Has Gauges helped you a lot?

I'm a Scholar main and......not really. It doesn't feel any different except for the visual indicator is just a lot bigger, yet it functions just the same way.
The one downside is that my Aetherflow stacks are not visible on the party list, and that being up was sometimes a little helpful to other party members depending on their role and depending if they actually do look there.

The Faerie gauge is just the Faerie Gauge, you use it for one move that's pretty good but that's about it.

It can be shrunk in the UI settings. Also confused as to why people think this makes it difficult. You SHOULD be looking at more than your cast bar.

Does explain the players I've had in my dungeons lately, though...

The problem with many of these gauges being useless is that they try to be "cool" and draw attention. Except, you don't want your attention to be drawn to such things during a fight, so they are counterproductive to their purpose which is meant to make effective play easier.

Where there is a large numbered resource, like for Warrior or Red Mage, bars are fine. Where the amount of a resource is small or it works outright as a buff, they should just continue to be treated like that. They want to increase their visibility?! Sure. Make the "gauges" into nice, little frames that can be resized and placed where the player wants them, that will show the buffs the class can actually use and whether they are on or not (along with timers), and the debuffs the player can use. In both cases, where they are targeted, have them show the buffs/debuffs on target. And for crying out loud, make these buffs visible to other party members. Aetherflow and Astrologians cards being the biggest offenders here. I can see whether the tank have a tank stance or not despite them having that gauge. Why can't I see what cards the other Astrologian have, if any?! Whether the other Scholar have their Aetherflow to make up for a possible error or not?!

Being gaudy and cool is nice and all, but it should not come at the expense of functionality. Nor should it be half-assed. Either apply it to all similar mechanics, or none.

For BRD no.... its just more stuff to look out for. Now if they add in all my procs, song cool down timers and DOT timers for TARGETED mob/boss then yea it would be amazing. But as it is now its just more stuff cluttering up my screen. Some jobs like RDM and BLM its awesome and working as intended but for BRD no its just another thing cluttering up my screen.

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Originally Posted by kikix12

The problem with many of these gauges being useless is that they try to be "cool" and draw attention. Except, you don't want your attention to be drawn to such things during a fight, so they are counterproductive to their purpose which is meant to make effective play easier.

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Being gaudy and cool is nice and all, but it should not come at the expense of functionality. Nor should it be half-assed. Either apply it to all similar mechanics, or none.

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Very much this. Some simple usability heuristics analysis would have shown that the UI is in many cases objectively worse than before. Maybe the devs knew but decided to go with the cool factor anyway? As a BLM I have to keep an eye on one more place now, diverting my attention even more from the things I should be paying attention to (=the fight).

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Originally Posted by dinnertime

I don't feel like it's a hindrance or anything. For me it feels the same as it used to be, instead it's larger visuals instead of tiny icons with numbers on most of them.
In some jobs like AST it definitely helps.

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I respectfully disagree. While I adapted quickly to the separate card UI on AST, that's largely in part to just training myself to look slightly off to the side of the target's HP bar (where I moved it) as opposed to the top of my screen with the rest of my buffs.

The custom gauge on AST offers nothing new outside of a place to dump the minor arcana card indicator (which could have been done without a custom gauge anyway) and some pretty little border around your held cards. It factually took away visibility of AST's held, spread and Royal Road from others (the same way Aetherflow stacks are now some big secret). It really only comes off as "help" to me if the goal was to let mistakes on card/RR/spread management (if there's even any at all) and unlucky shuffles go unnoticed.

I do recall a (or "the") reason was the devs being more concerned with "buff bloat," but I personally never thought to myself: "Damn, I have too many buffs to know what's going on."

I like the audio trigger when we have enough to do something. Other than that, only RDM and AST gauge is really helpful visually. The rest is just distraction should be put on status bar instead.

edit: I realize those gauges might be useful for people with hearing-impaired, still simplified/toggleable version would be nice.

My experiences with them depends on which job;
Nin: It's ok, not really necessary since I just rely on the chime sound and can focus on what's in front of me. In this way they got it right.
Dark: I would probably care more if bloodspiller was oGCD.
SCH/SMN: Aside from a visual aetherflow stack for me, the rest is useless. With only 1 skill to summon fairy, and Bahamut lighting up on the crossbar after 2 DWT's, makes the gauges rather useless overly big timers.
RDM: It's been said this class makes the best use of a gauge. But I disagree. I find myself spending most of my time keeping my eye on it, rather than everything else.

Overall I think they detract from everything else too much for some classes, don't do enough on others.

I actually really like the new gauges. Yes, they took a bit of getting used to, but so did the new skills for level 60-70.

For RDM it's essential and easy to see at a glance which mana is higher without having to peer at the numbers.
For BLM it's also easy to see at a glance what I have going on with buffs and timers, without having to peer at tiny icons and numbers.
I really like the AST one. Again, makes it easy to see what cards you have available without having to squint at tiny icons. And the new undraw buttons are great. So much simpler than having to use multiple seconds and button clicks to navigate my cursor over to my buff bar then selecting which one to "click off".
I haven't played SMN/SCH that much yet but I'm finding the aetherflow indicator very nice. It's much easier to see at a glance (and even from peripheral vision) whether I have one or three lights up than having to peer at a tiny icon trying to determine if there's a I, II, or III on it.

I haven't played all the jobs to 70 yet but for the ones I have I'm giving this a thumbs up. Definitely an improvement in my experience.

For me it's a mixed bag. I haven't played all of the jobs properly with the new UI yet but:

PLD: Seems sort of pointless, but not especially harmful. I like that my stance still shows up in the buff bar anyway (why don't more jobs do this?!)
AST: Looks great and I could get used to it... except that it actively gets in the way of numerous minor functionalities that were sabotaged to make the new UI seem more important. I'm on PS4 and the button bloat is real. I don't even click cards off all that often, but having to have multiple buttons dedicated to each edge case sucks. I feel less in control than before. Not a fan.
WHM: It's ok in PVE, I just ignore it since the job doesn't really allow for much pre-planning when healing reactively. In PVP it's actively annoying; Benediction is our only instant heal and they doubled down hard on the punishment for someone dying during the animation (which happens with regularity). Losing Benediction's cooldown as well as the target is bad enough when you barely have any abilities, but now you also lose all of your lilies and the ability to cast another spell. The amount of busywork involved in the new WHM just to make it seem like it has a wide spread of abilities is stupid. I don't understand why they made MP management trivial then added two different mechanics to track instead, neither of which feels satisfying or looks good in the interface.
SMN/SCH: I don't like the new Aetherflow display and cannot get used to it. I also didn't like the small changes to how Aetherflow fundamentally functioned as a result of the gauge (especially noticeable with SMN). Sorely needs an option to have the original Aetherflow buff display back and then I'd just hide that part of the new UI.
BLM: I haven't played enough BLM yet for the new UI to be second nature but I do quite like it so far. It could use a few tweaks but I think it's one of the better ones.
SAM/RDM: Both of these are great. The only change I would want is having a subtle indicator of procs on the RDM gauge so that I could rely on it more instead of looking all over the screen.

The gauges are more annoying than helpfull for me. I'm to used to the old style.

I try to ignore them for the most part. They just clutter up my screen and even shrunk down as small as possible, I find them irritating.

the DRK gauge has only lead to more button bloat.

instead of
Blood Price > Mana
Mana > AoE spam

it now is

Blood Price > Blood
Blood > Delirium (for longer Blood Price uptime)
Blood > Quietus
Quietus > Mana
Mana > AoE spam

shifting your resscources through the blood gauge instead of directly into the mana like it was before feels tacked on, it leads to more button bloat and makes aoe situations more difficult.

and the fact that Quietus doesn't even had the mana gain at first and was basically useless tells me that the whole blood gauge wasn't thought out to the end...

however, for single target we have Blood Spiller, wich feels like some kind of mini-lb, wich is nice and i like it.

I don't like the new gauges. I wish you could toggle between new and old (buff icon) version.

I mostly play tank-roles (and some RDM), but as with other classes, it seems like Square really tried their best to give everyone a gauge, which makes some feel more "forced on" than others.
In general, tanks got:
PLD - a resource for 2 cooldowns, which is unnecessary
DRK - an extra resource that just makes ressource management more complex (use blood to restore mana to attack to restore blood to...)
WAR - just got his available ressources doubled and differently visualized. Though, the gauge did not make the job easier or harder to play.

I dont think every class needed a gauge, but I can already see Square sticking with it.

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Originally Posted by Serilda

I'm on PS4 and the button bloat is real.

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I'm on PS4 as well and I haven't noticed any problems with button bloat. O_o With the expanded controls I have plenty of space for everything I need, I don't even use the new W bar at all. So... am I missing something? >_>

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Originally Posted by SpiritMuse

I'm on PS4 as well and I haven't noticed any problems with button bloat. O_o With the expanded controls I have plenty of space for everything I need, I don't even use the new W bar at all. So... am I missing something? >_>

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You might just be better at AST than me - it's not a problem on most jobs (now) but with AST, to have access to the multiple separate extremely situational skills (Undraw/Empty Road/Undraw Spread) when all three abillities existed pre-Stormblood without taking up a single button hurts. Card management has what, nine buttons now, on top of the extensive healing toolkit? It's getting a bit too cluttered. SCH uses more buttons than WHM too since I micromanage the fairy - which inexplicably still uses different bindings per fairy even now - but at least none of them are hyper-situational like Undraw Spread. I resent dedicating a button to something I usually never need to press, and used to be able to do without a button at all :(

I picked up Astrologian after Stormblood got released and I couldn't imagine playing without the gauge and so far it's the most useful one I've played with. It must've been hell without it.

Red Mage one is pretty important, so is Samurais.

Ninja is pretty alright too, it seems like a big help to me. Paladin one doesn't seem all too useful to me, but it's there and serves it's purpose.

The first one I've seen is White Mage, and it helps White Mage a lot too.

Once the UI director can let us customize I think a lot of the problems with the Buffs/Debuffs will go away. Hopefully allowing us to toggle what we can see in party helps too.
One other suggestion I'd like is a "Fade" option.

I like how maps go semi transparent during movement. If we can have that for our action gauge while in action that would be great. Sometimes I feel the job bar covers up and interferes with the UI, still haven't found some good spots to put these even shrunk down because they can cover up another UI element because I'm trying to keep buffs/debuffs in one place.

I do like the sound cues, wish we could customize them because it does help a lot as well (specially if you are visually impaired)

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Originally Posted by Serilda

You might just be better at AST than me - it's not a problem on most jobs (now) but with AST, to have access to the multiple separate extremely situational skills (Undraw/Empty Road/Undraw Spread) when all three abillities existed pre-Stormblood without taking up a single button hurts. Card management has what, nine buttons now, on top of the extensive healing toolkit? It's getting a bit too cluttered. SCH uses more buttons than WHM too since I micromanage the fairy - which inexplicably still uses different bindings per fairy even now - but at least none of them are hyper-situational like Undraw Spread. I resent dedicating a button to something I usually never need to press, and used to be able to do without a button at all :(

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You're right that they're very situational. I do keep them on the "back row" - though I also keep them under the same face buttons as draw, spread and RR, which I found helps me find them. You're also right that it's an extra button for a function we already had, but personally I find them much more convenient. I've never found an easier way to access my buff bar with controller than clicking the touch pad multiple times and then pressing left/right arrows until I got to the buff I wanted to disable, which took me a long time, so I'm happy to have it now easily accessible under two/three near-simultaneous button presses.

As a summoner main all I can say: Can I have the old version back please?

Instead of having only to look at my skill bars and the opponent, I now have to divert my eyes to the side too, to see how many stacks I have which takes great attention away from the fight itself. I am not sure what was so bad with having the numbers and the time displayed on the skill bar and the opponent?

In the end it would at least be nice to have options. For those that like the gauges they could just keep them and for those that want to go back, they could have given us the old version too. I mean we can have two different ways for the camera but now way to go back to the old version for such a important part?

The only job from those that I play, where I liked the gauge is red mage and it kinda gives me the feeling that they only created them for the new jobs and afterwards used it for the old ones too even if they did not make much sense.

The BLM gauge has potential but it needs to be changed to include both Firestarter and Thundercloud procs so I dont have to look at two different places.

They should also allow you to turn it off if you so desire.

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Originally Posted by SpiritMuse

I've never found an easier way to access my buff bar with controller than clicking the touch pad multiple times and then pressing left/right arrows until I got to the buff I wanted to disable, which took me a long time, so I'm happy to have it now easily accessible under two/three near-simultaneous button presses.

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I'll agree that accessing the buff bar is not the most convenient of operations on a pad, but I guess I got used to it and sacrificing three buttons feels like an awkward solution to what used to be a minor issue, especially since dumping an unwanted card is easier than ever now with Lord/Lady. It would be nice to have both options available, giving everyone the maximum accessibility to suit their playstyle. I just cannot find any room for the existing options without messing my preferred button layout up and have to stow them on a third bar, since AST is already so loaded with great abilities I want close to hand :(

It confuses me why some things which had functionality beyond the gauge version were removed and made gauge-only, while others get to remain in the buff bar even if seeing them isn't that useful to anyone else in the party.

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Originally Posted by Cidel

I respectfully disagree.

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Well it's just my personal opinion. To me it's easier to track cards and Royal Road with the gauge than the old icons.

The only problem I see is that buffs are invisible to other players and how gauges in general are just another part of the screen to look at and causes more distraction which isn't a problem to me personally because I can keep track of things just fine.

I don't understand the BLM gauge at all. And I don't understand the purpose of the Paladin gauge -- like filling it up doesn't really give me access to some all powerful attack or healing, it just tells me when a few abilities can be used. I can look at my hotbar for that.

I think the gauge definitely seems to work better with certain classes over others. New classes this expansion were designed with the gauges in mind, so they seem to flow fairly well (ie: rdm, etc). Older classes don't seem to find as much use for them overall. Then, there are some classes that have been tooled to try and make them work (WHM), but which led to more problems within the class and how it's played than benefits initially.

On AST, I've enjoyed the gauge. Seeing what I have lined up in a more coherent manner makes it easier for me to simply glance, see, and act without delay. Moving/resizing the gauge also helped make it more practical.

I do find it tiresome that we have multiple undraw abilities, but that's not inherently a part of the gauge. If they had worked un-drawing into the gauge, that might've been a simpler solution. Not showing your cards to other party members is also frustrating, particularly if you're grouped with another AST. Again though, that's not really a gauge mechanic, but simply something that happened with the SB changes overall.

I play WHM, DRK and BRD mainly.

For WHM the gauge felt totally neglectible, and works against the class making it a requirment to cast Divine benison.

For DRK the gauge felt kinda like a chore, being a third resource bar to manage when the new skills could have been given just MP or TP cost.

For BRD it was fine, it's a visual key to get track of your songs, but an added musical cue would make it even better.

On some jobs, they're nice, like having MNK's Greased-Lightning's timer really big, and BRD's really changed the job for the better, imo, making each song useable at all times.
Overall, however, not really. I still have to look at my hotbar for RNGproc-heavy jobs like BRD, MCH, and RDM. I kind of wish Procs had a sound to them when they're useable like how when BRD gets three stacks of Repertoire for Pitch Perfect.
There's also cooldown too but at least you can make a macro to add a sound and/or message to tell you when they're up (unless you have a trait or ability that decreases or ends the cooldown).

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Originally Posted by Makrar

The BLM gauge has potential but it needs to be changed to include both Firestarter and Thundercloud procs so I dont have to look at two different places.

They should also allow you to turn it off if you so desire.

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yup, most of the gauges are useless or tacked on just to have a gauge. all the jobs that have procs should have procs on the gauge otherwise it's just more trouble.

Am I the only one hoping for something similar in concept to WoW's PowerAuras type of thing? For example:

Switch job to BRD, "Customize Gauge" ->

• General: size, position (can use mouse dragging), transparency, color scheme (standard and accessibility schemes)
• Bloodletter/Rain of Death: [ ] Show icon when recast ready. [ ] Pulsate icon [ ] Glittering border
• Straight Shot: [ ] Show buff duration. [ ] Pulsate icon [ ] Glittering border
• Dots: [ ] Show dot duration for current target
• Songs: [ ] Show song duration. [ ] Pulsate if duration less than 3 [ ] Show effect when duration ends

Something like that.

And useful scrolling battle text customizations like what WoW addons provided years ago, e.g. Mik's Scrolling Battle Text.

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Originally Posted by Zfz

Were they supposed to be HUDs to eliminate the need to focus on the buff bars?

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They are meant to bring certain core elements (thematically and mechanically) of each job to the forefront visually, not eliminate the need to look at the buff bars.

Not sure where people got the idea it was going to eliminate that aspect of gameplay.

Bard for example - songs and their respective procs/effects are a big part of the job now, so the guage acts as a clear indicator of the parts of the job that connect to the songs, rather than replacing the need to look at hotbar procs and the buff bar entirely.

Not at all. Gauges make it harder for me to notice when a NIN in my party doesn't use Huton, or a SCH isn't using Aetherflow, or a MNK can't keep up GL3.

Love the changes.

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Originally Posted by Berethos

They are meant to bring certain core elements (thematically and mechanically) of each job to the forefront visually, not eliminate the need to look at the buff bars.

Not sure where people got the idea it was going to eliminate that aspect of gameplay.

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Because it's inherently counterintuitive to bring gameplay elements to the forefront by removing them from the part of the screen you are already looking at (and need to continue looking at). That's removing them from the forefront and putting them somewhere else. You still need to watch for procs and watch your position and watch your allies and watch the enemies; why split buff management between so many different places too?

Some of them are nearly perfect; I would use them over the old display (BLM is fine for me, I put proc abilities around the gauge so I could see them in the same place on my screen). Some of them impede gameplay. Some of them can be hidden entirely with negligible impact on gameplay. It's all rather inconsistent which is why everyone is getting different messages from the design.

I hide my BLM one behind the chat box but I find the samurai and bard gauges useful. I hope they don't add too much more to the UI though. It's getting cluttered.

For AST and SMN, definitely. I appreciate the lack of clutter on the buff bar, and I like having a cool-looking indicator of where I'm at in my rotation (or what cards I have). Granted, they're probably adding card buffs back in 4.1, so double ASTs can coordinate.

Whilst for some classes it has seemed like a natural evolution, for others it has got in the way more than anything else.

The move to 'every class gets a gauge' - whether this be a sliding scale or item increase (lilies for example) - appears to have been driven through, sometimes with little or no benefit to the overall enjoyment of playing the class.
It seems now, that on taking up a new class one of the first actions is: 'right, where's the gauge for this one?'
We are all servants to class mechanics to some extent - global cooldowns, rotations etc. The addition of another thing to watch has the danger of making us more robotic in our gameplay - i.e. wait for bar to reach x, now use y - and so on.

So maybe good for some classes, but it didn't have to be all of them.

Of the jobs i do have @ 70 (Blm, Red Mage, Bard, Sam, Nin and Astro) i actually do like the Gauges.
War to me i do not like it and Monk i am unsure yet

BRD makes no sense to me now so Idk what I'll do when I go back to it. WHM, I made it small enough so it's not bothersome or distracting. SAM was made for it so it seems the best suited of course. WAR is fine very neutral. To be honest the best way I know the gauges are ready is the audio chime. That sticks out to me a lot for when it's ready. So for the jobs that have that it helps to avoid not looking at the bar.

For some classes it helped but it has it's drawbacks for sure such as Mch gauge you can't Cooldown until level 62 meaning you either have to Overheat and waste DPS or manually turn on/off Gauss Barrel so you don't Overheat at all which is weird design. Same goes for Drk you can get blood at 62 but you can only spend it every 2 minutes making it really awkward when you have this overflow of Blood and can't use it on something like Quietus or Bloodspiller as they're later.

Other drawbacks include having double Asts in the party meaning you can't see their cards due to the gauge which kinda sucks because overwriting cards can be super easy to do not to mention you can't tell what an Ast in your group is going to draw and use, I know in 4.1 they're fixing it.

Can't see GL3/Huton/Aetherflow/Dreadwyrm trails etc so if i'm in a party I can't see if people are just wasting them or what have you.

And the last thing I can think of, which is just nitpicking mostly, is some jobs just feel...empty until they hit certain levels Drg has a huge problem with this as you're spamming 1-2-3 until you get your OGCDs and Piercing Debuff and Chaos Thrust with Doomspike. Mch also falls into that category as it doesn't get many abilities either that compliments with these gauges, same with Drg as the emptiness with the gauge doesn't help. Once you reach those levels it's not an issue and the class is fun but yeah just a nitpick.