if you were a designer for SE....

[HankScorpio2]

Tarus would be the ultimate race and everyone would have to be one.
I'd add a cool background story too like there was a huge Ballista for the races and Taru just owned everyone so the leader of the Tarus, Umpalumpa created a potion to turn everyone into a Taru.
If you didn't drink the potion, you would be killed (and no, no one could raise you this time)

LOL. Sorry but that would be enough to make me quit. I couldn't stand to be a little rat/dog or whatever Tarus are. Eww.

 

[K. Ishitar]

I believe their "cliche ability" is called jump.

Sorry I meant niche along the items of the main reason you invite a so and so job to the pt, ie rdm refresh. And that you feel that you must have a healer, tank, refresher, etc. in your party giving an ability to drg would get them invites more easily.

Lecan:If only one PC can get so and so much of an item then it opens up to the rest of Vana to get it? Was thinking of Godcamping decrease, but yeah bcnms would have to be different^_^; but it does mean that gil seller profits would dercrease because you can't have so many osodes in your bazaar and on ah

pretty much baj, fixed ^_^;

 

[Bajaratt]

Sorry I meant cliche along the items of the main reason you invite a so and so job to the pt, ie rdm refresh. And that you feel that you must have a healer, tank, refresher, etc. in your party giving an ability to drg would get them invites more easily.

Lecan:If only one PC can get so and so much of an item then it opens up to the rest of Vana to get it? Was thinking of Godcamping decrease, but yeah bcnms would have to be different^_^; but it does mean that gil seller profits would dercrease because you can't have so many osodes in your bazaar and on ah

You mean "niche" not "cliche."

 

[K. Ishitar]

Bst- a gimped Spirit Surge that works on jug pets and mobs em and under adds half or a quarter of their stats to the bst for 10 mins, recast 20 mins, might help with the acc in solo and dd in pts /shrug

 

[ultraseven]

Make king abjs drop in multiple places, KS99 sounds good ~.~

or just buy it on AH... i like that one better

 

[Tyrath]

or just buy it on AH... i like that one better

Lawl no thanks. People still wouldnt sell stuff like e body or m body and would remain within the few camping linkshells

 

[Tymon]

Ks99 isn't as hard as an actual king.

If they're to add abjurations to a BCNM, probably the best idea would be to add a orb type item to the Ks99 to do a seperate BC in which you fight the king of the type of mob you fight in the Ks99 you get the orb from.

Identical to the actual king. Ks99 are similar but actually a bit easier.

 

[Marajade]

Ks99 are similar but actually a bit easier.

Tortoise and Wyrm are easier because you're no longer in an environment with other mobs. At fafnir, an accidental Sleepga can wipe the whole alliance, wheras in KS99 it wont do anything bad.
Behemoth KS99 is actualy harder, because with the real KB, you have the whole big circle to run him in, but at Holaris peak, its just that short and narrow path, so you're getting nailed at both ends of it, and the turn halfway down can kill you too.

 

[Khajit]

Tortoise and Wyrm are easier because you're no longer in an environment with other mobs. At fafnir, an accidental Sleepga can wipe the whole alliance, wheras in KS99 it wont do anything bad.
Behemoth KS99 is actualy harder, because with the real KB, you have the whole big circle to run him in, but at Holaris peak, its just that short and narrow path, so you're getting nailed at both ends of it, and the turn halfway down can kill you too.

Thanks for that info. I was planning on saving seals for the behemoth ls99 for the hide but now ima just do the tortise for my stylet probably.

 

[Lavi]

Thanks for that info. I was planning on saving seals for the behemoth ls99 for the hide but now ima just do the tortise for my stylet probably.

Even still, I believe the KB KS99 is still considered the easiest of the BCs. If you can keep it gravitied, avoid meteor, and don't pull hate off tanks, you should be fine.

 

[Dayner]

Ks99 isn't as hard as an actual king.

If they're to add abjurations to a BCNM, probably the best idea would be to add a orb type item to the Ks99 to do a seperate BC in which you fight the king of the type of mob you fight in the Ks99 you get the orb from.

Identical to the actual king. Ks99 are similar but actually a bit easier.

or they can add it to sea jailers

 

[Lecan]

Alright, time for me to finally weigh in with my own ideas on this topic. This post may or may not be long, I just woke up and have a few ideas but my concentration is a bit waning:

Changes to BST:

Introduce new types of pet food that do not heal pets but instead increase their stats. The levels required to craft said pet food would be relatively low, more than likely 30 cap. The types of food would vary, but namely they would be: ATK+, DEF+, ACC+, EVA+, STR+, VIT+, DEX+, AGI+.

Introduce a new NPC in Nashmau that sells Jug pets and Pet food (Similar to the NPC in Nashmau that sells NIN tools). The NPC would be a standard vendor, not regional or a guild merchant. Said NPC would not carry all types of pets or pet food, but more of a selection than the merchants near the chocobo stables.

Introduce new Jug pets. The new Jug pets would have a synth skill cap of 60 Cooking/Alchemy (Various Jugs across both crafts). These new Jugs however, will be uncapped in their NQ forms, HQ increases the number made per synth. Ingredients would be obtained from various monsters in the expansion areas as well as existing zones to assure ingredients are not too rare. These ingredients will not be buyable from NPC's. New pets would include: Puk Type, Coeurl Type, Scorpion Type, and a Raptor type. To balance the strength of these pets versus other types of jug pets, they will only last a maximum of 15 minutes per jug.

THF:

Trick Attack will be made an exclusive THF ability. In similar vein to DRG's call wyvern. Sneak attack will still be gained by subbing THF, but Trick Attack will not.

Mug will now do damage based on a small dexterity modifier. Less potent than SA, but not worthless either.

PUP:

PUP will be given native MP. Native MP given will be similar to the amount that PLD has at its disposal.

PUP will be given native spells (with restrictions). MP would be useless without spells right? PUP will also be given spells of its own. As WHM spells are to PLD, so too will be PUP's. PUP will gain their white magic at similar levels to a PLD, with a restriction to certain spells.

Restrictions on Spells/Abilities for PUP: Cure III is the highest PUP will attain in cure spells. No Raise spells at all. No Bar-spells. No stoneskin or blink. No reraise. No Flash. No Sneak or Invis. No Erase. Limited access to -na spells (They will not have Viruna, Stona, or Cursna). No Teleport spells or Holy. PUP will not gain Divine seal or any form of Refresh/Autorefresh.

PUP will be given new menu's. This is to coincide with the idea that a Puppetmaster is just that, a master at controlling and manipulating their puppets. A new menu will be added for Automation Magic, allowing you to select what spell specifically you would like them to use. Another menu will be added to the Ranged attacking and Melee type pets allowing you to select what weaponskill they use during battle. A job ability menu would also be added, allowing you to control what job abilities your automation uses during battle (which is based on the parts you have equipped on your automation I believe). The downside to all these things is that it will overload your automation very quickly if you use too many job abilities too quickly, which can cause in loss of the specific automation part that grants that job ability.

PUP will be given Clear mind I at 31 and Clear mind II at 53.

PUP magic skills will all be capped at a C rank.

DRK:

DRK will be given a trait named "Two Hands." Said ability would decrease the delay (Similar to duel wield) that allows for faster swings with two handed weapons.

Scythe weaponskills will be switched with the position of Great Sword weaponskills on the SC chart. In an effort to bolster the usage of Scythe over greatsword the weaponskills of Scythe will be switched with the position of Great sword weaponskills on the SC chart. So yes, now Scythe will be able to do light.

DRK will now have access to spells earlier. Currently DRK MP is rarely used for anything but drain, aspir, and a few absorb spells. Thusly, DRK will now gain its Elemental/Enfeebling magic at the same level as RDM.

RNG:

Distance from the enemy will no longer effect the accuracy of ranged attacks. Distance no longer will effect ranged accuracy, however, the damage reduction based on distance from the enemy will remain the same.

Sharpshot's timer will be changed. Sharpshot will now last for 2 minutes and 30 seconds, the recast timer will be left at 5 minutes.

COR:

New weapons: New guns will be added for Corsair at various intervals. These guns will be both of the hexagun variety and useable only by Corsair.

New ammo: A new type of bullet will be added:

Magnum Bullet:

Level: 50
DMG 55
Delay: 210

This bullet will only be useable in the new Hexagun type weapons.

SMN:

The timer for the Bloodpact ability will be reduced. Bloodpacts will now be useable every 40 seconds.

Summoning skill will effect Bloodpact damage/effectiveness. Summoning skill will now have a direct effect on the damage of Bloodpacts. Enhancing bloodpacts will have their duration and potency affected by summoning skill as well.

The way Summoning skill is earned will be changed. Summoning skill will now be increased both by initially summoning an avatar (The way it is now) as well as when your avatar is fighting an enemy (Similar to how you would skill up a melee skill).

RDM:

Red mage sword skill will now be increased to a A- rank.


Sorry guys, that's all I got for RDM. Most of the issues with that job are perpetuated by the playerbase, not limitations of the job itself.

WAR:

WAR will gain Physical defense Up II and III. II at level 40 and III at level 60.

PLD:

PLD will now gain Physical Defense Up IV. Obtainable at level 70.

Shield will now negate damage for PLD. For Paladins only, who are the masters at using shields to block attacks, they will receive no damage when an attack from an enemy is blocked by a shield.

Flash will now produce more enmity. Not as much enmity as provoke, but close to it.
-------

While I don't like NIN as a tank, I understand not only its usefulness but its necessity. Without NIN we would be relying on PLD and WAR to tank, mostly PLD. NIN itself has very decent melee capability and does have its own usefulness outside of tanking that most players are unwilling to explore.

BLM seems fine to me. At first I thought it was bullshit about the manaburn parties thing, but after some thought (not much) I realized that at least a few jobs can do something similar. SMN burn with avatars, Jugburn with BST and their pets, Jump burn with 6 DRG/WHM, Canon parties, etc. Most jobs have something similar to the BLM manaburn, and while it may not be as effective, changing BLM for that reason alone is silly and shortsighted.

RDM was my first job, and my first love in this game. The only thing that drove me away was the lack of melee effectiveness that RDM was originally supposed to be about. RDM does have problems aside from the low sword skill, but those are inflicted by the playerbase itself, telling RDM they can't melee, need to rest for MP, etc.

SMN I always saw as a backup DD/buffer/backup healer. I recognize that while they do not have any native healing skill and few healing spells from avatars, they do have a large MP pool and do function well as healers. Thus, I made it so they are able to do a bit more damage, and make all that sitting outside Jeuno skilling up Summoning skill more worthwhile. Neither of those will really change SMN role in the party, as they will retain the same effectiveness they have always had as healers/buffers, but now they will be able to do a bit of backup damage as well, which I believe was the original intention.

WAR honestly doesn't need much work. It is already a very good damage dealer, and definitely needs no work in that department. However, there are a limited number of tanks at higher levels. PLD and NIN are the only ones usually used for exp, with WAR/NIN only being used after they gain Utsu: Ni from their sub. So I figured increase their defense a bit, so they can tank a bit better and suit a few more situations (Ie: Lack of tanks seeking).

White mages I see as the perfect healers currently. PLD and SMN already gain autorefresh, and I don't think it would be good to start stepping on even more toes by giving them Autorefresh as well.

THF needs a few things, but not being very experienced with THF myself I added what seemed to be a few things they wanted. The main gripes I've been seeing lately is that other melee are able to perform hate control by using SATA at level 60+, thus reducing THF invite rate. THF is the top hate controlling job in the game, and I gave that back to them in a sense by not allowing other melee to perform that function. Mug not doing any damage seemed to be a gripe as well, so I thought that making Mug do damage based on a small dexterity modifier a cool idea.

PLD didn't seem like it needed -that- much to me. They gain autorefresh now, shield mastery which I hear is a great addition to PLD, as well as a decent set of spells and abilities for hate holding. I thought however that I would throw PLD some added hate control in the form of a Flash upgrade. This serves to lessen PLD reliance on the often used WAR sub. I always thought it was rediculous that SE would make a job that was quite obviously made to be a tank, but not give them an ability that produces hate as often or in the quantity of provoke (Thus limiting them to ONLY a WAR sub most of the time). Defense up was to help reduce the damage a PLD takes even more, to assist with getting invites 70+ as well as reduce the draw of parties to rely solely on a NIN tank.

BST I don't think has a lot of problems, a few, but not a lot. In an effort to increase the effectiveness of BST in both the solo and party arena's I opted to increase the effectiveness of jug pets and pet food. Using DEF+ food on a jug pet for instance could perhaps eliminate the need for natural pets when soloing (sometimes). It also serves to help out us BST who party and wish to be more on par with a few other DD's. Most of the damage comes from our pet, and when the pet only has 50% accuracy during the battle it really hurts us. ACC+ food for your pet would be wonderful, and bring up BST damage a bit without making them overpowered. The addition of the new jug pets was to ease the post 65 pain of being forced into using the only truely affordable uncapped jug in the game, Courrier Carrie. The new pets Square Enix added, while powerful, owe their creation high crafting levels and rare ingredients. That ultimately drives up the price and rarity on these items, and I didn't want to see that happen with the pets I propose adding. Also, the pet types I suggest are some of the favorites for any BST, which I think would be a welcome addition for all.

I feel bad for the Rangers, even the ones who survived the update on ranged attacks feel the pain of missing a lot. Noone had a problem really with their accuracy, but instead with the damage of their attacks. Thus why I sort of felt it would be right to give them the update that wouldn't have screwed them over so badly but still balanced them towards other jobs. I also think it's screwy how Sharpshot currently only lasts 1 minute with a 5 minute recast, so I boosted that a bit as well.

PUP needs a lot, honestly. I don't know what SE was thinking when they gave a job that has no native MP nothing but mage gear. In lieu of that I figured I would make Puppetmaster more like its name, and allow it a LOT of control over their automation, as well as give it some natural MP and spells. I feel I might have overdone it, but overall I think the spells and the levels they would be obtained will be an asset to any party without killing the rate of invites for WHM or SMN.

COR needed very little, honestly. I just thought it was dumb how the hexagun was supposed to be the COR weapon when SE introduced it, yet they only added one of them, which was level 65. I also think that COR should have access to at least one very decent type of bullet that is effective without infringing upon the Ranger job. The delay and relatively low damage of the bullet reflects the type of gun it can be used with. The Hexagun is a moderately powerful, low delay weapon. I wanted to create bullets that would reflect that ideal.

From what I hear DRK needed some upgrades as well, so I thought I would give them just what they are asking for while trying to go with SE's idea of DRK using Scythe more often. It also seemed silly to me that despite having Black magic, DRK don't use it that often save for a few spells. Way I understand it is that by the time DRK get any elemental spells they are more or less no longer useful, so I figured it would be a nice change to give DRK access to useful spells a few levels earlier.

The rest of the jobs I don't really feel the need to comment on, and I'm sure half of you are already really annoyed with me for making such a god awful long post. Please take the time to read it, as I've spent almost two hours typing it up and thinking up ideas that would be beneficial without being too overpowering or reducing the effectiveness of other jobs.

Edit: Also I want to make it clear that if any Mod/Admin see this post as being too horrendously long to be a reply in a topic, I don't have any problem with the post being removed or split into its own topic of discussion.

 

[Lecan]

Hopefully my post doesn't kill the topic, these lengthy ones tend to do that I've noticed :\

 

[Tyrath]

Even still, I believe the KB KS99 is still considered the easiest of the BCs. If you can keep it gravitied, avoid meteor, and don't pull hate off tanks, you should be fine.

Yeah KB KS99 is the easiest. Just be ready to die when he does insta cast Meteor+5 just before he dies

 

[Dayner]

well i was thinking abot some new ideas but iam not good at coming up with names XD

THF

Steal Enmity
Target : 1 party member
Description : Steal 50% of Enmity/Hate gained by one party member

Give Enmity
Target : 1 party member
Description : Give all THF Enmity/Hate to one party member

Job Trait

Accuracy Bonus Lv1


DRG

Dragon Cry
Target : AoE *allys*
Description : Enhances critical rate to all party members within range
*have the same Enmity as War Cry*

Dragon Shield
Target : AoE *allys*
Description : Lower enemy's critical rate to all party members within range
*have the same Enmity as War Cry*

Job Trait

Accuracy Bonus Lv2

 

[K. Ishitar]

Great Post Lecan, I will post some on rdm later but there is some things that rdms "should" have.

The only thing I see really wrong with the Smn job is that SE has smn skill revolved around the spirits, so decreasing perp and having more control over spirit spells would help. The spells a spirit would cast will not be affected by avatar bps.

Make spirits more useful then people wouldn't have to rely on avatars so much, keep the one avatar min thing(which you guys are probly going to smoke me for).

Tp gained by the spirit will be transferable to the avatar of its corresponding element, ie have the fire spirit out casting a few spells and hitting the mob then cast Ifrit the spirit will change to Ifrit with the tp the spirit gained and now you can actually have more tp this way, assuming that spirits are fixed at least -perp and control wise. As a smn you have to hope that you get to at least 100tp before firing off a magic bp or a bp affected by tp, and it not being resisted.

Lv25 pt in the Yuhunghta Jungle.
Did a few tests with Ramuh with Thunderspark which is affected by tp.

First I did Ramuh meleeing bping as soon as i could which was about 2 per fight if the mob was stronger. I consistently hit for 126(no resist) to 44 or 60(resist). Average damage every mob 88-252.

Then i decided to see if it was more effective to get 70-100tp and then bp.

Waiting for tp also meaning i had to wait another minute meaning only 1 bp per mob if stronger, I waited and got at least 70 tp and results were the same Thunderspark 144(70 tp) 160( very rare) 60(resist somewhat common)
I'm basically wasting time letting teh avatar melee when i can just bp as soon as i can and often do double the damage rather than waste a bp(1min) letting the avatar melee.

If Se wants avatars to melee and just not be sent away bp after bp then make tp have a greater effect on avatar bps, reduce the tp scale by half and it will be improved, but it could be broken maybe anywhere from 100-150tp limit and 1 tp for an avatar would be 2 tp for a pc. Applying it to all pet types may help with invites

 

[Bajaratt]

I like some of the idea's in Lecan's post, but several of them would either break the jobs or would be pointless.

SMN BP timers would make them completely broken for endgame. While with a default 40 second timer and the -15 or whatever in gear they can get, they might not suck for exp, they'd be beyond broken for endgame. Summoning skill is already going to be made useful in an upcoming update, but your change to how they gain skill doesn't make much sense. With building up skill on a melee weapon, you gain skill as you're actively using it, but they're only actively using summoning magic when they are summoning the avatar; maybe when they do a blood pact as well.

If RDM had A- sword skill then you'd keep hearing rdm's whining about wanting to melee in exp parties, which I'd rather not have. If you want to melee as a mage, go BLU, they can actually do it well.

Your modifications to rng put it almost back to where it was pre-nerf, you take away the accuracy penalty and then buff them even more by lengthening the time of sharpshot. Sharpshot already removes the accuracy penalty while it's active, so you're also undoing one of SE's modifications to breathe life back into the job.

Just switching scythe and great sword positions on the sc chart wouldn't solve anything. SE wants Drk's to wield both great swords and scythes, not just one or the other, so all you're doing is going from one extreme to another. If you remove ground strike from it's position in the light sc, leave it's darkness position and then move one of the scythe skills to light; that will accomplish what SE apparently wants without removing the usefulness of great sword.

As for the "nerfing manaburn cannons is stupid," exp is not why SE is going to nerf blm, it never was, but most of the blm's couldn't understand that and kept whining about melee burns. The only reason blm is on the block is because of blm zerging in endgame, manaburning everything in endgame; they're cutting through content that is supposed to be challenging in seconds by just having enough blm's. It's the same reason why rng got nerfed earlier, the solution to any problem was to throw more blm(used to be rng) at it. If exp was why SE was changing blm, they'd go after the melee first, since meleeburns get far more exp/hour than manaburn parties. The proposed change to blm was to make them weaker in large numbers, to stop blm-zarging everything out there; thus solving the problem without weakening the job itself.

I do like your proposed changes to thf, that would give THF's a greater advantage in endgame/exp, while not completely ruining the purpose of subbing thf for other jobs. They could still get the massive damage from SA, but would have to deal with the resulting hate.

I don't know much about PUP, BST, or COR, so I've got nothing worth saying about your proposed changes, except maybe it'll make PUP not suck later on.

 

[dedalius]

COR:

New weapons: New guns will be added for Corsair at various intervals. These guns will be both of the hexagun variety and useable only by Corsair.

New ammo: A new type of bullet will be added:

Magnum Bullet:

Level: 50
DMG 55
Delay: 210

This bullet will only be useable in the new Hexagun type weapons.

That would be amazing.

 

[Lecan]

I like some of the idea's in Lecan's post, but several of them would either break the jobs or would be pointless.

SMN BP timers would make them completely broken for endgame. While with a default 40 second timer and the -15 or whatever in gear they can get, they might not suck for exp, they'd be beyond broken for endgame. Summoning skill is already going to be made useful in an upcoming update, but your change to how they gain skill doesn't make much sense. With building up skill on a melee weapon, you gain skill as you're actively using it, but they're only actively using summoning magic when they are summoning the avatar; maybe when they do a blood pact as well.

If RDM had A- sword skill then you'd keep hearing rdm's whining about wanting to melee in exp parties, which I'd rather not have. If you want to melee as a mage, go BLU, they can actually do it well.

Your modifications to rng put it almost back to where it was pre-nerf, you take away the accuracy penalty and then buff them even more by lengthening the time of sharpshot. Sharpshot already removes the accuracy penalty while it's active, so you're also undoing one of SE's modifications to breathe life back into the job.

Just switching scythe and great sword positions on the sc chart wouldn't solve anything. SE wants Drk's to wield both great swords and scythes, not just one or the other, so all you're doing is going from one extreme to another. If you remove ground strike from it's position in the light sc, leave it's darkness position and then move one of the scythe skills to light; that will accomplish what SE apparently wants without removing the usefulness of great sword.

As for the "nerfing manaburn cannons is stupid," exp is not why SE is going to nerf blm, it never was, but most of the blm's couldn't understand that and kept whining about melee burns. The only reason blm is on the block is because of blm zerging in endgame, manaburning everything in endgame; they're cutting through content that is supposed to be challenging in seconds by just having enough blm's. It's the same reason why rng got nerfed earlier, the solution to any problem was to throw more blm(used to be rng) at it. If exp was why SE was changing blm, they'd go after the melee first, since meleeburns get far more exp/hour than manaburn parties. The proposed change to blm was to make them weaker in large numbers, to stop blm-zarging everything out there; thus solving the problem without weakening the job itself.

I do like your proposed changes to thf, that would give THF's a greater advantage in endgame/exp, while not completely ruining the purpose of subbing thf for other jobs. They could still get the massive damage from SA, but would have to deal with the resulting hate.

SMN: reason I did this was to try to help SMN in the damage dealing department. There's no doubt of the controversy surrounding the SMN job and its role in a party. Some don't mind main healing, others despise it. Honestly I didn't think of end game when I devised my ideas for SMN, mostly because I don't know what SMN do in end game besides heal and BP.

I figured a reduced BP timer and summoning skill effecting BP damage/effectiveness would boost their damage potential while not destroying their ability to main heal. I should have added skill increasing avatar melee damage and accuracy as well, making it worthwhile to keep an Avatar out longer than to BP and dismiss.

The idea behind avatar meleeing giving skill was that ideally under this pretend update SMN would be leaving their avatars out more frequently, and not summoning/dismissing immediately. This would allow them to gain skillups similar to a melee job using their main weapon in a party; as they hit their skill goes up. I understand it doesn't make that much sense, but (at least to me) neither does repeatedly calling and dismissing your avatar for skillups.

BLM: Precisely the reason I didn't really add anything for them. I didn't want to do any sort of nerfing really in my pretend update. While I wouldn't have to per se, trying to think of a way to make BLM zerging less effective without nerfing them was more than I was willing to think about at the time. Honestly I'd rather just boost the other jobs to put melee on the same ground as BLM in endgame, or at least close to it.

RDM: How would RDM skill be any less useful than BLU having sword skill? BLM get access to quite a few decent swords, and if they could actually put out significant damage for it, than what's the problem?

I understand that current strategies don't allow for it, but perhaps in lieu of the strategies these new jobs are employing some of the old strategies should be built upon as well. I understand that BLU has to be in melee range to use a lot of their spells, and that TP is more important to them. However, I envision RDM who can melee when they don't need to rest for MP. Meleeing wouldn't stop them from performing their normal duties, and it's not like you would use them for skillchains so when they swap to staves to assist them in landing a spell real quick and lose TP it wouldn't be an issue.

It honestly doesn't take that long to disengage and start resting when MP supplies run low, and in a decent party I fail to see how RDM not having MP is an issue because in every party I've been in for the past 25 levels or so the RDM has always been fine on MP and usually has an excess of it despite refreshing, hasting, debuffing, and backup curing.

DRK: I agree switching things around was only initially a good idea, I've had some input from other sources that said the same thing. It would be more beneficial to change the two handed weapon damage formula instead, then also impliment the change you mentioned so that using Scythe or GSD was a matter of preference, not requirement.

THF: That's exactly what I was aiming for. I didn't wanna kill THF as a sub, just give mainjob THF their job back. They still do their job well now, but a lot of parties would easily take a DRK/THF for hate control and high damage WS over a THF/NIN.

PUP: Again, what I was aiming for. Trying to give PUP an actual purpose. It seems rather well suited to backup healing. Proposed changes would also serve to give their automation a use besides looking like a goofy little robot.

 

[Neyla]

RDM: How would RDM skill be any less useful than BLU having sword skill? BLM get access to quite a few decent swords, and if they could actually put out significant damage for it, than what's the problem?

I understand that current strategies don't allow for it, but perhaps in lieu of the strategies these new jobs are employing some of the old strategies should be built upon as well. I understand that BLU has to be in melee range to use a lot of their spells, and that TP is more important to them. However, I envision RDM who can melee when they don't need to rest for MP. Meleeing wouldn't stop them from performing their normal duties, and it's not like you would use them for skillchains so when they swap to staves to assist them in landing a spell real quick and lose TP it wouldn't be an issue.

It honestly doesn't take that long to disengage and start resting when MP supplies run low, and in a decent party I fail to see how RDM not having MP is an issue because in every party I've been in for the past 25 levels or so the RDM has always been fine on MP and usually has an excess of it despite refreshing, hasting, debuffing, and backup curing.

You're giving most RDMs entirely too much credit. Most of them can barely keep an effective Refresh order as is, not to mention enfeebling, hasting and backup curing along with it. Asking them to walk and chew bubble gum at the same time (cast and fight) is a bit much for the majority of them. Feed their delusions of usefulness on the frontline and most will only get worse. Look at how little casting meleeing RDMs (they exist, most of us have come across them at one point or another) do now and you'll see what I mean. Besides, elemental staves would throw the whole thing off eventually since you have a different staff for almost every spell you cast. You really don't want to sacrafice the difference they make for something as miserable as a sword.