Since ARR we have seen many shifts in the battle system, and I believe that this has culminated in the messiest it has ever been. The biggest problem I see is that there is no real identifier of what a certain DPS should be, causing mass disparities between jobs within a role, and a mass balancing nightmare that leads to jobs being either OP or terrible. The only defining things about roles is:
- Melee: Attacks at melee range
- Caster: Attacks at range, has cast times
- Ranged Physical: Attacks at range, does not have cast times
To me, these are too vague of classifications with the number of jobs that we have now. What it results in is jobs like RDM and BLM being in the same category, competing for a slot, when the jobs are wildly different. We could equally pair jobs up as follows and it would make as much sense:
- Selfish: BLM, SAM, MCH
- Hybrid: DRG, MNK, SMN
- Support: DNC, BRD, NIN (possibly hybrid now, but was definitely support in SB), RDM
The problem right now is that jobs are balanced against their role with things like movement tax and raise tax when these things don't have a definable mathematical value to the party. It would be better to balance DNC and BRD against NIN and RDM for the support value that they bring to the party, but to do that we would still need to account for differences in movement, and the defined role slots that are in the game.
The way I would fix this is to better establish the identity of the roles into the selfish to support structure (with some outliers based on inherent identity), by giving jobs more or less damage and utility in 6.0, so that it looks more akin to something like this:
- Selfish: BLM, MNK, SAM, DRG
- Hybrid: SMN, RDM, NIN
- Support: DNC, BRD, MCH
This puts the roles far more inline that Melee are selfish, casters are hybrid, and ranged physical are support, allowing the jobs to be far more balanced against each other and allowing for better rules to balance jobs against.
To go back to my definition of the rules, this would now become:
- Melee: Attacks at melee range, very little utility
- Caster: Attacks at range, has cast times, has some utility, including a raise
- Ranged Physical: Attacks at range, does not have cast times, lower DPS, high utility
With the only two outliers being NIN and BLM who are swapped.
From there, the roles would do fairly similar rDPS, with a concept taken from the way current physical ranged DPS is supposed to work (all should do similar damage, with DNC getting it from party buffs and MCH getting it from selfish DPS), but ranged physical would get it from buffing the party and melee would get it from pure damage output.
What does the community think? Regardless of whether or not this is the correct way, I feel like something needs to be done about role identity because right now what the role is being balanced around feels meaningless and jobs like MCH and SAM seem to be suffering for no reason.
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- Melee: Attacks at melee range
- Caster: Attacks at range, has cast times
- Ranged Physical: Attacks at range, does not have cast times
To me, these are too vague of classifications with the number of jobs that we have now. What it results in is jobs like RDM and BLM being in the same category, competing for a slot, when the jobs are wildly different. We could equally pair jobs up as follows and it would make as much sense:
- Selfish: BLM, SAM, MCH
- Hybrid: DRG, MNK, SMN
- Support: DNC, BRD, NIN (possibly hybrid now, but was definitely support in SB), RDM
The problem right now is that jobs are balanced against their role with things like movement tax and raise tax when these things don't have a definable mathematical value to the party. It would be better to balance DNC and BRD against NIN and RDM for the support value that they bring to the party, but to do that we would still need to account for differences in movement, and the defined role slots that are in the game.
The way I would fix this is to better establish the identity of the roles into the selfish to support structure (with some outliers based on inherent identity), by giving jobs more or less damage and utility in 6.0, so that it looks more akin to something like this:
- Selfish: BLM, MNK, SAM, DRG
- Hybrid: SMN, RDM, NIN
- Support: DNC, BRD, MCH
This puts the roles far more inline that Melee are selfish, casters are hybrid, and ranged physical are support, allowing the jobs to be far more balanced against each other and allowing for better rules to balance jobs against.
To go back to my definition of the rules, this would now become:
- Melee: Attacks at melee range, very little utility
- Caster: Attacks at range, has cast times, has some utility, including a raise
- Ranged Physical: Attacks at range, does not have cast times, lower DPS, high utility
With the only two outliers being NIN and BLM who are swapped.
From there, the roles would do fairly similar rDPS, with a concept taken from the way current physical ranged DPS is supposed to work (all should do similar damage, with DNC getting it from party buffs and MCH getting it from selfish DPS), but ranged physical would get it from buffing the party and melee would get it from pure damage output.
What does the community think? Regardless of whether or not this is the correct way, I feel like something needs to be done about role identity because right now what the role is being balanced around feels meaningless and jobs like MCH and SAM seem to be suffering for no reason.
Continue reading...