Job Balance?

Then you completely misunderstood what I said. FFXIV is the opposite of what I'm advocating. Almost all jobs are the same there with different graphics.

Nerfing is never the way.

See: Ukko's Fury, Victory Smite.

It is disappointing in the first place, and almost always comes back to be doubly damaging to the job when the job inevitably drops off the top.

Btw I don't know, or even care whether blu is op compared to other jobs as I don't partake in this penis envy sport that is common in mmo.

I just think that calling king swapping an awesome game design is ridiculous.

30% dps nerf, No thanks......

Nerfing cocoon and MG defense stacking is probably better.

Except.. MNK reigned high long after the victory smite nerf and ukko's spam with ukon is still in the top few options. There's nothing wrong with a balancing nerf, especially given how little new content is coming out. Buffs only just lets people blow through things without challenge.

The fix needs to be some amount of spells that replace the other.

For example:

Mighty Guard overwrites Cocoon.

Cocoon overwrites Nature's Meditation and vice versa.

And do this for a few other spells so that it really does take a skilled BLU to CDC their way to victory.

To each their own when it comes to opinions but it has proven very successful for a lot of other games. Even proved successful in the early days of XI when people were stuck to one job.

The downsides of it become even less of a problem when you consider how easy it is to switch jobs in the game and how much gear is now shared between them all.

Edit: I mean there also really is no way around it. There will always be a King especially when it comes to DPS jobs.

Even if they took everything except mighty guard and erratic flutter, BLU would still be in the same position it is now. I have near-maxed out BLUs. I have near-maxed out RNGs. I have near-maxed out BLMs, SAMs, DNC, THF. I run my own group and am responsible for my own buffs, healing. The bias is nonexistant.

Why do I take BLU as my DD 99% of the time now? It takes the least damage, and no other option will increase the speed significantly. Often I don't even cast cocoon as it slows DPS, but mighty guard alone makes them more durable and easier to heal than any other DD. Erratic flutter removes the need for me to use indi-haste or a second march. Cocoon and barrier tusk are great for the fights that dictate their use, but they aren't necessary to cement BLU as the most practical melee for most content.

Short of drastically overhauling it's spells or reducing it's damage enough to make other DD a worthwhile choice, it's going to stay the way it is.

Admit it though, there is some badass fascination coming from that image!

Also side note but since when did people become capable of bandwagoning blu?? I still have in my mind the picture of dozens of blue mages with macc swords and using stupid battle styles.

Would probably work if the decrease in defensive effectiveness doesn't.




This may be surprising to you but I don't want so many people playing BLU. I also don't care if it's #1 as long as it's viable to be used in content. I don't even play it primarily myself since I'm focusing on RUN which is far more useful.

My desire for future battle content to be more than just tank and spank AoE spam fests is more a want for the game to try new things instead of just fighting the same monster with a new coat of paint that we've been fighting for over a decade. But you can believe whatever agenda you want to try to label me with, it doesn't affect me any. I'll keep playing whatever I want and there isn't a damn thing the meta can do about it, as long as I can win a fight I will use whatever means I can come up with to do so in the way that is the most enjoyable for me and my friends. You can keep your extra 1-3 minutes of clear time.




This is what BLU has always been, and good BLUs have always excelled and managed to hold their own in "real" content as well. It wouldn't pain me if it went back to that, but no matter what happens you'd be remiss to just assume that nerfing BLU would solve all the problems. Jobs like MNK would still be trash regardless of BLU's standing, they still need adjustment. Other jobs that are better off such as NIN would be next up on the chopping block and no doubt within a few months we'll see threads like these devolve into nothing but whining about why Utsusemi: San needs to be removed from the game or Blade: Shun needs to have a bigger attack penalty or something. It's a neverending cycle that I wish would be broken.

This is an MMO, there is no ending the neverending cycle until the servers shut down.

And I question how much the "this is how BLU has always worked" matters. THF used to be the premiere evasion tank of the game. I parsed 55% evasion in a colibri merit party, that's 55% evasion against T-VT in DD gear!

Today? Evasion tanking is 100% dead, you MIGHT be able to unfloor evasion if you dedicated all the buffs to it, but otherwise? Nope.

Guy, come on. You're really grasping at straws. If you haven't picked up by now that I want every job to be fun to play then I don't know what to tell you. Each job in XI already has the foundation to be built into something unique, but it was never really utilized. Playerbase is semi at fault for that though, we already know a lot of decisions when it came down to job balance were centered on how players used them. Content design also led to this since facilitating zergs really snuffed out most of the potential to find different ways to approach battles.



It doesn't matter, I just find it funny that anyone would think I have an issue with BLU being reverted to how it has always played and performed. What I have an issue with is the mentality that all must remain as it is, either due to a fear of change or for the utter lack of faith in the ability for anything to change.

Grasping as straws? You said BLU shouldn't get nerfed because then it'd be the same as all the other jobs. If all the other jobs aren't the same, that means your entire point is nil. I'm pointing out your logical inconsistency, not grasping as straws.

Wrong, I didn't say BLU shouldn't get nerfed because it'd be the same as other jobs. I said it shouldn't have key mechanics removed because then it would be the same as other jobs. I did, however, say that buffing up the weaker jobs would be better. However I think a compromise such as adding the buff-piercing/dispelling attribute to the strongest "offenders" while bringing up the damage potential (and, ideally, bringing out some of the more unique elements of each job) would be best. Right now, a melee job plays nearly the same regardless of what you're playing on. Maintaining the flavor of each individual job instead of succumbing to the XIV disease of "they're all the same thing with different names".

Maybe it's just my jobs, buy my THF/COR/RUN overlap a TON of gear but play quite a bit differently, both in execution and stat priority.

I would hope so, they primarily fill three different roles.

DD, DD and...tank and DD?

If you define by dd everything that swings a weapon..

Thief sneak trick attack should get nerfed. It's too powerful. Corsairs leaden salute should also get nerfed, it's not fair a melee can shoot and do crazy damage out of harms way.

(Btw, this is a troll reply) just dropping in to say hi =]

Well I'm always told THF is hate control/TH, so it's a hybrid, and thus isn't a real DD, so...

Don't be coy. One is a DD, the other is a support DD, and the third is primarily a tank. Their abilities and spells are catered around these roles and thus cause them to play differently. Compare, instead, SAM WAR and DRK. They have very little as far as defining characteristics that make them stand apart from one another. They do have the beginnings though, for example SAM excels at skillchains compared to the other two, DRK has an enormous amount of attack and some risky job abilities, and WAR uh... has Blood Rage I guess. Idea would be to differentiate these and make them play a bit more uniquely. So for example, THF, COR, and RUN all play dramatically different from one another. PUP and MNK, too, despite using the same type of weapon and armor (sort of). Putting more emphasis on the unique traits of each job to make them stand out more and potentially give them more purpose would be the goal.

No one here is calling to take away all of BLU's spells. So nobody is asking to take that differentiation away from BLU. Again you're making an argument against something that doesn't exist.

Idk, I think war has a better starting ground for uniqueness.

Drk's problem has always been the shittiness of magic. Idk if they bother using it nowadays as I haven't seen a drk around in 2 years, but yeah, if they do that then it's fine in that aspect.

Yeah, that's not what I'm saying. You wouldn't have to take the spells away to cripple it. I wouldn't want whatever nerfs that are being imagined to reduce the impact of using blue magic in a way that benefits the situation. Catering your spells to fit the target is the primary differentiating factor that BLU has. Going back to the old days of magic being nigh useless to cast would be terrible.

So you're afraid of imagined super nerfs. They haven't been doing those with this dev team. The BST nerf was reasonable. The Rudra's nerf was reasonable. They've been pretty focused on doing small changes so as to not disrupt everything. That's almost certain to be how they do things with BLU.

Some people are asking for the spells to become useless. I think it fits what he's talking about.

I've only seen people call for spells to not be stackable, not useless. Where are people asking for spells to become useless?

This is a more complex issue than any of those. They could do what Thorny suggested and just outright cut BLU's damage by 30%, which ultimately would just push everyone on to NIN or something and then you get to be bothered by NINs instead of BLUs and people complaining about not being able to find enough support. I'm almost wondering if there's a way they could turn BLU into a more support oriented class to help fix both problems at once. Reduction in BLU's damage along with a reduction in Diffusion's recast time or something to be able to provide buffs to the entire party on a more consistent basis. Job ability that reduces TP gain and weaponskill damage in favor of reducing blue magic enhancing abilities' recast times by 50-75% or something, idk.

Sorry, no.

I get it, and why people thought so, and why many thought it was a hoot, but I personally found it really disgustingly offensive to the high fantasy sensibility. And that's okay. The game doesn't revolve around me.

I just think it's indicative of a bigger problem XI always had and that was that it's never really been 100% sure where it's going. Yet, it's always been sure that it's going, which is saying more than 90% of the MMO content out there.

I will always love XI. I just haven't always been enamoured with the community's ideas about how to play it at any given time.