Comments from the Devs

[Eagleheart]

AGAIN?!

Jesus Christ, SE, you seriously don't want my money. Ever. Again.

How hard is it to make a cool-looking class that uses a lance and jumps on shit decent?! Is it just me? Are my expectations about a job that a company creates being somewhat useful just out of line with today's thinking?

Yoshi P acknowledged DRG is too weak, and intends to buff its damage output in 1.22b. (O.o) I was glad to hear that, my DRG friends have been sliding into the moody DRG archetype again, and I don't really want a repeat of that from the XI years...

Or the moody Paladins (my job) for that matter. >_> Bring on 1.22b, pronto!!

[Lucavi]

Just kinda wondering how it always ends up too weak. I mean, this isn't the first time this has happened. Ah well, change is coming! Get this shit figured out before 2.0; with TERA and GW2 here, SE needs to knock it out of the park on the first swing.

[Jamison]

Tell me if I'm crazy, but I think you need melees to have some other battle mechanic that isn't damage. As some examples: each melee class has one move that mitigates or greatly reduces the effect of one particular NM move. Or locks a mob in position for 15 seconds to help directional combos. Or provides a damage shield in a particular direction from the mob to help with AoE. They could provide some bonus to the other members of the party. That would greatly encourage diversity in party make-up that is sorely lacking now.

[Raldo]

I can't speak for its damage capabilities because I rarely participate in endgame currently, but for me it's "feels" weak because its class-specific abilities are lackluster, thus leaving it in the position where any DD can do what it can, and usually more.

They need to increase the length of the surge buffs to 3 minutes and strengthen their effect. The surges are what make the class unique, and from what I've seen, people rarely use them. Upkeeping a surge effect every minute is ugh.

Again, that assessment was completely ignoring its damage capabilities. I am currently leveling LNC/DRG, so I'm not commenting from personal experience at Lv50.

[Lordender]

Just kinda wondering how it always ends up too weak. I mean, this isn't the first time this has happened. Ah well, change is coming! Get this shit figured out before 2.0; with TERA and GW2 here, SE needs to knock it out of the park on the first swing.

Lol, deep down you know the truth, you know why :D 10 years later, same problems with the same classes, a shocker.

[Lucavi]

Makes me want to shout "TEN MORE YEARS~!!" like the Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 fanboys yell, whenever I think about how Dragoon is still fucked up by SE all these years later.

[Cichy]

Melee overall are still not up to par for big mob fights.

[Corrderio]

Melee overall are still not up to par for big mob fights.

Pretty much sums up XIV endgame ATM.

As for the DRG patch, don't get your hopes up Lucavi, they said all they were considering was boosting damage from crits.

[Lucavi]

Oh, after playing GW2 and TERA all weekend, I doubt my hope will ever be up again. Still, the history of the job is awesome and I love the AF in both games, so one can keep an eyebrow raised for the future.

It would help if they actually knew what they not only wanted to do with the classes, but what the classes need within the context of the game. Either that, or learn what it takes to make an epic fight feel epic. Getting knocked on my shit by BAMs all weekend has me feeling very, very meh about these primal fights, even before touching them myself. Still, 2.0 can impress; it'll be the first PC game that SE has really made for PC, instead of PS2/3 ports. We'll see, but in the meantime, you faithfuls in game still need a few bones tossed your way to gnaw on.

[Patriarch]

AGAIN?!

Jesus Christ, SE, you seriously don't want my money. Ever. Again.

How hard is it to make a cool-looking class that uses a lance and jumps on shit decent?! Is it just me? Are my expectations about a job that a company creates being somewhat useful just out of line with today's thinking?

its af is ballin tho

[Niiro]

I can't speak for its damage capabilities because I rarely participate in endgame currently, but for me it's "feels" weak because its class-specific abilities are lackluster, thus leaving it in the position where any DD can do what it can, and usually more.

They need to increase the length of the surge buffs to 3 minutes and strengthen their effect. The surges are what make the class unique, and from what I've seen, people rarely use them. Upkeeping a surge effect every minute is ugh.

Again, that assessment was completely ignoring its damage capabilities. I am currently leveling LNC/DRG, so I'm not commenting from personal experience at Lv50.

Surges can be maintained full time without ever touching a mob.

The problem with them is simply that the only "challenge" in maintaining them is a test of your ability to divert a portion of your attention to trivial minutiae 1/min.

The boosts they offer don't need to be enhanced but the mechanics of granting/maintaining them do.

MNK on the other hand actually has a challenge to maintaining their buffs which I feel is a shitty system but for different reasons. In any fight where targets move often a few direction-missed sucker punches and you're fucked, hoping the BRD (if you have one) is going to take the time to run in and ballad you assuming he's not Minueting the WAR or any other melees because they're melees and they don't fucking need MP.

MNK rant, not overly topical:

Spoiler: show

This is beside the fact that I think the nature of the elemental fist abilities is fundamentally flawed, you can choose to increase your damage by using the element the mob is weak to or you can use the fist ability that gives the most beneficial stat bonus to your situation, if either of these criteria conflict then the usefulness of the ability overall is shot in the foot from the beginning aside from any complications maintaining MP.

At the very least they need to rework the impact the elemental effect has on the nature of your damage, as it is using an element the target is resistant to kills your damage completely. If the Fists abilities are to be useful outside of niche situations where 1) melees are viable and 2) the mob has a particular elemental weakness, they need to tone back the elemental aspect and emphasize the associated stat bonus. If your damage per fist is 100 on, say, an Earth Elemental and you use FoE it shouldn't plummet to 15, MNK is a physical DD and their damage should be predominantly physical. Having only 3 elemental fist abilities is retarded if you're going to make the chosen element such a huge factor in damage dealt because it leads to you either owning the shit out of a mob (something weak to fire) or doing mediocre-to-crap damage because there is no elemental weakness to exploit and the target resists elements you actually have (something wind based, can't use FoF or FoW, and if the mob isn't weak to Earth you might as well not use FoE either).

The decision of which ability to use should be first and foremost in the stat boost if offers with the element aspect offering a very minor boost or penalty based on the target's resistances. I should be able to use FoF when I need pure damage, FoE when I'm soloing, and FoW when I need mobility or find myself with a surplus of ATK/TP, and I should be able to do so without having these options completely taken away because of an arbitrary elemental resist.

The overall problem with melees currently boils down to a few simple concepts:
-They need to go out of their way to maintain their damage buffs
-They need to meet directional requirements that can be detrimental (going in front of a mob with a breath attack) or simply impractical due to mob movement (nvm that any mob movement cripples a melee's damage to begin with)
-They need to be able to deal enough damage to warrant the increased risk they carry by fighting withing AoE range of targets, requiring more attention from healers

ARC/THM:
-Don't need any maintenance (it's not hard to maintain MP on THM, aside from virtually always having a BRD you need to stand around waiting for recasts/hate anyway)
-Don't have restrictive requirements for combos
-Don't lose damage on mobile or kited mobs
-Usually require little to no extra healing attention

[Vuitton]

So they recognize that the only way for the vast majority of players to effectively kill Garuda is to manaburn with well geared BLM. [/U]That's progress. When you need to do fights almost 20 times to actually get a weapon you want (provided you aren't by chance luck as hell), the fight should be possible as such: easy with a skilled group working together and hard but not frustratingly difficult with a PUG. Having starting doing the primals more and more, I am becoming frustrated daily that if you don't have a ls of good players or they aren't online, you are going to be failing repeatedly and growing increasingly frustrated.

Because the majority of the playerbase have BLMs with double and triple melded gear? Get real. Almost nobody can kill Garuda with this setup.

[Lucavi]

its af is ballin tho

Not gonna lie, it really is. If looks could kill, Drg would have always been top tier, and it used to be...

I miss you, Kain.

[Elcura]

Truth

Goddamnit. I hate the state melee are in right now.

[Raldo]

Surges can be maintained full time without ever touching a mob.

The problem with them is simply that the only "challenge" in maintaining them is a test of your ability to divert a portion of your attention to trivial minutiae 1/min.

The boosts they offer don't need to be enhanced but the mechanics of granting/maintaining them do.

I didn't mean they are impossible or even difficult to maintain, I just meant that it is annoying to do so. I don't think an extension from 1 minute to 3 minutes is too much to ask. I guess I haven't experienced the effects enough to say whether or not they're very potent.

[Jamison]

What kind of things, besides dealing damage, to melees do in other MMORPG's?

[Niiro]

I didn't mean they are impossible or even difficult to maintain, I just meant that it is annoying to do so. I don't think an extension from 1 minute to 3 minutes is too much to ask. I guess I haven't experienced the effects enough to say whether or not they're very potent.

Power Surge is +39/39/40 atk.

iirc Life Surge is 50% DMG-> HP recovered at tier III. If I had to guess I'd say it's probably 1/4 > 1/3 -> 1/2 for each tier.

[miokomioko]

What kind of things, besides dealing damage, to melees do in other MMORPG's?

I think the common archetypes are just the hybrids between melee and tank, support, or debuffer.

We're just missing a melee class that is more focused on the enfeebling side of things... which is probably a side effect of just about every damn weaponskill or spell already having an additional debuff effect (despite the fact that they only last like 2 fucking seconds).

I think they had this (bad) idea of modeling each melee class to excel in a specific situation... instead of modeling each class to have a specific function in any situation.

[Corrderio]

Class specific buffs would be nice to, though I cringe at how bad SE would mess that up.

[Arximiro]

Power Surge is +39/39/40 atk.

iirc Life Surge is 50% DMG-> HP recovered at tier III. If I had to guess I'd say it's probably 1/4 > 1/3 -> 1/2 for each tier.

really power surge scales like that? O,o That seems a bit fucked.