July 2016 Version Update

Low tier content with a overwhelming advantage to jobs using piercing weapons is an outlier, not a good representative of typical shouts.

+1

If anyone argues stating that 2hd can't DD or can't load up on -def gear stop playing with them. They obviously don't know what they are doing.

I do agree with many people stating blu will be the quicker grab for a DD slot, not because it deals the most dmg, but because it, what I like to call "lazy gaming." Assuming the blu isn't an asshat he will erase/def buff/haste himself and the group. This gives the mages the ability to sit back and do nothing but run out of mp using cure 4 for some reason.

That doesn't mean traditional setups don't/won't work.

Some guy on Asura was shouting in town the other day about how drk can't take a hit, I shrugged if off for a while, but he kept going. I finally sent him a /tell saying all the options drk has to be able to take a hit including the highest hp pool. He continued to argue with me, I finally just said you need to get out from under the rock you have been hiding under.

Seriously though, this isn't 2006, drk only has 3 bad points to them, low level of innate acc, the need for a mage to buy the spell haste, and someone to cast erase/-na spells. Really not that hard to work with.


I have been in groups like that, I leave after the first fight. Not wasting my time with a group that can't do a simple spell that last for 3 minutes without any duration gear and only cost 40 mp. Most fights last less than 5 minutes, means you cast at start and once in the middle.

On a final note, I have been guilty many times over of saying jobs need a nerf. I feel certain jobs do, and others need a buff, but that can be deduced to me being biased about some jobs. However I have been learning to work with having a blu in group 90% of the fights, haste 1 and MG give me capped haste on drk, or brd and MG give me capped haste. I will take the free def buff and roll in tp gear and not worry about -dt set as much, that is of course assuming I don't have to actually tell the PuG blu to use diffusion MG like I have to do most the time for some reason. (I still think cdc spam is a ***way to kill things, learn to chain ws people...)

The 100% reality is you can still play the jobs you want and be effective in 90% of the games content if you get a solid group of players that not only have the gear but play to their full potential.

+1

Hold on guys, not so fast.

This thread is worse than the July update...

This is what extrapolating one very small example and generically applying it across the board looks like.

Give it a few hours. It will still throw a few BLUs in there, cuz why not? I'm glad to see other jobs getting an advantage, though.

There will always be some job imbalance, and somebody left sinking in the deep end but I'd rather have that than the other option: every class is the same, which is what a lot of MMOs do.

At the end of WoW's Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard apparently got tired of balancing druid (a regen healer), shaman (an aoe healer), discipline priest (an absorb-heavy healer) and holy paladin & holy priest (both pure numbers healers).

Their solution was to neuter the potency of all the job's flavors so that everyone pretty much became pure-numbers healers.

In an ideal Vana'diel, it would all be balanced and have flavor but you can't have both without someone suffering.

That's not to excuse the current "balance", it's inexcusably lopsided.

I only get praise on my DRK. But over the last 2 years I've barely played it, because there's no content people really want one. I could take DRK to my events, but it's not feasible. I have COR, and SCH soon. Last time I used DRK regularly was for Delve, because it was built for any DDs at that point.

My H2H damage still sucks.

/salty tears

Not this again. What exactly do you thing Blu's melee? Aside from Ambuscade and T1-2 Reisenjima NM's, there's not much. And usually, when we're fighting a target Blu can melee, we have DRK's and/or WAR's and/or THF's there too. So what's the big deal? As far as I can tell, people shout for DD on my server, not BLU (unless Blu is needed for a very specific reason like AoE nukes/sleep or Blank Gaze)

I dunno, I have two afterglows on BLU and spend all my endgame time on all my other jobs.

I guess it's just because blu is ugly.

Thanks Thorva. I'm not like that guy who says "DRK can't take a hit", because I know we can! I've been the last DD standing on occasion and tanked something while everyone unweakened. I do hate that I have to repeatedly ask for basic things like haste to be effective. As for being good defensively, I need to talk to Urteil again and see what he's doing with DRK, because I know he makes it work no matter what.

Welcome to everyone that has ever made a Yagrush, or Idris. Or back in the day, Brd with four songs

Someone make a "2016 FFXI DD Tier List Thread", so I can relive my wonderful days of Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition.

1. BLU
2. Dabu
3. De Da Bu Die
4. DNC
5. BLU

Apparently there's people who think that Blu's in 119 AF and a couple of Vampirisms are being invited to melee WoC.

Actually drk only needs acc and mages that play their jobs right, we didn't need this stupid utterly useless attack buff. I am drk and I think it was by far one of the most ignorant ideas SE every came up with.

Sam might have got left out on the attk update, but sam can chain serious sc dmg. The only jobs getting the shaft in dmg are drg and mnk. I highly doubt bumping up attack will fix those jobs. (However I kinda want to see what an AM3 AG Vere mnk does to be honest, I bet that white dmg is pretty solid)

Why is DRK being discussed as if its always been the red headed *** child of FFXI. Having done end game at every inception since release, every job and every strategy has had a chance to shine.

Are we forgetting how AV was first downed without using wall locks? Yup that's right, it was a zerg. Which job excelled at that zerg? Was it BLU? Nope. Was it THF? Nope not even SAM. It was all Soul Eater Kraken club darks. Didn't have Kraken Club? That's fine a lvl 50 Merc Kris got the job done too. Even end game Dynamis when Dynamis Lord "was hard" it was still DRK that was highly desired. Kirin zerg time? Better get some DRKs. There was a time DRK was the absolute most broken job in the game and while I wish this could be an "all jobs are created equal" game, it isn't.

Having to be diverse and not stuck on the same job has arguably giving me and many others more enjoyment than trying to do things "one way", even if I wish my Koga SAM could touch more content.

To further the above there was also a time that DRK/NIN was a beast of a tank the same way NIN/DRK was. DRK used to be a very diverse job and still can be today, but the players today that know how to play the job don't show the average player of what it can accomplish with what it has.

Anyways, to finally put my point across. Smite is not ground breaking, and while it's welcome to all jobs who can use it, it's not likely to make anyone bring a 2-hander over a decently geared BLU who knows how to use the job for "most" (but definitely not all) fights.

The main problem with 2-handers isn't the damage output, it's being susceptible to status ailments. BLU is extremely versatile and can continue to deal damage and cure ailments with minimal support. No one wants to bring anything extra to make something work, so you find 2 BLUs, GEO, PLD, WHM, and anything as sixth and you're ready. It's lazy, but it's tried and true so people will do it to save time.

Dual-wielders like THF and DNC are lucky, because they have healing waltz. Yes, it doesn't cure the most annoying ailments, but it's better than nothing, and you can do healing waltz back-to-back. Again, 2-handers could just bring Remedy and Panacea for the same effect. At the same time, those jobs can heal themselves, and have higher evasion for shadow tanking on /nin.

1-handers natually have more accuracy, and they skillchain easier with each other. It's not impossibe to skillchain with 2-handers, but more people have BLU and THF and know what to do immediately. With a 2-hander you have to look it up and say .. ok, well we need this, and this. Again, it's not impossible, it's doable, but most leaders would bring 2 BLUs and be content with that.

Survival is the biggest thing. Higher content doesn't use melee DDs at all, and prefer a SCH MB setup. That's fine, it gives SCH and BLMs a place to be useful. What would be cool is if we had mobs who were very resistant to skillchains and magic damage. Then guess what? You bring the most physically imposing DD you can find.

But that's not all, what about fights like the old Dynamis? Remember when we had to fight hordes of mobs at a time, and they could easily kill the BLM? We had Paladin assists and a bunch of DDs killing them off. It was quicker and safer than rounding them up for an AGA. The type of content effects the DDs we bring, and most content lean towards us needing skillchains from SCHs, or BLUs.

What about fights that last a long time? As someone said, most fights last about five minutes these days. Wouldn't 2-handers be more welcome to a fight which lasted 20 minutes? Or do you think everyone would still bring BLUs?

I like versatility. I like bringing different jobs for the situation. I don't want to play DRK 24/7, but it would be nice if I went to an event and they were like.. "i don't care what, just bring ya strongest DD". Is that too much to ask? Am I seen as a complainer because I want to do more with my main job? Aside from a couple niche uses.

Because they are overpowered and just got a mini buff with the wardrobes. Being able to pretty much endlessly spam healing items on your pet is pretty broken if you ask me. That's like a player being able to spam Vile Elixirs nonstop and solo a bunch of BCNMs, do you think that's fair?

I have been utterly crushing things on drk since I made AG Rag, and after I made AG Apoc I have outlasted pld on several occasions and went to -dt, enmity+, and spammed cata with seigan/3eye, dread spikes, drain, stun, weapon bash etc... This has saved the group several times and got us wins. The only bad thing is when I run into a mob with dread spikes or charm, things go real bad, real fast.

There is plenty of nm AoE that causes 2.5k+ dmg to everyone in range and wipes all the DD, but here drk is swinging away still and has plenty of hp left over. (Lots of nm's I ds/vs drain2 and single cast drain 3 to keep mp in the 4k range, not like I am getting hit for more than 4k dmg by anything anyway.) So I literally full time 4k hp by anything that doesn't resist my drains, if they resist my drains I swap to a hybrid set and swing away.

Just swapping out 1 tp ring for d-ring will do you justice. All these people farm up d-ring and never even use it. The ring is for all jobs, not just pld. Can't tell you how many times I have out lived people on cor because I simply swap to -dt gear, and rdm with d-ring just isn't even fair. Telling you, if I had better AoE dmg on rdm, I would solo mass pull/AoE on rdm and sell exp/cp slots.

I am dead serious though, I actually have a list of people's name I will never invite to a pt. I know I have bad days and I play like crap at 3 a.m. after 16hour binge and running low on caffeine, but simple basic things will boost your win/loss ratio just by using common sense. You don't even have to have decked out hq abj, all +1 accessories 100% vorseals, idris geo, yag whm with 4 different AG weapons. Just use common sense. I.E. don't throw melee at Crom Dubh.... Good Lord how many times have I seen shouts for melee on that thing. Seriously a pld and cor can kill that faster than throwing 3 AG melee at it, why? Because a cor will stay the hell out of range and still be able to DD. That is assuming the cor doesn't think they need to melee....

I've heard great things about Drain III, which I've yet to get. This gives me some hope, thanks for sharing your recent experiences. Hopefully I can be like you and have fun playing my main job in the game we have now.

For years I've been able to keep debuffs off myself with these.

While it isn't a cure all, it takes off most of what has been the most annoying so I don't feel like BLUs have an upper hand there. On slow... maybe.

If they are going to give DRK a bone it should be to bring back the spirit of what DRK zerging used to be... a mini but potent job ability with the old Soul Eater formula on a 10 min recast/45sec duration would be nice. You wouldn't break anything end game, and you would make mid game seem faster/easier.

Thorva you are ranting like a mug. A good read on lunch breaks. Keep at it.

I'm known as that "amazing" everything and the entire server as well as my close friends who have seen what my other jobs can do still ask me to come blu 100% of the time.

Look, the point is Blu is a hybrid job. DD's are there to do nothing else but DD. They should have the advantage in damage output. They don't. At best they are slightly (2-3%) ahead of equally geared, skilled Blus.

Nightfire and Draylo, I'm not calling for nerfs to Blu so don't jump the gun. I'm calling for buffs for the rest of the DD jobs to give them at least a 5% lead in damage.

I don't believe in nerfs. Its like demoting an employee because another employee deserves/needs a promotion.

Smite is typical SE.
S ome
M eaningless
I diotic
T errible
E effort

Panacea can take off slow, its bought off the ROV moogle or you can get a stack every month from ambuscade. Idk why nobody carries them around.

Especially useful for when you get hit by all stats down too, you can will it away in a second.

So using panacea to remove all buffs and spam them when necessary on your main isn't broken, but doing the same thing to keep your pet alive via hp meds is.