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

pcgamer.com:

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 7.05 brings 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's Job 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 like The Balance are bound to crunch the numbers in short order, but for now, you've got me.

The most interesting part of these patch notes, by far, is actually the exclusion of the Pictomancer from them entirely. Everyone's new best caster friend hasn't been nerfed as expected—instead, as per the Job Guide, Square Enix appears to be employing a buff first, nerf later philosophy.

«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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