MOAR JOB UPDATES/ADJUSTMENTS

I'm not exactly sure what the current dev. team is thinking. They're actually working, and mostly in a good way. Unfortunately, they still seem to keep missing some of the bigger points about job balance.

I get all jobs need to be unique. I get there has to be a certain level of work you have to put into a job to get it up to an acceptable level from a gear and skill standpoint. What I don't get is how a select few jobs can keep getting mega-buffed while others that have needed buffs for a very long while have continued to be ignored or just get a bone thrown it's way from time to time.

The cyclical nature of this game is pretty funny to watch. The first few years, it was all about dual wield burns anywhere you could keep a chain going. Then it became all about 2H'er burns. Now it's obviously about Abyssea burns, but the common denominator in all of that is the relevance of a couple jobs in comparison to the rest.

Those jobs? WAR and WHM.

The game has been changed to a point where if you have a NIN, WAR, WHM and BRD, you can pretty much tackle the vast majority of the content. You don't even truly need all 4, but from an Abyssea standpoint, any other healing or melee jobs just come up on the short end of the stick if you're trying to low man things. The name of the Abyssea game is KI acquisition. Want to cover all the red staggers? Bring a NIN and WAR. Want to attempt to farm up fast gold chests? Bring 1 or 2 Fell Cleavers (preferably WAR cause DRK GAxe just doesn't cut it). Want to keep them alive? WHM is pretty much your only option. That or an army of people with Cure 4.

Sure, other DDs can dump out some damage that's on par with some pimped out WARs, but why fill up a slot in an event with a job that's only there for a potential blue stagger? Why claw your eyeballs out watching a PLD tank something when a NIN can bust out so many different staggers, avoid getting hit most of the time (thus drastically lowering your target's TP gain) and dish out exponentially more damage?

So, to address this, here's what I would suggest to the dev. team:

Give all jobs access to the elemental trigger skills 175 and below. Energy Drain, Tachi: Koki and Blade: Ei are the only 3 that wouldn't be covered. You can still leave other potential WS like Penta Thrust (150) with their current job-specific traits and it's not like these weapon skills do a shitload of damage to begin with short of using a brew. Even then, the truly good brew-skills (jinpu aside...) are all upwards of 300 skill anyway.

Toss in some Lv.1 weapons people can carry around. Hell, make them available through dominion credit purchases since there's really nothing else useful out of those. Between people being too f***ing lazy to actually skill the weapon to begin with and the potential for 3 out of the 13 current staggers to not be covered, I don't think game balance is going to be thrown completely out of whack.

As for specific job adjustments...a lot remains to be seen. A true balance in a specific role (which I define as Tank, Healer, Support, Front-Line DD and Back-Line DD) means a player's skill and equipment are what set them apart from their team members. Right now, a completely pimped out BST can get trashed by run-of-the-mill MNK or WAR. I get there are niches for each job, but really...it kind of sucks when you need X job because it's just so far superior to dishing damage and not because there's a JA or Trait you need to win.

A DRG, SAM or WAR don't need anymore adjustments, but one or more or all tend to be in the notes when it comes update time.

...well, I personally would love for a DRG to have actual pet commands, but that's a story for a different day.

RDM and SCH both need Cure 5. WHM has had the ever-loving shit buffed out of it to the point where RDMs, outside of Abyssea, are simply there for Refresh II and barely considered within Abyssea. SCH doesn't even have that and I'd contend the main benefits of SCH main are the same things you can get from subbing SCH, but then again, why would you when subbing RDM for Convert and Refresh would probably trump it?

Anyway, I could go on for hours about this, but I won't. I'm going to wait until Lv.99 comes about before I truly pass judgement on SE's job adjustments. All I know is, I'm sick of having to make sure there's a NIN, and WAR for every event we do.