Class BalanceFollow

Theoretically, the classes are perfectly balanced for cutting-edge groups because FFXIV doesn't have any such group dynamics. When we look at what content the game does have, however, there are no "hard" aspects to it; people often tank the endgame bosses naked just for fun. In fact, it's probably due to this problem that I hear many people dismissing Paladin - there's not much need for an all-out defensive tank when content seems to be balanced toward zerg runs more than anything else... so I guess you could say that everything's fine unless you're a Gladiator/Paladin.

I'm curious to hear others' thoughts on the matter, though, since I'm not exactly at endgame myself.


Edited, Jun 14th 2012 6:35pm by KaneKitty

So I assume the game is so unrefined and unbalanced that such things don't exist yet?

FFXI had some boss battles where people utterly refused to take any melee, except to set up skillchains for the casters to get their elemenyal bonuses from.

There were dungeons and boss fights where one mistake would mean a wipe and 2-3 hours worth of redoing content simply to reach that point again.

I guess maybe this is INTENDED in FFXIV but not present yet, due to the game's 'limbo' status as somewhere between Beta and release?

The more info anyone can provide, the better. I greatly appreciate your input.

Okay, the posts above are from people who aren't playing the game and is all hearsay. Here's actual info first hand from someone who has played the game.

1: Paladin Artifact is useless, yes. That is true. The stats are very lacking and you can get much more out of your tanking ability if you use melded Cobalt Gear. Tanking naked, I don't know who has done that, but that's kind of asinine.

2: White Mages will always be needed. However, there are usually two spots for such out of an 8 person party. Ifrit and Moogle usually requires 2 White Mages. Garuda you can get by with 1.

3: Paladin and Warrior are interchangeable when it comes to tanking. Warrior is better for tanking a group of mobs (with Steel Cyclone) and is kind of better for tanking Hamlet battles due to being able to dish out more damage. Paladin is more useful for Moogle and Ifrit and Garuda.

4. Each of the damage dealing types are useful for different situations. Monk can do magical damage but is close-range, Dragoon has spike damage. Bard is a good all-around kind of job. Decent damage, and buffs make it useful.

Lastly, Garuda is not as easy as people are making it out to be. They likely watched a BLM burn early on its release before it was patched.

Suggestions on DD class that would find itself in high demand currently?

Classes are relatively balanced but unfortunately many people have the idea stuck in their head that the only dd class that is allowed in anything is blm. Drg and Mnk get the shaft for many endgame events, standard party comp is bring your tanks and heals, 1 bard and a bunch of blms.

No they are not, the only reason people can even say that with a straight face, is because it was the same way in FFXI.

There is no balance as far as classes are concerned, Thm/BM out perform every single DPS in the game by a HUGE margin, is not even close, is not like they do 2% more dps, they do 60% More! As far as i have seen i am level 32 lancer, and my mage friend can solo leves at 4 stars(6 levels higher) than his own, and not break a sweat, Magic dmg does not miss for what i have seen atleast, even if the monster is higher level, melee attacks miss most of the time if the monster is 2-4 levels above you, and you do a measly 40-35 dmg, while a mage can just press one key and do 300-500-600 dmg my combos combined do around 300 and i have to spend 1000 TP, a mage can just laugh and kill a monster......

At first i tho that the difference in dps would decrease as levels went up, but it is the same as i have seen since level 1, a mage can outperform any other dps with easy and efficiency. No wonder they stack them for bosses, is not even a contest.

It's cute how people pretend to know what they are talking about. BRD and ARC has nowhere near DPS as MNK or DRG (or their class counterparts). In your dream it would be, BRD has only two feasible WS that are Rain of Death (30 secs CD and 3,000 TP cost) and Quick Nock (3 min CD). Barrage is not as good as you believe if it is used on high def mobs like Primal or PLD Moogle for exampple, it totally sucks. THM/BLM has very high spike damage in the beginning but they will soon run out of MP and Thundaga (45 secs CD) to combo with, in a long battle they do not do 60% more dmg than MNK or DRG. In fact in 16-17mins AV run people would change from BLM to MNK on Mistress because it's faster. THM/BLM is only undisputed on AoE normal mobs because they have the largest AoE arsenal.

Ifrit (Hard mode only) - Luck after Hellfire, you may or may not get screwed up and it doesn't matter what DD you are using, they all gonna die if you get screwed up.
Moogle - BRD and BLM for speedrun not because of doing more dmg, but because half of the Moogles will run away when you get hate, and all of them randomly do hate reset
AV - MNK. BLM main job is, guess what, Sleepga
CC - You can do either BLM stacking (a bit harder since 1.22b) or MNK + DRG (MNK can incap the tail and make it safer for melee) for speedrun
Garuda - You can try stacking BLM and see for yourself, it's already patched.
Castrum Novum - H1 bot has a ton of Hp and Def and OHKO long range directional AoE attack, so it's either very easy with any DD or it's very hard with any DD depends on you know how to do it or not.

And Hamlet wise a PLD is much better than WAR. You are not required to do much dmg to get 60k+ or 70k+ score, while PLD can make WHM life hella easier than a WAR.

Featherfoot/Heavy/Sleep/Self-Heal are all crap in end-game.

The only one get the shaft is people who don't or won't play all lvl 50 jobs with above average gears (AF are mostly crap, but what do you expect from free stuff?).

Edited, Jun 24th 2012 10:05pm by Khornette

Rinsui, have you actually been in these end-game at all, or just speculating it on the forum huh?

In Ifrit Hard mode, there is equally as much safe spot for Melee as for Ranged, Crack and Plume are what killing people. In Extreme mode it is reported there is no safe spot, Big kaboom will hit anywhere it feels like and Ifrit will reset hate every Jump.

In AV, BLM is useful for AoE spam on the way to the Mistress as well as primarily Sleepga on adds at Mistress. MNK wins hand down at DPS battle there. You can try bringing in more BLM but it's a lot harder to burn Mistress before she regen than MNK burn.

In Garuda, it is actually easier to have Melee because you have to kill the Plumes/Feathers ASAP as they spawn and doing this on BLM is quite MP costly/time costly. People are so used to BLM burn that after the patch they just give up, because the new strategy require a more balanced set up.

Castrum Novum, lol you have never fought any of these bots, staying at distance is equally at risk/safety as staying right close to it. The AoE is farther than the distance you can shoot/cast spells and you have to move sideway to avoid it. In fact most of the time nub death occurred are Ranged/Healers. It has tons of HP and def, making the battle long which even out the DPS capability of MNK/DRG/BLM, because BLM is a Spike DD type meaning BLM does awesome damage the first minute or two then begin to decrease significantly.

Because Sleepga is only used in one out of 3 Primals (one that has 2 modes for end-game), 2 Dungeons (I pretend that Darkhold is not end-game, because it is not) and 4 Strongholds.

Edited, Jun 25th 2012 4:24am by Khornette

No. Blm and Bard are wanted in nearly every game over traditional melee because they can stay out of AoE range.

It's always a problem. At least in Diablo, the devs added mortars and other things to try to balance it (and failed)

There should never be a low def melee DD, as Mnk and Drg seem to be, because no one wants to have to heal anyone but the tank.

Well, I would be o.k. with a ranged class that does good damage in exchange for low survivability, as long as it not possible to "nail down" all the danger with a single tank / off tank combination. In that regard, SE's class design choice is a little questionable at the moment.

I see two scenarios that are both viable and fair:
Scenario 1: "Tanks can't consistently hold the hate of all enemies"
-> Ranged class that does tons of damage is o.k., because it is constantly in *real* danger without *several* supporting tanks. Like this, it always is a tradeoff: either you bring more secondary tanks (thus lowering overall damage dealt), or you skip the secondary tanks and pay for your damage-only focus with lots of dead mage/archer glass canons.
Scenario 2: "A single tank or two can consistently hold the hate of all enemies"
-> Ranged classes can only do moderate to low damage in exchange for their relative savety.

So, perhaps, it is less a matter of unbalanced ranged DDs alone, but a matter of combat mechanics that favor single (dual) tank setups.

Again I have to ask have you actually played in those fights recently, or just making it up because it seems fun? Ifrit Plume is the one that span almost the entire battlefield leaving very little safe spot (which conveniently the largest safe patch is right where Ifrit and the tank is). Whenever Ifrit jump, everyone scramble to designated safe spots, and then they will have to move back to their old location. Mages/Archer staying where the safe spots after jump were would risk getting crack on the healers and imminent party wipe, they are to stand at further back of the field to be crack bait. Archer/Bard would be the one getting killed the most in Ifrit to be honest.

There are no relative safe spot for Garuda. You even touch it or not? Before Astral, she's very lolcake in that she only hit in front of her, and there are 4 column of stones you have to hide behind whenever she repops. After Astral you can't hide anywhere, little Plumes will get to you and then explode. The Miser fight is not about safe spot, because you want to kill her ASAP before she start retreating and regenerating, it's the whole point of speed run. In CC there are AoE moves and Ants spawning, which although ranged still have "relatively" safer spots, it's no joke. Don't even start about Ifrit Extreme mode.

And just so you know, more than a few of the current bosses reset hate including Ifrit Extreme, so you can't stay happily ever after in your safe spot and playing the game with one finger.

Edited, Jun 25th 2012 10:35am by Khornette

@Khornette
So basically you are saying:
"Even if you took away the ranged element from archers and black mages, they would get just as many party invites as before."
Like, because we already established that being able to attack from range provides no significant advantage.
Where do you come from, pal?
Wonderland?

Edited, Jun 25th 2012 1:16pm by Rinsui

^ This.

I don't think anyone is saying that Range DD is the only way to do anything. It's just the path of least resistance, which is what PUGs strive for, because you can't depend on party members unless you know them.

When Abyssea came out, that was the start off FFXI's "No TP Feed" phase. No one wanted a melee because it caused the enemy to spam tp moves, and it was all around boring. I think they have a ways to go before balancing the classes, but they won't bother focusing on that until 2.0.

It's gotten to the point where I don't see a reason to gear up Drg anymore because I'm forever Bard ;;

Actually (IMO) BLM is popular because it's an easy class to play and get good damage, it's a perfect job for PUGs with random people. All but the crappiest players can do above average damage with BLM. Granted you still have the random idiot spamming spells and making life difficult on the tank, but the damage is still higher than a mediocre player on a melee DD. I'm not saying there's no skill to BLM, because there is... it's just that like your favorite fighting game... BLM is that charactor that anyone can play decently even though other fighters can do more damage with a skilled player. (The analogy worked so much better in my head before I typed it)

Not to discourage you any further, but... if you liked XI then why not just play XI? I'm gonna guess that the answer is 'Because no one wanted me for anything other than TH' and tell you that the mentality hasn't changed. There will always be an optimal setup for a particular event or battle so you'll probably never escape that unless you happen to favor a class who is included on that list.



You must've quit a loooooong time ago

Yes, I understand I made a bad point at that, because I thought we are arguing over FFXIV class balance.



Yes, because weirdly large number of people already got too many Ifrit weapons and they just don't bother going back there. What for? Also weirdly you (and maybe those people) trying to forget that Ifrit first release has LNC LNC LNC LNC LNC Healer Healer Tank as the set up to speed kill it, and in fact the general outcry was why Mages so weak vs Ifrit. There is no thing hard about bringing melee into Ifrit. I have to stress again, speed kill. The only "hard" thing about Ifrit is animation lock on bad server architecture, with the random thing Ifrit do after Hellfire (he can go nut and crack on Healer/Tank at the same time and you can be sure it's a wipe).



Yes, I agree I didn't read that and that was my bad.

But you know what, after 1.22b when Voice of the Dragon on Chimera now hit the ranged, people are complaining it's too hard to do CC because they can't stack BLM (which some other people pointed out they can still) and can't stay in one spot press 1,2,3,1,2,1,2,1,2,3 to win anymore. And then they complain why ranged get an unfair advantage... And yes, my point is that BLM does not do 60% dmg more than Melee, and that SE actually has been trying to balance out the playing field by throwing in moves and adds that can reach out to the ranged and what they got are more people complaining and avoiding such contents (Garuda, it's hard because people are so used to Ranged safety spots which is gone now). And yet most of the people here complaining about class unbalanced are, guess what, people not playing end-game. Put two and two together and you see what I am trying to say.

P.S: If you have read through all the comments who are saying the balance is better than the others made out to be, you can see that they all come from people who have all lvl 50. It is easy to presume something is very out of whack because you don't have experience about it firsthand. Also I have no intention to reject that the game is gearing toward having multiple class to work in different situation, because balance is supposed to bring unqiue strength and weakness to class and not making them all similar to each other.

Edited, Jun 25th 2012 8:31pm by Khornette

@Docent42

Thanks. Was good to read your post. Back on track in the mind set of just playing the game. All the negative stuff on MNK was just starting to take its toll. lol... gotta stay away from those kinds of threads! ><

Thanks again.

Why, hello FFXI circa 2006. Long time no see. How have you been? Good, good. Nice to see that the old FF rule of "If you can't kill it, throw more BLMs at it" still applies even today.

Just did a run through "United we Stand" with a social linkshell last night (and 2 people we picked up to help finish it out), and as far as I could tell, there were only 2 of us that had ever completed the fight (a couple had fought but lost).

I made a mistake getting to the last gate, got a couple people killed (I couldn't find the tunnel... we need map markers...), but in the end, we got there, spent 5 minutes going over the strat, went in, and in < 20 minutes, we walked out with a win.

With that being said, we tried to go with the standard pt, but couldn't get a blm, and had a drg in place of the blm.

At the end of the fight, I realized, we really only needed a single war, 2 whm, 2 tanks, and any 3 DDs. The two tanks rotate through destroying the Generator, and kiting the Mech. The War has to avoid using (or uses with care) AoE weaponskills when the generator is up, but other than that, focuses 100% on the adds (either by the generator when the mobs start spawning, or at the transmitter when the generator is down).

With the rest of the party focusing only on the transmitter. Even the two kiters don't need to be tanks (if they are good enough at running from the mech, and time the last hit, and know what they are doing), but pld or war can buff def, then destroy the piller and run. As well, Pld is better, as they don't have AoE, and will not accidently pull adds on the kite.

And after having gone into that battle field a few times, I can honestly say that, after the 1 War, and 2 Whm, that fight is 100% skill and 0% party make-up. Once you have the 1 War, and 2 Whm, you can win that fight with 2 whm kiters, and 3 whm dds if they know what they are doing.

More fights like this, I think will help people understand party play much better. Where there is a clear, and easy fight strategy, and speed is not necessary and does not influence reward. If it matters to people to spend 5 more minutes in a quest fight, then they can spend the 30 extra minutes making their own party and getting there:).

I think this is a good sign of things to come. Each fight that has been added to 14 since the battle adjustments has been adaptive to our play-style. And we now have a quest fight that skill and strategy are key. And with good players who know how to play their classes/jobs you can get a win on a first run (if you are familiar with the fight).

More fights like this, with more difficulty, and continued effective ways of assigning party members to tasks may prove to make fights feel like accomplishments.

Sounds like you are not fighting high enough mobs. Try increasing the leve difficulty by 1 or 2 stars and try that. As well, you are at a point where you have most of your support abilities, but not your high damage abilities. Those should be coming ~45 if I remember correctly with Lnc/Drg.

On a side note, Drgs do have a place in party play. They are the stunners, and TP magnets. So, not only can they significantly reduce the mobs damage output, but they can use their weaponskills faster than any other class or job.

Edited, Jun 26th 2012 11:58am by rfolkker

Grandlethal, you should be able to easily duo +6 if you have your main cross abilities like second wind, featherfoot, foresight, protect, cure, and keep up Life Surge.

At 40 Lnc (recently to 50) I was soloing +3 and changed to +6 at 45. BUT, this was as Lnc, not Drg. I needed all my cures and other abilities that I couldn't use with Drg.

Yeah, and the exp gain isn't worth it if you're risking dying, or standing around for a while healing hp and mp. I don't have any hard numbers, but it always seems like completing the leve faster will net you more exp with the speed bonus than the extra exp per kill you receive.

Also, there really is no rush. I prefer to take more time leveling a job.


EDIT:

Also, I just noticed your Streetlight Manifesto sig. Nice.

Edited, Jun 26th 2012 2:20pm by Louiscool

What I have found for exp is that the best way to balance it is to fight mobs as hard as you can safely handle, without any significant down time, and still get the speed bonus. Kind of a balancing act. If they are too easy, you lose anywhere between 200-500 exp a kill (assuming you are fighting 10 mobs a leve, that is 2-5k exp), and if they are too hard, you can spend 10-20 minutes extra a leve killing them (which is basically losing an entire leve worth of exp).

Typically in the 40s you should be getting ~8k+ exp a leve, and finishing them in 10 mins. If you flag 4 leves per location (and if you are not linking) duoing, you can get (8k*4)+(5k*4)~(12k*4)+(8k*4) exp every 2 hours (the first set of 4 would be yours, the second would be your partners and the range in exp rewards is based off the number of mobs you end up fighting). Add in travel and down time to fill in the twenty minutes per hour not fighting.

If you link them, you end up getting ~2k bonus exp, which doesn't add up to the 5-8k exp you would normally get from the additional mob kills. Leve linking works best when you are going for rewards (gil), or for faction points, or working with more then 2 ppl (as 4 leves is roughly 10-15 mins arun).

(so that should be 25k-40k an hour you can get in leves).

But, as Louis pointed out, it's always better to take a little less exp than to take even a single death. And it's always better to get the speed bonus (more leves, and the bonus exp) than to take too long to complete them (which also goes towards the no-death policy).

If this is what future contents going to be

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifM_vJ5F-eA&feature=player_embedded

There won't be any safe "ranged", there is only haul butts~