Cegrin

Correction: the problem that you acknowledge and which wasn't the reason for the change wasn't fixed. The change was made, by all indications, because it was adding more party survivability than intended. What you're talking about here is a different matter entirely. LoS being broken is a valid complaint. I don't mean to imply otherwise. But the mechanic being broken does not change the intended niche. It's a reason that the mechanic needs to be fixed, and - at minimum - a stopgap needs to be put in place so Dante approaches the functionality of that niche, such as the "cone" solution/compromise I saw suggested earlier in the thread. *shrug* Because you don't want to play as Styanax? Because Styanax's 4 requires different circumstances (namely the Intrepid Stand augment and a bunch of grouped up enemies that your allies may or may not tear through before you get your overshields?) Because you also want to amplify party damage with Wordwarden or increase enemy status vulnerability through Pageflight? The answer to the question isn't a simple either/or based off of a singular ability, it's an answer that's neccesarily based more on the whole of their kits. It's not "bootlicking". My point is that the appeal to popularity argument of "most players don't like the change" (as per the post I originally responded to) doesn't hold up because so many of the arguments that is referring to are disingenuous (such as the "should have buffed everything else to Dante's level"), based on extreme outliers (such as the "wasn't so overpowered after an hour or so in endless SP"), or predicated on false - and frankly insulting - assumptions, such as the idea that DE had to have been tricked into the nerf by taking some rando at their word. As I said in my original post (which, to be fair, had to be edited in, as an errant enter submitted the post prematurely): Appeal to popularity is a poor argument, and "If you want them to revert a change, you need hard math and practical examples within the gameplay bellcurve to demonstrate your point." I'm not saying the change is perfect or even good. I'm saying that that if you want to convince DE that the change needs to be undone, you need to both demonstrate why it needs to be changed, and that the situation you describe is typical rather than an outlier. I have no bones with the "LoS was a poor choice" or "the overguard problem could have been better addressed with <proposal>" positions, provided they can elaborate on how and why. If you can elucidate your position, I wish you all the best. I just hate the "people don't like the nerf, so you should undo it" argument. Nerfs are done because they're perceived to be necessary, and they are expected to be unpopular. You aren't going to convince a game dev that the the change was a mistake by saying that the nerf is unpopular. You convince them by showing - in a reproducable manner - that the change doesn't work as intended.

Same as before, just not as efficiently. Dante can still quickly buff the party's defenses through overguard just as high as before, it just takes more casts. He can still shred enemies vulnerable to status, it just requires a bit more precision. And so on.

A lot of that feedback is also not looking at this from a game design perspective, and several pluralities of it are: 1) Talking out of both sides of their mouths and tacitly acknowledging the problem they're saying didn't exist. This would be the "you should have buffed everything up to Dante's level rather than nerfing him" crowd. Such an argument is wholly predicated on the idea that he was noticeably more powerful. 2) Egregiously hyperbolic, treating the fact that Dante is weaker than he was as treating him as now having no utility whatsoever (not dissimilar to the claims about Wukong after his rework because Defy was no longer a set-it-and-forget-it immortality button) 3) Outright invoking extreme outliers as the core of their argument (and disingenuously, at that). This would be the "He's not that powerful after an hour or so in SP Survival" crowd. 4) Are being downright insulting in their presumptions, acting like the devs cannot have reached their own independent judgment and instead must have been "tricked" into nerfing the frame and must have made the decision because they took some rando at their word when they said it was too powerful. 5) Are mistaking the purpose of such changes as if they were simple popularity contests, as if simply demonstrating that a nerf is unpopular is in itself enough reason to undo it. If you want them to revert a change, you need hard math and practical examples within the gameplay bellcurve to demonstrate your point.