There's a surprise lack of Pictomancer nerfs in Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail's first major balance patch—which streamlines Viper and tries to save the suffering Black Mage

GamesRPGFinal FantasyFinal Fantasy 14There’s a surprise lack of Pictomancer nerfs in Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail’s first major balance patch—which streamlines Viper and tries to save the suffering Black MageWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Square Enix)

Pictomancer in Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail

Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail is getting its first tier of raids' Savage difficulty today, and you know what that means: It’s time to speculate on balance changes! Imagine me clapping for emphasis between those words at your leisure.

Patch 7.05brings with it a few neat additions—the expansion’s first treasure map dungeon, for example—but it also adds the first avalanche of controversial job tweaks to help sand off some rough edges, just as statics begin their race to world first.

With the aid of the game’sJob Guide(that includes further explanations for these tweaks) I’m going to sum up each job’s changes in a broad overview. The boffins over at resources likeThe Balanceare bound to crunch the numbers in short order, but for now, you’ve got me.

Patch 7.05 job changes

(Image credit: Square Enix)

The Pictomancer, a job in Final Fantasy 14, splashes the screen with paint.

“At present, the DPS of Pictomancer is higher than we originally expected,” the Job Guide reads, “Because they have a number of actions with long cast times, and no means of reviving others in combat, we intended for them to have comparable DPS to melee jobs alongside Black Mage.

“There is a significant gap in the DPS between these two caster jobs, however, which is why we have increased the potencies of Black Mage actions. That said, we also increased the potency of actions for the other magical ranged DPS jobs and physical ranged DPS jobs, to ensure there is no large disparity.”

This is, uh, an interesting decision, and I’m not sure I agree with it entirely, but I think we’ll have to wait and see how these changes pan out. While the Pictomancer does have some long cast times and no resurrection ability, it has one thing the Black Mage doesn’t—party utility, in the damage buff Starry Muse.

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Black Mage, on the other hand, has no party utility at all. Raw damage is meant to be its Thing, with a capital T. Considering the amount of movement in Dawntrail’s dungeons, too, Black Mage (which definitely has stricter cast time difficulties than Pictomancer) has, I’m told, been a little agonising and restrictive to play. I hope “comparable DPS” means “slightly under” for their sake.

Let’s run down the list of the other tweaks before we get into Viper, the other job that’s seen big changes:

(Image credit: Square Enix)

A viper from Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail stares, frustrated, at the ground.

Alright, let’s talk about Viper. A while back, I—and a few others—were pretty baffled when Yoshi-P stated he and his team wanted toreduce the business of the job. A job that, actions per minute aside, already feels pretty streamlined and bare-bones. Fortunately, the balance team listened to that confusion in part. Positional requirements haven’t been touched, though “looking ahead, we’ll continue monitoring your feedback as we consider further adjustments.” Huge win, in my opinion—if you stripped the positionals I think I could play Viper with my eyes closed.

The job’s base combos, however, have been simplified. Previously, you had to maintain a damage vulnerability debuff on an enemy via one of your branching combo strings. Now, one combo starter simply buffs the other starter’s potency, and that’s about it.

This makes the job even more of a “follow the glowing buttons” game than it was previously, so I’m not psyched about the change overall—maintaining a debuff was a little annoying, but it was also the most complex part of the whole deal. Ah well.

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Patch 7.05 job changes#

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals#

Patch 7.05 job changes

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals