BST Balance Discussions

BST is still a pretty popular option over here too. It's flexible, it's safe, it's low maintenance (from the backline's perspective at least), and it's still a top DD.

Guess that's what happens when misinformation about BST being overpowered is allowed to spread. Hilarious really, when its nowhere near optimal for a whole bunch of stuff.

@ Saevel

People do ask for blue Mage in asura. Blue Mage for leviathan, SR and more. I don't really see all that much shouts for bst. I do see someone ask for 3x bst for selkit, I was scratching my head on that. There was a shout for the tree T3 and SR tho. I would see I see a shout for bst once every 3 days.

I see them all the time. I'll give BLU being used for VD Avatar spam, but that's about it. All other relevant ***is either BST or SCH/GEO/BLM bursts. Unless your telling me aoe cleaving is whats important to you.

I check the shouts all the time. Since I don't have a group I check it all the time and I rarely see bsts. Yea it's all mages but I see blue mages in shouts more then bsts.

I'm on Asura and I see the other way around for relevant things. The only thing I see BLU's is AoE cleaving / Apex and VD avatar spam. The rest is BST or SCH / GEO / BLM bursts.

Likely your only paying attention to the jobs and forgetting that the same two people are shouting for cleave / Apex parties every 10~15s for 30min while the T2 Escha guy fills within 5 min cause he only needed a GEO and already had 2~3 BSTs. I play with a large variety of people due to my time zone and every time someone needs clears or farming some Escha gear, you see them using BST's and only shouting for support.

I'm on Shiva, but I check the Asura shouts all the time because I like to spy on Draylo, but I never see bst in these shouts.

I'm sure some servers are different, like that server with literally only pet jobs, but Asura said *** bst as soon as the nerf hit.

Yeah, bish. We own this server.

I see it all the time. Somebody wants to kill T1's or T2's, gets a BST or two and then shouts for GEO. Or they get on COR / shitty GEO / WHM and shout for SCH's / BLMs lol.

Just because ppl shout for bst, doesnt mean its op job. 90% of the bst pt are terribly inefficient, full of undergeared bst doing low DMG every 10 sec.

In SR blu x2 setup with vex attunement kills faster than bst.

Blm sch sc mb setup kills faster than bst.

Cor or other strong magical WS DD close SC with malaise kills faster than bst.

If bsts are not popping sp Im not convinced that they can kill Escha T1 and T2 fast as well. After last pdif update WS DMG pretty much went through the roof with temps. And melee job spams WS faster than 10 sec.

UNM 135 such as behemoth are blu zerg.

I can see bst setup makes certain fight easier since you can just use ja and get it over with, ignoring certain mechanics.
NM such as fairies in zitah, seiryu, Yakshi, T4 sandworm may be easier with bst zerg from what I've heard. But zitah aside you do need very, very well geared bst to pull it off. I've checked with Trulusia about their bst setup for their reisen helm kill requirements, their pt are far more elite than random bst shout groups. Basically they are not lesser geared than any other reisen helm groups.

tl;dr: ppl are acting as if everyone can just burn their bst to lv 99, get some starter gears and suddenly beat all NM in easy mode, this is far from true. Try to join one of the bst shout party see if you can tolerate their kill speed, v.s your well geared other DD jobs. Personally I've never seen any bst shout pt clear low tier content with reasonable killing speed unless they pop SP.

The people who finally beat PW didn't use Bsts, Blus, or Blms. checkmate, damage dealers.

Hell a week or two ago we did all the T2's in Reisenjima using

PLD
WAR
DRK
GEO
GEO
WHM

Smashed them all. Old Shuck down in under 40s. The recent cRatio cap change was huge for DD's, especially 2H ones. They require a lot more support, but it's worth it. Provided the content is meelee-able in the first place.

Thank you Afania!!! I been telling this to Saevel a while back. He thinks anyone can just undergear bst and pull out insane damage. I even tried to have him undergear his own bst and show us some screenshots of his 20k run wild razor fury that he claims noob bsts are doing.

i still wouldn't mind playing bst. If a good bat linkshell showed up in asura I would join.

Prior to the cRatio update they could.

BST Pet cRatio cap 4.0
Player cRatio cap 2.25

Run wild is +25% attack and accuracy which enables the BST to spam high damage TP moves with Beast Roll and Geo Fraility + Dia II. No amount of buffing a melee could get them past that 2.25 cRatio cap. In effect BST's pets had a 77% higher damage ceiling and due to Run Wild and 10s ready timers they could effectively exploit that without running the risk of being splattered by the NM's overpowered TP moves.

In contrast a melee setup would require two GEO's, one for vex / attunment, and the other for Fraility / Precision, they would take turns entrust indi-haste. You would need a dedicated healer who was actually good and not afk. Then you'd need the melee's to pay attention and possibly bring a tank too.

So a lot more work for less potential. That is what made BST Over Powered. SE addressed this using two methods. First was to reduce the range of ready so that the BST's were forced to bring a tank / healer or be extremely careful, this puts them in the same position as the above melee setup. Second was to raise the cRatio cap of melee's so that, with proper support, they could reach the same damage ceiling as BST pets. The combination of these two has leveled the field somewhat. BST's are still the easier, safer and more reliable solution, but melee strategies now have a viable effort vs reward ratio.

There is more to balance then absolute power.

Best change SE could make now to allow people to play the way they want with whatever jobs they want is to get rid of the ridiculous time limits on everything. I'm pretty sure I could solo/duo/trio things and have way more fun if I could spend more than 15 minutes playing it safely, having time to step back out of range, use items and potions, buffs and re-engage. I could time mob moves better, etc. You know, actually use some skill and strategy vs having to figure out how to zerg the ***out of everything with these arbitrary time limits. Lately every time I join a party as bst I get told not to use ready and *** up the sch MBs because we don't want to timeout.

I know people complained in aby when bsts would kill stuff in 30-40 minutes that would only take a perfect zerg party 5 minutes, but with so much content, instances, all NMs popped with items and able to have many popped at the same time, why all the stupid time limits limiting us to fast kills or gtfo? Why is it so important to se that we kill everything in 15 minutes all of a sudden? Why do they hinder our creativity with crap like that?

Are you saying you'd rather kill things in 40 min when it can be done in 2 to 3 min?

And for some reason killing things in 40 min instead of 2 min is somehow more "creative"

Yeah, but pets with strong readies have severely limited skillchain potential, which is a major limitation compared to, say, CDC spam generating "free" damage from Light every other use. Not forgetting that not all readies use a single charge, reducing frequency of usability severely outside of unleash.

Pets are not invincible either. A DD pet like Randy or Bertha/Xerin will not last long under sustained hate or a continual barrage of damaging aoe magic and they are always susceptible to enfeebs.

Losing a pet means losing any buffs you have on it, which can be severely problematic if for instance you are leaning on RW to maintain capped accuracy.

I'd rather have options and be able to do what I want. If I want to try and solo something and it takes me 40 minutes, but I have fun doing it why would se or anybody else care?

And yes, using a non bandwagon setup is more creative than just doing whatever you just saw in the latest youtube video the exact same way.

Content in ffxi has time limit since years ago I think. BCNM has time limit if I remember correctly. Dyna salvage all has time limit.

If you seriously enjoy killing things in 40 min just enter dyna and pop adl so you get 2 hr to kill it?

Also exactly which soloable nm needs 40 min to kill nowadays...= =

No, the real question is you haven't explain how "creativity" is involved to solo things in 40 min when others solo NM in less than 10.

Doesn't matter when you are 4.0 vs 2.25. That kind of advantage is insurmountable, especially when the pet doesn't need TP and can use high powered moves every 10s. All while the BST stays 20 yalms away eating cheeto's and watching cat videos.

It's a skill vs power and effort vs reward problem. Too much power / reward for both the skill and risk required. It was so skewed that nothing else even compared to it. Post update it's a bit more balanced, BST's now have some element of risk to go with their reward and other DD's now have a better power ceiling to go with their effort.

BST's have always attempted to use BLU as a red herring to distracts people away from how broke they were. BLU isn't anywhere near as broken due to it having the same limitations all melee's do. They need one GEO with vex + attunement to even stand near the NM and then a second with actual DD buffs. They need a dedicated healer to keep them alive along with removing any status ailments that do make it through, while the BST's stood safely out of range.

So comparing BST to BLU specifically is a really illogical thing to do. It would be better to compare BLU to other melee jobs like WAR, DRK, THF, NIN, ect. Instead you must compare BST strategy to melee strategy and then to SCH + BLM SCMB strategy. The metrics are skill vs power, risk vs reward and effort vs reward.

How much skill must I achieve to accomplish high power?
How much risk must I take to acquire my reward?
How much effort must I put in to acquire my reward?

Those are how a developer measures content. And in all categories Beast Master was horrifically skewed. Everything else paled in comparison. Reward is the same for all. SCH + BLM required significantly more skill and effort while carrying higher risk (more moving parts / communications / timings / player focus). Melee strat carried the highest skill and effort required while also having the highest risk.

This caused everyone to immediately prefer BST's whenever possible. If that's not possible they fell back to SCH BLM method. And only then would they dare to look at melee, and only if there was absolutely no way to make the previous two methods work.

Then update, BST's now require more skill and carry higher risk, melee's now have a higher power ceiling. Melee's still the worst of the three for pure comparisons, but it's not such a great gulf as to be insurmountable.

Anyhow based on your previous statements I doubt your actually looking to understand anything and just want to defend your home sports team.

You're the one who's obstinately refusing to listen to the numerous caveats regarding BST's supposed over-performance, while doggedly repeating the same fallacies and moaning about a situation that complainers like yourself were instrumental in creating.

Bandwagons start when people on forums start saying job/strategy x is overpowered and a guaranteed easy win.

What irks me most about your argument however is that you act like playing a standard DD is somehow more challenging than playing BST, which is patently false. Spamming a ready move while keeping the pet alive requires just as much "skill" as spamming a ws macro whilst periodically hitting ja's and waiting for the backline to cure your fragile ***.

In either case, keeping hate on the tank while the GEO weakens the target offensively and defensively is always going to be the critical thing. The only difference is the amount of work the healer has to put in and the number of targets to cover.

Which in a nutshell is why the range nerf basically made no difference. Staying alive was never *my* problem, it was the backline's job to mitigate that risk. *My* problem was always and remains keeping the pet alive and dealing damage because that's where all my dps is coming from!

No.

Bandwagons start when a group discovers strategy A is more effective then all other strategies. Others witness it, discuss it, repeat it and also find victory. They share the information and soon everyone is doing it. Then it makes it to the forums where it's spread further.

Jobs are bandwagoned not because of a misunderstanding but because they ARE more effective then anything else.




*Blink Blink*

Just wow ... yeah that explains everything about you

Problem solved.

I play/have played in the past pretty much every melee DD in the game at endgame level. I'm pretty confident I know what I'm talking about.

Clearly you are just trolling, but I'll feed you anyway. Pop-able NMs having time limits is recently new. BCNMs have 30 minutes, always have. Dyna and salvage 100 minutes and greater. 15 minute timers are new, punitive and unnecessary.

The adl comment is just straight up retard. How does killing adl with a 2hr have anything to with the issue I pointed out with 15 minute time limits impeding our ability to attempt a solo or low man kill on a T2/T3 raisn mob (or Unity mobs) just for a clear? Does taking 40 minutes to get a clear, but being able to do it on the jobs I play make more sense or should I spend a week or month to level the going bandwagon job to do it n 3 min? Come on man, locate your brain. I've seen people and parties take much longer than 40 minutes to gather to kill said mob in 3 minutes whereas my 40 minute solo would be done and I'd be on to something else. Again, stop trolling and bringing up irrelevant comparisons without thinking them through.

Apparently you prefer spending months level'ing and gearing every bandwagon job so you can blow through content in 2-3 minute spurts, if that is what you call fun knock yourself out. I don't have that kind of time it is much faster to kill a few NMs in 40 minutes than a couple months... And frankly don't see how increasing these pointless 15 minute time limits pisses in your corn flakes and causes you to make baseless arguments filled with false assumptions in the first place.

Just because other people express their opinion that's different from you, doesn't mean it's trolling. Popable NM and dyna salvage are all battle content in this game, thus I don't understand the logic that you think it's okay to have time limit on BCNM, but not escha NM.

Also if everyone all spend 40 min holding a pop spot, others won't get to pop. This is the main reason why the lack of time limit is a bad idea.

You said 15 min time limit is hindering you from soloing low tier NM when you don't want to pt, this is far from true. A lot of reisen T1 has been soloed in less than 15. Course, selkit, soulflayer is a 2 min fight solo. Many other NM has been soloed in less than 15 min. Just Google YouTube video. 15 min time limit does not stop people from soloing the NM at all.

Most if not all escha T1 to T3 has been soloed in less than 15 AFAIK. There are tons of solo video on YouTube. Unity 135 also has been soloed in less than 15.

7 years playing this game I've never bandwagon any job. I don't have blm sch geo bst etc, in fact I rarely job change and play 1 job most of the time. I dont have issues solo or duo most low tier eacha nms in less than 15 min. You dont need to lv every job at all. If anything it is you that have false assumptions.

You claim "spending 40 min solo" is somehow very creative, you still haven't explain why. IMO creative= deal with the limitation and work around it. If the time limit is 15 min, creative players solo in less than 15 min like all those YouTube video soloers, instead of complaining about the time limit then go "I'm creative, I need 40 min to solo"

Also for the reisen T3, it's meant to do with a pt. This is mmo, some of the content are meant to be done in a pt, instead of having 1 soloer spend 4hr solo like hnm era. Even without time limit, with T3's acc requirement I highly doubt an unbuffed BST can solo it in 40 min anyways.

If you have issues with time limit when solo, you can always ask for advice on forums, instead of asking for more time to kill them.

Agreed. Saevel, me Afania and inx are all disagreeing with your assumptions of a poorly geared bsts that can chew gum eat cheetah and beat the game. While a blue has more buttons to press a good bst has a few buttons to press as well. Keeping pets alive in pdt set, timing run wild to end with another pet ready. Throwing food to keep pets alive. It's of coz less advance then a blue. But on anything that matters, it still requires the player to be good.

I enjoy playing blue Mage that's why that's my main and not bst. It's more versatile. And it's more powerful. again go prove us wrong, gear bst and show us some screenshots of your vision of a noob bst doing 20k run wild razor fangs. My point is a noob bst is still a noob period. Forget about the math. The end results is the most important and that result is very underwhelming.

Bandwagon is such an odd word. It's replaced by the word "Optimization" in most games, but FFXI somehow got the idea of Bandwagon with a negative connotation.

For example in WoW, every world class guild is using whatever DPS is optimized for every fight. That's a game in which you can't just switch jobs, you have to make a brand new character and grind out all the gear for it. Like to play Mage but your guild is pushing for the world first kill of Blackhand? You are ***out of luck, either use a Balance Druid alt or sit out.

Almost every popular game is like this. People who play non-optimal characters in League of Legends are called "One Tricks" which has a negative connotation. It requires extremely tight balance to make this not a thing at high level play.

I've never play WoW at endgame level so I may be wrong....but I don't think bandwagon in FFXI is quite the same as lving and gearing an alt for endgame in WoW? When we talk about bandwagoners in FFXI, we meant ppl who play jobs that are no where near close to being optimized. Instead of actually optimize a job, they only unlock a fraction of a job's potential in order to get the result asap.....and the result is often quite bad due to the lack of gears. For example a poorly geared bandwagon BLU or BST probably are not going to kill faster than a perfected geared WAR, despite BLU is a more optimized DD job.

In that case it'd be extremely weird to use the term "optimization" on those poorly geared BLUs.

Abyssea may be an exception since really just need proc WS to have efficient runs. Otherwise most of the time bandwagon in FFXI meant ppl who play popular jobs but their jobs are not optimized.