FINAL FANTASY XI Development Team
Job Adjustments (03/30/2006)

Beastmaster
When we changed how monsters would despawn when out of their natural spawn radius, it caused a lot of problems for the beastmaster job class. We know that many players are dissatisfied with this system, and we're working to relieve the problem. The beastmaster is a tougher job than some of the others to balance, so we may be unable to make radical adjustments, but rest assured that we have not forgotten you!


Bard
There is a tendency for bards to only sing particular songs in the party and nothing else. We want to make it so bards have many types of useful songs with which to aid their party. For example, we might add a low-level song that, when sung, would increase party movement speed--like a weaker version of the Chocobo Mazurka.


Ranger
We recently made large changes to the ranger job class, which causes them to deal more damage depending on their distance from an enemy. From now on, we will only make small adjustments to the ranger class. We're sorry we don't have any final details for the future, but please stay tuned. However, the distance-based accuracy adjustments will not be a factor while the Sharpshot ability is active. Also, we'll be adding more stackable ammunition in the future.


Samurai
Samurai is a job that revolves around TP. We would like to modify samurai in regards to the timing of their weapon skills or various other ways to utilize their TP ability. We are considering giving samurai a new ability that will lower an enemy's TP.




Ninja
We know that ninja is a strong job, but we do not have any plans to weaken them. Compared to other jobs, ninja is a complicated job to balance, so we plan to spend a lot of time on testing adjustments.







Dragoon
We recently changed the dragoon's Call Wyvern ability and completely redesigned the 2-hour ability. We are currently collecting data and feedback.





Summoner
Currently, the trend is for summoners to only call out their avatars to use a blood pact ability, but we want to create something that will encourage summoners to keep their avatars out for longer periods of time. Also, we will adjust the abilities that avatars use so that they are based on the summoner's summoning skill. We have no plans to add Bahamut as an avatar, because we would like to preserve his powerful image. We would have to make him weaker if he became a player's avatar, and we do not want to do that. We are thinking about new avatars for Treasures of Aht Urhgan, however, so stay tuned.