How Would You Balance The Jobs?

imo the game is properly balanced, it may not fit others standards to what you what to do when you want to do it. in 10 years+ of playing ive seen every job excel at something. whether it be a niche or best at the most popular content, there is always been another job better than the other based on the content you are fighting, if anything needs to be changed it woujld be the content we fight, there can be some improvements or additions tho. Somethings can be revisited for a fresh look/new experience, however its not because its broken. Certain game mechanics are set and cant be changed otherwise the entire game would be broken. just have to give us balance mobs/events that cater to each job niche.

well pups and maneuvers/attachments seem poor to me but that's about it.

So, for things like pages for upgrading gear (Or anything currently relevant anyways), MNK WHM BRD PLD RNG RNG/COR Is balanced? Idk, doesn't seem very balanced to me, and don't get me wrong I mean realistically you could bring different jobs to these sorts of things, but more than likely, whoevers shouting isn't going to invite you.

That's a problem with the playerbase and not the balance. Yes, optimally geared jobs like DRG, DRK, WAR etc will not be able to compete with an optimal MNK or SAM reliably unless the situation particularly favors them(something that dies before Mighty Strikes would wear off for WAR, some type of weapon weakness, need for Tomahawk/Angon since people rarely consider the overall alliance DPS boost of these abilities).

I am confident in saying that you can clear most content pretty easily with a suboptimal setup. I'm of strong opinion that if you are a "main" something, you don't really have much right to demand a random PUG fit you into their composition.

They've somewhat closed the gap on buff jobs(RDM or GEO can at least compete with BRD if you can land Distract reliably), you can main heal some of the easier content or RNG-strategy setups with a non-WHM job, and DD are DD, if you taking a DRK instead of a SAM meant you timed out in an event or it took 15min longer, then realistically there we a lot bigger problems with the run or that DD was bad and he would have likely still been bad at SAM.

I suppose, I mean I Occasionally get invited to shouts on lolrdm but generally not. Not saying there's some entitlement to be invited to anything however, you're going to be hard pressed going far in the game because no ones going to want you if you're not on an "optimal" job, which in turn forces you to level something "useful" I guess can't fight conventionalism I suppose. But that's just sylph I suppose, dunno how it is on other servers, would imagine its the same.

It is more of a player base issue as was already said. Gotta keep in mind when people aren't overly confident with something they will go with whatever strat/setup has been proven to work over taking new paths because they want to cover up for their inexperience/possible mistakes. It's understandable but also frustrating for people who understand certain setups aren't necessarily needed or are actually good enough on their job to make up for the often mediocre people playing the "required jobs" everyone shouts for.

Yeah like I said sort of definitely not doubting its a playerbase issue. Meh, on that note I'd like to see more SMNs in shouts, ran Tojil in a PUG, and the smn carred most of the weight because the DDs weren't consistent at all

With sufficient skill, strategy, gear and effort on the player's part any job can, in most cases, perform the role of any other job to varying degrees of efficiency in FFXI.


A Warrior can heal other party members.

A Black Mage can tank.

A White Mage can deal devastating damage to monsters.

A Paladin can buff other party members.

...and so on.

That is what makes the variety of gear and sub job concept in this game so cool.

This

I think the one thing they really need to look at is haste, it would be a pretty big thing to change but would affect tons of jobs if it was rebalanced. Jobs that were built around having unique high amounts of haste like Drk (Last Resort), Dnc (Haste Samba), Rdm (Haste II), Drg after the update, Blu, etc would all benefit from a change of haste. As it stands right now the cap is easy to get to for basically any job (mainly Sam) so there is no reason to bring something like Drk which will cap at exactly the same haste that the Sam caps at just as easy. It wouldn't fix everything but it would be a great way to start rebalancing a large portion of jobs. Possibly lower haste values across the board? I'm no game designer so I can't tell you how to do it. Even jobs like Pup I think have access to Haste 2 now and Smn is getting Haste 2 so those jobs could become "better".

Basically it's silly that Last Resort gives 25% JA haste and that doesn't even make me swing faster because I'm already capped without anything.

I think any job can perform in any event well, though to really make the most of it certainly requires the player to understand and observe the enemy in addition to being aware of their own capabilities. I've seen talented PUPs pull some serious weight in AA fights, for instance, not because they were just trying to be a MNK, but because they were taking advantage of what tools they had. BLU is invaluable in Incursion primarily because of Winds of Promyvion.

It's easy for people to look at jobs like MNK and SAM and say "wow, look at those numbers on Tojil", without really understanding why people bring these jobs to Tojil, or at least why the pioneers of these events and strategies brought them. RNG is popular because it has excellent hate control options and does damage from a safe distance. When it comes to picking out jobs you wanna bring, you simply gotta look at the enemy you're fighting and ask:

- Is there AoE damage or highly problematic debuffs like Amnesia or Petrify?
- Is hate an issue?
- Is the enemy particularly weak to certain crap?

Once you deal with those things, you just have to do 2 things; 1) kill stuff before time runs out, and 2) don't die. I usually insist that people come on a job they are more passionate about and comfortable playing, since they will usually have geared that best and understand it better than their other jobs.

I haven't seen a buttersheep since like 2004/5. Oh, bad memories. ><

Very interesting thread. As someone else mentioned for themselves, I too am not a game designer, but hypothetically here is my idea. Instead of balancing the jobs, why not create different tiers for each new event going forward. We already see this on a small scale with delve from a pt of 6 to full ally of 18. Id like to see entry options for these events solo, pt of 2 or 3+ etc and scaled/designed appropriately based on the # of people who entered... this wouldn't work for delve type of content, but certainly would for skirmish or new BCNM fights etc... I think this would bring a tremendous amount of flexibility to the game and strategies used between attempting solo with strong solo jobs like pup and smn or even duo/trio with all kinds of setups. It would also address others' concerns with server population.

Taking the idea itself without concerning the likelihood it could actually happen (which is obviously very low) what do you all think about this idea?

the bcs are already very soloable on VE-difficult depending which bc

rescaling them for every single job is absurd

Dark Magic for Dark Knights.

I think most of the jobs are actually balanced well, if you mean optimize every job for all content then that is probably not possible. People will always pick the best for X situation, doesnt meant you can try other things though. Each job can excell at different things too so that is another bonus. I think the weakest job atm is BST though, they really need something.

In general things are balanced with only issues with MNK and SAM. FS, mantra and the DPS power of H2H is a little OP in a single job. SAM is a case of the developers not predicting how much min-maxing the player base will do. Fudo is crazy OP with the right setup ontop of SAM being designed to output massive numbers of WS. Essentially you got the best WS on a job that puts out more WS then anyone else by a large margin.

Outside of that, job wise things are better then before.

Most the Pet jobs in my opinion need help.

The main issue they have is accuracy, even with Shiromochi it's still difficult for BSTs and PUPs to do decent damage in 126+ content.

The ability for DRGs to Spirit link with Empathy and give our buffs to our pet would benefit the other pet jobs immensely I believe, but like another post mentioned I don't know if that would throw the game balance out of wack. If a Pet was able to have soul voice Ghorn songs and COR rolls.

Due to breath locking from WS spam from master a wyvern potential has yet to be seen with the same amount of buffs as Master.

Fudo didn't need the boost it got, it was already a great WS. The issue was how do you buff SAM without nerfing or buffing the crap out of other slashing jobs. If they lowered the attack penalty on Reso, it would put DRK and WAR way ahead, if they raised it, it would drastically nerf RUN. Similarly, how do you make skillchains relevant without changing the WS properties. They could have achieved basically the effect they wanted without adjusting Fudo at all.

it would be nice if you could pre-set a pets moves/abilites/spells in some way ahead of time. like say for pup, there would be 5-10 slots for its spells and you just pick the 5-10 you want and put them in the order you want them used and itll just repeat said order. i mean it would actually be kind of interesting to see something like that, i know i for one would find it so at least.

as far as pet accuracy goes though, i feel like the only path they could take is to significantly lower the attack/damage variables in favor of a higher base accuracy to each pet. maybe in some attack+acc to current dps scale, there could be some kind of middle ground as far as what would be acceptable balance. simply filling in that accuracy gap would be way too overpowered i think, and is probably the *** block pet jobs face in the developers room. the only other option is to just accept that those jobs will never be and were never meant to be the kind of jobs people who wish to do the hardest/most rewarding content should use.

Yeah the buff to Fudo was overkill on a job that can already spam WS's so fast they reliably self SC. From SE's point of view they wanted to make Fudo competitive with Reso but didn't take into account how the players would min/max gear sets. So you end up with Fudo putting out just as much as Reso but SAM doing many more of them, sheer overwhelming quantity. Not to mention Fudo has vastly superior SC properties over Reso, WAR, DRK and DRG would have to use inferior WS's to be SC compatible.

They could of accomplished balance by slightly buffing Fudo, to keep pace with Reso and just making SC's stronger. Honestly how hard would it be to make NM AI respond to the last SC property inflicted on it? Not this "randomly lower aura" bullsh!t but straight up alter it's AI mechanics.

Another good example of unlove Job is DNC, heal debuff (now around 23%def down) and made a nice DD.

Maybe now with incursion, we can made some nice setup.

Personnaly, i always shout for DD (any), always happy to let PUP to come to skirmish or AA fight.

Well If jobs were not meant to do specific type of content than they need to create content for those jobs.

If BSTs and PUPs were not meant to be able to do Delve or Incursion and things of that nature, SE should make content that is geared towards them.

Back in 2004-2006 days it was cool to be a BST because you could exp alone and take on certain NMs alone, but now i don't believe there is anything that a BST can solo that another soloist job cannot.

2 years ago it was very fun and popular to be BST for dynamis (with Faithful Falcor and the LadyBug) but after TH Nerf on pet and adoulin iLvl to everyone, it went back to THF/DNC being optimal.

To the jobs, I'd do several things:

1: Bringing mage/ranged DD up to physical DD output.
2: TP & WS
3: Pets
4: Give all jobs an A+ rating in one weapon catagory.

5: Support Roles
6: Melee DDs
Sadly, I actually wish they'd do these things, though I know they never will. -_-

You put quite some thought into this, have you ever posted on the official forums?

It only took me ~10min to write it up, then another ~50min to make it at least somewhat understandable.

I've posted on the official forums some, I think I have already said almost all the things mentioned here at one point or another on those forums too. All of it was ignored, almost as much as "make a chatoyant obi/gorget from a synergy of all 8 sea obis/gorgets" got ignored. :(

Sometimes it seems like JP players feedback is acted upon by developers but NA/EU not so much.

I can remember a lot of changes they made due to the JP community posting on official forums;

Twilight scythe nerf
Ukkos/VS nerf

two that come to mind I'm sure there are more, doesn't seem like they take the NA/EU communities feedback as seriously.

Sad.

U are a fakejp! u should be able to do something!

Not that it matters because this is not JP. Said time and again over the years.

1) remove annoying hard delay after JA and Spells even if its only for white damage swings This will buff Blu and Drk a good degree

2) Pet Acc and survival, really how many times can this be buffed and still fail.

3) Hate ceiling, make it significantly higher by traits or give tools for Jobs to shed it more efficiently.

4) The AOE in this game right now is just to much. Make it fan or based on a small radius around target, not really a change but way too Much heavy AOE content now a days.

5) every Job should have an inate MP pool even if its small.

6) Better utilize the Sub Job system. Seriously the crowning glory of FFXI is the Job/Sub system if you buff Jobs heavy 1-49 you effectively buff every Job. Give Whm a self cast +100 atk,acc and +10%QA and I'm sure u will have every melee subbing whm.

7) Make traits stackable.

8) Can we get some charmable mobs in content, whats the point of having it in game if it is not even used on relevant content?

Giving THF Attack Bonus V at 99 would help a lot, I think, since they are severely lacking in attack.