Is it just me or is class design / balance severely lacking this expansion?

That's the result for having too many jobs in the same game : as a game designer, it becomes a mess to balance.

Besides, the more jobs there are, the more homogenized they need to be, so no group composition is too much better than others.

Stop asking for new jobs at this point !

Healer here. My role as a whole has become boring and definitely pushing me away from the game. I'm still here for the other stuff the game has to offer, not the gameplay. Sadly

I came back a week ago and i'm really trying to find the reason to keep my sub on at this point. MCH is totally ruined and DRK feels like dark paladin without mechanics, bear in mind that im only 66 but 3.0 DRK had more mechanics at lvl 40. At this point Samurai feels less point and shoot friendly compared to those others. I dropped White Mage years ago for obvious reasons, miss those times you had to combat to keep mana up and hoping the boss dies before mana dies.

Now its a choice between ESO or going back to WoW Classic

They will never put RDM dmg almost same as BLM, its just, think ppl. Can't say what i feel about the changes, but overall really liking the classes so far.

People praise Shadowbringers as "best mmo expansion ever", but while the story has been fantastic, job design is a downright joke. Support roles got the shaft especially and devs seem to refuse to acknowledge it in a slightest.

I've been a die-hard tank for entire Stormblood, but I finally broke and will be raiding on dps this time. Reason being, the previous Eden tier felt like a painful slog to tank through, which I only endured for the sake of my static.
Both jobs themselves, as well as core role mechanics feel like a bare minimum and are hardly engaging. Mitigation has lost a lot of depth with pruning of cooldown variety and Tank Mastery coupled with bosses no longer being able to crit, made it feel less impactful to boot. What little there was left from aggro management is completely gone. To make things worse, Edengate bosses had very little in terms of tank-specific mechanics and positioning to take care of. The tanks are balanced, but they are far, far from being truly enjoyable to play.

WAR's lack of depth is literally a meme.
DRK rework is riddled with mechanics that basically solve themselves and the rest is copied from WAR.
GNB's "signature mechanic" is... that it has a second combo.

I do acknowledge the fact that there's people who are in fact fond of this new, "relaxed" form of tanking and I don't think these players should be ignored. However with 4 jobs in the role, there is ample space to create a decent difficulty curve to satisfy both new and more experienced tanks. Moreover, old tank/damage stance system already offered a very good way to provide a choice between easier, "training wheels" mode and a more demanding option with a damage reward for more experienced and it could've been expanded upon, rather than discarded.

SE is clearly pursuing accessibility in the tank role, but doing so at the cost of making it so shallow not only alienates veterans, but also removes anything meaningful to strive for even for newer players.

Healer won't be fun until the game is actually balanced around the idea of you HEALING and not dpsing during raid content. It's not unusual for healers to have spare time to dps once in awhile but the game shouldn't be balanced around them having nothing to heal and relying on their oGCDs primarily.

The only job I've found enjoyable this expansion is nin, drg and maybe smn to an extent...

What we have here is a lack of unique jobs in general, all have a "template" that can be used with some slight variation. Dancer is a lot like ninja with some light additional mechanics and oversimplified rotation for example.

Every tank is essentially the same job but with one additional mechanic or ability to make them at least somewhat unique with a differing form of invulnerability. Every job has their own and each one sucks more than Paladin. Paladin has a self heal, dark has an absorb spam, and gnb has an additional dmg reduction. Each has their own form of self-heal more or less and a form of dmg reduction unique to themselves. That's it.

A real diverse system would be tanks that offer unique tanking styles that perform better in certain situations. Tanks that are ability to mitigate spike dmg better, tanks that dodge better, etc. All jobs have been basically "distilled" down into their most basic forms possible. They'd originally tried copying WoW's ideas in drk war and pld but they ended up not being able to make them work in this game so they dumbed it down. that's all.

This system is the same for every job on the healer side too, they took shield healing but they never really made it scholar's primary healing method it's just a bonus to regular healing... if you choose to use the abilities that have shield over converting it into regular healing. Not that you would anyways because typically you just lustrate/etc

Hence... a shield healer isn't even really a shield healer.

We might all criticize homogenization but what's the alternative? Each job having their own unique flavor inevitably leads to some jobs being great (FOTM) and some jobs being bad (jobs that are basically not viable for progression content). This puts a lot of stress on developers who have to figure out a way to make all classes pretty much equal because everyone has their own playstyle.

The easiest way to do that is to essentially make them all the same.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lium

We might all criticize homogenization but what's the alternative? Each job having their own unique flavor inevitably leads to some jobs being great (FOTM) and some jobs being bad (jobs that are basically not viable for progression content). This puts a lot of stress on developers who have to figure out a way to make all classes pretty much equal because everyone has their own playstyle.

The easiest way to do that is to essentially make them all the same.

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Yes, classes in a certain role need to be able to do the same thing, to a degree. Every healer needs to be able to heal, every tank needs to be able to tank, but when the classes are so similar that the only difference between a SCH and a WHM is asthetic, that's going way too far.

SMN/RDM/BLM all have the exact same role, yet they don't play similar to each other at all, I don't see why AST/SCH/WHM can't be treated similarly just because their icons are green.

As a MCH main, they've thematically finally got the job right, but metagame wise we are back in the gutter. I feel next expansion, they should either only add one job and focus on balancing others, or just straight focus on pure balancing other jobs next expansion.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lium

We might all criticize homogenization but what's the alternative? Each job having their own unique flavor inevitably leads to some jobs being great (FOTM) and some jobs being bad (jobs that are basically not viable for progression content). This puts a lot of stress on developers who have to figure out a way to make all classes pretty much equal because everyone has their own playstyle.

The easiest way to do that is to essentially make them all the same.

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That's fine because it's kinda been FotE. Flavor of the Expansion. You can see that easily with White Mage.

It can also be reflected in past content where a PLD's Physical mitigation excelled in one fight while Magic mitigation from DRK excelled in another.

Have no movement then use BLM or a melee that loves standing still? Have movement take a class that can attack on the go and has no or very short cast times.

And once they make all the jobs function the same you'll just choose the one that brings the most benefit.

I'd prefer some being great and some being bad. Whether it's Job A is good at this and Job B is good at that or Job C can do the jobs of A and B but better but only if you play at a high skill level.

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Main problem I think many can agree on is that the classes are getting simpler and just aren't evolving in a engaging way. And as a result does not feel fun. And with each xpac you just go through the motions of leveling up a class to cap, get disinterested in it after 5 minutes and then level something else up and be unhappy about that. And then you take a break and hope things get better. Combat is going to get real shallow if every class Archetype has the same general kit and the only deviation is animations and if you do either burst or sustained DoT.

And it's getting worse if they are going to start hiding information about battle changes. There was no reason to exclude changes from the Preliminary notes. It lacks transparency. If it's not the changes the playerbase is hoping for they should grin and bear it. Not send a message that they clearly aren't addressing player concerns. Which especially on the Healer end is more then warranted.

I don't play Healer role but it's very disconcerting I took a break for 3-5 months and found they've done nothing to address that. And the same general Tank complaints are still around too. Yeah damage numbers are more balanced at ever but at what cost? Job lore and identity.

Story is great but the combat is a mess.