No, because they may be the job most able to do big damage to IT+++++ in the future, with MNK/WHMs' Chi Blast, things like /SAM Spirits Within-whores, and probably BLM being second-tier.
SMN damage dealing still has problems. They're timer-based and summoning skill based which is a difficult skill to get any significant levels in unless you really sink the time in (more so than any other skill in the game). While they definitely can put some very nice numbers out, it takes forever to get the skill to do so and you still have the chance of not having the extra oomph to do the proper damage.
Chi Blast takes forever to properly power-up and then shoot for the damage that it does. There's also the timer on it too. There's two reasons why MNKs use it though. A) It's unresistable as far as I know and B) MNKs really can't melee HNMs due to TP giving ratio for the damage they do. They also don't have a very good WS to make use of /THF. Chi Blast is very good though but it's not that much stronger than a DD with /THF sub going and using SA+WS at 300 TP in full STR/ATK equipment on a HNM. It's a lot easier to use in most situations though.
As for /SAM Spirits Within usage, that's pretty ass for most classes. Almost all the major DDs in the game can just /THF and smack up HNMs for a hefty amount of damage with SA+WS of their choice (depends on job). I know if I was planning on DDing a HNM on my PLD, I wouldn't do Spirits Within because I could get more damage out of PLD/THF using SA+Spinning Slash in my DD set. The only problem for that is HNMs that you kite but that's a problem for all melees anyway. Also, there's quite a few HNMs that are Spirits Within resistant (I believe the COP Wyrms are) which makes it kinda useless.
Jonnyram said:
I don't really understand the nerfing going on at the moment. If they nerf BLM in the same way as RNG, they'll make HNMs and Gods almost impossible. Is that what they're intending? It doesn't make much sense, since most HNM linkshells already have most of the items they need. It would be more interesting if they improved other melees, so that they could actually damage the HNMs.
Actually, most HNMs can be done without the standard BLM and RNG fair. In fact, a lot of the HNMs that were introduced in COP are Ranged and Magic resistant as I recall. A lot of the HNMs and Gods can be taken in alternative ways from the established strategies but most linkshells tend to stick to one strategy that proves safest for them. This kind of perpetuates itself with other linkshells copying strategies. Personally, I've heard of linkshells straight tanking Kirin, straight meleeing Tiamat, PLD/NINing the COP Dragons, and a host of other strategies that would be considered crazy by most.
As for BLMs, it's a matter of nerfing them so they can't monopolize activities. BLMs are the only ones that are able to "burn" party now (RNGs could prior to the patch but cannot now) which pretty much leaves out other DDs in the cold. They can also massively nuke BCNM battles easily which they shouldn't be able to do either. The best solution to that would be making the scaling properties on the -ga spells much more rigid with -ga spells doing significantly less damage as the number of enemies goes up. Right now, the -ga spells aren't scaled harshly which allows a group of BLMs (5 or so) to go into something like the Operation Desert Swarm BCNM and basically -ga all 6 Scorpions dead within 2-3 minutes.
The RNG nerf was actually a general nerf to Ranged but it's called the RNG nerf because it affects them the most. It's not really as much as a nerf as a fix IMO. Prior to this, Ranged attacks worked on a VERY screwed up formula which allowed anyone doing Ranged Attacks to do almost unbounding damage. Regular melee weapons would eventually cap at a certain point even on the weakest mobs but Ranged attacks would continually do higher and higher damage despite having only a handful of DMG above regular two-hande d weapons. This in turn affected WS damage and is what made Sidewinder and Slugshot do 1000+ damage (if not more) easily on weak mobs while other weapon skills remained below 1000 in general. They should've stuck Ranged with the same damage formula as melee weapons from the get go but they didn't for whatever reason and now they've rectified it. RNGs are still great DDs, it's just that they aren't the definitive DD now.
They need to nerf up, not down.
i.e. don't reduce the power of powerful jobs... increase the power of weaker jobs!
I'd normally agree but in this case, they really can't without having to totally retweak all content in the game. Most jobs now are just at the right power output to deal with all the content they currently have. If they tried upping the power of the other DDs, they'd risk making the game easy which would cause a massive backlash that's worse than pissing off the thousands of people that jumped on the RNG train and went flying when it crashed.
I'd like to hear some of your ideas though. I've discussed this thoroughly in the past but it's nice to get some fresh ideas as well.
