FINAL FANTASY XI Job Adjustmentｓ Manifesto

[Sumy]

SE's big mistake was adding unnecesary jobs. SCH's strategems/spells could have easily been dispersed to WHM/BLM/RDM without the need for a new job. DNC's steps could have been renamed and given to THF or WAR as 'Rends'. BLU is unique. PUP was unnecessary. Some jobs still don't have a 'specialty' after all of these years....

Can someone PLEASE explain to me why a job NEEDS a specialty?
I dont understand this method of thinking -- it's a game. Jobs, what abilites they have or dont have, what overlaps, or overpowers, all add variety to a game. How is any of it a mistake? By this method of thinking wouldn't it just be easier to eliminte ALL the jobs and combine them in one super-mega-job? That'd be fun!

The reason we have "unnessesary" jobs is NOT to invite them to an event they are not designed for... it's to experiment, to add lore to the game, to add variety to the game, to make fun of them, and MAYBE have a little fun of your own (but that is low on the priorities list - amirite?).


IIRC, Stratagems were designed with SCH-as-a-sub in mind (most of them below 40), to WHM, BLM, and RDM (or any other job really) - it can be used to enhance spells those jobs have, it can cap skill levels to B (or higher?) for jobs that dont even natively HAVE those skills. Could those abilities been dispersed to WHM and BLM? Yeah, but with so many why not just make another job? ..and what would be the point of -ga spells when BLM would have Manifestation? ...or why would a WHM use Rapture instead of Divine Seal? - it's a differnt set of tools to do the same job. I vote we get rid of BLM and WHM and keep SCH (get rid of RDM while your at it - they suck)
Yes, BLU is unique, but before Yellow!! can you really say it was nessesary?
Yes, PUP is unnessesary, thank you SE for not FORCING anyone to level it, and thanks for all the gil I can make selling attachments. I consider it a hobbist-job (that sounds like an oxymoron though).

I totally agree with Sept "The FFXI team did not alienate jobs with Abyssea, the player base did." and I'm guilty of doing it myself even. Soloing Briarius is WAY easier then getting a group, and slightly easier than scheduling it with friends or linkshell mates that have various hours of play. Abyssea was the BEST thing for this game... you can solo, duo, and trio a lot of what you want... PTs and EXP are incredibly easy to get, hell I cant LOSE exp fast enough.

[drwaffles]

the players decided that "procs or GTFO" was the method of play for the game.

As someone already said, this isn't the players' fault. It's a stupid system due to the fact that it so heavily favours just a handful of jobs by giving them far superior access to what is essentially a way to boost your item acquisition rate tremendously. FFXI has always been about the drops, so you can't blame players for favouring jobs whose use far better facilitates getting what you want.

I really don't understand why people have to segregate "good jobs" from "bad jobs" when there really isn't a difference.

Don't kid yourself - there is massive disparity between the different jobs, both in terms of usefulness as proc'ers and damage output. It sucks, yes, and I agree with you to a certain extent that people shouldn't always be pigeon-holed into playing, say, WAR over PUP if the latter is better geared due to the player having much greater enthusiasm for it. However, if you're farming for AF3+2 items and refuse to come BLM for your group because you want to play BST, you're wasting copious amounts of everyone else's time. So your choices are to suck it up for the sake of efficiency (and we're not talking small increases in performance that only maths bods care about), stick with your BST and either inconvenience or alienate your group, or go off and solo your stuff.

Edit: also, regarding Abyssea, it was a sugar rush, but now it's left them in a very difficult position. Short-term, yes, it's been successful and refreshing (although most people are sick of it by now), but in the long term they've backed themselves into a corner and are going to need some serious creativity in order to get some sense of challenge or progression back into the game.

[Kaisha]

With buffs being so potent from key items, buffers get undercut, enfeebling is wholly unnecessary when a WHM can keep you going indefinitely and potent damage is just a few atmas away. Who cares if you can Drakesbane repeatedly when jobs like NIN can do the same damage while hitting procs and evading far more attacks?

I'm still of the opinion that Abyssea atmas need a serious nerf to restore any semblance of balance the game used to have.
(well, still has, but no content outside of VW warrants a challenge at lvl90)

I could go without DD & WHM duos that rely on infinite-MP courtesy of refresh atmas, along with zombieing it to infinity with Apoc atma if shit happens.........., well, until it goes yellow and I gank it when I see abuse of it. The dev team must know it's a problem, because VW atmacites are laughable in comparison, and are actually more in line what what I'd want in Abyssea. Just minor boosts that you can upgrade its potency of a little more, not crazy shit like Razed Ruins that makes you crit nearly every attack...and then adding +crit dmg on top of it.

Perhaps once sales of Abyssea die down they can do the switcheroo, as to me it feels like a ploy for easy sales. "Hey, want to cap all your XP, get super gear with high droprates, and dish out godly damage with weapons you can make in under a week that are better than relic/emps? Only $30!"

Funny thing is that Voidwatch has the potential to be the wild card where any job can fit the alliance. The loot system is terrible right now but the idea itself is sound and needed if SE wants to break the current trend.

With a virtually limitless pool of procs and the Abyssean crutches thrown away, you have a situation where players are baited into bringing the previously obsolete jobs back into the fold if for no other reason than procs. It's actually refreshing when you know... you need a tank class to hold a mob and DD aren't just rushing everything down thanks to overpowered buffs.

You're also baited into having to readjust your Cat2 merits on certain jobs because they had to be a douche and include some of those too. I do like that in VW, you need tanks. T4s FLY through DDs if they don't watch their hate levels. At least they're slowly adjusting VW to allow more means of gathering lights, rather than usually being fucked the second both HV procs are of jobs you didn't bring.

[Okan]

I could go without DD & WHM duos that rely on infinite-MP courtesy of refresh atmas, along with zombieing it to infinity with Apoc atma if shit happens.........., well, until it goes yellow and I gank it when I see abuse of it. The dev team must know it's a problem, because VW atmacites are laughable in comparison, and are actually more in line what what I'd want in Abyssea. Just minor boosts that you can upgrade its potency of a little more, not crazy shit like Razed Ruins that makes you crit nearly every attack...and then adding +crit dmg on top of it.

Personally I like this aspect of FFXI now. It's changed it from a game where you ran around Jeuno for 8 hours a day because not enough people logged on to a game where I can grab a friend or two and we can do things. The things I don't like about it so far are the single-pop seal dropping NMs and I absolutely hate abyssea-VNMs right now because of how contested they are. I've been trying all weekend to pop T2 in Attohwa and it's almost always "no monsters in the area." I've seen the 'vacinity" three times and someone popped it right in front of me at 21:56 which made me rage a bit. I got lucky and did grab it once, but no neck. Wish Tantra neck didn't suck so bad.

[Dooom]

Edit: also, regarding Abyssea, it was a sugar rush, but now it's left them in a very difficult position. Short-term, yes, it's been successful and refreshing (although most people are sick of it by now), but in the long term they've backed themselves into a corner and are going to need some serious creativity in order to get some sense of challenge or progression back into the game.

I remember worrying about this back in January or so, and I'm really sad that they don't seem to be showing much sign of knowing what to do in the post-Abyssea world in terms of balancing challenge and reward. Though I think the real test will be when the next level cap rise comes in a few months, and the final one after that. We're in FFXI-limbo right now, and it's not much fun.

I totally agree with Sept "The FFXI team did not alienate jobs with Abyssea, the player base did." and I'm guilty of doing it myself even.

I really can't figure out how people can think this. There's a great big carrot (procs) dangled in front of you for using certain jobs, and if you don't use them then you're back to retarded drop rates. I think most people wanting a drop would sooner fight the NM a handful of times rather than 30 or so, especially when the fights are, in general, so very uninteresting. The whole proc system is designed to favor certain jobs, and you can't blame players for that.

[Byrthnoth]

Nothing against you, but I have to say I hate that mentality of most players in this game. "lolJOB. Go level something useful."

If I love playing a job, regardless of what it is, I shouldn't have to stop playing it to form to the social standard. I've been in that boat of "No, you can't come as BST. You have to come as BLM." And this was after confessing, very clearly, that I hate playing as BLM and I have virtually zero gear and merits minus what my WHM can share with it. Whereas my BST had the best stuff I could farm or buy virtually solo and as many merits as I can get on it.

I really don't understand why people have to segregate "good jobs" from "bad jobs" when there really isn't a difference.

I'm not saying that's how I feel. I play DNC all the time and gleefully go play it for days so I can replace one situationally useful dagger with another.

But it's pretty clearly SE's view that the jobs don't need to be balanced in every event. They seem to feel that they just need to make it easy enough for you to level a job that is useful in those events, and make sure all the jobs have a use somewhere. For instance, they don't seem particularly worried that Ranger is worthless in any kind of meleeburn. The "Manifesto" improves the things RNG is already good at. They're trying to make an maintain niches for the 20 jobs they've made.

For instance, take your BST vs. BLM example. Your party isn't looking for a solo job (BST's niche). They're looking for a proccer or sleeper (BLM's niche). If you're looking for party play on BST, I see and foresee a lot of disappointment for you.

[Alkar]

What exactly is wrong with COR?

Bullets. They keep giving COR abilities and traits to shoot yet there's no reasonable way to get high level bullets. And those that are somewhat reasonable to get are exclusive to RNG.

[Okan]

For instance, take your BST vs. BLM example. Your party isn't looking for a solo job (BST's niche). They're looking for a proccer or sleeper (BLM's niche). If you're looking for party play on BST, I see and foresee a lot of disappointment for you.

I was using examples of times past. I've since leveled Monk and I'm thoroughly enjoying that, more so than BST actually. It was just an example that I experienced and found it relevant to the discussion at hand.

[Toth]

Bravo Septimus. Bravo.

Although you can add what really hurt Abyssea are the 200k brews. Now the challenging aspects are completely nulled.

And people....stop hating on hybrid jobs. Honestly, many of their issues can be solved with skill and getting the right gear, more so than other jobs, in order to maintain their footing with other jobs.

[Dimmauk]

Maybe SE could add procs to Abyssea like they did in Voidwatch? So all jobs have a reason to be there, but not as completely random as Voidwatches procs?

[shaddix]

It's like a miniature version of the official forums in here

[Ksandra]

I think it's partially a playerbase problem and partially an SE problem. Their patching process is so slow and infrequent and the DD jobs so similar in function that the strongest one(s) remain the strongest for a very long time. If the balance was changed much more often, people would perhaps adapt to a more mercurial style of play in respect to choosing jobs as they simply wouldn't "know" which the strongest was. At the moment, given a choice between a WAR and a PUP etc, the answer seems incredibly obvious.

I think that's wishful thinking, sad to say. WoW tweaks their jobs every week (literally), and there's always a fuckton of whining from the players on each of those weeks.

What exactly is wrong with COR?

I can't think of any situation where a COR is needed anymore. It's not that they can't be used, just that there's really no niche anymore to be like "fuck ya let's get a COR" like back during meripo. Any proc they can do, rng can do, which as others mentioned is mostly alienation from the playerbase. But that's become the reality and SE should work to fix that. Hell, they at least gave a PUP a place to be awesome in, even if it is just Dynamis. At least it's something more than cor gets atm.

[Dimmauk]

I think that's wishful thinking, sad to say. WoW tweaks their jobs every week (literally), and there's always a fuckton of whining from the players on each of those weeks.



I can't think of any situation where a COR is needed anymore. It's not that they can't be used, just that there's really no niche anymore to be like "fuck ya let's get a COR" like back during meripo. Any proc they can do, rng can do, which as others mentioned is mostly alienation from the playerbase. But that's become the reality and SE should work to fix that. Hell, they at least gave a PUP a place to be awesome in, even if it is just Dynamis. At least it's something more than cor gets atm.

I still think COR card shots should have been included in yellow procs.

[Ophannus]

Should be like Dynamis procing.

[Ophannus]

But even Hybrid jobs have something to offer, except for PUP, DRG, DRK.

NIN is a hybrid that can tank.
RDM is a hybrid but specializes in debuffs.
BLU can self SC and do massive burst damage and AoE burn better than anything.
DNC is unkillable and does massive damage and can heal.

PUP is all over the place but has a nice crit WS and can put out good damage but is a generic DD like DRK and DRG are. DRK has a moderate spell list but uses maybe 4 spells. Its JAs are supposed to support it's DD ability but it has no WS in which to put them to good use really. If you take away empyreans, DRG is one of the top DDs in the game, but lackluster relic and empyrean makes us just a generic DD. Wyvern's damage output is just a flying Enfire with an HP bar on most things, that occasionally adds 45-200 damage to our WS with highly resisted breaths. SAM has been getting JAs for skillchains, gaining TP and for TP bonuses these past updates, WAR has been getting crit traits and crit bonus JAs. DRG could use some JAs that aren't jumps and don't affect the wyvern at all, something that boosts our OWN attribute(s); attack or attack speed are examples. Hell since DRG focuses a lot on high accuracy, I'd settle for a JA that forces the next hit to be a 100% hit like Sneak Attack when behind a mob but without the crit. Could be used before a WS to guarantee all hits from Drakesbane land or during Perfect Dodge or when a mob has shadows, or just on something mega evasive.

DRK needs a high output weapon skill.

PUP can be a good support healer or DD but the AI is still wonky sometimes. The Valoredge frame needs massive enmity tools and damage mitigation to be a 'tank'. Maybe if Flashbulb was more like a Ballista provoke than a normal provoke, in that it forces the mob's attention on it for 15-20 seconds regardless of everyone elses enmity, then it could tank even if other jobs are dealing massive damage. Actually that would be a nice ability for PLD. An 'enrage' ability that ignores everyone's enmity and 'forces' the mob to attack/target the PLD for 10-15 seconds, then when it wears, the mob returns to normal enmity list.

[Dooom]

I always felt drg's role was to be "the DD which gets less hate", through High/Super/Soul jumps. Admittedly though, we're at a stage in the game where very few fights let you DD full time (because you're often holding off so you can find triggers), and where enmity/having a real "tank" matters. As such, their "get less hate" aspect doesn't really matter or gets overlooked because it's so unimportant in today's FFXI, but I remember Back In The Day that being able to go all-out and then just jump my hate away was so awesome. It's solo abilities also used to set it apart from other DD, but again, they don't matter anymore with the way exp and NMs have changed (and also the introduction of Dancer).

PUP can be a good support healer

Every time I have seen a pup try and "heal", it's ended terribly; if you have another healer there then the pup may as well use a DD frame for all the help it's healing will give. The AI is FUBAR for it's whm mode. Am I correct in thinking it can only cast once every 15s?

[Ksandra]

I still think COR card shots should have been included in yellow procs.

this would be a great idea, esp if they include pup abilities into the mix.

Should be like Dynamis procing.

However, this is an even better idea. I think it'd be fucking awesome and solve a lot of issues if they just did this.

[Byrthnoth]

COR shots are level 40. Making them procs is a bad idea that forces THFs to sub COR.

[Ksandra]

COR shots are level 40. Making them procs is a bad idea that forces THFs to sub COR.

forcing thfs to do something other than tank sounds like a good idea to me!


but seriously, I see what you're saying but they need to do something. I hope either they move away from abby come 99 and whatever new shit they offer doesn't alienate jobs or at least do Ophannus's idea if they want to keep doing the whole procing thing.

[Dimmauk]

COR shots are level 40. Making them procs is a bad idea that forces THFs to sub COR.

Kinda like how all BLMs have to /BRD?