Dev Tracker

[Dimmauk]

I'm surprised they are nerfing already. Seems like a CS chainspell would easily take care of HF. I guess bringing jobs with multiple hit WS would help with damage. I haven't seen how blm and blu spells do. Just seems early to nerf. PD and or Alexander would help too LOL

[scaevola]

Well, I'd repeat what I said on the OF: the problem isn't that the fight as is is really hard on tanks (and by proxy healers), it's that it's that hard while giving DDs a free pass. All damage is single-target and 100k health in 15 minutes is insignificant for 3 DDs that aren't strawman-level unprepared (3 digits below combat skill cap, worse armor than aurore/perle, etc.).

If the enfire were weakened and Asuran Fists was removed so that blink-tanking would be more feasible and lesser-geared PLDs could keep up, health was left the same, and the time limit was reduced to 8 minutes from 15, would you call that "easy"?

[Selamis]

I'm surprised they are nerfing already. Seems like a CS chainspell would easily take care of HF. I guess bringing jobs with multiple hit WS would help with damage. I haven't seen how blm and blu spells do. Just seems early to nerf. PD and or Alexander would help too LOL

My first thoughts upon watching the video was A. Pld coulda used Invincible and B. Chainspell Stun would be king for this fight.

[orson]

Was the video taken down? I know that SE removed the link off the official forums but is the video still floating around?

[Dimmauk]

My first thoughts upon watching the video was A. Pld coulda used Invincible and B. Chainspell Stun would be king for this fight.

The enfire is what kills in HF mode. Still, fucking rampart, shield bash and flat blade...anything

[Kaisha]

The enfire is what kills in HF mode. Still, fucking rampart, shield bash and flat blade...anything

I'll laugh if he's not very stun resistant, and a BLU could just Sudden Lunge lock him the entire fight.

[Septimus]

I'll laugh if he's not very stun resistant, and a BLU could just Sudden Lunge lock him the entire fight.

If they made it so that the max damage per hit that you can do to him is 100 to prevent zerging, it would be a fairly huge oversight to not make him stun resistant or gain it if he is stunned too often since that is a fairly common tactic as well. (Of course, I wouldn't bet money that they gave him stun resistance...)

[Koyangi]

I'm surprised out of all the people here on BG doing things on the test server that you all haven't teamed up to try the BC so we aren't sitting here asking all these questions. Has no one on here tried the BC, or was it only allowed to be accessed by certain people?

[6souls]

Was the video taken down? I know that SE removed the link off the official forums but is the video still floating around?

[Khamsin]

Was that basically just him spamming an inventory full of dawn mulsums until it died?

[Cesaria]

Was that basically just him spamming an inventory full of dawn mulsums until it died?

Pretty much the usual BST solo "strat" for anything these days.... aaah Charm... how I miss you...

[Septimus]

News everyone!

Thanks everyone for the feedback and comments regarding our previous update.

Based on the opinions across all regions, we have decided to make multiple versions of the battlefield. Along with this change, we’ll need a few more days for development and testing, but we’re working diligently to get this in for the version update.

I’d like to outline details for the two items that will be used in conjunction with the battlefield.

• The item required to enter the battlefield
We’ll be preparing a new item that will be necessary to enter the battlefield. It will be possible to obtain this item from high level monsters in each area and the drop rate is quite high.

• The item that can be used to lower battlefield difficulty
Previously we said that we’re making adjustments so that you can win without having a full party of six members, but you can take this to mean that you’ll need the enfeeble item to achieve this.

This enfeebling-type of item exists for two reasons:
The first is the player’s choice to increase their chances of winning.
The second is to set up a countermeasure so as time passes it will be possible to clear the battlefield with fewer people. Note that it will take a bit of leg work in order to obtain the enfeeble item.

In other words, there will be two methods for challenging this battle. In exchange for spending some time preparing for the battle, you’ll have the option to increase your chances of winning. If you deem it unnecessary to obtain this item, you can take on the battle without spending any time preparing ahead of time.

In the case that you fail the battlefield, you will not need to re-obtain the entry item. Instead we might make it so you will need merit points or High Kindred’s Crests, but we are currently making adjustments in the direction of lowering the amount of merit points required to challenge it again.

[Lordender]

Genkai quests are so retarded, I hope SE stays the fuck away from that shit in XIV.

[Colenzo]

Genkai quests are so retarded, I hope SE stays the fuck away from that shit in XIV.

Pretty much, they serve no purpose at all lol. Maybe if they were challenging or something...

[Septimus]

I'm not even a Beastmaster and I fail to understand this logic.

Why is the development team heading in the direction where BST only use jug pets?

Recent content contains a lot of areas with monsters that cannot be charmed as well as confrontations where summoned pets will be dismissed upon entry. Since it would be difficult for beastmasters to perform with only their Charm ability, we wanted to make adjustments to add familiars and make it so they can select their pets based on the situation.

Of course, you will still be able to use monsters that were charmable up to now since they are still roaming the lands of Vana'diel.

Can the devs. make it easier to change between different pets?

Making it easier to change pets means a reduction in the call beast ability's duration, so this would be a difficult problem.

From the beginning, familiar pets have had strong attacks and durability, so being able to constantly summon these pets would make it so a variety of monsters could be defeated with only a pet. Also, depending on the situation, if beastmasters were able to constantly change pets, it would make it possible for them to do everything.

We would like more damage dealing pets, instead of tanking pets, so that they can be more useful in parties.

When adding new pets, we design them by adding a special feature to them such as high attack or high defense. In the future we will be adding more pets, and among these new ones there will be an opportunity to introduce some strong attacking pets.

OK, so recent content doesn't have charmable mobs, so they are focusing on jug pets. Are they not aware that they are the ones making the content, and therefor could actually put charmable mobs in it and not make charmed pets deapawn with confrontation status?

I could be wrong since I am not a Beastmaster and haven't known any professional ones for years, but I was under the impression that jug pets were weaker than regular mobs of the same level. Has this changed with the newer pets, or are they full of shit about "strong attacks and durability"?

[Forte]

I'm not even a Beastmaster and I fail to understand this logic.



OK, so recent content doesn't have charmable mobs, so they are focusing on jug pets. Are they not aware that they are the ones making the content, and therefor could actually put charmable mobs in it and not make charmed pets deapawn with confrontation status?

I could be wrong since I am not a Beastmaster and haven't known any professional ones for years, but I was under the impression that jug pets were weaker than regular mobs of the same level. Has this changed with the newer pets, or are they full of shit about "strong attacks and durability"?

Shocking. SE doesn't know how to play their own fucking game.

I'm glad I'm banned from the forums, because otherwise I'd be tempted to try to once again sane and rationally explain how retarded they are.

[Xantavia]

From what I can recall, jug pets 76+ seem to be equal to a EM charmable mob. Where jugs used to be more of an emergency way to distract the mob while trying to charm something, they are now a powerful force to reckoned with. With the increase of pet enhancing gear now too, jugs have gotten even stronger. I personally find it sad, since my fondest memories of the job were the crazy charm/leave fights against NM's where death was a simple mischarm away. All these new bst just seem to dual-wield pet -pdt axes and toss a sheep at the enemies while spamming biscuits.

[arus2001]

New jugs seem better than those of yesteryear, yeah.

Overall, I kind of look at SE's attention to BST similar to their disdain for RDM. Put enough charmable mobs in the area of a big bad NM and BST can basically throw them endlessly at it, either letting the pet die or releasing just before it does so it can recover and be ready for a recharm later. Charm has a relatively quick reuse timer, and while fails happen, this isn't much of a risk when dealing with things without enhanced movement speed and/or easy to kite around objects pinning style. Since Snarl's implementation, throwing a jug in now and then to shed the enmity gained from progressive use of Fight can also up the BST's longevity (often alongside Utsusemi). Start multiplying BSTs and it begins to get easier, since native mobs in the 90s will probably be boasting 6k HP or more compared to, I think, Nazuna's 4.5k. Back to Charm, though, unlike SMN there is no MP cost involved in summoning and maintaining the pet. Jugs, with their added freedoms, do have a gil and timer cost. PUPs and DRGs are timer-based, but they're also on the fragile side with the latter having little control. +Charm gear and level progression also gives Charm nice durations on charmed pets, maybe not enough for some VW fights, especially if trying to max lights, but still a good portion.

Personally, I wouldn't be against keeping a charmed pet when entering confrontation status, but the question is what happens once it uncharms? You can't normally interact with other mobs, and while SE could put a hidden status to using Charm that could circumvent this, it doesn't solve the problem of the BST getting an entirely new local pet if the first one dies or despawns. This puts them back to using jugs, which kind of veers back to the balance concept between costs and performance. In scenarios where Confrontation status is involved, the BST just mainly winds up saving a bit of gil for a dumb pet that does little more than auto-attack on command. With enough time and pets, this is usually enough to win most FFXI encounters.

I don't lament Charm not being the BST's focus these days, but SE could do a better job on the jugs they're getting as a compensation.

[Cesaria]

It's a combination of jug pets improving and there being a huge range of pet PDT down gear that's available now. Back at 75 cap our best DD jug was Lars, but with the defense of a cabbage and quite hard to get hold of at times... our best defensive jug was still the old faithful of Carrie - not awesome. They've upped the jug-ante no end yep, and some cheap to synth, easily accessible pets with good HP who can take a hit and give one out in the form of things like Nazuna (although I fucking hate that sheep cos the char model's so huge) and then Gerard (who at least has a cool name) made jug-pet bombing things easier... then the reward changes where the amount of HP healed by pet food increased drastically, even with a mediocre reward set, and then dawn mulsums - well it's changed BST completely. When you add in the fact that dual pet PDT axes are one of, if not the most, easy of the magian elemental paths to do, then giving BST an evasion tank in the form of Yuly - jug pets utterly utterly dominate now. While they needed buffing - they got crack, steroids and their weetabix. It's led to a lot of bandwagonning from idiots with, being frank, too much gil and no friends who can now call an entire rainbow of disposable friends with their Brogames gold card and chuck gil at everything that they can't get support to kill - with no skill, no expertise, no anything really - just chucking consumables at a mob and hiding behind snarl.

As for how I feel about it - I bloody hate what's happened to the job. It's just become the ranger of pet jobs - stand back and throw gil at the problem, and personally I think a lot of the skill's gone out of it. I dumped millions into my charm set, and still had it nowhere near where I was 100% happy with it. I didn't use jugs to 75, apart from the odd disposable creature to get its arse chewed on instead of my own as I ran for my life - it was part of the fun of BST, those narrow scrapes where you made it to a zone line or finally landed charm with 30HP remaining... and some of those occasions where me and my husband ended up howling with laughter at how spectacularly we'd died, or nearly died were the funnest around.

While charm is, yes, MP and gil-cost free - the trade off for that was always the mischarm factor. Carbuncle is never going to get pissed off at you and suddenly decide he'd rather eat your face off than the mob you're sending him to his doom towards... your automaton isn't going to suddenly go all apeshit and start trying to kill you (although PUPs have the overload issue as their risk factor - and you could argue SMN has HP as theirs), whereas although potentially you've got an entire ecosystem of pets at your disposal - there's always the risk that you'll fuck up and end up with the monster you're fighting, the mob you've just dropped charm on and all its buddies, plus everything else you've aggroed as sneak and invis got knocked off when you took hits all wanting to get to know your innards intimately - hence good career BSTs dropping gil on charm setups to try to minimise these kind of incidents - but by heck was it fun when you survived one, cleaned up the mess you'd made of pissed off mobs and resumed a fight with some stability and comfort!

I barely play my BST anymore - I don't want to play it just by repeatedly hurling jugs at a mob. I'm thankful to SE for giving that option - but abyssea was un-charmable, FoV augment fights were un-charmable because of the confrontation status thing, and it seems they're determined to continue it into Voidwatch as well... there's NO OPTION for BSTs to charm, even if they wanted to at all - it's hit the point where you wonder why the hell they leave the job ability coded in the game at all.

I don't see SE wanting to return BST to what it was - and the stuff BST could solo was relatively limited really - you needed sufficient pets of a decent level and charmable, near enough to an NM that you could release them without them depopping, and even then you were up against the claim stealing issue from the get-go... so even with things like Voidwatch - what exactly would there ever be in East Ronfaure worth charming and chucking against the NM there? You'd be limited in areas that charm would be useful in anyway for fights like those, especially with the loss of voidwatcher status radius as well.

And as for the jug selection - turtle... going to piss everyone off with the size of the character model (see why I hate the fucking sheep), frog - you're taking the piss seriously... like I'm really going to sit there with a fucking frog and feel good about myself - if I want to do that, I'll be a twat and stand there spamming the NIN job emote for free.

[Colenzo]

ok whats your point?