Making jobs spam the same move more than once feels boring

[linay]

Okay, but... how? Let's take that step past some vague gestalt and look at what specifically makes it however good it is.

For instance, I like the Thrill of Battle upgrade because it gives me additional interaction with my healer. It gives us more reason to schedule whatever healing GCD is absolutely necessary to just after a tankbuster that was countered at least in part by ToB. I like healer-tank interactions in general, and that seemed an appropriate spot to put it, so even while it's nothing 'special' exactly, I like it.

Nascent Chaos, on the other hand, is a mechanic that seemed to me to have a lot of potential, but made use of almost none of it. Upon seeing the skill described in the ShB reveal I at first thought "Oh, nice, my Infuriate timing should matter now!" which I could see as working with my other macrorotational factors in interesting ways. But, it doesn't actually add any opportunities for its use. It only takes some opportunities away, offering complexity only by restriction. Thus, while I love the concept and what it could be, I'm badly disappointed by what it actually amounted to.



But, again, what "change" and why do you think it's good?

The only changes Fell Cleave has received is that it no longer has an opportunity cost except against the combo ppgcd (no Inner Beast or Steel Cyclone mitigation or self-healing to balance its choice against) and it has less of a bonus over the normal rotation (a relative nerf). I don't see why either of those would be good or enjoyable changes.

Overall, I like Nascent Flash, tank stance change, and the fact I have reason to not use Infuriate within an IR window.

[Shurrikhan]

To be fair, Enhanced ToB just gives you old Defiance ToB, as Defiance used to give you increased healing received, though back then Defiance also naturally gave you 20% HP anyways.

True, but as Defiance was removed with the role-wide changes, in much the same way that Nostrond gave back some slant of the old Geirskogul considerations, it at least gave back something that carried simple but satisfying interactions.

[KalinOrthos]

I feel like removing Physick and Resurrection would be a minor quality of life change for SMN unless their removal changes how SMN gets developed. Removing Vercure and Verraise would definitely be a quality of life change for RDM unless nothing changes in its development, which would make it a bad quality of life change.

This right here makes me think you don't actually know what "quality of life" changes and skills are. A good example of a quality of life is Monks getting the ability to maintain GL stacks by using Form Shift; the change doesn't directly contribute to damage, nor does it give them new toys to play with, but it makes the experience better. Current Hagakure is a quality of life skill, as it allows Samurais to have more control over the seals they have stocked up. Armor Crush is a quality of life skill as, though less potent than Aeolian Edge, allows for easy upkeep of Huton so you no longer have to spend Mudras to keep it up, leading to an indirect DPS increase. Iron Jaws also serves a QoL purpose as bards only need to spend one GCD to maintain DoTs instead of two, and back in Stormblood, Bite Mastery was a QoL ability that lined your DoTs perfectly with your songs, smoothing out both song rotation and DoT reapplication.

QoL changes are not meant to be direct damage increases or new tools that change the way you play; they're tools, abilities, and skills that smooth out the bumps in play. When patch notes have things like "Reduced cooldown to 25 from 30", as was the case with Dragoon's Blood of the Dragon, THAT is a quality of life change; not a significant change, but a change to smooth out gameplay.

True, but as Defiance was removed with the role-wide changes, in much the same way that Nostrond gave back some slant of the old Geirskogul considerations, it at least gave back something that carried simple but satisfying interactions.

No, you're right, and you only got extra healing in Defiance; using ToB in Deliverance didn't really net you any increased healing received. I just have it in my head that Enhanced ToB is just old ToB because I spent so much time in Defiance back then.

[Fluffernuff]

Removing Vercure and Verraise would definitely be a quality of life change for RDM unless nothing changes in its development, which would make it a bad quality of life change.

Yes, the quality of my life would surely improve after removing the only way I can heal myself AND a way to prepare a dualcast during boss transitions!


....seriously, your opinions on what a job should and should not have are not objective improvements.

[Shurrikhan]

This right here makes me think you don't actually know what "quality of life" changes and skills are. A good example of a quality of life is Monks getting the ability to maintain GL stacks by using Form Shift; the change doesn't directly contribute to damage, nor does it give them new toys to play with, but it makes the experience better. Current Hagakure is a quality of life skill, as it allows Samurais to have more control over the seals they have stocked up. Armor Crush is a quality of life skill as, though less potent than Aeolian Edge, allows for easy upkeep of Huton so you no longer have to spend Mudras to keep it up, leading to an indirect DPS increase. Iron Jaws also serves a QoL purpose as bards only need to spend one GCD to maintain DoTs instead of two, and back in Stormblood, Bite Mastery was a QoL ability that lined your DoTs perfectly with your songs, smoothing out both song rotation and DoT reapplication.

QoL changes are not meant to be direct damage increases or new tools that change the way you play; they're tools, abilities, and skills that smooth out the bumps in play. When patch notes have things like "Reduced cooldown to 25 from 30", as was the case with Dragoon's Blood of the Dragon, THAT is a quality of life change; not a significant change, but a change to smooth out gameplay.

Ehhh... This may be getting nit-picky, but I'm not sure I'd agree with all these examples, either. For instance, that 5 seconds on Blood of the Dragon means it goes from being able to instantly refresh BotD upon loss, but losing Eyes, to being unable to lose Blood of the Dragon. That's a pretty huge change, and it hasn't really been delivered as QoL. A QoL variant of that would just be that Eyes can't be lost (except perhaps to death); instead, they've just obligated that, in case of doubt, you keep BotD on an auto-clicker so you can't lose it to anything but the E1 mid-fight cutscene.

Form Shift follows nearly the same idea: it massively changes how Monk works in dungeons, effectively removing Tornado Kick from the job, but does so by forcing it to spam an ability, almost the opposite to the QoL change we say to Meditation out of combat. They replaced the job's core mechanic, GL maintenance, with the work of carpal tunnel enthusiasts. Though it increases throughput only in less serious content, it specifically invalidates old tools, all to bring back the ramp-up immediacy it already had, but it a definitively worse way than when we had RoW and just 3 stacks of GL. More than QoL, it's just a blanket, to cover Monk up and muffle its cries until the next expansion.

And, while Bite Mastery lined your DoTs up with your songs, it specifically made its sync with Raging Strikes (IJ again just before RS ends) far less lucrative and to then cause issues with future Raging Strike (since you'd often have to IJ just before RS comes back up, rather than only upon reaching your first GCD of RS -- in many ways the most irritating part of Bard play if not already suffering through high ping). IJ likewise, in the context of Repertoire and formerly River of Blood, doesn't just make Bard "smoother" by allowing for two globals of DoT maintenance for each global of IJ, but greatly shifts how it would be optimal to multi-DoT in pulls lasting more than a DoT and a half's duration.

Now, one might extend that to claim that there must not then be anything that's QoL, but that would be similarly ridiculous. SMN DoTs applying instantly, for instance, seems wholly reasonable to call QoL. Removing Steady Shot removed only the gamble of using Heavy Shot immediately and possibly getting an RA immediately before both SS and DoTs were about to fall off. Removing Hot Shot removed only the least likely way for anyone to waste ammo. Removing Heavy Thrust left Chaos Thrust to rule our rotation, but actually made rotating on DRG far more flexible and capable of using more SkS breakpoints than previously the case. The last was a general gameplay change. The second was a compromise -- a bit of loss to its integral complexity (if ammo hadn't been removed altogether anyways) to remove a skill no one liked pressing anyways. The first cost only the most niche of scenarios, which you never felt better for performing correctly but felt terrible when performing incorrectly. Thus, I'd call all three of those largely QoL changes. They favored gameplay but had little cost to gameplay.

On the other hand, what happened to Monk, for example, I'd just call a paradigm shift that went wrong. More than a QoL change, it was a means of procrastination. A QoL change minimally adjusts gameplay and doesn't destroy other tools and interactions within the kit prior to that change's addition. That just wasn't the case for some of those examples. They intentionally changed a lot, rather than just offering further fluidity.

[linay]

Yes, the quality of my life would surely improve after removing the only way I can heal myself AND a way to prepare a dualcast during boss transitions!


....seriously, your opinions on what a job should and should not have are not objective improvements.

Who says anything about improvement? Do you know that a change can be either good or bad?

This right here makes me think you don't actually know what "quality of life" changes and skills are. A good example of a quality of life is Monks getting the ability to maintain GL stacks by using Form Shift; the change doesn't directly contribute to damage, nor does it give them new toys to play with, but it makes the experience better. Current Hagakure is a quality of life skill, as it allows Samurais to have more control over the seals they have stocked up. Armor Crush is a quality of life skill as, though less potent than Aeolian Edge, allows for easy upkeep of Huton so you no longer have to spend Mudras to keep it up, leading to an indirect DPS increase. Iron Jaws also serves a QoL purpose as bards only need to spend one GCD to maintain DoTs instead of two, and back in Stormblood, Bite Mastery was a QoL ability that lined your DoTs perfectly with your songs, smoothing out both song rotation and DoT reapplication.

QoL changes are not meant to be direct damage increases or new tools that change the way you play; they're tools, abilities, and skills that smooth out the bumps in play. When patch notes have things like "Reduced cooldown to 25 from 30", as was the case with Dragoon's Blood of the Dragon, THAT is a quality of life change; not a significant change, but a change to smooth out gameplay.

What exactly is your point? Are you also confusing what I said just like Fluffernuff?

[Sloprano]

The absolute either misguided or directly malevolent attempt at balance of Scholar means I can be at peak efficency pressing one button and an occasional oGCD for healing and it's the first time in six years I'd rather play something else if none of my friends need anything done. Going by how much fighting there is this game and how little thought is set aside for the combat-to-combat scenario from fighting a bee in Thanalan to taking on Eden Ttan is astounding how "just let them RuinBroil 1/2/3, it'll be fine" even got past the single spark that ingnited the first neuron needed to light up the idea.

Did you know SE first tried this flangrantly thoughtless approach with Broil back in 3.0? It was the most boring new spell and to show much thought went into it; it wasn't a upgrade trait from Ruin, it was a seperate spell you have to manually move back and forth if you were under level 52. Yeah, it was because "summoner arcanist, work work, oh so much work!", which they repeated EVERY expansion with removing arcanist stuff for SMN's new stuff then scramble MONTH after to patch the gaping gashes it left on Scholar. And often I could go entire pulls without noticing Broil was greyed out because as SE shouldve known had they played the job outside of godmoded ultimates Ruin was the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel, least prioritized, always scramble to find because I was doing a hundred things before even considering Ruin/Broil and they've spent one fifth of every expansions new fancy spell budget on it. Arcanist Guildmaster weeps. Even Ruin II got a pass before it because it had Blind.

I saw Paladin mentioned in this thread and I find it in the same boat, although a more colorful and vibrant boat, but you're still expected to spam skills. Sure the Atonement, 2 gorings, five Requestacats, and a whole 1-2 aoe combo is fancy, it's almost a DPS! And like DPS jobs I find it feels like boring work not even high fortitude can deal with. Like for example grand strategy games and olives, just isn't for me. Which is why I loved PLD and SCH in HW. They either didn't have much combos to think of and was instead laden, to the brink! with tools and devices that demanded clever or timed application to turn the fights around. And it was fantastic. There was this DPS on time in Sohm Al HM who was so surprised I kept chain-shield bashing the crabs with massive aoes before last boss, he said he'd never get to stand still so much before and thanked me. But enough self-fellating. Instead of worrying if I got one more hit in with whatever buff window or proc for some miniscule increase somewhere so the fight could end 1.2 seconds faster, I could first use Flash couple of times then msotly be on the lookout for mobs to stun/silence, use Shield Swipe on, use Clemency in a pinch or use any of the many cooldowns or abilities for whatever situation required to stay alive and help the party. Why did paladin have to be beaten with the dps stick until Cover required 50 gauge?


Whatever boring invasion of boring, beige, middle-picking, prosaic, safe alien race infestation took over the job designers after 3.0 so only thing on their mind was conformity: "Every job must have spammable skills, everyone job must fill the same criterias, abnormal non-spammable beatnik playstyle will be persecuted, all hail Zzertcik."

[Angus-Beef]

With how people refuse to read tool tips or even attempt to do better with things being more homogenized currently, I'd say no. Yeah I would like things to be have more thought put into it from the players end, but I dont want half my runs being people wet noodlling the boss to death because too many buttons to press.