BLM and the upcoming update

[Demetrios]

You guys are crazy if you think a combination of NIN, WAR, (RNG still yes), MNK and then a RDM + BRD merit point PT in sky/sea/range/krt is in any way underpowered compared to BLM PTs. It's not just Ridill WAR PTs that can output sick DOT, for fuck's sake my NIN/WA with Fudo/Kraken Club outdamaged a Woodsville/Ridill WAR, each of us having near-perfect gear in Uleguerand Range over a period of 2 hours of parsing.

As for HNMs such as the COP Wyrms: /THF melee WSes are usually 1k+ (up to 2000); the most powerful of this class is SAM which can put out 800-1200 damage every Meditate if they know how to play their job well. SMN and BLM (mb and non mb) are both great sources of damage, but neither is overpowered compared to any other job.

Anyway, there is no way killing elementals for chain 200 in sea is as satisfying to land a 1k Rampage, Blade: Jin, or Asuran Fists for chain 20.

[Lockecole]

Agreed, just because people see big XP Chains they assume rediculous XP per hour. That is not always the case. If I had the option to sit around and nuke the same mobs sitting in one spot, or having a roaming camp raping all mobs in sight, I'd pick the roaming camp. Take a NIN 3 WAR,MNKs,RNGs a RDM and a BRD and you can pretty much chain the HELL out of Celestial Nexus, Uleg. Range or any of the many D and A Weapon camps, for near to if not more XP then you would up in Sea.

Anyway, Demetrios did you actually skill up your Parrying on the side or is that just from a bunch of meriting/HNM tanking? I'm @245.5 and trying to skill on Korrigans, but its hell. .3 in an hour even with +40 Parry equip. I was skilling like crazy on Orcish Champions, but I think Im beyond them now, too bad Korrigans hit much slower/harder. I'd assume you did Pucks to 269 if that is how you capped?

[Posterboy]

...crucified posterboy of the FFXI world.

Don't give them ideas D:

[Raineer]

Sea parties are long chain and easy XP but boring as hell. It's more relaxing than following around 5 people bitching for haste and refresh but not nearly as fun.

[Demetrios]

No, I never acutally tried to skill it up on Pucks, using parrying skill items, or anything like that. My frist job to 75 was PLD so I naturally had decent parry on NIN until the mid 60s. After a year and a half of tanking HNMs and EXP mobs I finally hit 269 doing this:

http://img367.imageshack.us/img367/5821/parrying1ad.gif

(farming Sea pop items probably got me from 260->269 )

[NynJa]

wheres the
/l CAPPED PARRYING BITCH
??



oh, and by the way...those who've never done sea blm pt, you do not understand how boring it is. It has got to be the most mind numbing activitiy in this game.

[nivlakian]

As far as endless chaining in sea, SE can easily just nerf pet exp and be done with it if that's the issue. There are a lot of other jobs that can exp just as well if not better than BLMs at 75, so you can hardly say that's a reason to nerf them.

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah no.

Maybe 3 war with adaman hauberks, each with his own ridill brd whm rdm in uleguerand range yes but from my point of view, I have to dissagree with you on that.

I think Quickley is right that other jobs could chain better and longer, but the issue I see is that there are not enough mobs in other places to keep the chains. D. weapons will usually run out around 40's. MNKs maybe 50-60s before chain. In sea, the mob summons the pets that are VT and easily killed.. Therefor making it possible to get EXP Chain 498403489349803498409384 with enough time and patience.

I don't understand why BLM is blamed for the whole SMN mob chaining thing. BRD and RDM are used too and are what makes it possible yet seemingly take no blame for helping to achieve these chains. It is seen as BLMs being the ones who are overpowered. I mean people talk about all the BLMs getting awesome XP and what of the other two jobs who share that XP?

Considering the low HP of the pets (which are tough, not VT), I would imagine a PT of RDM, RDM, BRD, RDM could do the infinite chain like BLM, BLM, RDM, BRD can. One RDM sleeps the mob and the other two are the nukers. Along with their convert, they probably wouldn't need to worry too much about resting. Would you blame RDMs then instead?

It is also possible to do this as BLM, RDM, BRD and get more XP (due to less ppl) yet the the MP consumption probably would eventually take its toll on the RDM. There have been cases where either I or the other BLM would d/c and the others maintained the chain til the person returned (of course the d/c'ed person starts over).

The SMN mob chaining is perhaps slightly faster than the what I've heard of blink parties being able to achieve in sky and MNK parties supposedly can do even better.

As has been said before, what limits melee PTs from doing something similar is lack of mobs for the most part. Damage output from melees does not suddenly drop off to 0 causing them to have to stop unless they died for some reason.

I suppose one shouldn't say alot of of other jobs can XP as well but there are some that can. DRGs, DRKs, THFs, etc seem to be mostly excluded from such spam parties.


Anyway for on topic. Some comments people have made for what they might do as a nerf (some of which i mentioned before on pg.6 here)

-Making BLMs more skillchain dependant to do damage i.e. lower non-bursted damage, but keep MB damage the same.
-Adjusting the chance for some spells to be resisted.
-Adjusting the emnity resulting from some spells.
-Subjecting a target to multiple spells of the same element will result in an incrementally greater chance for the spells to resisted for each one beyond the first. (this one is possibly a problem for mobs that only have one elemental weakness)
-Adjusting damage from -aga spells so it does much less than it does presently when hitting multiple targets.
-Adjusting chance of resisted damage on -aga spells depending on the number of mobs hit.



Personally, I don't think lowering damage output is a solution to much as it doesn't hinder some of the things people complain about. A BLM would still be able to solo (just takes longer) since solo is mostly dependent on landing sleep. The all-BLM AAx5 fight may no longer be possible, but I don't think it'd stop Operation Desert Swarm or other such similar BCs that some groups of BLM do since again it's about landing sleep. Most likely BLM damage would still be prefered due to the mob tp gain issue.

I'm not sure what is most likely for SE to choose to do in the end, only time will tell.

[Okan]

Mob TP gain? While BLM does do more damage than melee, we still give TP to the mob per spell. 10% to be precise. I suppose that's better than a XXX/NIN giving 20% per attack round or more if double attack...

[Morphix]

Instead of nerfing us I think SE should be more worried about some of thier broken jobs first, instead of breaking another one.

[Okan]

Instead of nerfing us I think SE should be more worried about some of thier broken jobs first, instead of breaking another one.

Again, I agree, but do you think SE will listen?

[nivlakian]

Mob TP gain? While BLM does do more damage than melee, we still give TP to the mob per spell. 10% to be precise. I suppose that's better than a XXX/NIN giving 20% per attack round or more if double attack...

I'm quite aware that spells give tp to the mob as well. However, considering a scenario where a melee can not use an alternate mob to tp on we have

BLM casts something for 500 dmg giving mob 10 tp.
Melee hits mob 5+ times for 500 dmg giving mob 50+tp.

[nivlakian]

Each expansion?

BLMs were balanced before Rise of the Zilart came out.

BLMs were horribly overpowered when Rise of the Zilart came out.

BLMs still shame melee when Chains of Promathia came out.

Could you elaborate on this Sekkite? What changed between the first before RotZ and after? I don't really know what endgame was like before RotZ.

[Lordwafik]

Horribly overpowered ? Not in sky. Go lvl blm and tell me how much you nuke Suzaku for, then realize that sky is a place for melee. We are more usefull just for casting stun and only MB'ing (once per.... whenever people get TP) If you thought melee damage was shit in sky, I'd love to see the day you take your 75 blm with uber gear up there, and resist like a bitch

Not overpowered.

[Okan]

Before Zilart, the level cap was lower too, so they have like... Level 3 spells max... That meaning they couldn't do 1k spells except maybe AMs if cap was that high at the time. I'm not sure of exactly timeline of expansions and level caps.

[Palin]

Each expansion?

BLMs were balanced before Rise of the Zilart came out.

BLMs were horribly overpowered when Rise of the Zilart came out.

BLMs still shame melee when Chains of Promathia came out.

Could you elaborate on this Sekkite? What changed between the first before RotZ and after? I don't really know what endgame was like before RotZ.

If anything that's inaccurate. Blms on pre-RoZ mobs for the most part are unresisted and do insane amounts of damage. RoZ mobs we don't do so hot on, Sky at least. CoP end-game mobs we dont' do hot on either, sure we do good in Sea, but thats cuz we can solo ITs, can do the same in pre-RoZ and RoZ zones.

[Sekkite]

I meant pre RotZ, the level cap was lower and BLM wasn't so blatently overpowered compared to the other DD jobs.

[Lordwafik]

Melee just wanna keep things nerfed or "balanced" so they get more invites/stop being left out to do end game stuff, but what makes them think nerfing BLM will give them more opportunity? It'll give them less when we get even MORE war/sam/mnk(what all post nerf rng became), who will be nerfed by DRG/THF/DRK, since there's no room for them to do anything because everyone is SAM/THF zerging shit. But then after everyone becomes a DRG/THF/DRK the other THF & DRG will get the DRK's nerfed because they want more space since they cant pump as much damage out due to lack os SE+LR. Then after all the DRK have become DRG and THF, the DRG will get the THF's nerfed since their Trick Attack / Sneak Attack is so rapid, therefore pumping out faster damage spurts, so after all this nerfing, everyone will become a dragoon and say "I wish we didnt nerf BLM and RNG".


NERF

NERF

NERF

NERF

NERF



Im sick of all these stupid topics coming up, where everyone thinks they are SE's HQ and decide on their way of nerfing jobs, when instead they should be sending comments via POL on how SE can improve their jobs (give them higher damage modifiers to compete with high damage rampages, etc) . Nothing pisses me off more than seeing someone who hasnt played BLM from 1-75, come and tell me i'm overpowered and need to be nerfed. Same goes to my BST and BLM jobs it's pathetic. People saying my CC jugpets need to be nerfed (Charm range already got bloody nerfed a few patches back so you can claim your NMs with voke now!!!!), or my RDM is too overpowered with Gravity/Bio. Blahblahblah.

Note : Jobs are meant to be unique in these ways, if all jobs were meant to be as efficient as eachother with no variety, there'd be no job selection menu.

If you are not getting invites or think your damage sucks on mob X vs another job, and love your job, why do you wanna see other peoples jobs be ruined for your benefit? That makes you a sadist. Other people love their jobs too.

Go tell SE what you want done to your job, post it on a openly used forum with the link to SE's customer service area and tell everyone to submit their forum with the suggestions. SE wont listen if 1 person wants their job improved, but if many do, they'll see something's up and probably do something about it.

SE's -does- listen to suggestions, we have proof of that being HNM & JP latency problem with the Random Claim timer.

[Sekkite]

And exactly how long did it take them to respond to our complaints about the latency issue?

And I never once asked for a nerf. I don't want BLMs nerfed except maybe a TP nerf so that the tier of the spell casted determines the TP given rather then a 1400+ thundaga 3 giving less TP then my 80-100 damage swing of a weapon.

[Lordwafik]

Ah wasnt talking about you sekkite, your views always seemed realistic (I remember you posting how if BLM are to be nerfed, Melee better be beefed up).

I am just annoyed at everyone wanting others nerfed, rather than having their own jobs improved.

It did take a while for the HNM crap to come forth, but that's because at the beggining, there werent that many NA's camping HNM, it was like 1/2 LS's on each server? Only recently has a big boom of people camping HNM been shown, and im guessing almost nobody from these LS's posted a form to SE to see that there's a problem, untill recently, when HNM camping became as big as it is now.

[NynJa]

I meant pre RotZ, the level cap was lower and BLM wasn't so blatently overpowered compared to the other DD jobs.

And what is SE supposed to do??

As you level up, your nukes get stronger...."Welcome to level 70, heres a spell that does less damage then its previous counterpart, but costs more mp. congrats".