The first major balance update for Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail doesn't include any Pictomancer nerfs. Instead, it streamlines Viper while trying to save the Black Mage.

Final Fantasy 14 Dawntrail's first tier of raids will be Savage difficulty starting today. You know what that means? It's time for speculation on balance changes. Imagine me clapping to emphasize those words.

Patch 7.05 adds a few neat features, such as the first treasure map dungeon in the expansion, but it also introduces a first avalanche controversial job tweaks that will help smooth out some rough edges just as statics start their race for world first.

I'll summarize the changes to each job in a general overview using the Job Guide of the game (which includes additional explanations for these tweaks). The experts at The Balance will crunch the numbers soon, but I'll do it for you.

Patch 7.05 job Changes

The Pictomancer is not included in these patch notes. This is the most interesting part. Square Enix hasn't nerfed everyone's best caster friend as expected. Instead, according to the Job Guide, Square Enix seems to be using a buff-first, nerf-later philosophy.

The Job Guide states that "At this time, the DPS is higher than what we originally expected", "Because of their long cast times and the fact that they cannot revive others in combat, it was our intention to give them a DPS comparable to Black Mage, a melee job.

We increased the potency of Black Mage's actions because there is a large gap between the DPS of these two casters. We also increased the potency for other magical ranged DPS and physical ranged DPS to ensure that there is no large gap.

This is, um, an interesting choice. I'm not entirely sure I agree, but we'll see how it turns out. The Pictomancer has a long cast time and no resurrection, but it does have one thing that the Black Mage lacks: party utility. This is the damage buff Starry Muse.

Black Mage has no utility for the party. Black Mage's Thing is to deal raw damage. I hope that "comparable DPS", means "slightly below" for them.

Viper is the other job that has seen major changes.

• Gunbreaker, Dragoon and Dark Knight's gap closers have been tuned to feel more responsive.
• Dragoon, Ninjas, Summoners, Machinists, and Red Mage all have increased potency.
• The Monk also received these potency boosts, but the patch notes currently show the incorrect job action: No, Monk's basic combination isn't now the most powerful in game. These increases are meant for Phantom Rush, Rising Phoenix, and Tornado Kick.
• Red Mage's Manafication buff allows you to roll into your combo using Magicked Swordplay longer now--30 seconds, up from 15 seconds.
• Tsubame Gaeshi (which repeats the previous iaijutsu, or big, damaging moves), is now available after each one. This is a major change, as it was previously only available every few minutes via Meikyo Shisui. To counterbalance, the potency of other actions has been lowered.
• Black Mage's potency has been increased across the board, as have some of its quality-of-life improvements. Paradox can be used in both the fire and ice phases and Umbral Soul does not need to be spammed out of combat anymore, which is absolutely massive. You had to keep tapping it in between dungeons to keep your damage going.
• The Astrologian's three replay actions no longer share cooldowns.
• Dia, White Mage's DoT went from 70 up to 75. Yippee.

Let's talk Viper. I, along with a few other people, were baffled a while back when Yoshi P said he and his crew wanted to reduce the work of the job. A job which, actions per minute apart, already feels streamlined and barebones. The balance team listened in part to this confusion. The positional requirements have not been changed, but "we'll continue to monitor your feedback as we look ahead and consider further adjustments." My opinion is that this is a huge win. If you removed the positional requirements, I think I could play Viper without looking.

The base combos for each job have been simplified. Previously, one of your combo strings had to be used to maintain the damage vulnerability debuff. Now, a combo starter boosts the potency of another starter, and that is all.

I'm not thrilled about the change. Maintaining a debuff used to be a little annoying but also the most complicated part of the deal. Ah well.

Otherwise, it's not a bad first showing. I'm also not against the philosophy of buffing first and nerfing later. I am worried that the new difficulty level I've enjoyed in Dawntrail dungeons will be undermined by everyone getting an increase to their damage. FF14's power creep has always been a problem. Over the course of an expansion, fights become trivialized by increasing DPS. I'm still looking forward to the new Savage Tier in Party Finder. You can play patch 7.05 now.