The Roles of a Pugilist? [DISCUSSION]

[BRP]

Absolutes are dumb unless they are used very sparingly. If you are going to use them everywhere, like Utsusemi, then all jobs should have their own type... unless they are meant to be weak in combat, like mages.

EDIT: Actually, if one is going to put so much effort in making melee attacks pointless, why not just get rid of them altogether? All they do is slow monsters down.

[niwaar]

I hope they never add utsusemi to this game in any shape or form. Really messed up the mentality and PT schematics.

Seconded. Maybe a stoneskin tank or something, but not shadows.

Also a defense formula that doesn't blow.

Utsusemi was a decent idea. The reason it messed up PT schematics and Mentalities was not because of Utsusemi itself. It was Utsusemi + Dual Wield that made /nin as popular as it was. For some classes the safety, of having shadows is a huge boon, but it was DW that made it popular for Blu, Thief, War.

SE is going to "fix" this by giving Blu innate DW. To be honest, this is the wrong class to be giving it to. Give it to thf or war and it gives many more options for all classes that would choose to dual wield. The question is ... if thief could DW would you see as man /nins in these classes?

[tsaroth816]

So Whistle is 1 skill that vokes 1 mob? But in FFXIV mobs travel in parties, I don't think Pugilist will be suited for that. Maybe a soloist job with DEF stance and DD in party with OFF stance.

I think it's more of a "oh shit mob is running after our mage! /whistle" but hey opinions/speculations are just that.

[Dantrag]

I'd say the role of a pugilist will most likely be DD. Without utsusemi, it won't be able to survive let alone maintain hate when it keeps getting hit. I doubt the evasion stance will let them evade much more than an evade-build MNK in FFXI.

What I'm more interested in, is which job will be the best at claiming.

In FFXI world yes. But no one has any idea how damage mitigation or evasion... or ANYTHING is going to be in XIV. So saying PUG won't be able to tank and will only be a DD is silly. It's like saying only certain classes in FFXI can tank. I'm pretty sure most people didn't even think about RDM tank forever.

edit:

also lets not assume that whistle is going to have a 30 second cool down. It could be 5 for all we know.

[Mytiwar]

edit:

also lets not assume that whistle is going to have a 30 second cool down. It could be 5 for all we know.

Or it could be a 2hr ability while we're at it

[Velocy]

Well, a bit senseless to spectaculate...

I also thought I read something about being able no to attack, but to block... you know... similar to the classic FF games, where you were able to sit one round out. I guess certain classes might have access to that.

The stances could also have a similar function to the front-row back-row placement from classic games.

Offensive Stand = Front Row. Deal out Max damage but also enemy does.
Defensive Stand = Back Row. Reduced damage dealt and taken.

[McGoonagle]

Hmm, so... thinking out loud here...

So are these 5 ability slots supposed to be like a create your own subjob type of deal? Itd be cool to make any class have all rogue-like abilities. But I feel it coming on... "Pugilist looking for party with Ability 1, 2, 3 ,4 and 5 that every person desires, send /tell"

Which would mean that we have to level other jobs to get those abilities for those other slots. SE is clever to be able to approach this completely different but still retain a similar feel as XI. Subjobs were awesome.

Well yeah. Progress is to be skill-based rather than XP-based. You will have to work on a broad range of skills to progress. If you keep a balanced set of skills leveled, then you should have no trouble getting into the good stuff.

[Plow]

Well, you have to remember that originally SE didn't plan on the "main tank" role. Paladin was a DD job (hence the GS skillsets). It wasn't until months into the game proper that people started to use a main tank. Players made Paladins the tanking class due to its armor and the ability to use healing as a threat mechanic. It was only then that SE adapted to what players were doing.

They did the same thing with Ninja. Just to a FAR FAR FAR lesser extent. Ninja has gone through so many minor changes but we are still pretty much the same as always. The evasion tank that can push a decent amount of DPS out there, but not near as much as other classes. There have been several attempts to make viable Ninja caster prototypes but none have really stuck.

Wait, what? PLD was *the* tank from the start. The issue came when instead of WAR/MNK or MNK/WAR being the 2nd tanks, it was NIN/WAR and WAR/NIN.

Also, pre dagger/2h buff NIN clowned everybody but MNK and WAR as far as merit dps.

They may not have planned an exp main tank (although you have to remember-- they originally planned for most exp parties to be 3ish people), but there's no question Paladin was intended to be the main endgame tank.

Both Warriors and Monks have skillsets that help in tanking. Both are actually capable of tanking for party play. They have stated that they are going to give both classes a bit more defensive abilities. The game needed a solid tertiary tanking class with the advent of WotG but only got dancer.

With XIV we will really not know what classes are the true tanking classes until we really get into the game. Two classes have "provoke" so far. However, we don't know nearly enough on how characters will mature and evolve. We know of the "armory system" but not exactly how we will "level up" and gain strength and abilities. Its too early to wonder what a single classes true role will be. The only thing we can say for sure is that SE is trying hard to make sure every melee class is a hybrid of some sort. Either pure DPS/Tank or DPS/Support, etc.

Actually, if you read closely, the Marauder's Defender ability is a taunt when they're in defensive stance, too.

So while the Gladiator is clearly a pure tank with small offensive capability, the other 2 close-up melee both have defensive stances and taunts. The 3rd melee stands farther out behind them all and can direct hate to whichever one he chooses.

So, basically, the mention of dancer is perfect here-- I'd expect that if you turned their healing into damage and left their tanking capability as is, that's about what you'll get from PUG or MAR.

[Kaelan?]

The reason /NIN became popular is not because you can avoid damage in and of itself. It's because the way FFXI combat is set up, avoiding damage is really important. The whole choice betwen WAR/SAM, say, and WAR/NIN is "Do I do more damage or take less damage?". The fact that it's more important for a damage dealer to take less damage than to do more damage is the root of the problem.

I'd say it's a combination of how healing works and how much damage you can take in such a short time. If that wasn't as big of a deal, /NIN wouldn't be that great and you'd end up picking subs that help you do more damage instead. It all just goes back to the fact that DEF (and blood tanking in general) needed to have been more effective than it ended up being.

Dual wield is kind of similar. The problem wasn't really that DW was too strong, it's that 2h wasn't strong enough.

[Plow]

The AOE effects are a part of it, with there being no legitimate way to avoid a ton of moves.

But as far as DD are concerned, nin rose to power on the strength of dual wield for sure. Dual wield flat out beat other options, be it monks and their dual wield, wars, nins, and post dagger buff thf, and even pre-sushi the accuracy from a 2nd hawker's beat out any other subs for rng.

To some extent, even that was ok, if they had simply matched non-dual-wield jobs to that strength.

In terms of damage absorption capability, that really didn't matter much at all outside pulling until we started forgoing tanks. Yeah you might trick onto a warrior or monk or whatever, but the best choice was just to do it on a drg and let them jump it away, else have the war or mnk voke while you sata the tank.


What really broke utsusemi as a damage absorption ability was the fact that def/vit were massively flawed and people realized voke really wasn't that great, let alone necessary. And all that happened a few years into the game. The aoe is what it is, there's really not much that "can't" be dealt with without utsu'd dd's, although there's plenty that's easier.

[Cadsuane]

Back in the early days utsusemi meant you didn't take damage from magical or physical AoEs too, which was a huge advantage at decos. At least some of your guys had to have blinks or you wouldn't be going very fast there.

Also, christ, those were also the days before assassin. Getting an SC working used to be a work of art just because the opener had to turn the mob so the closer could SATA on the tank and lock the mob down for the MB. Being a DRG actually kinda sucked, particularly if it was back when wheeling thrust (I remember the importers calling it daishiarin) still did like 100 damage on a good day, since voke and a WS like that wasn't about to turn shit unless the fight had just started. Not as if you could just eat the SATA all the time either with HJ on 3 monutes and SJ on 5. After WT got updated turning wasn't so problematic or at least, you could do it often enough that you could get a good thief to improvise and go on you if he sees your gimp ass unable to turn the odd time. And you had to be careful when you were burning high jump too because the hate loss can fuck up the whole rythm, and the reflexive thing for most DRGs (even today) is to use it for damage and TP whenever it's up. I remember being pro enough that I could ball park the PLDs hate and make a good guess whether the mob would turn or not after a WS that I would pre-emptively instruct the THF who to go on. That was fucking hardcore. exp pts today are snorefests compared to that.

[Enos]

Back in the early days utsusemi meant you didn't take damage from magical or physical AoEs too, which was a huge advantage at decos. At least some of your guys had to have blinks or you wouldn't be going very fast there.

Also, christ, those were also the days before assassin. Getting an SC working used to be a work of art just because the opener had to turn the mob so the closer could SATA on the tank and lock the mob down for the MB. Being a DRG actually kinda sucked, particularly if it was back when wheeling thrust (I remember the importers calling it daishiarin) still did like 100 damage on a good day, since voke and a WS like that wasn't about to turn shit unless the fight had just started. Not as if you could just eat the SATA all the time either with HJ on 3 monutes and SJ on 5. After WT got updated turning wasn't so problematic or at least, you could do it often enough that you could get a good thief to improvise and go on you if he sees your gimp ass unable to turn the odd time. And you had to be careful when you were burning high jump too because the hate loss can fuck up the whole rythm, and the reflexive thing for most DRGs (even today) is to use it for damage and TP whenever it's up. I remember being pro enough that I could ball park the PLDs hate and make a good guess whether the mob would turn or not after a WS that I would pre-emptively instruct the THF who to go on. That was fucking hardcore. exp pts today are snorefests compared to that.

haha....man i guess its been WAY too long since ive played, but that's how it was when i played still. I dno why they would change it...at least it kept xping moderately interesting.

[Roxas]

I'd say SE is shooting for more group synergy than in ff11. Where in the early years you 'needed' 2 SCers and a BLM to burst, and later you just saw 4 melee cut shit up. They seem to be aiming for a group that can pick up almost anyone for basic party killing.

Also, no way utsusemi makes it into this game lol. It truly was a gamebreaker in ff11.

Lastly, if experience has taught me anything its that evasion tanks rarely are as practical as the concept. Yes, conceptually 50% evasion means you're taking 50% less damage; however, in practice one stream of bad RNG and your dead. period. This is especially true when tanking multiple mobs.

But, like its been said, we don't know just yet how the balance is going to shift once 14 goes live, so we will have to see.

[Syntex]

People keep mentioning whistle like it's the new flash but are
forgetting where voke is now. For all we know whistle could be voke 2.0 with a 30 second cooldown and generate no ce and just enough ve to decay back to zero upon it just getting off cooldown.

Remember when you would use war tanks? 15 seconds after voke the mob would start turning if there wasn't a SATA at some point with hate bouncing till a ws or provoke was off cooldown.

[Skeletor1278]

I think a lot of these points will also depend on the mentality of the players. I remember when I initially played FFXI, people wouldn't even bother making pt's without a specific setup, or fighting/xp'ing against anything other than IT++, even after you could prove to them that chaining VTs fast enough would provide a bigger xp/hr total. (btw, this was ~2003-04) Then you'd go to a certain area and see groups of 3 JP's or whatnot xp'ing just fine. I doubt a Pugilist will have the capabilities of performing as well as a Gladiator as far as a main tank, judging only by the description of the abilities presented so far. However, we also don't know what kind of cooldown abilities will have, if SE ends up creating a more fast-paced scenario and ends up giving an ability like 'Featherfoot' a 30sec cd, then it becomes a whole different ballgame.

Also, take into consideration the fact that they continuously say the fights will be party vs party, so that also points out that abilities will have a much more shorter cooldown than expected and will open a new world of possibilities.

PS. IMO, I think this game will have way less 'FFXI' in it than people expect.

[Syntex]

On the thought of party vs party maybe the pug's role is specifically to offtank a mob while they handle the bigger threat much like a rogue can in wow when they blow cooldowns. Maybe the pug can tank untill he exhausts those cooldowns then will need some heavy cures or the tank to pull off him.

[Vacht]

Back in the early days utsusemi meant you didn't take damage from magical or physical AoEs too, which was a huge advantage at decos. At least some of your guys had to have blinks or you wouldn't be going very fast there.

Also, christ, those were also the days before assassin. Getting an SC working used to be a work of art just because the opener had to turn the mob so the closer could SATA on the tank and lock the mob down for the MB. Being a DRG actually kinda sucked, particularly if it was back when wheeling thrust (I remember the importers calling it daishiarin) still did like 100 damage on a good day, since voke and a WS like that wasn't about to turn shit unless the fight had just started. Not as if you could just eat the SATA all the time either with HJ on 3 monutes and SJ on 5. After WT got updated turning wasn't so problematic or at least, you could do it often enough that you could get a good thief to improvise and go on you if he sees your gimp ass unable to turn the odd time. And you had to be careful when you were burning high jump too because the hate loss can fuck up the whole rythm, and the reflexive thing for most DRGs (even today) is to use it for damage and TP whenever it's up. I remember being pro enough that I could ball park the PLDs hate and make a good guess whether the mob would turn or not after a WS that I would pre-emptively instruct the THF who to go on. That was fucking hardcore. exp pts today are snorefests compared to that.

Wow, i forgot the days when there was no assassin. Hell that wasnt really beneficial for thieves unless they wer ein a party, which was odd, thieves seemed to do better at soloing than anything. But it sure helped when they did add it, when everything is party related.

[Agito]

Those early days were truely grand, a little after FFXI came out i leveled up a Paladin, it was my first job. There was a Thief in the majority of my exp parties and i quickly became accustomed for the need for a DD to be able to turn the monster around easily so i could take the SATA and/or SATA WS hate. Sometimes it was mid battle, sometimes it was at the beginning of a pull AND mid battle. From that i adapted pretty good, i always tried keeping the lowest amount of hate that kept the monster attacking me at all times and that was all by feeling alone. Those without Provoke were even taken into consideration, a Ranger pulled, i'd quickly get into position and they'd do their skillchain really fast. Even a Warrior with lolMistral Axe coupled with a Provoke was able to get hate off of me. I was always complemented for really putting in the effort and that in return made me a better tank and readied me for share hate tanking HNM. It's off topic but i thought i'd share my experience with the olden days.

It was beneficial for the 2nd voker/hate taker to have Utsusemi, because if there was a slow Thief that took forever to do their sata then that was unnecesary massive damage that really made a major blow to your mages MP pool. This leads me to the Pugilist (i'm finally getting on topic here.), their description says that they lack defense so they would really need abilities that lets them dodge most of the attacks, something like Utsusemi but different. It's going to be a massive blow to the mages MP pool if they're not able to dodge 7 out of 10 incoming attacks, there even needs to be something that will help mitigate the damage done by those 3 attacks that they weren't able to dodge. There's alot of things to consider though, weapons, armor, level of the monster, abilities you selected to equip, stats? specialize in wind stat for evasion?, there's just a huge amount of things. I believe that Square Enix didn't completely mess up the Pugilist's ability to tank but we're still left mystified as to what and how long it will be able to.

[McGoonagle]

What the PUG, or anybody else does, is going to depend on the abilities the player selects. You can maximize evasion, damage dealing, or ability to absorb damage depending upon which abilities you select. A pug with a lot of evasion may be a great puller, although pullers may not be that important in pt-vs.-pt fights. Defense > evasion may give you a tank able to hold some hate, and DD > everything gives you a DD.

I suspect that you could make a pt of four pugs with different abilities, a lancer or archer, and a mage, and that combination would cover a lot of possibilities

[Leonhart]

Ahh, the days of Pre-Assassin in FFXI. I remember getting into a lot of groups due to being a smart Samurai that knew how to first voke. Also Distortion skillchains... (Damn, I hated leveling Monk. "You can only make Fusion. gtfo.").

Through a damage dealing perspective, with some work, I can kinda see Pugilists doing the Haymaker + Sneak Attack combo with a boost of evasion for a strong amount of damage. However, we need to wait to see numbers first.