Job Balance?

Few things:

A) Obfuscating the issue and putting an already-used bandage over it is not fixing it. Your solution does not fix a single thing and only leads to even more problems. I'm not sure what makes you think supports will get more numerous or anything just by kicking BLUs out of your parties or will make the plight of not being able to find enough support to give Haste to your DDs any less of an issue.

B) Cocoon, Magic Barrier, Saline Coat, and Occultation (which doesn't work on AoEs by the way, it's Blink not Copy Image) may be strong buffs, but let's not ignore that the reason melees are risky primarily comes from status ailments, which BLU has no additional native defense against (besides T1 Tenacity, woohoo) and to a somewhat lesser extent people's inability to build and use a DT- set. Again though this is another issue of overall imbalance than just imbalance with a single job, and they do seem to be, little by little, attempting to correct it with things like the AoE damage adjustment. While BLU's added DEF/MDEF isn't inconsequential, it also isn't an easy "I win" button(or, set of buttons). It merely lowers the ceiling on both the quality of healers and the quality of DDs required, which for the state that this game's population is in you would be foolish to argue is a bad thing.

C) You keep saying it would be too hard for the devs to actually fix the game and address the problems (which I find quite ironic considering mere months ago you were touting that the new mog wardrobe microtransactions would lead to better support for the game, but I digress). Accepting this and letting them rest on their laurels is not the proper response, and expecting an overnight turnaround to core problems with game mechanics is foolhardy. To truly fix these problems will take time and patience, and if seeing people playing BLU really gets your goat that badly then I suggest you either make a group that caters to your interests or do something productive that can bridge the gap until SE finds their solution. BLU is much prettier to look at than SAMs (reigned for years), WARs( ^), and MNKs ( ^) anyway.

D) Making support jobs more accessible and rewarding != making gearing those jobs pointless. That's a very two dimensional way to look at it and I trust you can be more creative than just assuming they'd have to make all the instruments and weapons for those jobs better. That's merely the starting step, as that would make the jobs more accessible leading to less of a gap between an ergon GEO and a non-ergon whateversupport. The next step would be adjusting spells/songs and perhaps finding a way to introduce more hybrid elements (damage dealing, healing, etc.) into support jobs than what it currently possible. This would attract more people to them. And no, this doesn't mean make a support replace a DD or healer slot, it means add additional utility and incentive to playing a support class.

I disagree and refute your assertion that constantly shifting the king is a good game design.
Allowing jobs to shine at different tasks is a much better and worthy endeavour.

edit: was directed at Eli

I think both forms of balance are healthy but the latter is a lot harder to obtain, especially in a game where new content is extremely limited.


Both of them definitely have issues as well. Take the shift meta for example, the stock in your class is effectively determined by which patch cycle you are on and it would be harder to guide people in the general direction of what class they should level to get what they want done.

For yours, if you compartmentalize each class into their own "task" then they will only be wanted for some fights and not wanted for others. What will happen is they will be left out of the other fights where their task isn't required and therefore be let out of gear and/or progression. You would also need to completely redesign content to make their tasks a valuable addition to certain fights.

EU as well.
I wholehartedly agree with your statements and I've seen this happening over and over in FFXI (MNK, WAR, SAM, NIN, BLU... Each of these jobs have been bandwagoned at least once in the FFXI history) and other games as well.

Nerfing a single job like there's no tomorrow is not the solution to this issue, people would just jump the next ship just like you said.
It's unavoidable, devs can't fight that.

What they can do is "level" things a bit, without resorting to the stupid method of complete homogeneization like WoW before and everybody else after did.


They can't fight bandwagoning? Ok. But then at least make sure that the difference between the currently bandwagoned job and the other jobs is not so huge. Make so like every job can count on at least some niche, some special thing they can bring, and stuff like that.

I've never been one of the people most fervently advocating BLU's nerfing, but I reckon SE could at least tweak a couple of things without nerfing the job too much
As it stands now it's true that BLU brings a bit too much versatility without really a "cost" for that.
BLU can be a decent offhealer, deal all sort of damage type magic included, have all sort of buffs (some of which are unique and pretty powerful), job traits sometimes more powerful than those of other jobs, one of the best WS in game, some very unique and powerful stuns and debuff (granted that without focus/languor they won't reliably land on anything that matters).

If i had to name one issue in BLU it's just that. There's too much versatility without any real cost to that.
I think SE did a mistake when they powered up traits too much with their gifts, and when they allowed too many BLU points.
With some sort of smarter limitation in the number of spells you can equip maybe BLUs would have to accept bigger compromises and have to make harder choices, and that could be a fair compensation for the versatility and overall power at their disposal.

On the other hand you have jobs like MNK who can basically only deal damage these days, and they kinda suck at it compared to all other jobs. They could use some small buff, but I guess they're afraid to buff MNK because they don't want to go back into the "MNK ONRY" periods of Abyssea and Delve1.


It's hard to "balance" stuff. One microscopic step in the wrong direction and you go from one excess to the exact opposite. How do you say in english? From the Frying Pan to the Fire?

For T1 it doesn't really matter if you pull hate though.


SCH, BST, BLU is the most WELL known solo job that's traditionally resourceful(in terms of ability) and has tons of tool that could help players to accomplish solo goals.

Other job has other tools and is capable of soloing too.

SCH, BST and BLU being the best is just your opinion, like the list of the other 2 person.

I will respectfully disagree. There is no reason to have a revolving door of FoTM. You'll never achieve perfect balance, no, but you can and should attempt to achieve some form of harmony where everyone feels strong if they try to be. FFXI is closer to this now than it ever has been. The issue with your revolving door strategy is thus: there are already multiple players on the table. Just because the community as a whole chooses to follow one example doesn't make it the only one. It still shocks me that NIN has managed to fly under the meta radar for this long.




Come now, you can't honestly tell me that you believe most people go out and figure things out for themselves. It's much easier to watch a youtube video or read a post on BG for strategies than to come up with one, and thats what most people do. "Path of least resistance" works in more than just one context. Also saying BLU is the strongest job in the game is horrendous hyperbole, it excels at meleeing in low to mid tier content, that's it. It is not the strongest job in the game and it probably never will be. In any case, invoking the revolving door mentality perpetuates the problem rather than attempting to solve it, and that's not a good behavior to ask for in my opinion.




You most certainly could make a DRG sound like a good option if you wanted to. Though I have to ask and I've yet to see anyone address it: when you remove BLU and its supposedly impenetrable defenses from the meta, what are you going to do to get the most damage without straining the party? What solution is there to this that can not be achieved by other means? Genuinely curious.





This would have been relevant a couple of years ago, but you have to remember that we went from doing 3-4k weaponskills to doing 10-20k ones and 99k skillchains and magicbursts in less than 3 years time, however they've still managed to introduce powerful and intimidating enemies. Power creep does not seem to be an issue as long as they can keep pumping out meaningful content at the upper end. What matters is drawing all the jobs into the same relative power pool. From what it seems, people are salty dogs about BLU's survivability, not so much their damage output. That's cool. How about they just make things do less damage with AoEs, like they've been working on? "But then the content becomes way too easy and boring". Well, it doesn't really have to. You can make a battle engaging without having to rely on nothing but huge damage spikes and status spam, and they have done it before albeit infrequently. If anything is boring, it's that a majority of fights end up playing out the same way with some minor variations. Less emphasis on overpowering AoEs would be healthy.



At the end of the day this is all balancing around mid to ***tier content anyway. When you enter high tier content territory everything gets even messier and none of the precious melee jobs are safe there. This is the most distressing part of the current endgame for me.

A) If a job is required, there will usually be people that will gravitate towards it simply to clear content. This happens fairly commonly with GEO, but that doesn't leave much flavor in deciding which "in demand" job to roll with. Why would someone play a BRD, though, if the top DD doesn't make use of it and it won't get invites? So long as the king DD caps their own haste you won't see BRD around unless it's for Lullaby or Scherzo. GEO has outpaced BRD for a while, but BRD didn't completely die until BLU took over the melee game.

B) Yes and no, some fights it's debuffs, some it's AOE damage. A very regular anecdote of mine is fighting Morimar in SR. This is even older content, but he has an AOE tp move that can one shot light armor DD's. But a BLU can be in regular TP gear and take under 1k damage from it, because defense is extremely powerful in this game and BLU can have close to what, 2k defense while in a non-DT set? If I am playing a job and have to full time DT gear just to fight something while a BLU can go all out, which job is your standard player going to gravitate towards?

C) I don't know why you think this is a very personal issue to me. I am a big time merc on my server, I can do all zitah, most of ru'aun and most of reisen...as a THF. I'm fully capable of completing a very large part of this content. My interest is in the balance of the game, and BLU as it stands is not good balance for the game. Any new players we are fetching are being told there's only a single melee job that's viable and that is silly. It's not true, necessarily, but you have to put a lot more work to make another job viable, which is something a new player is not quite capable of.

Doesn't matter what I commented with wardrobe, the fact of the matter is buffing 9 jobs would be far more development time than nerfing one. Especially as they're a little more focused on small changes right now and not sweeping overhauls (partially because a lot of the devs don't know ***about how endgame actually works).

D) And that still sounds like a whole lot more work than changing a few BLU spells/traits. You do realize the development team is extremely barebones, right?

Sorry, but the dev team being barebones is not a reasonable excuse. As long as we're paying them money we should expect to get a reasonable level of service, and I don't think maintaining the balance of the game in non-lazy ways is asking too much. Like I said, it may take them some time, but assuming it is out of their bounds and totally impossible is pretty defeatist and isn't going to help.

Prepare to be disappointed. The dev team being barebones is a reality and not something we have the power to change. Quitting will only diminish any further resources being used on this game. Many aspects of development are already done by people who work on other projects (some work on the other project as their main). This is how the game is being developed, so there's really nothing we can do about that. Unless you think you have a realistic chance at changing how a Japanese company operates so you can have them make the job balance changes you would prefer, of course.

A none blu DD using DT- set and playing defensively do less dps, v.s blu that can just go all out without any penalty.

You're expecting instant gratification. Long term adjustments handled over a period of time > heavyhanded ones that ultimately solve nothing. This is exactly what they're doing with new content anyway, the new battle system coming up clearly wasn't made overnight. It is something they've been working on for some time. Need to get used to the fact that they're cooking on low heat, but that doesn't mean they can't make big meals.



I had no idea ty.

Sorry but it's hard to take it seriously when someone points out something this obvious, but let me point something obvious out for you too: you don't have to fulltime a DT set to make it effective.

Did I suggest people to full time DT set whenever they play a DD job? I don't think so.

Then please offer me some examples on where a DD using their PDT and MDT sets properly will either

A) Be the difference between victory and defeat

or

B) Cause the fight to take so much longer that you may as well just uninstall the game from all the time of your life that you just wasted and will never get back

Not arguing that BLU's defensive buffs are inconsequential (indeed, the sentence right after the one you quoted says that) but overstating their effect (when comparing a good player with a good player, of course) is silly. Cocoon doesn't make you indomitable, it gives you (and your healer) extra room for error. Again I'd challenge the notion that this is a bad thing, because I don't think denying the less skilled or less geared people from doing content at this stage in the game's life is an intelligent decision. Nothing is stopping you from doing things with other jobs if you don't want to use BLUs all the time (well, aside from the fundamental flaws we covered earlier which, again, nerfing mighty guard, cocoon, barrier tusk, etc. would do nothing to address and would draw more attention to them instead).

I'm not disagreeing that BLU is in a better position than a lot of jobs (not ALL of them though, some are on par or better than BLU overall), but you guys seem to want to approach this in a way that stagnates things rather than a way that could potentially fix them. Dev team's small, game balance is hard, we're out of donuts, yeah these are all hurdles. Fortunately for us the game isn't going anywhere, so they've got plenty of time to fix it, and to be honest the people complaining the most vocally about all this are probably in the minority anyway.

the denial is strong here

(and melee strats are faster than mage strats on at least half of the relevant NMs now, and use less people.. so the whole BLM trumps all argument is going out the window pretty quickly now)

Are you saying that job adjustments only allowed to happen when a job is key to winning or losing?

wat? you're going to have to try again in english for me, I don't understand your question.



I believe you, but allow me to invoke the same argument that has been used here this whole time: people will use the easiest strategy and job spread available to them. I would hazard a wager that there are far more groups and linkshells capable of fielding a BLM party than there are capable of mobilizing a comparable melee team since, not only have people been gearing for that for a while now, but most are set in those ways. By the same token that people flock to the easiest to play melees, I would argue that people will also flock to the easiest to use and mobilize setup.

Also not sure what you think I'm denying, try rereading my posts. I'm not in disagreement that BLU is easier to use than other melees atm. I am however disagreeing with the fact that the only solution is the boneheaded nerfbat one.

If I can add to Prothescar's last post, people will use the easiest strategy and the most reliable.

Majority of people do not like to wipe for days or weeks trying to learn something new when they can just win with less effort and with less risk.

Sometimes it's a matter of a certain strategy just having a smaller degree of potential risk (more room for errors).
Sometimes it's a matter of you and your group being used to doing a certain thing in a certain way compared to having to learn/train teamwork for something different.

Most of the times it's a combination of both I'd say.

You have at best an argument that BLM is best now. It's based on loose anecdotal evidence(it's easier to play). The lowest # kills on many of these NMs are melee. The lowest time kills on many of them are melee. Objectively, melee setups are at least comparable. That means you can't use the straw man you're so attached to(BLU isn't OP because only BLM matter). It doesn't matter if most people still use BLM, they're no longer the only(or even best) option.

Cocoon is effectively -1/3 physical damage taken, for 90 seconds, on a 20 second recast for .35s of melee time and 10 mp. That mitigates more physical damage over time than PLD's entire repertoir of abilities being used on recast. Never mind the way it stacks with berserk allowing you to use that with even less consequences. It's pretty easy to show mathematically that BLU is closer to a PLD or RUN's damage taken than it is to another DD's damage taken, given both are in their DPS setups.

Given that's the case, how the **** do you justify BLU's damage dealt being comparable to the DD?

Not sure your purpose of using language like this in a job balance discussion either.

Attempting to misrepresent my argument is pretty childish, you're going to have to try harder. I never once said that BLU isn't OP because only BLM matters, but trying to force the narrative that BLU is the biggest problem with game balance when there's other issues as well is foolish and ignorant. BLU's current prominence is the direct result of years of balance blunders that would all go unaddressed if you guys had your way of it, apparently.


Ok, feel free to quote at least one instance where I tried to say this wasn't the case instead of attempting to undermine my argument with ***.


You seem angry, take a valium. Once again this issue points to an overarching problem with XI's balance and one-tracked battle design: overwhelming AoEs by the dozens with next to no variance.

I happen to know that you're smarter than this, you don't need to resort to misrepresentation in order to get your point across boo.

Option A:

Looking for BLU for <content>!

Option B:

Looking for melee DD that knows how to properly utilize a PDT and MDT set as needed for <content>!

Guess which one is going to be used more often?

This whole blu job balance argument on this site has been attaching to strawman from the start. People has been playing the "but bst and blm" or "but higher defense doesn't stop you from playing other jobs" card over and over.



But Ill bit the fishbait and answer the question here.


No, massive defense isn't going to be the difference between victory and defeat, nor suddenly make none blu DD pt kill 500% slower.

But that doesn't mean job adjustment shouldn't happen because these condition didn't happen.

A whole post of misdirection with no rebuttal, and I'm the one who's being childish?

Plain and simple:

BLU's damage taken is closer to that of a tank class job than that of a damage dealing job. Why, then, is it acceptable that their damage dealt is on par with damage dealing jobs as well?

I can't play any job well and still have had lots of fun for years.

I hereby second the valium recommendation

Well yeah, there's no denying that and, again since this seems to be a recurring problem with you guys, I'm not saying that people are more apt to using the easiest method. I did, in fact, go into detail on how I think most people just, you know, follow the easiest strategy they find to a T and don't bother thinking about expanding on it themselves. That isn't what I'm saying though. It is possible to do things with DDs that aren't BLUs. This is fact. BLU is easier to do things with due to the way blue magic works and the way the job is designed. This is also fact.

I do not agree that the only way to make the difficulty differences between supporting and using BLUs and other DDs can only be done by outright gutting BLU and just making it another DD like all the rest, devoid of any flavor. I don't think you're arguing for that to happen, either, but it is inevitable since the only way to make BLU function like the other DDs and bring them all into standard... is to make BLU like the other DDs.

Let me ask you this, hypothetic and nothing more, what would you rather see:

All jobs brought up a bit to be more fun and reasonable to use in more environments

or

A continuation of the current boring cycle of 1 job on a pedestal for x number of months only to be replaced by another

And let me ask you another: provided the dev team was capable (which isn't guaranteed), would you be willing to wait a couple extra months to see solution A over solution B? Or would you want a faster, easier solution that ends up with solution B?

Whether or not the current dev team is able to do it or not is certainly not guaranteed either way, but I'm curious to know your answers anyway.

I think the fact that there are multiple jobs on the table is the reason why the revolving door will work so well. Cycling jobs in and out of their meta is the only way to force change among mass players.

NIN is a great example. It has flown under the radar because it is just like BLU except it can't cap its own haste, it requires support. As long as BLU can do the same damage but support themselves we will never see NIN take off. Nerfing BLU would reveal this and then NIN would be FoTM then we nerf NIN, but another job that will then become FoTM. Greatest thing about a rotating Meta is that you can even find unexpected surprises from the nerfs and buffs introduced.


With so many jobs competing for the same spot you will never obtain Harmony or anything close to it. It is a dream that just produces a boring game. Look at FFXIV, jobs are near harmonious but overall they feel so close that their identities are sku'ed. The type of balance you and Seha are suggesting will either create a dull and boring game or is impossible.


You are right I misspoke, I meant the strongest for the content that melees can fight not strongest overall.

I think that if you nerf BLU enough to remain viable but still be weaker than its current form, people will start thinking about what they invite. People will not think on their feet if there are no changes to the game.




It would be a change in Meta so it is something we can only assume.

Let's just say you remove BLU from the game in its current state. Then you would need to focus on using other Melees. Obviously NIN is going to come out first since it has survivability and deals great damage. Thing is then if you are bringing Ninja you need to Haste cap them, you need to haste cap any DD. RDM and BRD will then start to show up in parties since they are actually needed. GEO will still be just as strong and COR will still be just as strong as well but you will want to meet haste cap while capping pdif so you will want another support to cap haste.

The point I'm trying to make that there really is no other alternative that can create the same situation that having a BLU does. Party compositions will change and maybe even strategies.

I also don't necessarily think BLUs strength is in its defensiveness but rather a culmination of of all that it can do. I personally think their ability to Haste cap them and their whole group limits party compositions.

I apologize if I haven't been clear: I'm not saying that BLU's ability to be more defensive than other DDs isn't an issue at this time. I already refuted your entire post saying exactly this but I'll reiterate: the game's main flaws come from the fact that battles are balanced toward playing extremely defensively. This is not necessary to make engaging combat. BLU's defensive capabilities would be less influential in the choice of DDs if the severity of party damage was lessened (not removed, for glaringly obvious reasons) to the point where other jobs were not put into 1 shot risk or immediate danger after taking a single AoE to the face.

Inevitably, you're going to say that this would only make BLU's lead even more dramatic since they'd require no support at all, and you'd be right. THe easiest solution to this would be to add an effect to cocoon/saline coat similar to RUN's Swordplay: if you take X amount of your health in damage, the effect is pierced and negated. Say, if an attack deals 25% or more of your HP in damage, then cocoon will be dispelled. This maintains BLU's ability to be diverse and retain its identity while also providing risk and balance into its buffs.

"Oh but that would be hard to implement, just reduce cocoon or remove CDC from BLU or..." and then what? BLU then runs the risk of becoming genuinely worthless. I think every job should have a shot at being useful (yes, MNK too), which is the entire basis of my argument. The revolving door of flavor of the month is boring and overall just adds layers on top of the same ***sundae that we've been eating for years now.


I'm not saying that no adjustments should happen, I'm saying more adjustments should happen.

My recommendation would be to reduce their damage by roughly 30%. That way, a turtled up BLU is still the most durable of the DPS classes, and an offensive BLU is still ahead of a turtled up other DPS job.

This could be accomplished numerous ways, all of which are much easier and much more straightforward than changing the entirety of XI's content(which sounds more like you being desperate to keep BLU in the #1 spot than it does a realistic goal for SE).

BLU would still be the premier AOE job, would still be able to hold it's spot in lowman, but it'd lose the 'best-at-everything' status it currently has if people stood to gain significant speed by swapping out for a less durable DD.

This has been SE's problem from the very beginning - and I mean the very beginning - with FFXI, and has been the source of countless hundreds of thousands of hours of players bickering at each other.

People want to be the job with which they identify, and the game's evolution has not always allowed jobs to shine in the fashion in which they were thematically designed, be that through SE's direct action or people innovating in ways SE did not intended (blink tanking and/or bard tanking, for instance.)

It's why even once I finally caved and started playing BLU, I still never felt quite right with it. It was not within the wheelhouse of jobs with which I always identified.

So you're saying BLU gets to be a special snowflake because having 9 DD jobs that are absolutely the exact same is okay but BLU should be special? What? Do you think all the other melee DD are the same job? If so, what? If not, how does asking for some type of nerf for BLU somehow make it the same as the rest?