprisals and don't give a damn to trust anyone to back them up. They also don't want to cure others.

See, its not just that colibri are easy to kill, its also that by and large BLMs do not want to be team players.

For access to even more MP endurance, SE wants BLMs to forgo safety. That whole glass cannon thing. SCH doesn't need native stoneskin seeing as there are three subjobs to grab it from and they're the third job to AoE it if they go /WHM or /RDM.

BLM needs something that encourages them to be team players, not more MP endurance because SE gave them that and they turned up their noses and clung to their RDM subjobs.

[Aksannyi]

Re: Job Adjustments and Additions Part I (07/03/2009)

Or because sometimes, no matter how many tanks you have and no matter how much hate they have, shit happens, and you get your face fucking ripped into shreds. Sometimes after a big time nuke, inexplicably, the PLD goes down. (This is rare, but humor me, because it does happen) Who are the mobs coming for next? The BLMs.

/SCH sucks. You can't rest with sublimation up, unless you use stoneskin. Oh but look, I don't have Stoneskin anymore, because I subbed SCH. -.- I don't want to be flipping sub on and off so that I can rest, that makes it really inefficient to even bother with. And that's the ONLY thing good about /SCH. The job abilities are nice, sure, but they're more likely to get BLMs killed than anything else.

BLMs with max stoneskin builds can actually survive long enough to run to a tank and get covered, or at the very least cured. BLM/SCH is just going to cost me another R3. And another. And another. There's no survivability there. Fighting Tiamat and the tank gets roared, who's Tiamat gonna draw in? A FREAKING BLM. And the BLM without any stoneskin/blink/phalanx is going to be dead in seconds. Maybe other linkshells have BLMs they can rotate in and out for seven hour Tiamat fights, that's not us. My point is, SHIT HAPPENS, even the best of BLMs with the best of gear and the best of skills and the best of enmity knowledge are still going to pull hate sometimes, and /SCH isn't going to save anything. While theoretically it looks good, with the MP reduction/cast time reduction JAs and Sublimation, it ultimately fails. Because let's be honest, if a BLM has extra MP, the BLM's gonna use it. The way MP actually is now makes it so that BLMs can last just a little longer, even if they can't just decimate in 2.5 seconds. BLMs nuke, they rest. They nuke, they rest. They don't pull hate this way, unless they are dumb. BLMs even know better than to use Manafont unless it's absolutely necessary, (or the mob is almost dead) because they know they're going to pull hate. Having more MP on BLM is good in theory, and only in XP parties. Again, though, if your BLMs are retarded, no choice of subjob will save them.

And yet, even if BLMs did sub SCH and try to join XP parties, not a single damn soul would invite them anyway, even if they have MP regen out the ass and even promise to backup cure. Parties don't want BLMs.

BLMs need nothing really to help them at endgame. Subbing RDM is perfectly fine and probably the safest route for them to go. BLMs really need something to help them get into parties more and to ease the trouble of xping. If SE can do that somehow without ruining the way BLM plays at endgame, they're miracle workers. But we all know SE. They'll do something that will fuck it up.

---------- Post added at 02:06 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:58 PM ----------

To add, I've casted more Cure IIIs on BLM than I probably ever did on RDM. I cure other BLMs when I'm in the BLM party, and I cure tanks when it's necessary. This is gonna come off bitchy and elitist, but sorry your BLMs can't be bothered to help cure when they need to, sorry they can't recognize that the situation calls for extra heals. Maybe you need to find new BLMs. I don't know a single BLM in my linkshell who hasn't tossed a cure or two out when it was really needed, like when we claimed Khim with 4 BLMs and a PLD and no WHM. (Was fun spamming cures during petrify, once we got it under control I changed to WHM.)

BLMs are fine at endgame, I keep saying that but I mean it. Even the elemental nerf is annoying but whatever, BLMs are fine at endgame. BLMs need better ways to get xp on the way to 75. And any BLM worth their salt knows that their subjob isn't just for SS/Blink/Phalanx. Hell, some of us even have MND/Cure potency builds for curing on BLM. Again, I guess we're in the minority. Find better BLMs, I guess. lol. I guess there are some selfish ones out there, but they're the same retarded ones who die easily. They're expendable. Kick them.

I don't say it to be mean, but honestly, if people don't want to help the linkshell as a whole and do what they need to do (even if it isn't what they want to do) then why the hell are they even there?

[Karinya]

Re: Job Adjustments and Additions Part I (07/03/2009)

Do you even play BLM @75?

No, because I've seen what happens to players who have BLM and other jobs, and I like to be able to bring other jobs to events. I thought I said that already, but maybe it was another thread. And incidentally, unless you deny that such players are systematically asked to bring BLM in preference to their other jobs or think it is a stupid thing for the LS leadership to do, that alone is enough to prove BLM is overpowered in those events where it occurs.

No one uses /SCH at events, especially in Dynamis because it's a death wish. Losing Blink, Stoneskin Aquaveil and Phalanx is akin to bending over with your pants down. The only time I BLM/SCH is in campaign or when I know I'm not going to be pulling hate (occasionally if we have a SMN handy for Earthen Ward etc)

That's exactly my point. Sublimation on a BLM would be crazy overpowered unless it was very dangerous. SE knew that. That's why they made it very dangerous.

Sublimation works fine for WHM since they can sub SCH without worry much the same way WAR can sub NIN and get nothing but benefits.

The main cost of WAR/NIN is that you get its benefits *instead of* another SJ's benefits. If you'd ever seen a good WAR/SAM in action you'd know what I'm talking about. This is less true for WHM because for a long time, there weren't any SJs for WHM that really had any benefits worth mentioning. Conserve MP or Auto-Refresh, that was pretty much it. Now they can get Conserve MP, Light Arts, stratagems, *and* Sublimation all at once - of course they're going to jump on that.

As anyone who levels SCH above 35 quickly discovers, Sublimation is quite powerful even when you can't rest while charging it. Turning it on and off is *way* better than not having it.

WHM doesn't lose any defensive buffs, and it's MP expenditure is far lower than BLM's on average. BLM has DoT Spells, but nothing that will lower it's MP use to deal damage the way Regen can lower a WHM's need to Cure.

Except, you know, DoT spells, which cost less MP per damage dealt. But those are slow and interfere with CC, so they aren't used much.

Anyway, probably the best way to lower BLM's MP used to deal damage is... Parsimony. Which is a SCH ability.

The only reason to avoid BLM/SCH is that you expect to take hate and die (and you aren't willing to take the RR1 that is all /SCH can provide you).

Blowing all your MP as fast as possible and getting smacked around isn't the only way to play BLM, or even necessarily the best way. It's just the most common. (I've been the RDM in BLM parties. It's an exhausting and thankless job where every BLM who manages to commit suicide in spite of your best efforts bitches at you, and the rest ignore you unless they're pestering you for the Refresh that wore off while you were saving their lives. Most of them won't even cure *themselves*, let alone each other. Biggest f*cking prima donnas in the game, and they get away with it because their job is necessary.)

Finally, as far as Dynamis goes... at least in Dynacore, things can get ugly fast if we don't have enough BLMs for a run/they're all dead. They die, we die with them simple as that. It's not just the crowd control, but you need them for statues and the bosses, safely taking down hoardes of Eyes in Xarc etc...

Yes, exactly. They're essential and there is no substitute for them that works as effectively. Some encounters you effectively don't have to fight at all (in the ordinary sense of the word) if you have enough BLMs to time nuke them.

For a job that is so central (along with PLD) to end game strategies it's a ridiculous and downright insulting double-standard that BLMs get the shaft for EXP and Merits at end game. The people who just tell us to go solo or manaburn do not know what they're talking about at all.

They're much more central than PLD. NIN (either /WAR or /DRK) can tank almost anything that doesn't involve Invincible as an essential feature of the strategy, and even then you don't need more than 2 or 3 PLD (out of 36 for CoP Dyna, or for DL, up to 64). (In practice, in my experience, there are always plenty of PLD and unlike NIN they're not much good for anything else, so you might as well let some of them tank, but if you were ever short on PLD, it wouldn't be much of a problem.) And NIN tanking will only get better after the patch - the acc penalty from Yonin is going to be almost completely irrelevant for endgame tanking, while the enmity bonus will benefit ninjutsu, provoke, and Stun enmity and the evasion bonus might reduce damage taken at some fights.


As for exp, it's a simple fact that BLMs cannot perform well in a meleeburn party fighting relatively low level monsters (especially monster types specifically designed to be pains in BLMs' asses). Do you expect other players to invite them out of charity? It'd be a somewhat misplaced charity that lowers the other 4 party members' exp in order to let in the BLM.

I'd like to see meleeburns and low-level enemies, especially wimps and lolibri, become less dominant as an exp style for high level players - I've said that repeatedly on these forums - but I don't see any practical way to make BLM wanted in the kind of parties that predominate in level 60+ exp today without overpowering them further in the situations where they are already extremely strong. (Then again, as much as I may like to second-guess the devs as a hobby, I'm not a professional. Maybe they will come up with something. It will probably come with huge tradeoffs like BLM/SCH, though.) They "get the shaft" from meleeburn parties because they aren't effective in them. The people who tell them to solo or manaburn know *exactly* what they're talking about, you just don't like the conclusion.

You could also level sync - there's plenty of levels and camps where BLMs are very useful to parties, and even if parties don't necessarily look for BLM75s to see if they're interested, you could form your own and find a player of an appropriate level to sync to. They might not make 20k/hr, but you don't need that much to recover the piddling tiny amounts of exp lost to R2-3. (Meriting might be a bit of a challenge if BLM is your only 75, but still much easier than accumulating endgame gear when BST or DNC or PUP is your only 75. This is because exp, in general, is easy.)


P.S. There's no particular reason why nukers should get a raw deal in campaign, so if they currently do, then I would support changes to the campaign exp system so that they don't. Everyone should have the option of campaigning for moderate amounts of exp if they have nothing better to do.

[Mog]

Re: Job Adjustments and Additions Part I (07/03/2009)

/sch if there's 100% chance that I'll never ever take hate or get AoE damage from anything.
/rdm otherwise

And if anyone says black mage needs revamping, I don't know how to respond to that. It has so many uses for endgame and it's a mage job, so you're required to heal during fights.

[Coinspinner]

Re: Job Adjustments and Additions Part I (07/03/2009)

Funny you should mention "MP endurance issues" because BLM has tons of access to Clear Mind gear, elemental skill gear and Refresh gear. For all those big nukes they dish out, they should be sitting down after a while and its not really SE's fault BLMs are simply too chicken to apply /SCH to their job. They just want to spam, spam, spam their nukes with no reprisals and don't give a damn to trust anyone to back them up. They also don't want to cure others.

See, its not just that colibri are easy to kill, its also that by and large BLMs do not want to be team players.

For access to even more MP endurance, SE wants BLMs to forgo safety. That whole glass cannon thing. SCH doesn't need native stoneskin seeing as there are three subjobs to grab it from and they're the third job to AoE it if they go /WHM or /RDM.

BLM needs something that encourages them to be team players, not more MP endurance because SE gave them that and they turned up their noses and clung to their RDM subjobs.

This is silly. Nobody expects a melee DD to turn around and stop damaging the enemy to keep their hate generation down. They expect them to sub NIN and blink away the damage. You would boot a dude who periodically turned around and did nothing, or at least complain.

I agree that BLMs need something to make them team players if they want back into exp parties, but I don’t think it’s the BLM players’ fault that they are out of the game ATM.

For a mage, having endurance means you continue to function for long periods on the MP you recover on the go. Refresh effects, Aspir, Siphons, etc. Other mages* achieve this because they provide support. Their expenditure is either to maintain a schedule (buffs), or in reaction to the parties needs (healing), or proactively preventing the need for that (enfeebling.) When party members avoid taking damage and the supporters are efficient with their casting, you end up with mages that never run out of MP.

But BLM is a DD job. They spend MP to make the enemy dead. They can’t proactively prevent the need to kill things. They don’t have good buffs or debuffs. We don’t have a “Regen” equivalent that lets us deal damage more efficiently – DOTs don’t carry over between fights like Regen does. High level spells are more MP efficient, but that the problem of generating huge enmity spikes and having long cast times.

We like to say that battles last 20 seconds these days… an unmodified Tier IV takes 8 seconds to cast on average. Assuming those circumstances, you could manage two if you start casting immediately, but casting that early pulls hate. And casting too late means your big damage spell may land when the enemy has too little health to take the full damage. It may not land at all, because it dies before the spell goes off. If the BLM only casts one spell, his damage contribution is small. Why not invite some other guy who would do more damage and didn't need somebody else to provide defense for him? In exp situations it is a struggle for a BLM to contribute meaningful damage, and they can’t provide meaningful support. That was my experience in the few non-manaburn parties I was invited to between 69 and 75**, and I expect it is a pattern that holds true down to level 55 or so.

I don’t have the slightest idea how to fix that without wrecking something else. Fast, super-efficient nukes that do low damage? Second tier elemental debuffs? An enmity stance? Encourage people to fight things that take longer to die? No clue. But I don’t particularly think it needs fixing. I’d rather they crudely shove flans into every zone in the game. The problem is that BLM have a hard time leveling and that their merit camps are crowded, which is more easily fixed by encouraging manaburn than by fixing their mismatch with melee jobs.

* Excluding BLU.

** I got BLM to 69 in 2003/2004 and finished it 2007-2008.

[Raydeus]

Re: Job Adjustments and Additions Part I (07/03/2009)

The only thing I'd like to see is enhanced Clear Mind effect. Either by shortening the time between ticks after the first one or increasing the amount of MP recovery bonus over time.

I know /heal is somehow considered a balancing function, but it takes way too long to get mp back while /heal'ing in my opinion.


Then again, is not like it would change the amount of time I spend on XI either way (currently not playing it at all) so... /shrug

[DakAttack]

Re: Job Adjustments and Additions Part I (07/03/2009)

increasing the amount of MP recovery bonus over time.

Isn't that exactly how it works? Gaining more and more MP each tick?

[Raydeus]

Re: Job Adjustments and Additions Part I (07/03/2009)

Yep, but I want more. More!

[Coinspinner]

Re: Job Adjustments and Additions Part I (07/03/2009)

With all the hMP food/gear out there I doubt they would speed that up. Waiting for that first tick can be maddening sometimes though, so maybe they could speed up just that one...

[Nuriko]

Re: Job Adjustments and Additions Part I (07/03/2009)

To add, I've casted more Cure IIIs on BLM than I probably ever did on RDM. I cure other BLMs when I'm in the BLM party, and I cure tanks when it's necessary. This is gonna come off bitchy and elitist, but sorry your BLMs can't be bothered to help cure when they need to, sorry they can't recognize that the situation calls for extra heals. Maybe you need to find new BLMs. I don't know a single BLM in my linkshell who hasn't tossed a cure or two out when it was really needed, like when we claimed Khim with 4 BLMs and a PLD and no WHM. (Was fun spamming cures during petrify, once we got it under control I changed to WHM.)

I've seen people seriously say that somebody needs to cure the BLM ... can't they cure THEMSELVES? Sure, they'll use MP doing it, but it beats dying, and when all the BLMs are eating AoEs in range (doing the wyrm KSNM99) you probably shouldn't be there if you're not FULLY ready to nuke...