Reapers of Eorzea, What is your wishlist for the 7.0 for the class ?

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Originally Posted by Taranok

Stop making abilities like old school chakra, shoha, and harvest moon. If the ability is not used regularly during combat, just stop your design process right there and go back to the drawing board.

Make harvest moon something reapers can charge passively while playing reaper so that the ability is actually used. And then we'll hit the trifecta on this garbage ability of the devs constantly adding it, the ability being awful, and them just baking it into the core rotation anyway.

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You have to understand about those types of actions. They were conceived of to give these Melee jobs something to use when they were forced into downtime. Entering HW, DRG originally had Piercing Talon and NIN had Throwing Dagger while MNK had nothing for GCDs to use while out of range. Thus, Form Shift and Chakra. Shoha was tied to Meditate which always existed for downtime during fights, as SAM got Enpi (them not wanting to revisit MNK's unique detriment). RPR likewise gets Harpe, but also gets Harvest Moon just to get something to do when there's no boss.

It doesn't build any special resources because it's not meant to be used as a cooldown. It exists beyond the 2 minute meta, and I think that's fine. Jobs should get situational tools like Harvest Moon, but then they just need the fight design to give them situations, which is where they're sorely lacking. Harvest Moon makes sense if we're playing RPR in a fight that has forced downtime or many opportunities where there's multiple targets. Those aren't the fights they put into the game anymore.

They don't have melee downtime anymore which is why it feels weird, especially now that PT, TD, Enpi and Harpe don't interrupt your combo anymore anyways, so there's even less of a reason for these tools to exist in terms of your bog standard 8 man encounter. Your Harvest Moons are way more fun and useful doing dungeons and FATEs though, like NIN using hide, you get plenty of chances to ready your extra actions.

Harvest Moon feeling bad is a symptom, not a cause. Making it into another Chakra or Shoha would be the predictable boring thing so they'll probably do it, cuz changing their fights to not have a single, giant target would be tougher to do.

I'd like a passive added to harvest moon where it refreshes death's design. It's a small thing, but if you get into a group with mid damage output overall, you may need to re-apply whorl of death and if you're down to 3ish monsters, it feels bad even if it's numerically sound, just because the potency on whorl is so low.

PS. I like Harvest Moon, I am glad to have a button to push during downtime. But I also like the chunky ae damage in dungeons.

See, that's a more fun idea I think, because even on a single target boss fight, now it has more interaction with the kit but the player has MORE decision making, not less: do I refresh DD with my Harvest Moon, or do I save it for when there's maybe multiple targets to hit (when they remember to put in bosses where that is a thing)? Both are good uses of the skill and you have to consider which one you want to do and you won't just get it back forever so the button supercedes DD in all cases past the first second of the encounter, or just another cooldown to hit during the 2 min.

All the tools keep revolving around the 2 min window because that's the only window they keep building. RPR is super fun fighting trash because it builds so much gauge when lots of stuff is dying, but they don't put that in probably because they're afraid of certain jobs outperforming others in certain situations, I guess? Instead of just making sure the worst job for the situation can still succeed and letting the lucky ones have fun.

My jobs split across 2 characters each expansion; one leveled/MSQ-progressed solo, one in time with a friend. All Fending, Maiming, and 1 of each other armor class except scouting on my main, while this one covers the rest. RPR was my 4th job capped across all chars/jobs, and probably my 4th most played DD.

I mention this only because we're apparently not allowed to post consistently from one character with less than all 90s, lest we believe --solely for lack of level 90 Savage experience on RPR... on the character posted from-- that, say, the ST | AoE division to Shadow/Whorl just feels like bloat, or that having downtime actions like Soulsow is fine, some part of which may count as "theorycrafting simplifications"?)

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Originally Posted by Taranok

The most important part about harvest moon.

This is the third time you have added it devs. The third time this godawful ability has been put on a class. First it's Chakra on Monk. Then Shoha on Samurai. Every single time, you've had to add a way to use that stupid ability as part of the normal rotation, because it's not fun to have a button you use once during an entire 12 minute fight.

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Tbf, both Chakra before Deep Meditation and Shoha on SAM before Iaijutsu generating stacks quite a bit more use.

Chakra had, at the time, the best non-melee range ppgcd of any melee, and was far more granular, to boot, allowing it to be weaved in at more opportunities than the likes of Piercing Talon or Throwing Daggers.

SAM's Mediate, meanwhile, wasn't nearly so all or nothing as Soulsow is presently on RPR.

And... all that being said... there's nothing wrong with downtime skills if jobs would otherwise be that much harder to balance among diverse contexts. I'll take the occasional Harvest Moon-like action over fights increasingly having no melee downtime, etc.

And Post already said above all I wanted to regarding applying Death's Design via Harvest Moon. I wouldn't mind giving it a bit of uptime-based generation, but, as has been suggested for SAM and MNK since they were added, I'd like to see that happen in a way that doesn't randomly make a waste of Soulsow itself.

See Meditate when already at 2 out of 3 stacks, meaning Meditate loses 373.3 potency generation just due to the timing over which SAM has no control beyond choice of GCD tier... and maybe, maybe, a desync from late Higan refresh to avoid a Hagakure. That's the kind of thing I'd like to avoid from Soulsow gaining generation over (up)time.

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[Tangent] As for Harvest Moon becoming an oGCD... if it really helps along gauge sync that much, I wouldn't mind it, but I kinda like it being decently chunky in itself and offering at least that one GCD of ranged attack without loss, as per its being a GCD, and given that making it oGCD only hastens our loop by 1 GCD, that seems a very limited 'solution' to the issues it'd be meant to address.

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I'd rather attention went elsewhere in the class, such as potentially removing the 2 'of death' abilities because they're just boring pseudo-dots that is more annoying than interesting.

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I don't find either of those abilities particularly interesting, but I do think the job would be at least faintly worse without them.

That said, I wouldn't mind...

1. Consolidating Shadow and Whorl into a single form (e.g., of 300p to primary target and 100p to those nearby). Checking whether we can count to three is not a mechanic worth doubling a skill type's button costs over.
   
   (For a very similar reason, I wouldn't care for a separate single-target Communio-equivalent. It offers so little "complexity" that it just feels like a bad joke.)
   
   
2. Granting that combined skill a bit more range (e.g., 10 yalms max to target, current radius thereafter, or a 8y cone or a 10-yalms long and few-yalms wide linear AoE, etc.).
   
   
3. And maybe moving the gauge generation on kill to a passive, as Shadow/Whorl providing 10 gauge on kill encourages excess duration and makes use of Shadow/Whorl so greatly a default that it's hardly worth thinking about (it's always a DPS gain by 4+ GCDs) outside of overpopulated AoE FATEs, and it can feel a tiny bit "clunky" to use on a mob that will only live those 4 GCDs anyways.
   
   Instead, just have Shadow/Whorl's potency increase each time RPR's combo skills do (via Death Scythe Mastery I and II)... and perhaps even have the remaining duration and/or your overkill damage spread on kill when you land the finishing blow. That'd be plenty to keep it feeling worthwhile and interesting while feeling a bit less often chore-ish-ly obligatory against mobs with extremely low TTK.

Reaper isn't pressed for hotbar space the same way that a lot of older jobs are. Having a transformation action helps with this. If necessary, Communio need not have its own hotbar slot, and can share space with Harpe.

The suggestion to have HM add 30s to DD's timer is fine. It does take away a slight correction that you can do with filler GCDs going into Double Enshroud, but the people who recognize this are probably also unlikely to need to ever use it. I wouldn't consolidate or alter SoD or WoD. The Soul Gauge trait is more flavor than anything else, because we don't see add spawns in raid content. I would also recommend that you save your theorycrafting simplifications for jobs where the players are actually vocally complaining about the gameplay, like BLM.

The current job design is one of the best we have. Please resist the urge to tamper with things that are actually working really well (and perhaps actually level the job in question yourself first to see why that's the case).

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Originally Posted by Lyth

The current job design is one of the best we have.

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This is true and also why it's so hard to come up with decent ideas. Just boring but obvious ones like a st version of communio, a communio followup, something like drg's Lance Mastery. A followup attack for Grim Harvest would be cool but mostly just so I get to see the full grim harvest animation in a context outside of PVP instead of clipping it with enshroud every time. But then if that followup ability also has a sick animation that i inevitably clip with enshroud it's like I can't win for losing!

Most unlikely to happen wish of them all: Avatar Glamour.

Choosing between 2 or 3 voidsent would be super cool.

A small rework to how plentiful harvest potency is increased, rather than obtaining only one stack from each person doing an attack gcd under arcane circle, everyone under arcane circle can generate multiple amounts of stacks up to a total of 8 for max potency. It'll be easier for reaper to obtain potentially 8 plentiful harvest stacks in dungeons but also more consistently in any form of group content.

Harvest moon grants 50 soul gauge on use (20 if too much but i like to dream hehe) or make it an OGCD

Harpe gives 10 soul gauge.

Gluttony gains an extra charge.
Gluttony reduces the next the next two weaponskill recasts to 1.5 seconds and removes the directional requirement.

This basically gives the double Enshroud cadence to the opener. Hitting two/four consecutive positionals within 1.5 seconds of eachother would be seriously annoying and require True North most of the time so TN will get baked into it.

80 capstone can be an additional step after Gluttony which helps even out the faster weaponskills.


So basically the opener will be a double Soul Sow with a late Arcane circle cast after the first Soul Sow into double Gluttony pseudo Enshroud with Plentiful Harvest acting as the first Communio.

Maybe during shroud, spending void units accrues green units, when you have 4 units, do an extra weaponskill. The extra weapon skill before the communio forces some time in between to use egress out of melee into a safer communio cast since communio is actually a ranged spell. This gives the opportunity to use the enhanced Harpe as well as Harvest Moon. Maybe using communio can enhance Harvest Moon as well. Then tele back to mob to reiterate the cycle.

(Void Reaping -> Cross Reaping -> Lemure Slice)x2 -> New Skill with 4x green orb cost -> egress -> communio -> enhanced Harvest Moon -> enhanced Harpe -> ingress.

This it what my combo looks like already (when their are no damagning AOEs outside melee range) so, I'm biased for a new skill that enhances the ranged end of the combo.