PvP Patch v4.0 Focused: Any Gender, Any Job

In PvP Patch version 3, many gender equality changes were made to close the gap between male and female build varieties; hair adornments, bags, perfumes, and the Tynar Rouge accessory were now accessible to males. Additionally, the reaction abilities, Fury and Magick Boost, that were gender-locked to Bard and Dancer were added so that either gender could use either ability. These improvements were well-received and opened up build diversity in a positive way. However, there is one outlier that version 4 is addressing – the gap between male magical and female physical specs.

The changes you will read more about are centered around improving the male and female Squires in both Standard and Rendezvous and have minimal impact on unique characters.

To resolve this task, this required a two-pronged approach:

• First: Fixing the stat disparity by adjusting PA/MA values of the base Squire stats – the result is that male Squire will now have 13/12, and female Squire will now have 12/13, a +1 stat increase from version 3.
  
• Second: Fixing the PA and MA multipliers (also known as PAM and MAM) marginally; most jobs received a 5% bonus to these multipliers depending on needs. For example, White Mage’s MAM was increased from 110% to 115% which resulted in generic male White Mage specifically getting an extra +1 MA.
  
• Combining the base Squire stat increase and job PAM/MAM resulted in:
  Male White Mage – 11/14 (+1 MA)
  Female White Mage – 10/15
  
• Lastly, to make sure being a male or female gender still played a role in the higher HP or MP spread, male Squires received +8 HP and female Squires received +9 MP.
  
• The accomplished goal of these changes is that the total stat spread (between PA and MA) is no more than 1 point between either gender. You can still build “optimally” and use a female White Mage, or you can choose for whatever reason (aesthetics, sprite design, wanting to use the additional PA) and go male White Mage instead and perform well and with a bit more added bulk!

The result of these adjustments to male White Mage for example is:

Another example of these base stat and job PAM/MAM adjustments are female Monks. In version 3, running a female Monk was very much not desirable, because there was realistically little to be gained from doing so (comparing Martial Arts, a female Monk had a marginally better Doom Fist).

In version 4, this changes quite differently, as you will now see that a female Monk is viable and even plausible for running secondary Dance or Arts of War:

And lastly, to quell any worries about how these job PAM/MAM changes affect unique characters let’s compare Agrias as a Dark Knight in version 3 and version 4:

Dark Knight’s PAM was increased from 130% to 135% resulting in a +1 PA value for female Dark Knights. This ultimately sets generic female Dark Knights to 16/11 while male Dark Knights retain 17/10 and the +1 PA translates as a minimal difference here with Agrias.

In PvP Patch v4.0, you can truly play any gender, and any job and perform well competitively. I look forward to seeing new builds and creations once we enter public beta on March 12th!