For most jobs, Crit is king. Critical Hit gets to double-dip on effectiveness because it improves both odds OF a crit and bonus damage FROM a crit. When you can go all-in on Crit with your melding, this surpasses the X * Y * Z math that would normally even things out a bit.
For Summoner, Red Mage, and Pictomancer, Crit is way out in front.
For Black Mage there's a viable build - often called Fast Mage - focusing on Spell Speed. Because you can't focus entirely on it, Crit doesn't really get going and actually has lowest priority in that build.
Except that Black Mage shares its gear with these other three, and they don't get near as much value out of Spell Speed.
Making multiple top-end outfits wouldn't be an inherent problem; It's not so different from everyone who's doing the work of making an extra outfit to raid as both Viper and Pictomancer. But it does hit an extra snag in the fact that you're only allowed one copy of most top-end gear. If you want to play both Fast Mage and Red Mage, you'd need to find an entire alternative max-ilvl outfit.
This is both a really weird problem to have and a signifier of an ongoing...dangling issue left over from older days of FFXIV's design ethos.
Personally I don't have investment in the direction they go to solve this, but I'd like them to solve it.
Three directions I see offhand:
1) Eliminate the pretense of gear specialization. There's a reasonable argument that almost none of the community gets actual value/enjoyment from fiddling with materia. And by and large the math/game logic of "what set of materia on this job gives the best output" is a solved problem. Cons: Materia has thematic value. Also, you'd be removing an entire class of treasure.
2) Double down on gear specialization. Having truly interesting materia that could really impact your rotations would hypercharge the players' creativity in builds and give a "play your way" feel. Cons: Would require its own balance team, most likely. Also, the more impactful a system is the more players feel penalized if they don't engage with it. It's neat to have a cool materia but also if you don't find the materia system interesting it sucks to feel hobbled if you haven't bothered to focus in on it.
3) Focus on QoL for the existing setup. Making it possible to save preloads of materia arrangements on your gear as part of the gear, such that changing to Black Mage would just swap in the Spell Speed materia to replace the Crit, would solve the above problem at least. Cons: This would require dropping the materia break chance from current-content materia, which is used as a currency sink.
Personally I think option 2 has the...swingiest value. It has the greatest chance to be outstanding but also the largest cost and risk. Options 3 and 1 are comparatively easy to implement, with 3 having less impact on economic systems, but neither feels like it adds something huge to the game in the course of fixing the existing issue.
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For Summoner, Red Mage, and Pictomancer, Crit is way out in front.
For Black Mage there's a viable build - often called Fast Mage - focusing on Spell Speed. Because you can't focus entirely on it, Crit doesn't really get going and actually has lowest priority in that build.
Except that Black Mage shares its gear with these other three, and they don't get near as much value out of Spell Speed.
Making multiple top-end outfits wouldn't be an inherent problem; It's not so different from everyone who's doing the work of making an extra outfit to raid as both Viper and Pictomancer. But it does hit an extra snag in the fact that you're only allowed one copy of most top-end gear. If you want to play both Fast Mage and Red Mage, you'd need to find an entire alternative max-ilvl outfit.
This is both a really weird problem to have and a signifier of an ongoing...dangling issue left over from older days of FFXIV's design ethos.
Personally I don't have investment in the direction they go to solve this, but I'd like them to solve it.
Three directions I see offhand:
1) Eliminate the pretense of gear specialization. There's a reasonable argument that almost none of the community gets actual value/enjoyment from fiddling with materia. And by and large the math/game logic of "what set of materia on this job gives the best output" is a solved problem. Cons: Materia has thematic value. Also, you'd be removing an entire class of treasure.
2) Double down on gear specialization. Having truly interesting materia that could really impact your rotations would hypercharge the players' creativity in builds and give a "play your way" feel. Cons: Would require its own balance team, most likely. Also, the more impactful a system is the more players feel penalized if they don't engage with it. It's neat to have a cool materia but also if you don't find the materia system interesting it sucks to feel hobbled if you haven't bothered to focus in on it.
3) Focus on QoL for the existing setup. Making it possible to save preloads of materia arrangements on your gear as part of the gear, such that changing to Black Mage would just swap in the Spell Speed materia to replace the Crit, would solve the above problem at least. Cons: This would require dropping the materia break chance from current-content materia, which is used as a currency sink.
Personally I think option 2 has the...swingiest value. It has the greatest chance to be outstanding but also the largest cost and risk. Options 3 and 1 are comparatively easy to implement, with 3 having less impact on economic systems, but neither feels like it adds something huge to the game in the course of fixing the existing issue.
Continue reading...