SE's Nov Job Adjustments: SMN, RNG, and BST

SE posted some updates on SMN and BST today. That followed up the RNG update from a week or so ago.

Ranger



Velocity Shot: They're increasing the duration of this from 5 minutes to 2 hours. That's always been one of the things that's baffled me about SE's job ability timers. Why do they make a JA with the same duration as recast? I get it when we have a JA that's got a 5 min. recast with a 2 hour duration (Afflatus JAs) or a 1 min. recast with a 5 min duration (Hasso/Seigan) and you can alternate back and forth, but a 5 min. recast with a 5 min duration just makes no sense.

At any rate, the benefits from this are rather obvious. Most of a RNG's damage is obviously going to come from ranged attacks, so having this up and not having to think about it for 2 hours is beneficial.

Unlimited Shot: Changing this so that the effect remains active until you actually hit your target. The benefits from this are rather obvious. Don't know how many RNGs I've heard over the years griping about missing a wind throw on sky gods or missing a weapon skill with a certain type of ammo. Not that they can simply spam weapon skills again, but in a zerg, it seems as though it would come in super handy with an Icarus Wing.

Camouflage: Changing this so that you generate less enmity from your ranged attacks. Given the main two things I fight anymore are Dynamis Lord and the various Einherjar bosses, this would be something that I'd insist on our RNGs using before they pop a weapon skill. I don't know how many times I've lost TP cause a RNG pulled hate. Depending on how much lower the generated enmity is while this JA is active obviously.

Distance Messages: This is something sorely overdue and likely was part of the reason people started using Windower en mass. This is also a reason why I never bothered leveling RNG. I don't want to use Windower and I don't want to spend time guessing where the sweet spot is. Depending on how this is implemented, I may end up changing my job leveling order from DRK - BLM to DRK - RNG - BLM. I can't imagine this would be horrible though as any assistance in finding the right ranged distance would be welcome.

All of it looks promising, although these updates were probably due years ago.

Summoner

Summoner is getting a new job ability called "Avatar's Favor". I had talked at length in this blog post about Tikki main healing an XP party. I also mentioned that if SMN had some sort of AoE refresh similar to that of Ballad I or Ballad II, they'd probably be every bit as powerful in an XP party as the old guard of healing.

The news here today actually surprised me. Not only did they get an AoE refresh, they got a ton of other stuff that seems to put them on par with COR (at least on paper).



How this is actually implemented though remains to be seen. With a two hour duration, this is obviously not an ability that a Summoner is just going to pop out like Evoker's Roll or even Refresh itself. This is basically a support ability that seems to focus on getting the SMN to keep their avatars out for longer.

All of the avatars have a different perpetuation cost. For ease of math's sake, we're just going to look at level 75 with no perpetuation reduction or refresh gear yet.

Carbuncle: 9MP/tic
Fenrir: 11MP/tic
Ifrit/Shiva/Titan/Ramuh/Garuda/Diabolos: 13MP/tic

Obviously the focus for SMN has always been on reducing perpetuation cost. There's a whole host of gear available for doing this. Not having SMN leveled myself, I'm not going to speak of the math involved in reducing perpetuation, but it leaves me with two burning questions that probably won't get answered until the update actually arrives.

1. Do these favors wear off immediately when the avatar is dismissed or is there a duration?

The answer to this question here is what will make or break the usefulness of this ability. If the effect wears off when the avatar is dismissed, then it's "Thanks for the thought SE, but you failed." If it remains in effect for at least a short period (to give the SMN a chance to recover some MP), then it's complete win.

It's awesome that you can stack them, but really, if the effects wear off immediately after the avatar is dismissed, what's the point? You'd have to build a party with all these SMNs in it and keep them there it would seem. Meaning the more buffs you wanted to stack, the few people it would actually reach.

I'm not knocking the change, but until this part of it is answered, I'm not going to get overjoyed at the prospect of finally being able to stop making the SMNs in our linkshell feel completely useless.

2. How long does it take to get to max potency?

This is kind of an augment to the first question. If the effect takes say...5 minutes to reach max potency and it's removed immediately when the avatar is dismissed, it stands to reason the SMN is going to be spending more time reaching max potency than the amount of time the party actually benefits from max potency. While some buff is better than no buff obviously, making it too long (i.e. longer than a minute or a minute and a half) just isn't worth it.

I think all of this will end up being decent for SMN in the end, but part of me looks at it with a little trepidation as SE tends to advertise some really great things, then just implement them poorly. It seems to change SMN for the better so far.

Now to go see how many threads get filled up with "WAAAAAH NO NEW AVATARS!~"

Beastmaster

This, on paper, is probably the most significant change to a job in all of the updates...and not in an entirely good way. It's obviously something BSTs have been wanting for a long time and it definitely seems to put a lot more fun into BST (albeit at the expense of your wallet). Like the SMN updates, depending on how all of this plays out, I'll reserve judgement. Looking closer at it, I'm not so sure this ends up being the best thing to happen to BST as you can make the case it makes them less self-sufficient.



What this does is give the BSTs the ability to control their jug pet's moves through the use of charges. Right from the getgo, the first thing that appears to be bad about this is the 2 minute recharge on the charges. If these moves are dependent the available number of charges and the pet actually having 100TP, why do they have to put a 2 minute recharge on these things? Hell a SCH gets charges on a 1 minute recharge and I think it's pretty safe to say they haven't exactly broken the game.

I also doubt SE adjusted the strength of the jug pets, so this recharge timer is even more baffling, especially considering just how long it takes for a pet to get 100TP.

On paper, this seems to perhaps close some of the gap our BST friends suffered in XP or meripo parties. Having the ability to choose a move to spam every 2 minutes along with the normal damage a pet and BST dish out likely accomplishes that at least a little. What does it do for end-game events though? Nothing really. It seems that it hurts them more than it helps since they now have to wait for charges and are dependent on the pet actually living for 6 minutes to build enough TP to use it. Sure, they could monitor the TP and get the pet to disengage until all 3 charges were ready, but by then, (in the case of an Einherjar boss for example), the target is dead.

Don't get me wrong...I think the idea here is a step in the right direction, but depending on just how powerful the jug pets are and how moves are distributed with the charges, this will go badly. If the Funguar is any example, I don't think this would help much at all.

Personally, I think if the charges themselves counted as an extra way to use a pet's TP move w/o the pet having TP and if you could bank your charges (like SCH) w/o having a pet out, this would look a whole lot better on paper and probably perform that way when it's implemented.

I wouldn't get completely discouraged though if you love your BST. This is the first time that I've noted SE making a specific point of telling people that they're watching closely and want to make more adjustments to BST as they see fit. So definitely test the living piss out of all this and submit your feedback to them. They might actually be listening. :)

Conclusion

While a lot of these updates look decent on paper, they need to be tested. Some of these things are just way overdue while others are rather innovative ways of updating a job and bringing them up to par with some of the others in their category. I can see some of the benefit of having these updates around in the events that I do from week to week, but again...until they're tested, I'm not going to jump onto the bandwagon.