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

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.

Patch 7.05 job changes

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.

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:

• Dark Knight and Paladin have had their potencies increased, while Gunbreaker, Dragoon, and Dark Knight have had their gap closers tuned to feel more responsive.
• Dragoon, Ninja, Machinist, Summoner, and Red Mage have had potency increases across the board.
• Monk has also received these potency increases, though the patch notes are currently showing the incorrect job actions: No, the Monk's basic combo isn't the most powerful in the game, now. These increases are instead meant for Phantom Rush, Rising Phoenix, and Tornado Kick.
• Red Mage's Manafication buff now lets you roll into your combo via Magicked Swordplay for longer, now—30 seconds, up from 15.
• The Samurai's Tsubame Gaeshi, which repeats the last iaijutsu (big, damaging moves) can now be used after every one—which is a huge change, since it was only previously available every minute or so via Meikyo Shisui. The potencies of other actions have been lowered to counterbalance this.
• Black Mage has had potency increases across the board and some quality-of-life boosts: Paradox can now be executed in both fire and ice phases, and Umbral Soul no longer has to be spammed outside of combat, which is absolutely bloody massive. Previously you had to keep tapping this thing in between dungeon pulls just to keep your damage rolling.
• The Astrologian no longer shares cooldowns between its three replay actions.
• White Mage's DoT, Dia, went from 70 to 75. Yippee.

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 to reduce 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.

Not a terrible first showing otherwise, and I'm not opposed to a buff first, nerf later philosophy. I do worry, though, that the new level of difficulty I've been enjoying in Dawntrail's dungeons is going to be undercut by everyone getting a boost to their damage. FF14 has always had difficulty keeping on top of its power creep: Over an expansion's lifespan, fights can become trivialised entirely via climbing DPS numbers. Still, I'm looking forward to suffering in Party Finder with the new Savage tier—you can play patch 7.05 right now.