Sic And Reward Radius Nerf Vs LARGE Scale Mobs

Before I respond I'd like to state that I am not asking for a SMN nerf or any other job nerf for that matter. I have leveled and played all jobs to some extent (some less than others; I'll never make a good SMASH EVERYTHING Warrior) and I do enjoy a large majority of them in various ways. That being said...


My pet can take a beating, but it's on a timer for resummoning. Yours takes seconds, and is highly disposable in group content. Mine dies to a death/doom move or gets stoned or amnesia'd, I can't just desummon and resummon to have a fresh, un-statused pet.


I'm not in disagreement with this point to an extent; BST probably does have more DT options. However, you can make a 50% PDT set with SMN, just as you can with BST. You've got 20% of it alone on an Earth Staff. The catch? You have to sacrifice pet stats, including Perpetuance cost. Our catch? Pet accuracy, pet DT (suddenly our tanky pets aren't nearly as tanky, and see above about disposable pets), anything pet related. Our pet starts whiffing and good luck having them obtain aggro again without dying first while turtling up.


I'm in agreement with you that SMN should have some AoE options, but let's look at everything else they have. Moderately good buffs (particularly Hastega II, though I'll admit some of the 75 era ones need a higher cap to adjust to the current times), good single-target damage of various elements and types (physical in Flaming Crush, Volt Strike, and PClaws, magic in a lot of different moves), disposable pets, your subjob isn't tethered to your pet (BST is forced into /NIN or /DNC the majority of the time to provide additional pet stats), and you have the ability to move around and fight from a safe distance.

What I'm saying likely won't change anything, as the devs have spoken and we're stuck with what we've got. But my point remains: If they're going to do the "we want there to be an element of risk" thing, then they need to do it equally, not arbitrarily. If there's going to be an element of risk, it needs to focus on those who are on the backline as well as those who are forced to the front.

SMN's are glass cannons as are their pets. They die so fast it's not even funny. Imagine a BLM level defense and HP, yeah that's avatars. The least defensive BST pet has over 4000HP and decent defense along with far better -DT. RNG's suffer from all sorts of issues, namely they aren't pets. Pets in FFXI use monster calculations for damage and that damage formula heavily favors those monsters. BLM's are pretty bleh without a SC to MB off of, which takes us to the real OP job, SCH. Mechanically SCH is fine, but SE really shouldn't of given them the ability to create SC's with their spells, or should of made it cost 2 stratagems rather then one. A SCH will eventually run out of stratagems but by that time the NM is dead or very close to it. I'm not sure how SE could balance that without breaking the game though as melee is simply not an option on anything over 135 and only barely plausible at 135.

As for your comment regarding you being forced into the frontline, this is on purpose and SE has stated this multiple times. BST was designed to fight next to it's pet, standing right next to the WAR's, SAM's, DRG's, NIN's, THF's, and MNK's. BLMs, SCH's, and WHM's were designed to fight from far away. RNG's, BLU's, COR's and GEO's were designed to fight from both depending on the situation, though some favor front rather then back or vice-versa. BST is on most of the heavy DD gear with lots of defensive stats, I know this because I look at my WAR's "please don't kill me" set and I see "BST" on those pieces. Those jobs you moaned about are all on the mage cloth sets which lack many defensive stats and are paper thin. GEO's have to really work their options in order not to be splattered all over the place. SE has gone to extraordinary lengths to enable BST's to fight with their pets. They have made entire gear sets that are nothing but +stats to both master and pet simultaneously. You have an entire 119 Abjuration set and several Escha sets practically devoted to BST. SE handed you every tool you could possible need to fight with your pet, giving your pet the same stats as a fully geared 119 DD while also giving them 2~3x the HP pool of that same DD. And all BST's did was find ways to abuse it. Completely ignoring your own stats you instead focused everything on buffing your pet and sending it off into the distance while you stayed nice and safe, eating Cheetos's and watching TV. You even gimped the *** out of yourself by off handing a low level axe just to get your ready timer lower to spam more obscene TP moves. You had zero interest in meleeing with your pet, you never gave it a moment's thought. You wanted safe easy wins and SE has reacted by forcing you to now stand in range. SMN to the contrary is paper thin and has all the melee potential of a BLM. Some notable SMN's have attempted melee builds in the past, and while being "fun" they are very weak and get splattered by anything notable.

I'm not accusing you of crying for smn nerfs. Not at all! But, some things to keep in mind though is that i am not calling for homogenization. So that being said, your lack of flexibility to call beast is probably the balancing part for how sturdy your pet is, and how you can remove statuses from it via gear that augments reward (not all statuses, i know). Where my only option is to sack mine and resummon (not always an option, ie: soloing).

The other other side of the coin to the disposable pet is that the master can't do anything more then pet commands or you'll be tanking. Send your pet to somthing, and eating food will have it turn to you, it's a bit ridiculous! And for the -pdt part, it helps, but not as much when you have paper for armor and much lower hp. the back line risk is just that, when you can't back line "enough" you are one flat cookie.

But that's a really old debate, its already been beaten to death.

The interesting bit to me is the rest of the things. What does a bst bring to the table? Dmg, yes, then what? Super good AoE! Check! But that's kinda it is it not? If there was such a thing for BST for their pet to have a form of "avatar's favor" to them that even if it only apply to the master could help with gearing or even make interesting gear choices...

Ex:
Tiger: when you are in range to be able to use ready commands... Gives you Acc/Atk buff that's a non-HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE % of your Pet's Acc/Atk.

Crab: When you stand behind it, it has a form of Cover that take a % of the dmg you would take to be taken by the crab instead. (So you could focus on master dd gear and using your pet for defense)

Things like that... I highly doubt we'll see anything like that but...

As a SMN, in those situations I can bring buffs and I can provide an avatar's favor to the group I am with and that does not impair the dmg I can bring with me. I'm boned in the AoE dept though. I'd be ok with the lack of AoE if the rest of the skill we do have would be brought up to snuff.. In today's world Titan's Stoneskin is really lacking, Fenrir's acc buff in perfect condition is like +15 (wow!) And if only SMN had 100jp and 1200jp gifts that actually did anything... heh...

Let's all just level BLU right? :P

BST's pets are amazing tanks, especially with multiple of them. BST's tend to group together into pet focused parties and bring a COR and GEO to help them out. BST x 4 + COR + GEO was actually a thing for awhile, though on anything over 130 they need a PLD + WHM. See I was that GEO on many occasions, which is how I know all these posters are bullshiting us about what a gimp BST was capable of. There is a strat where you can use companions roll to give the pets a pretty good Regen / Regain effect. It dramatically extends their life when stacked with reward. Also BST has Killer Instinct, which can be incredibly potent depending on what your fighting. It's basically a "Circle" ability but it use's the killer trait of your pet. The effect is identicle to the ones that DRG / DRK / PLD and SAM get and lasts 3min with a 5min recast. -15% Damage taken, +15% Damage Dealt and +15% Intimidation rate. So if the BST has the lizard pet out, he can give the party a "Vermin Circle" effect for 3min that enhances their effectiveness against Vermin. And since that lizard pet would naturally have a bonus against Vermin there isn't really a negative to using them. Same with using a vermin pet against plants and so forth.

But no, *** working with people or in a party, we need more ready Razor Fang spam at 20 feet with Blackbeard.


People are and the effect is hilarious. BLU isn't a job that can be learned quickly or easily. People can learn the spells and then get the gear, but putting them together in the right combinations for the right situations is an entirely different matter. People who are already very knowledgeable, mechanic wise, won't have much of an issue but those hordes of players who flock to the FoTM won't bother learning all that and end up falling flat on their face, especially in party play which is very different from solo play.

You telling us that we don't understand game mechanics is rich considering that employing a fencer build means some very significant sacrifices need to be made to pet damage output, specifically the all-important power and frequency of ready attacks.

Kind of a big deal given how inconsequential pet white damage is.

Its a trade-off that in 99% of cases is simply inferior and less effective than gearing primarily for the pet. The plain fact is that all BST's most powerful JA's effect the pet alone, so trying to play as a gimp WAR (and how often do you see that job get invited to anything these days) is just dumb.

I mean... technically Charmer's Merlin does have Fencer+1 on it...



I'm guessing you mean after the range reduction? Although, even after we don't use either of those jobs and I don't think there are any pet focused groups doing the stuff we do. I don't know what Minions has been up to though.


Why do people keep saying 20 feet? It was 30 yalms. I know because you could stand totally out of range of Oreo's AoE while beating his face in with a Tiger. It was fun.

Fact check:
Fencer requires single wielding. Charmer's Merlin is not an iLevel axe. The range was 15 yalms from the pet.

If we're discussing BST melee damage, which is what we were, then you will be using Fencer. Dual wielding a chamers will nerf your melee damage so badly you might as well just not engage.

Here is the original replied to text


If your not meleeing with your pet then you can offhand the charmers since your really just a SMN +2 then.

And yes you suck at game mechanics. How can we expect you to understand them when you can't even bother learning reading comprehension.

No serious BST would ever full-time a Merlin off-hand! You either macro it in or you don't bother.

The whole point is that the enhanced TP-gain from a fencer build is worthless when the master's TP gets reset everytime a ready command is issued!

The bottom line being if the pet is doing all the work, why waste a useful offhand weapon-slot on a useless shield!

If BSTs were to play all out MELEE (and screw the pet).. They might as well play....WARRIOR.

I guess koalas don't understand sarcasm. Rich to criticise other's reading comprehension when sarcasm flew over your fluffy head.

BLU is the hardest job to master. BST is a piss easy job for shite players.... You're like a broken record.

Chill, eat some leaves. This is just game however you spin it.

Oh dear, you're back to insulting people based on their avatars.

How scathing.

^ Dancing ladybird thing to the rescue? I'm sure koalas are more than capable of defending themselves and not need the protection from an insect.

I am after all... Just a bottle of sugary black currant water.

This is circular thinking. "BST does bad melee because I'm purposely playing in a way that ruins it's melee damage".

Again you guys seem to have a problem with reading comprehension.

~If~ you wanted to play BST in such a fashion that your actually dealing damage, then you won't be switching your weapons out nor dual wielding. This mode might actually be useful if you weren't in an "easy mode" BST focused party and were with more traditional setups instead. You know, the pleebs and unwashed mass's you thought you were better then.

He proposed a melee focused BST, which is actually what SE designed the job for. BST + Pet fighting together on the target. They have even released a ***ton of gear for it. BST's have chosen to focus exclusively on the pets damage, to the complete detriment of their own. Upon further exploration we can see that BST's are doing this because the pets are far more powerful then regular players and this power discrepancy can be easily exploited for "easy mode" FFXI. SE's update was designed to balance that exploitation by forcing BST's to be within the aoe range of the targets. BSTs, now being denied their "easy mode FFXI" are whining, screaming and crying tears of hate filled blood. Experienced BST's will grudgingly adapt by turning off the TV, putting away the Cheeto's, focusing on the game and paying attention to the NM's position and how to best survive. Inexperienced BST's will just fail and wipe, get pissed, go play BLU and fail even more at that, then throw their hands up in the air and scream "FFXI is dieng, SE hates us".

*grabs some popcorn*
so apples or pears, atleast we all can agree the radius should be tweaked a little, but its not the end of the world every player by now should have a -dt set by now to deal with any kind of moves that hurt the player, and since we kinda went off topic who misses the old charm and rotate on nms, shame cant really do it any more,

1. Why would anyone want to play their job in a deliberately sub-optimal manner?

2. There's nothing cheap about playing a pet job by using the pet to its best advantage. That's the point of a "pet job"!

3. A pet is basically a weapon. Its effectiveness comes from how well geared the player is, and how well they utilize their abilities and the overall game mechanics. There is no distinction in dealing damage directly rather than indirectly via the pet.

Sorry but I'd like to briefly interrupt this productive thread in a futile attempt to spread smiles all across Vana'diel, and in hopes of the second coming of Altana:

So you finally bothered to actually read what the side topic was about before letting verbal diarrhea escape your fingers, we're making progress.

Masrur made a statement regarding BST's going full melee, even as a bad joke, and then revealed his ignorance of game mechanics. I corrected this statement and demonstrated some basic math backing up that correction. The statement, was at no point in time, about whether a BST should or should not do melee damage. That is a straw man your adding in an attempt to discredit someone who's opinion you really don't like.

BST's abused a game mechanic related to pets. Originally SE updated pets so that their damage would be sufficient to supplement the BST's. BST's discovered that if they optimized only the pets damage they could stay safely out of range and by-pass a game balance mechanic. SE didn't intend for this to happen, they never planned on BST's focusing solely on their pets. Seeing what this unintentional consequence did to the game SE had two choices, nerf jug stats back to their previously low stats, or modify the master such that they can't bypass game balance mechanics.

And before another "but but but but BLM!!!! SMN!!! SCH!!!" leaves your diarrhea infused mouth, those jobs were designed to be played from the back and are functioning as intended. SE has gone so far as to state this as a reason BLU's weren't getting the newer, more powerful, nuking gear.

OMG it's spreading!

Not sure about you but I NEVER seriously meleed with my pet after level 60 that was my level. I would throw a pet at a vt, stay the hell far away from it and pray I didn't get hit with paralyze or something worse.

https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Valorous_Mail

The valorous set is really good even as is... will hardly leave you gimped for swinging dat ***... I mean that axe. And with the amount of pet stats you can get in augs could make for a good master / pet hybrid set... and you even have -pdt on it. There is acc on all pieces save for the pants.

Anyways, even without this set... What is stopping BSTs from having a TP set to TP in, a WS set to WS in, and a Ready set to Ready in?

Time to stop crying, and strat swinging :P

That's because you were soloing at a time when the game was designed to not let you do that. Everyone else was in a party with a healer and a tank, or just melee burning things. You chose to do everything "solo". SE never intended for the job to be a "solo" job, their incompetence at pet implementation resulted in that situation.

There is the Despair Armor Set which also has a ***ton of master and pet stats. Then we have an entire abjuration set dedicated to melee BST.

https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Emicho_Armor_Set

Every single piece has really good offensive melee stats for the master along with really good offensive melee/magic stats for the pet. SE has created all the tools for BST's to actually participate in end game content with other people, but instead they wanted to abuse it and cheese everything. That resulted in a smack down from SE. I don't know how much louder SE can be with it's intentions for BST's to be meleeing with their pets and not playing Summoner God Mode Edition. SMN has a ~30s limit on Blood Pact for a reason.

Keep it civil.

Emicho is mediocre. Acro/Taeon with high augments has better pet-focussed stats which will do more to mitigate damage taken by the master that any number of armour stats. Hint: Pet.acc is critical.

Not to mention that Valorous is easy to get for the most part and utterly destroys Emicho.

As per usual, your post shows utter ignorance of the subject at hand.

BST's stacking pet bonuses at the expense of master stats is as much of an exploit as NIN's using shadows to tank. It's a legitimate use of mechanics that results in a situation SE's planners didn't expect and howls of outrage from the stroppy kindergartner contingent of the userbase.

The result being a "quick-and-dirty" fix that causes more problems than it solves. Which is really unwise given that FFXI is now in the golden years of its service life and could use retaining players more than ever.

What's most laughable to me is your contention that BST's were somehow guilty of excluding other players from content. As if you couldn't level the same complaint about nuke-heavy setups excluding melee players to the exact same extent!

As I wrote earlier, the playerbase will always gravitate towards the safest and most efficient path to victory. Was it really so problematic that pet-burns were as effective as SC+MB nuke-fests?

No, it wasn't. Because an easy application of critical thought shows that the commonality between the two is that both methods circumvent the same issue - low survivability/high maintenance cost for melee jobs in proximity to HQ targets.

Making stuff more "inclusive" would simply require giving players a concrete advantage in bringing more varied jobs, because otherwise whatever happens to be most efficient at a given point in time is inevitably going to be band-wagoned to the detriment of everything else.

Preach.

Unless gear allows Master AND pet to achieve 1200+ accuracy, expecting a Master to effectively and efficiently melee alongside their pet is moot. When BLU, SAM, DNC's accuracy is easily 1200+ and yet they still need Hunters Roll and Indi-Torpor, expecting a BeastMASTER at 1050 acc and pet at 1250 acc (that's after Drachen Roll and the other roll being Beast Roll... Companion Roll is a terrible choice) to actually melee alongside pet....I would happily let SE scale down ready moves in order to achieve this.

Valorous - depending on what aug it gives BOTH the master and pet, it may well allow the Master to actually melee alongside pet.

As highlighted by many, for a BeastMASTER to make full use of Fencer JA, they will have to forgo Charmer's Axe, which from a pure damage output perspective makes utterly no sense. Therefore duel wielding is still a given and renders Fencer 'useless'.

Saeval's dislike of BST is obvious, they believe the job is for lazy people eating crisps (personally I prefer eating Walkers sensations than Cheetos...) mashing macros and that the job is still overpowered.

Majority of BST have accepted the current play style, are adjusting gear and just frankly getting on with things. Unfortunately some players like Saeval feels the need to constantly belittle players of Beastmaster and the job itself... Which has gotten to the point of being spiteful and petty.

Unfortunately, from my testing on Valorous, any "pet" path augments will only offer up the Utility slot to the master, the rest is always a Pet: Augment. So you might get DA or STP, but things like Acc, Atk, etc will be locked to the pet if you're on the Familiar path. Melee path won't give any pet stats, either. So once more, Valorous has separated rather than hybridized the job.