Zyrusticae

The tank classes' damage output is fine. Top-tier DPS can dish out something in the neighborhood of 1200+, where the tanks can't even break 900. The fact that MCH and BRD can only hit about as hard as tanks only says they need a buff, not that tanks need a nerf.

That's the dream, ain't it? A lot of times it feels like it just ain't happening in this lifetime... but then stuff like this happens. Maybe there's hope after all?

Well, of course someone has to be the worst. The point is that 'the worst' could be a matter of tiny degrees and even be in flux depending on the player in question. When it's widely agreed upon what 'the worst' is, that's when we have a problem. Also, it seems ACT is indeed counting Wildfire correctly, though I don't know if it was the most recent update that made it work or a previous one: If you're curious, I hit 467 DPS that run, at level 56 and i133. The other MCH had Gauss Barrel on the entire time and... well, they didn't do so well (337 DPS). 467 DPS at 56 and i133... I do more than that on a regular basis on my level 50 i120 DRG. Grumble, grumble....

Can I just say how much in love with Ken-E-Senna I am right now? I totally fangirl'd out over how sweet she was dealing with the moogles' silly meaningless chores. She never once complains or even raises an eyebrow at it. In fact, if anything, she looks so happy just to be interacting with the moogles. I loved how her bodyguards are absolutely incredulous at the things they're forced to do, but she doesn't even mention it. Sweeping the floor? Scrubbing dirty dishes? All in a day's work for the Elder Seedseer, apparently! Gawd, I love her. I joined the Adders for good reason!

You lost me there. Dragoon has great burst. Black mage has great burst. Warrior has great burst (lolwut?). At most MCH gets pretty close at the very beginning of a fight when we can pop all of our cooldowns in quick succession and have Gauss Barrel running for mostly free damage. After that, it's all downhill from there. And even then, our burst hardly matches up to the greats. But yes, we have (extremely weak) buffs, (worthless) debuffs, all CCs (which are useless in most boss fights), and of course we have mobility (when Gauss Barrel isn't on). Yes, I'm bitter. And you're really overstating the value of Bard DPS when Alexander hasn't even been released yet. Yes, a full team of Bards can meet all the currently existing DPS checks... but they also have to play that much better for it relative to a team that's running with a stronger composition. Obviously, this isn't a problem for parties that are on farm, but when you're trying to get a clear... The problem, ultimately, is that many Alexander teams are going to NOT want to run with any jobs that will make life more difficult for them, and MCH is currently that job. Getting discluded from raids, getting badmouthed by other players for playing the job, getting blamed if the party fails DPS checks, and general negativity all abound from being the heel of jobs. At least for awhile, we didn't really have a job that we could point at and say 'yep, that's the one'. Once WAR, DRG, and BLM got buffed, only SMN was really suffering, and even then they still had their own niche to fill. MCH has no niche. They're utterly overshadowed by bard and even bard is not in a great place thanks to that woefully ill-thought-out Wanderer's Minuet.

That's intentional, and it is NOT random, which is what I was talking about with regards to MCH damage. You can mitigate that by knowing when the boss is going to jump and using the new skills to make the most of it. ACT, yes. As far as I can tell it's been tracking Wildfire properly (and I haven't unlocked Ricochet yet), but I'll double-check to make sure. Either way, Wildfire is still not a huge proportion of our damage on its own. I'd like to see these parses where we're hitting close to Bard, though, to be honest, I don't think Bard itself is a good metric as it is a weak DPS class to begin with, as said. "Hits as hard as bard" may as well be a codeword for "hits like a wet noodle" as far as I'm concerned. (Yes, I do think bard is in need of buffs, too.) (And how you could mention Dismantle/Rend Mind as a positive with their horribly weak effects, low duration, and long cds is entirely beyond me...)

5-8% variance is still a pretty significant amount, especially when you consider that the melee DPS jobs enjoy 100% consistency, though BLM and BRD have some (but not much) randomness of their own to contend with. (Never played SMN so I know nothing about them, heh.) I think you have an odd standard for what qualifies as "bad". "Marginally worse than bard" when "bard" already qualifies as "weak DPS" is not exactly an encouraging statement. I also have yet to see a single MCH parse that even matches top BRD, so there's that. I'm still fully convinced MCH is just plain weak, even disregarding how hard it is to play. Even though I am playing pretty much as close to perfect as I can manage (and out-DPSing everyone I meet in PUGs), the DPS I am putting out remains pathetic in light of what the other DPS jobs are capable of in the right hands. Even at level 55 I am still putting out 400-ish DPS where I can hit the 500-range on a regular basis as a level 50 DRG with similar gear. That's pretty damning, really. WAR damage output is front-loaded. Those big numbers do not translate to outrageously high sustained damage output due to the rest of their kit being kind of weak in that regard. That being said, yeah, they can do insane throughput in Deliverance now.

Your suspicion is likely correct. At least at the moment, even Warriors are capable of doing about as much damage as MCH is at level 60: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/241432-Machinist-needs-serious-attention?p=3065907&viewfull=1#post3065907 I wouldn't be surprised if a Cleric Stance'd WHM is capable of superior damage output. The potencies on our skills are completely pathetic. Even accounting for the turret (which is effectively a DoT that hits for 80 potency), Paladin still hits harder more consistently than us with their primary attack chain. Here's some really simplified math (with the turret damage converted to the GCD for consistency) Fast Blade (150) > Savage Blade (200) > Royal Auth (340) Split Shot (140+66) > 50% chance > Slug Shot (180+66) > 50% chance > Clean Shot (200+66) In other words, since we're stuck at the mercy of RNG our effective potencies are cut to a pathetic amount. If you're stuck spamming Split Shot, the PLD WILL out-DPS you. That's how bad our damage is. Now, granted, when our cds are up and we can hit our opening salvo, we can keep up during those short few moments. But as soon as everything's on cd and we're stuck spamming split shot and the demon of RNG rears its ugly head, we may as well be firing pea shooters at 'em. It really feels like we were designed on the assumption that we would get to fire off our entire skill chain 100% of the time instead of 25% of the time, but of course, the math doesn't work out that way, hence why we feel so terrible in actual play. It's an easy fix, too - either increase the potency of Split Shot or let failed Split Shot procs give us a stack of ammo (or maybe even both), and that would go a loooong way to making the class less boring and frustrating to play and help us keep up with the other DPS.

It's true that Balmung is generally pretty good about this. But there's still that small chance that you'll run into bad apples that can ruin your day. I don't blame anyone who fears that sort of backlash for looking into options that minimize the chances of that occurring to almost nothing. It's particularly prudent for individuals who suffer from some level of social anxiety, which I imagine is quite common among LGBTQA people who have suffered abuse for their differences. No matter how many times you tell them "it's okay, the community's cool", the fact remains that it's a server full of tens of thousands of people and you cannot absolutely guarantee that all of the people you run into are going to be as cool with this stuff as others.

This is the kicker, and why the "but you don't need to segregate yourselves!" posts are so damaging over the long run. We're still not equal yet - not in the eyes of the law, or the general populace, or the insurance companies, or the medical professionals, or in so many other areas of life that are essential for healthy living. Because we are not yet equal, we need safe spaces where we can feel like we ARE equal, or at the very least among people who can understand our unique situations. Removing these safe spaces does not magically somehow make us more equal in the eyes of so many people who see us as freaks and monsters. It only makes us invisible, which itself is a problem of its own and is not at all a solution to any of the above listed problems. Thus, these safe spaces are here to stay, at least for awhile yet, until the day no LGBTQA individual is considered special or remarkable in any way because it is simply an accepted fact of life that people are different. Let me repeat that - until no one on the whole planet considers an individual in the alphabet soup to be unusual or worthy of note, we are still not yet equal. The end goal of equality is for your sexual orientation or gender identity to simply be a universally accepted facet of your person, one about as noteworthy as your hair or eye color (though much more difficult to change). It should be abundantly obvious to anyone who lives in this modern world that we are nowhere near that goal. So let it be. We still have a lot of work to do, and creating these safe spaces isn't hurting anyone.

It's not really British at all, honestly. It's just a fictional variant of English dialect that they decided to create to give the game more of a fantastical, unearthly feel. Personally, I quite like it, as it gives the game its own unique flavor. It's not meant to imitate Shakespeare (and it really doesn't if you read any of Shakespeare's actual works), nor is it really Medieval-style English (that's even worse than Shakespeare in terms of modern comprehensibility). It's just flavor and seasoning, that's all. That being said, it shouldn't be very difficult for you to rewrite the dialogue to modern English if that's your thing, since it already only uses a handful of archaic words and phrases to create that flavor. Just replace them with more modern terms and you're good to go. Somehow I fail to see the issue here. They don't have to be the same. Japanese and English in particular have so many enormous grammatical, stylistic, and cultural differences between the two that a literal translation is barely even comprehensible to native English speakers. If I did an actually literal translation of the Japanese dialect I'd have to do a LOT of omission of subjects and essential words that make English sound like English. Hence, they just write separate dialogue that puts the same points across. It's the preferable route to take, IMO, especially for native English speakers as they will have a much easier time navigating the dialogue than with the alternative, more literal approach.

Bard song and turret aura are their own things and should only penalize you for actively using them, not just having them at all. While you're using them, you're a 'support DPS'. When you're NOT using them, you're just straight DPS. I mean, the only point of 'safety' is that you do less damage when you're dead. In the off chance no one ever dies and everyone is playing optimally, what do you REALLY bring to a party if you're doing 10-20% less damage than everyone else? That being said, I guess I must eat my words because bards were already pretty damn strong even after getting "nerfed". Which, honestly, raises the question of why they felt they needed to introduce a completely different playstyle to force bards to become BLMs (and with two big skills gated behind the stance, they are being forced). It can't be because they were brought on in most raid parties. With MCH being added, the two would become interchangeable and the slot would just become "pick a ranged support DPS", which is totally fine (assuming good balance). Trying to "fix" what wasn't broken with WM/GB just strikes me as a very strange direction to take. The melee were shit. lol. I know that playing as a DRG the only time I get out-DPSed is when a BLM has AoE'd the crap out of the dungeon, because in that case I cannot keep up (though that's probably changed with Flare being nerfed - IIRC I managed to out-DPS a strong one during a recent post-3.0 Syrcus Tower run). Even though MNK and NIN are technically capable of doing higher damage, I rarely (re: never) run into players that skilled in duty finder runs. Edit: This guy sums up my feelings pretty much exactly: Edit #2: LOL Not mentioned is that every opener assumes you start the fight with 5 stacks of ammunition AND reload is on a 10s cd because you precast it. If you don't start the fight with 5 stacks of ammo GB is literally useless unless you're AoEing. Great mechanic SE, 10/10 balancing A++

That's all well and good, but the fact remains that BRDs and MCHs get to deal with an entirely different playstyle once they hit level 52+. It's a rather harsh and jarring transition, to be sure. Pretty much. That, and spending the dozens of hours needed to get it to its current level. Well, it's not wasted, since I'll still be playing it and it will most likely get buffed pretty quick. It's just quite unpleasant, and a rather bizarre sort of oversight considering how good they've been about balance before 3.0. Of course, I am biased as I would gladly have accepted an OP class that got nerfed down the line ala NIN than the opposite.

The thing is, the difference in power between SMN and BLM in 2.x was still negligable overall. It wasn't even close to the difference between BRD and any melee DPS job, let alone the difference between MCH and literally any other DPS job. Even DPSing healers can out-DPS us. Off-tanks can out-DPS us. We're so bloody terrible at our jobs that we're literally a wasted slot. SMN vs BLM, hah! Those guys don't know true suffering. Yeah, I know they'll fix it. They haven't (notably) failed us in that regard thus far, at least. I just don't like denial in the face of facts, or the implication that even the most skilled players have no idea what they're doing until weeks or even months down the line (as though the game were that complicated...). I'm also quite annoyed because I was REALLY excited to play MCH, but seeing them in this state utterly destroys my motivation to level up the class (and since it was going to be my new main, well...). It's fortunate that there's no content that requires optimal play just yet, and there won't be any until 3.1 releases in July, but the rest of the time I get to run dungeons with the knowledge that my party members would be better off with literally any other DPS class taking my spot. I don't know about you, but that's hardly my idea of 'fun'.

Really? It's not complicated or even particularly difficult. Even NIN's "optimized" rotation only grants it roughly 30 DPS over the rotations people were doing at the start (assuming the player is competent and not completely neglecting obvious class features like you see in so many Crystal Tower parties *sigh*). This isn't going to MAGICALLY CHANGE just because someone figured out a slightly more optimal way to use the tools they've been given. I'm tired of people making excuses. Warrior did not magically improve over time, it only improved after Square Enix patched it. Likewise with Dragoon (and BLM, and SMN, etc). And, look, you have hundreds of very competent players trying all sorts of ideas and combinations with these classes. These things get sussed out in days, not weeks. It's been long enough to know quite a bit more than the general gist of how these classes work. If nothing's been figured out now, nothing is going to change in another month unless Square Enix makes that change.

NIN was actually OP right off the bat. MCH is the complete opposite situation: they're always terrible, even when played completely 100% optimally. High MCH DPS runs in the 600-650 range at level 59 and i142. Meanwhile, this BLM is doing 977 DPS at 60 and i159. As you probably well know, those 17 ilvls (and one job level) are NOT going to explain the raw difference in DPS. The job is simply borked. I think the most obvious problem is that even at our peak burst we're only doing sub-par damage, and then during the rest of the time we're slaves to the RNG as we pray for procs to use our slightly-more-damaging skills... and our skills have really, REALLY bad potencies to begin with. BRD also has low potencies but compensates with lots of crits and the bloodletter proc which completely changes how much damage they output at 50 (though that damage is still obviously sub-par next to melee DPS and caster jobs). Their Wanderer's Minuet skills are also straight-up superior to MCH's Gauss Barrel skills, something I find quite laughable as it's an extremely straightforward comparison and there is no excuse for this discrepancy. This is not okay: Black Mage Machinist

Only one other person in this thread even mentioned Machinist. I knew we were unpopular, but damn, that much? :? At this point, I'm seriously convinced a hotfix is in order. I knew while I was leveling it that it was not doing great damage, but I thought that was just because I was missing some essential tools (a problem in and of itself for any job that doesn't start at the level cap, but still more excusable than just being straight-up underpowered). NOPE! It just sucks. Period. They could throw like 30 potency on our three primary damage skills, maybe that would fix it. Honestly, the only thing that would work would be for them to just increase our potencies. They're too low as they are now. AFAIK they only changed Aeolian Edge to have a rear positional requirement. The rest is unchanged.

So Gauss Barrel/Wanderer's Minuet (including both here because their mechanics are identical). I don't like them. First of all, the stances alone are a sidegrade at best, a downgrade in actuality. Auto attacks constitute a significant proportion of our DPS, so taking that out makes the 20% damage buff only kind of make up for that loss. As such, they are only useful when using the stance-specific skills, and even then the inability to move while attacking can make it so that you don't actually gain any damage overall because you have to move and interrupt your own attacks doing so (though I understand that BRD's WM abilities are better than MCH's GB abilities, so maybe it's more worthwhile for them). Also, it's IMPOSSIBLE to weave off-GCD abilities in this stance. Maybe not so much of a problem for BLMs who are designed with fewer buffs as a result, but absolutely terrible for BRD and MCH who have LOADS of buffs they need to weave in. And why, exactly, do these stances have a 3-second cast time? Because it only makes it that much harder for me to justify using these stances in actual combat. The most glaring thing, however, is not any numerical issue, but simply the fact that using it isn't fun. If I wanted to play a BLM I'd play a bloody BLM. Forcing the playstyle onto classes that really have no business playing like a caster just makes me (and many others) quite bitter and irritated that the mobile-ranged-DPS style is apparently being phased out in favor of this stand-still-and-shoot gameplay. The worst part is that the new skills being gated behind the stance means you don't really have a choice in the matter - if you want to play optimally you're going to have to deal with it (as I fully expect either the stances themselves or their skills will receive buffs down the line), and that effectively means the death of the mobile ranged DPS play style as there is no longer any class that specializes in it. That all being said, I'll deal with it just because I like MCH so very much thematically (that pew-pew and clickity-clack is all I need to get me going). But, gods, I hope they backpedal on this. I know what they were going for but it just makes me really uneasy for the future of both of these classes. Don't fix what ain't broken, yo! But then again, WAR is now capable of out-DPSing other DPS classes with their new stance, and the new PLD skills put PLD's DPS through the roof. Seems like this is their answer to the tank shortage. Make the tank classes play like tanks that also deal damage, and maybe more people will play them?

Hey, someone had to start one! Use this thread to discuss the new jobs and any changes to the currently-existing ones (there are some real game-changers in there). So I haven't touched DRK or AST yet, but word on the grapevine is that DRK is a touch on the weaker/more finicky side and there's some grumblings about the fact that AST is definitively weaker than either SCH or WHM in either stance (but I've been told it largely compensates for it with insane utility). And then there's MCH.

Man, everyone's talking about other games in the series while I'm just sitting here pondering how in the world they're going to remake Supernova:

Lobby server errors again. Joys. Stop stonewalling me, dammit!

Haha. To their credit, the game being as smooth as it's been for the last few hours is an impressive accomplishment given the sheer volume of users. They've certainly learned. Now, just get that data center back up and running again...

What's weird is that, if it's really limited to the servers using the new instancing system, this is something they could have tested without the servers going live. Seems like something is pretty fundamentally borked with the system.