BST Balance Discussions

Exactly, I hate nerfs. Why nerf something when you could buff other jobs and balance the game? SE logic though.

Because if 19 jobs are at a usefulness level of 10 (arbitrary number for example), and 1 job is at a usefulness level of 15, then not only is it 19 times as much work to buff the other jobs to 15 than it is to nerf the 1 job to 10, but it will also make the content you're doing much easier than they originally intended.

I'm still waiting for a buff to warrior dark knight so I can play them.

Neither of those jobs need a buff. They are perfectly acceptable for any content you would bring melee to. People just suck at them, so everyone thinks they are bad.

Now this would be an interesting conversation. I haven't been subbed since AG weapons gave War/Drk that nice boost but until then they were undoubtedly the worst DD in the game. One of these days I shoukd get around to updating the War spreadsheet or something.

Content you would bring melee to? So nothing overly dangerous then.

That's a much more complex issue than just WAR or DRK.

I find that content people consider dangerous varies greatly from group to group. I think Teles is tied with Sandworm for the easiest Resenjima T4, I also think other people might feel differently.

Meanwhile, I don't consider most things under level 140 dangerous. There are exceptions, but there is also a lot more content under 140 than there is over it. Melee are fine for the majority of content provided they can be properly buffed.

Beastmaster Never had a Direct nerf.
It was the end-game players like myself, who hated Beastmaster with the way how it makes every other job entirely irrelevant for content.

It got to a point when the Distance changes to Beastmaster hit, and the White mages and other jobs had an outspoken point of, why would we use a job that is stood in melee range, when most of the band wagons don't know what PDT or even use it.

And not only that, most NMs do nasty things anyways. The large utility was the large range on the moves that BST had. Because even BLM cannot do that much damage as fast as what a BST can. But when their in range and dying, BLMs/BLU/THF/Any other DD Really can out parse it, and surprisingly without dying.

BST was a total band-wagon for those who wanted a cheap and easy to gear job to get content clears. And it still is.
It's great for someone who is behind in the game to catch up on content to get the clears they need before going to harder stuff where BLMs SCHs WHMs PLDs RUNs etc reign supreme.

TO be honest, as the WHM and GEO who supported BSTs from Escha Zi'tah -> Reisenjimma basically, Watching a BST and being on any of the supports for NMs that BST needs, is just utterly boring. Garantee you anyone who has been on a support job for BST has probably been AFK doing work or something else.

Next will be Blue who gets the nerfing.

Hi.

First off, I've changed your thread title. The previous one was either wholly insensitive to an ongoing discussion of police brutality, or your perspective is impossibly skewed. Either way, it's now more reflective of the actual discussion.

Regarding the discussion, every job balance discussion thread ends up this way, so blaming "bstrolls" is a an overly wordy way to say "people who aren't main BSTs".

The fact of the matter was that something had to be done; Beastmaster could do large amounts of damage, to even high tier monsters, with no danger to the master. Nobody else got anything even close, so the options were to either lower damage output or increase the danger. They increased the danger.

You can make a reasonable argument that lowering the damage output would have been preferable, but that would have just been kicking the can down the road. You can not make a reasonable argument that Beastmaster should have been left alone. It was very powerful, and powerful in a specific way that changed the mechanics of the game in a way that was not intended. That sort of dynamic will always be addressed by the developers.

Well scholars and black mages aren't in any danger either so why aren't they nerfed? Again I don't want any more nerfs just asking a question in regards to your logic.

They're limited by MP, by enmity, and max casting range is out of immediate AoE range, but it's not like you can sit ten miles out. They're also physically much squishier, so when they do get in danger, they're in significantly more danger.

(I think they're quite powerful as well, but they don't look anything like peak BST, and it's disingenuous to suggest they do.)

This isn't necessarily true, BLM and SCH can pull hate if they miss the timing- I've seen it happen more often than not. Also, a lot of the harder fights require you to abuse the terrain (which has been a strategy since the inception of the game) to not get hit by AoEs, and if the monster positioning shifts even slightly, it can cause a full wipe (see: Teles, Vinipata).

I do agree that BLM and SCH are subject to lower danger than any other jobs, but it is still incomparable to BST pre-nerf, who could completely be out of monster range and still dealing damage.

Furthermore, the gear requirement for BST is much lower than SCH and BLM. Sure, SCH/BLM can do well on easier content without amazing gear, but that is the extent of what a poorly geared mage can do. With Bolster and COR rolls, BST can face roll just about anything up until WoC/Kirin/Reisen T4s in a matter of a few short minutes.

For example- With 4 BLMs and 2 Idris all with pretty damn near close to the best gear possible, we kill Maju/Yakshi in 3-5 minutes with ~10 people, and this is after having it killed it at least 50 times. Another LS on our server was just starting out on Reisenjima T3s and used BSTs and killed then both in just under two minutes without Idris and just 2 BSTs.

Even on harder stuff, the only reason BLMs seem so effective on T4s is because most groups have GEOs rotating Bolster Languor/Malaise- our damage is pretty poor without Bolster being up. The most extreme example would be Schah- We have COR, BRD, 2-3 GEOs all buffing just 3-4 BLMs, I think ANY job would be insanely strong given that much overbuffing. BST just doesn't get to that extent because only bubbles that affect monsters help their damage.

tl;dr

BST can perform very well with just buffer and not amazing gear, BLM SCH are still subject to getting hit by TP moves on NMs that matter and require an insane amount of buffs to really shine- an issue that has been prevalent for all of endgame.

Sch and Blm are also a product of this specific type of content. They excel at fast fights so strats don't run out. If delve like content was released that was based around consecutive fights you would see MB strats be weaker, although thats no guarantee they still won't be the best strat.

Kinda like how Thf was crazy at early UNMs because they lasted 30 seconds and opening every fight with a giant SA skewed DPS way in their favor.

BST is still broken. They're still a tank and top tier DD. Only difference, you have to play either extremely conservative or have support. However, I do agree that the distance thing is pretty annoying. If it was working properly, I would say BST really has nothing to complain about.

@ Ramzus

Under 2 mins u prob talking about unleash and run wild with tegmina buffet spam. Obviously bst has two of the strongest jas in the game. U need to add in these details when discussing the power of bst. And gear requirements are pretty strict as well as u need accuracy to land tegmina buffet on a T3 reisenjima.

I can say this here without fear of being banned? (lolOfficial Forums) GOOD!

IMHO, SE went at BST the wrong way. They shouldn't have reduced the distance for job abilities at all. I mean, RNG can do great damage from distance and I don't see anyone complaining about that. "But that's what they're supposed to do!" Yes, and BST operated the same way from the beginning of the game with ZERO complaints, so why change it so late in the game's lifespan? Because BST got good and the ones who hate BST screamed lies at SE loud enough? pfft

If SE wanted to nerf BST, that's fine. But the "distance" was the worst way to go at it, and "distance" had nothing to do with BST being OP (Again, see Ranger, Black Mage, and Scholar for OP from distance). What made BST OP was the fact pets didn't require 1000 TP to use moves. All SE needed to do was make it so Ready moves required 1000 TP to use. By doing that, it reduces the amount of damage a single pet can put out. Also, strategies would no longer revolve around equipping underleveled gear to reduce Ready timers. Instead, BST would need to get Pet: Haste and Pet: Store TP augments on their gear in order for their pets to build 1000 TP faster.

I'd post that on the Official Forums, but since it's about BST and it makes too much sense, I'd probably get banned there too.

With that proposed change, BST would be worse than it is now.

Only reason I bothered gearing BST is to get what I need from people who only want a cookie cutter job format.

It also came in handy for getting all the Skirmish weapons I needed.

The job can do a lot of damage fast, but once the pets are dead/timers are down it's pretty useless. Yeah I can hit about 1200 melee acc with the right gear set, but the job's attack power is pretty low.

I did gear the heck out of it as well though. IMO the distance nerf was stupid, if anything S/E should have revised damage the damage formula or reworked enmity for pets. How many BST actually use snarl? Once a large amount of job points are amassed Blackbeard just rapes everything. Run Wild just make him hit even harder...

A damage nerf would only hurt people on the bandwagon imo, while players who invested the time and job points into BST would be pretty much unaffected. (Say a 20% reduction traded for pre nerf ready range.)

Or at least let us "merit" the range in the job point category..

Can you give a reason why? Or are you just saying that to spite those who play BST?

But seriously, before Ready became a thing, all BST had was Sic. And guess what? It required at least 100 (now 1000) TP to be used. Just like a RNG needs at least 1000 TP to use Last Stand, or a SAM needs 1000 TP to use Tachi: Fudo.

Imagine how OP RNG would be if it could spam 3 Last Stands, then another Last stand every 15 seconds after that regardless of TP? That's what Ready is like on BST. That's what needed the nerf. Distance has nothing to do with it.

Yes, my point was more that even with max buffs, BLM and SCH can't outdo BSTs pace, even if they have perfect gear and BST doesn't.

And no, Bolster torpor+drachen roll trivialize any accuracy requirement as long as you've put in more than 30 minutes of effort into the job (which you should have to for anything hard...)

Yea but u talking about something that can get used every hour or 45 minutes. And getting the accuracy and attack augments as well as store tp 200 on axes is costly as well.

Getting 1000 tp on your Pet on anything meaningful would take a while. Reducing BSTs dmg by a lot. With how it is now, you need 1800~ acc on NMs in Reisen. Sure, your tp moves would hit, but how long would it take to consistently get TP?

Any BST worth a damn would know to have a great Pet: Accuracy set and also take the time every day to kill Quetzalcoatl enough times to get 3/3 Accuracy++ as it also affects pet. Also, a GEO with 900+ skill (Idris even better but not required) using Geo-Torpor would help tremendously.

A dedicated BST would put the work in. The bandwagoners will be turned off by the work load and pick up something else to bandwagon, like SCH.

If you're bringing support into the mix, what is the issue with it now? A dedicated BST should have DT set/stoneskin/cure sets. Sure it is a minor inconvenience, but I see plenty making it work as is.

I agree the bst range was overdone, something like 15' would have been better. However, comparing bst to sch and blm...

You can stop at blm as their dmg is entirely dependent on other jobs doing sc's for them to mb. Ever see a non burst death... it sucks. On top of that, blm's suffer from a penalty on both AoE spells and burst volleys nerfing dmg. Dont recall bsts getting nerfed dmg if multiple ready moves landed around the same time or if it hit multiple targets.

As for sch, yes they are OP but not in the same degree bst was. AoE is still sch's weakness, albeit a small one, but one that bst isnt hindered with. Both rely on timers to do significant dmg and both have a 1hr to nullify said timers. However, the speed at which sch's can make sc's for big dmg bursts is significantly slower than a bst can spam rdy moves, making fights longer and adding more time for things to go wrong. Yes, sch is OP, but bst was still worse.

Honestly I don't think Square-Enix intended for BST to become such a power house. It just seemed to of happened once ILVL 119 was possible, combined with all the pet gear, -ready delay. Calling a Jugpet at 119 with reforged relic hands was just icing on the cake.
Reforged Empy hands are the cherry on top at 119.

At LVL99 they had nowhere near this much pet attack/accuracy gear. It was mainly on specialized pieces from add ons/JSE Abyssea gear.

Even the most mediocre gear has some decent pet stats on it.

The issue is the fact that post-nerf Ready moves sometimes won't go off. It's broken and needs fixed, or just straight up reversed.

And even with a DT set, I've been one-shotted. BST is squishy despite assumptions to the contrary.