Opinions for Job Adjustments

[Kenji]

It's not the cost, per se, of shihei. It's the fact that it's an unwanted cost from a job someone didn't want to level. We say all the time that, if you don't want to deal with the cost of arrows, don't level a ranger.

Assume for a moment, that to be viable as a WAR, you had to level RNG and sub it. That your melee damage was bad, and that ranged attacks did so much more, that you'd be gimp if you didn't. That you'd get turned down in parties because your damage sucks, because you don't spend money on arrows.

Is this okay to you? Would you be happy if this change happened? Or would you rightly call bullshit on it?

Lastly, most of the people here are end-gamers who have been around awhile. They have plenty of gil and relics aplenty. They have forgotten what it's like for a new person, reaching lv 30, and deciding he wants to continue leveling war, and realizing that he'll have to spend a ton of money on leveling ninja and various powders. He doesn't want to. He just wants to hit things with his Great Axe. And he can barely afford decent gear, because making money is hard at lower levels. But no one will invite him in later levels as a WAR/MNK because he's seen as an "mp sponge" even though he's skilled enough to manage his aggro and still deal decent damage.

[fndragon]

Lastly, most of the people here are end-gamers who have been around awhile. They have plenty of gil and relics aplenty. They have forgotten what it's like for a new person, reaching lv 30, and deciding he wants to continue leveling war, and realizing that he'll have to spend a ton of money on leveling ninja and various powders. He doesn't want to. He just wants to hit things with his Great Axe. And he can barely afford decent gear, because making money is hard at lower levels. But no one will invite him in later levels as a WAR/MNK because he's seen as an "mp sponge" even though he's skilled enough to manage his aggro and still deal decent damage.

Endgame XP is elitist.

Ask any MNK/NIN why they levelled ninja sub. Or DRK/NIN or whatever. If said WAR wants to hit things with his Great Axe, if he can find five friends who are ok with his playstyle/gear selection, that's absolutely fine. If said WAR wants to party in my party, I'll go look for a better geared/subjobbed melee. Because his roleplaying style / financial situation doesn't really affect me if he's just some random guy LFP. It's a competitive market. If some guy can manage aggro solely because he hits for the single digits with outdated gear, that's not an efficient use of a party slot for me.

I think your statement still breaks down to "Making money is hard" QQ.

And it is. If it weren't difficult, RMT would be all over it. If it is too difficult, people get upset about jobs that spend money for abilities: RNG, NIN, *FOOD* costs.

If you can figure out some way to teach this "hypothetical WAR" how to make decent money, all of a sudden his outlook will improve. That's how everybody clawed their way up to 75: By doing things that make money in order to be a contributing member of a party. Which is also why we take umbrage to those who skate along and leach XP from those of us who do take the time. See also the "Worst Equipped X" threads. Everybody has their own method for making gil; I don't really know two people who have the same method (except for some linkshells who split their banks, etc, etc) of making cash. And that's good, because it's a very free market system.

[Spider-Dan]

f Sharpshot gave ACC/RACC+10-15% and had 3min duration, /RNG would become insanely popular overnight.

Nice try, but no. It would be another "completely situational" subjob, and filed away into the list of "sometimes used" subs.

...are you joking?

/sea all SAM 10-75
/sea all DRK 10-75
/sea all DRG 10-75
/sea all MNK 10-75

Any of these jobs that are not subbing NIN would be extremely interested in subbing the hypothetical upgraded RNG. RNG would continue to be the premier SJ for COR and clearly demolish any other SJ for DNC. Even DD NINs would benefit (NIN/RNG has been fairly well-documented as is).

With added accuracy comes more consistent damage, which eventually will pull hate. Then you're throwing out your "mp sponge" argument all over again.

...except that again, an enormous number of the aforementioned jobs are subbing something other than NIN anyway. /RNG would definitely be a viable option in that scenario.

You just don't get it. Its not so much about nerfing nin, its about explaining that no matter what you do to enhance the offensive power that a job could gain from a subjob (whichever subjob it is), without giving either that subjob a damage-mitigating ability, or changing the way we accrue damage when we're attacked physically, its going to go straight back to "/nin is the most non-situational sub that should be used more than any other sub", which wouldn't fix anything.

If you seriously believe that "no matter what you do to enhance the offensive power that a job could gain from a subjob" people would still sub NIN, you have an extremely poor imagination. Sticking strictly to /DNC alone, there are about 5 different ways they could improve it that would virtually obsolete /NIN overnight:

- 'zerk (or equivalent)
- Aggressor (or equivalent)
- Haste JA (like Hasso, but works for 1h and 2h)
- +crit JA (i.e. single-target static effect Rogue's Roll)
- Auto-Regain

You want more accuracy? Buy accuracy gear, or eat sushi or +acc food.

Gee, I can't understand why anyone subs WAR then. You want more ATK? Buy ATK gear, or eat meat.

You want to take less damage (or fuck it, NO damage), while not nerfing your damage into the ground? Uhh... sub /nin?

What, exactly, do you consider "nerfing your damage into the ground"? /NIN offers no offensive bonus to any 2h/H2H job.

[Spider-Dan]

Assume for a moment, that to be viable as a WAR, you had to level RNG and sub it. That your melee damage was bad, and that ranged attacks did so much more, that you'd be gimp if you didn't. That you'd get turned down in parties because your damage sucks, because you don't spend money on arrows.

Is this okay to you? Would you be happy if this change happened? Or would you rightly call bullshit on it?

The problem with your proposal is simple: shihei is too cheap for your scenario to even merit consideration. Food costs as much or more than shihei, and every DD is expected to eat food.

[Septimus]

It's not the cost, per se, of shihei. It's the fact that it's an unwanted cost from a job someone didn't want to level. We say all the time that, if you don't want to deal with the cost of arrows, don't level a ranger.

Assume for a moment, that to be viable as a WAR, you had to level RNG and sub it. That your melee damage was bad, and that ranged attacks did so much more, that you'd be gimp if you didn't. That you'd get turned down in parties because your damage sucks, because you don't spend money on arrows.

Is this okay to you? Would you be happy if this change happened? Or would you rightly call bullshit on it?

Lastly, most of the people here are end-gamers who have been around awhile. They have plenty of gil and relics aplenty. They have forgotten what it's like for a new person, reaching lv 30, and deciding he wants to continue leveling war, and realizing that he'll have to spend a ton of money on leveling ninja and various powders. He doesn't want to. He just wants to hit things with his Great Axe. And he can barely afford decent gear, because making money is hard at lower levels. But no one will invite him in later levels as a WAR/MNK because he's seen as an "mp sponge" even though he's skilled enough to manage his aggro and still deal decent damage.

As a Red Mage I hate subbing WHM and main healing parties. I leveled WHM to 42 anyway and use it when the LS needs it. Leveling THF to 37 was one of the most painful experiences in my FFXI career, yet I leveled it on two characters even though I hope never to use sub Thief in a party ever, ever, ever.

Life is sacrifice. If you want to be good in the game it comes at a cost. You may think that the end-gamers had it easy, the hell we did. My first Ice Staff cost over a million gil when I was level 51. I could have whined that it was elitist to expect people to have them and you could be just as good of a RDM without one, instead I sucked it up and raised the money to get it back when it was a lot harder to make money than it is now.

You are free to sub anything that you chose, but /NIN is the most MP efficient subjob available. Chains live and die off of MP, if your healer has a full MP bar, that means more XP per hour, which means less hours XPing. The best way to deal with damage is to never take it- this is reality. Maybe Dancer sub will change that, until that paradigm shift happens people are going to see /NIN as the most efficient way to get lots of XP quickly. Think of it like Natural Selection- it makes the optimal the mean. Until something else even more optimal comes along it will continue to be the mean.

[fndragon]

Food costs as much or more than shihei, and every DD is expected to eat food.

I'm sure the cheap half of endgame was very happy when Colibri camps came around. Now every DD is expected to find and surgically attach themselves to Madrigal.

[Spider-Dan]

Food costs as much or more than shihei, and every DD is expected to eat food.

I'm sure the cheap half of endgame was very happy when Colibri camps came around. Now every DD is expected to find and surgically attach themselves to Madrigal.

For non-gimp players, colibri are a good deal more expensive than other camps. In 3 hours, I'll go through 3 subs @ MJSP or 4 stacks of mithkas @ g.colibri.

[The Q]

You are free to sub anything that you chose, but /NIN is the most MP efficient subjob available.

You're free to have any color car you want, as long as it's black.

[Kenji]

Endgame XP is elitist.

On the other hand, that's one reason why subscription hasn't grown. People learn that the elitist are even more in force here, and thus they can't play the way they want to, regardless of how good they are. They can spend a lot on gear, read guides, and be the best WAR/MNK with a Great Axe. But because the min/maxers won't even consider them, they quit.

Why should you care? Because if your LS wants decent replacements, you need to encourage them.

Of course, the bottom line is really just to show how badly /NIN is affecting the game. When it spawns these kinds of elitist attitudes of /NIN or nothing, then you know something's wrong.

If you can figure out some way to teach this "hypothetical WAR" how to make decent money, all of a sudden his outlook will improve. That's how everybody clawed their way up to 75: By doing things that make money in order to be a contributing member of a party. Which is also why we take umbrage to those who skate along and leach XP from those of us who do take the time. See also the "Worst Equipped X" threads. Everybody has their own method for making gil; I don't really know two people who have the same method (except for some linkshells who split their banks, etc, etc) of making cash. And that's good, because it's a very free market system.

There's a big difference between a leecher, and someone who just doesn't want to level a particular job and the costs that go along with it. I was there at NA release. I clawed my way up to, in a world that force /NIN on each other. We learned, and eventually when we hit 75, our xp parties got better and better. 10k, then 15k or more per hour. Chain 5s, to chain 100s. So you can earn good xp without using /NIN, but as Lucavi said, it's like crack coccaine to people now.

Food may cost more, but food+shihei costs more than that.

You don't want to have your time wasted. That's fine. That's understandable. How much time are you really saving, though? You may save some precious time by gulping down food and shihei at colibri, but that just means you need to spend more time making gil later. Any time saved is really an illusion. Another group might be making slightly less xp per hour, but they don't spend the extra time farming gil, either.

Opportunity costs.

[Spider-Dan]

There's a big difference between a leecher, and someone who just doesn't want to level a particular job and the costs that go along with it.

Not really. There are people who are willing to spend the time it takes to perform their role adequately, and there are people who are not. If there is someone who is not willing to spend 30k on a stack of toolbags that will last them for many weeks, do you think this person is going to save up the 300k for a SH? Or grind out 20 assaults for Pln. body? Or burn 1-2 stacks/hr of food vs. colibri?

Affording consumables, like anything else, takes nothing more than time. In exactly the same way that I expect someone to take the time to have proper SJs leveled and available, and take the time to have weapons properly skilled up and ready, I expect them to take the time to afford the basic necessities like food, shihei, oils/powders, etc. You cannot argue that shihei is an unreasonable requirement, then turn around and insist that people eat food.

I was there at NA release. I clawed my way up to, in a world that force /NIN on each other. We learned, and eventually when we hit 75, our xp parties got better and better. 10k, then 15k or more per hour. Chain 5s, to chain 100s.

Bullsh*t. At NA release, it was utterly unheard of for a non-DWing job to sub NIN. And the timing of when parties started to accelerate to 10, 15, 20k/hr just happens to coincide with /NIN becoming more and more widespread, even to the jobs that don't DW at all. Funny, that.

People started to realize that exp/hr would be better served by them setting aside their ego and using a more defensive subjob.

So you can earn good xp without using /NIN, but as Lucavi said, it's like crack coccaine to people now.

Then don't sub NIN. No one is forcing anything on anyone. It shouldn't be hard to find similar-minded players to party with. I'm sure you can find many RDMs who dislike the "pink mage" healing role and would rather perform the jack-of-all-trades, enfeebling combat caster role, and BRDs who believe they get access to Evisceration for a reason.

Oh, but let me guess... this whole "playing the game the way *I* want to" stops being cute when it means RDMs and BRDs start meleeing instead of healing and pulling, right?

You don't want to have your time wasted. That's fine. That's understandable. How much time are you really saving, though? You may save some precious time by gulping down food and shihei at colibri, but that just means you need to spend more time making gil later. Any time saved is really an illusion. Another group might be making slightly less xp per hour, but they don't spend the extra time farming gil, either.

You just made an awesome argument for never eating any food and exping in full AF. Nice work.

[Shuemue]

You are free to sub anything that you chose, but /NIN is the most MP efficient subjob available.

You're free to have any color car you want, as long as it's black.

Not what he's saying at all. It's more like;

You're free to have any colour car you want, but the yellow one has the top speed and MPG.

[XxSlusherxx]

Going to have to pull a POIDH on the chain100 w/o shadows

[Lucavi]

...are you joking?

Hardly.

Any of these jobs that are not subbing NIN would be extremely interested in subbing the hypothetical upgraded RNG. RNG would continue to be the premier SJ for COR and clearly demolish any other SJ for DNC. Even DD NINs would benefit (NIN/RNG has been fairly well-documented as is).

They'd also be interested in subbing the hypothetical "insert upgraded war, sam, drg, and drk subjobs" as well. Your upgraded ranger subjob sounds very nice, but by that logic, /sam would gain access to auto-regain and a greatly enhanced store tp, /drg would gain access to.. well, forget it; drg wouldn't get anything nice, and /drk would gain access to an attack buff that either rivaled or surpassed warrior's berserk. As it stands now, warrior is the middle-ground between raw attack and solid defense: you want power, pop berserk. You want defense, pop defender. Logically speaking, with your upgrade to ranger giving accuracy, drk (supposedly being the premier job of boosting attack power at the expense of defense) would have to gain a JA or passive ability to do the same as ranger, except with attack.

Once you whittle it down to:

/rng: Superior accuracy. Sub this if you always want to hit, and then gear accordingly.
/war: Sub this for a good balance on the fly between attack and defense.
/drk: Sub this if you want all-out attack, at the expense of what little defense you have.
/sam: Sub this if you want more tp than you know what to do with. Med, regain, ect. Gear around attack and acc to make proper use of all your enhanced tp.

Suddenly, the subjob choice waters become a bit murkier. Do I want acc, or defense, or lots of tp, or a mix of em all? I know: I'll pick the subjob that best modifies the current gear I have!

...except that again, an enormous number of the aforementioned jobs are subbing something other than NIN anyway. /RNG would definitely be a viable option in that scenario.

Lets take a look at all of the "winning" XP scenerios from FFXI's history:

Arroburn -- Tons and tons of rng/nin, sometimes with a nin in the mix: raked in crazy xp.
Manaburn -- No /nin, but no DD either -- burn the mob down to the ground: raked in very solid xp at the time.
Axeburn -- Heaps of /nin and a ninja piled high, and slathered with gravy: Raked in glorious XP.
Currentburn -- Grab X2 brd, or a brd + cor, some DD with /sam or /nin, and go to work: the sky is the limit for your xp.

Anything else is okay, but does not have the potential that those have. You throw in a rdm for all of those groups, and the xp goes higher. You don't see a lot of non-utsu in them, unless its one that has a mnk/war for all-out pulverizing the mob into a fine paste, but even then, mnk/war was at its best when everyone was laying waste to the mire -- things died too quickly to punish the lack of shadows.

The bottom line, and you know it, is that with a combination of high damage, bard songs or cor rolls (to keep damage high), good food (to maintain high damage), a rdm (because they are sex), and damage mitigagion (to keep what little MP exists as high as possible), the highest XP is obtained. You put a bunch of /war in a party, and even if its with a cor and bard, the potential drops, because eventually theres going to be some resting going on because of MP shortages.

If you seriously believe that "no matter what you do to enhance the offensive power that a job could gain from a subjob" people would still sub NIN, you have an extremely poor imagination. Sticking strictly to /DNC alone, there are about 5 different ways they could improve it that would virtually obsolete /NIN overnight:

No, it means I have an extremely firm grip on the real state of things in the game right now. You're the delusional one: you think that enhancing straight accuracy is somehow going to do some kind of damage that does not accumulate enimity to the point where the person is going to be attacked. How do you think my haste-build drg works? I pull hate from fast, ACCURATE attacks, with a decent amount of power behind them. I take hits because I never miss, not because I'm laying down some bone-crushing hits.

No matter how you get the damage: be it through raw attack power or swift haste or absurdly accurate strikes, if you do enough, you're going to pull hate, and in FFXI, if you're going to pull hate, you'd better not be actually taking damage. If your little ranger subjob creation included some form of damage mitigation, then yes, it would be some amazing sub for the masses to use, but as of now, its just another useless subjob when it comes to meriting, where again, every player worth their salt is already powerful and accurate enough to only need some subs or meat, a bard song, a haste spell, and UTSUSEMI to perform extremely well.

Your suggestion holds water for lower and mid-leveling, as well as for SITUATIONAL use in other events, such as a few end-game fights where you need a bit more acc to land reliable hits, but not enough power to outright rip hate, but for ANY place where you're going to pull hate, its just another useless sub for anyone outside of ninja, who gets utsu as a main. And so what? So do my suggestions. All of them basically go down the same road -- raise damage one way or another, but all of them also fail to address what you do when you actually pull hate.

WoW has many jobs that have many ways to drop aggro without actually blinking away damage. Disengage drops enimity, and all you do is actually put your weapons away for a second. Feign death drops all aggro, almost like super jump (which merely resets you to the lowest point, so if you try to run, you still get raped) but you can also escape if you need to. Those are just two of many different ways. Its not that hard to design ways to lower enimity outside of blinking damage away, but SE has yet to create any outside of subtle blow, which you have absolutely no control over short of piling as much as you can on through gear, or with merits.

You claim I have a poor imagination, but you just have a loose grip of common sense. High damage (no matter how its accrued - be it through high acc, high speed, or high power) will draw hate, and drawing hate without blinking it away with shadows equals failure in the eyes of the majority. Just look at the people in this thread, calling anyone that doesn't want to use utsu in merits, an essential failure. You think its because they don't like to dual wield? No, its because they are lowering the overall potential for xp from the party by taking raw damage because the defensive formula in this game is fucking pathetic. You can't disagree with them, and then say that I'm hair-brained for thinking that utsu rules the FFXI world at the same time. They're proving you wrong with every post!

[Spider-Dan]

They'd also be interested in subbing the hypothetical "insert upgraded war, sam, drg, and drk subjobs" as well.

LOL?

Who said anything about upgrading /WAR and /SAM? I thought the supposed goal was more subjob variety, not just reducing /NIN usage at any cost. More variety would entail improving and diversifying options, not just trading one kind of dominance for another.

Anything else is okay, but does not have the potential that those have. You throw in a rdm for all of those groups, and the xp goes higher. You don't see a lot of non-utsu in them, unless its one that has a mnk/war for all-out pulverizing the mob into a fine paste, but even then, mnk/war was at its best when everyone was laying waste to the mire -- things died too quickly to punish the lack of shadows.

I find it somewhat interesting that you dismiss improving offensive subjobs as a predestined failure, at the same time you casually mention that oh yeah, there is a setup where your DDs hit hard enough and fast enough for lack of defense to be offset. But there's no point in trying to improve and diversify offensive subjobs?

No, it means I have an extremely firm grip on the real state of things in the game right now. You're the delusional one: you think that enhancing straight accuracy is somehow going to do some kind of damage that does not accumulate enimity to the point where the person is going to be attacked.

And where did I claim that?

People sub notNIN now. Those same people would, therefore, have interest in a SJ that offers a unique offensive benefit. Any DD that uses /WAR today (or pre-70 /SAM) would obviously be interested in an improved /RNG.

Your suggestion holds water for lower and mid-leveling, as well as for SITUATIONAL use in other events, such as a few end-game fights where you need a bit more acc to land reliable hits, but not enough power to outright rip hate, but for ANY place where you're going to pull hate, its just another useless sub for anyone outside of ninja, who gets utsu as a main.

And that's true because most DDs (or half, or even some appreciable number) sub NIN to HNM fights, right? OH, WAIT.

Do you ever consider exactly why it is that /NIN is so useful for DDs in today's exp party and yet so useless against HNM? Could it be because people simply don't care who the mob is attacking in an exp party, as long as it stays up front? Your vendetta seems to be misplaced; rather than aiming to strip the defensive prowess of /NIN, perhaps you should be focusing on having actual tanks hold the mobs' attention.

[The Q]

So we come to two schools of thought here:

1) Shit's broke, it needs to be fixed.

2) Shit ain't broke, fixing it will break it.

[Nyuneko]

Going by the timeline of the /NIN argument, it seems that we have now changed from the "If Def/VIT is fixed, /NIN would be too strong" to the age old "I hate /NIN, and it should be nerfed without any countermeasure done", however, /NIN noers had a very strong bullet that is called(which for whatever reason, they decide that using it is too unfair to others?): If Def/VIT is fixed to an ideal state, PLD/NIN would be invincible. But instead:

1) They chose to 1st argue about how /NIN made NM fights unchallenging, which is true, however, nerfing /NIN doesn't make anything challenging at all, it just make things more tedious and risky for absolutely no reason at all: If shadows are gone, then the obvious outcome(without the need of "time-travelling", simply by using logic) would be... Mages spamming cures more rapidly, groups have to bring more mages than melee all of a sudden, but essentially, DD and tank roles are unchanged at all... But macro spam =/= challenge.

2) Then they argued that /NIN is overpowered with dual wield, which in many cases, isn't exactly true: the one and only job that have any DD ability enhanced is WAR, and I believe that's Ridill WAR vs Other WAR. In the case that the WAR has no Ridill, I believe GA WAR is now on par with DW WAR post 2h-patch. Every other job that sub NIN have their offensive ability cut in return for party efficiency.

3) So after that, they bring up the gil issue, which if we were still in inflation time, I would wholeheartedly agree, but now we are in deflation, where going to 4-5 dungeons for coffer can already get you a stack of shihei, which for /NIN can last at the very least 3 weeks(My stack lasted me several months because I never main tank anything). Even if the player is a new player who just started the game, the only jobs that need to sub NIN pre-75 are:

RNG(which they obviously wouldn't play if they aren't loaded with gil),

THF(which use 1d shihei every 25 parties or so),

WAR(which also use 1d shihei every 20 parties or so).

None of which would require a constant shihei supply everyday, comparing to a mage, or COR, it is already in the "cheaper" side of the scale(try adding all the necessary scrolls' prices, and then compare it with the price of about 6d shihei(benefit of doubt that the "newbie" can absolutely pull hate every fight)).

4)Then it's the "preference" argument, the "I don't want to level that job, why would I have to sub it?", which is pretty much the last straw I guess. Mage players who only want to play mage have to level DRK(a MELEE) for their RDM, why has no one called for a lower level Stun on BLM yet? THF has to sacrifice pull all the time, why isn't there any sympathy to them yet? They do lose EXP when dying, you know? AND Reraise hairpin isn't exactly cheap, it does go down a lot faster than 1d Shihei would. I demand a "Less EXP loss" for THF.

5) Go back to point 2.

6) When you are done, which I foresee a page 17 at least...
7) ???????????
8) PROFIT
9) 6-9 were totally obligatory.

So if we want to categorise the two schools of thought here:

1) I think for the team in a party-based game.
2) I can only think for myself in a party-based game.

[Kenji]

1) They chose to 1st argue about how /NIN made NM fights unchallenging, which is true, however, nerfing /NIN doesn't make anything challenging at all, it just make things more tedious and risky for absolutely no reason at all: If shadows are gone, then the obvious outcome(without the need of "time-travelling", simply by using logic) would be... Mages spamming cures more rapidly, groups have to bring more mages than melee all of a sudden, but essentially, DD and tank roles are unchanged at all... But macro spam =/= challenge.

In order for something to be challenging in this game, it has to be risky. If there's no risk of you failing, there isn't much challenge in it, is there?

But it's a combination of a bunch of other factors. I think the best suggestion in this thread has been to make it like the blink spell when subbed. There's only a chance it will absorb an attack. Nothing is impossible in the game if this made (other than lolAV, but it's impossible at the moment anyway). Then people might actually have to *work* to get what they wanted.

The subject of aggro management used to be well done in this game. It wasn't like wow, where threat meters meant that any competant player would never pull aggro. In this game, people actually had to learn, pay attention, and be good to handle their aggro management. In both games now, that's been cheesed. You have an EZ mode threat meter in one, and the ability to say "Oh? I have aggro? I wasn't getting hit" in this game. All nerfing /nin would do, is either force people to manage their own aggro, or have mages pay attention to their job instead of hitting the haste button over and over and falling asleep.

Hell, I've even seen BLM sub NIN(and it wasn't for duel-wielding clubs). I think practically every job has subbed it at one time or another. That's gotta say something.

Oh, and pre-ToAU, I had done many merit parties in sky on golems or weapons. The only reason chains ended, was because we ran out of mobs. I don't recall the high end numbers, but chain 25-30ish on golems, because we ran out of golems and went back to the start. Arrow burns could easily do it at first, but mixed parties eventually could as well.

Edit: bad english

[neochaos]

The only reason why people are so elitist in this game is for efficiency. A lot of things in this game are mind-numbingly boring (end-game exp), so of course, instead of having a mix-and-match party consisting of gimps, bad jobs, and worse subjobs, of people just "having fun", a good number of people rather just have the most efficient setup possible and shit out merits as fast as possible.

Elitism sucks bad considering how much it limits the other 90% of content in this game, but thats just how it is.

[fndragon]

The only reason why people are so elitist in this game is for efficiency. A lot of things in this game are mind-numbingly boring (end-game exp), so of course, instead of having a mix-and-match party consisting of gimps, bad jobs, and worse subjobs, of people just "having fun", a good number of people rather just have the most efficient setup possible and shit out merits as fast as possible.

Elitism sucks bad considering how much it limits the other 90% of content in this game, but thats just how it is.

You do 90% of your content with pickup groups?

[shirak]

Some observations:

-SE isnt going to read a thread this long.

-SE isn't going to nerf basic components of a Job/SJ (utsusemi)

-/sam is better and faster (for me) for meripo defense (fulltime seigan). Just use Third Eye every single time it is up and ws when at 15-10 secs into it. Personal experience I tank over 50% of my parties (using every single "anticipation" possible over hours) frequently ws at start of fight if I have tp, and take less damage than many /nins and DD faster. Your mileage may vary but /sam defense is every bit as good as /nin in meripo.

However, if I was a war, I'd probably /nin for the defense + the dual-wield axes.