Anyone else think caster has suffered this expansion? (hopes for the future)

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Originally Posted by Tamaerl

Boss hitboxes should probably go back to what they were pre-Endwalker. The large hitboxes making it braindead easy for melee to stay in attack range has done perhaps the most harm to casters this expansion.

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I would rather casters just deal closer damage to melee DPS than to make it purposefully more challenging for melee to keep uptime. That's not fun.

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Originally Posted by Sequora

I would rather casters just deal closer damage to melee DPS than to make it purposefully more challenging for melee to keep uptime. That's not fun.

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if melee players don't find it fun to try to stay in melee range they should consider the physranged role

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Originally Posted by Tamaerl

Boss hitboxes should probably go back to what they were pre-Endwalker. The large hitboxes making it braindead easy for melee to stay in attack range has done perhaps the most harm to casters this expansion.

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i'm fairly certain the change was to accommodate sages screaming phlegma balls every 40-80 seconds but you do have a point.

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Originally Posted by Denji

SMN needs some serious help. Honestly have no idea what they were thinking removing all the dots and everything that made it unique.

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Offhand, they probably were thinking how Summoners have nothing to do with disabling/debuffing/enfeebling/poisoning things, so the DoTs were very out of place on the Job. Arguably Energy Drain/Fester are now (Siphon and especially Painflare less so), though.

Interestingly, I dislike BLM and RDM, but like SMN. (RDM's AOE rotation being "backwards" sets my OCD off...)

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Originally Posted by Ggwppino

The smn is a bug to the system: it has no resources to manage and no significant optimizations to do, an operationally simple and simplistic rotation, high movement, non-existent casts and a buff that has a half minute window,

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It's strange to me that everything you hate about SMN is what I love about it, and what you want for it is what I hate about RDM and BLM. The only thing I think is stupid is how little damage RDM does, which isn't a problem with SMN, it's a problem with RDM tuning. RDM shouldn't be doing less damage than the party buffing Ranged Jobs, yet here we are.

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Originally Posted by Tamaerl

Boss hitboxes should probably go back to what they were pre-Endwalker. The large hitboxes making it braindead easy for melee to stay in attack range has done perhaps the most harm to casters this expansion.

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100% agreed.

I feel like casters and ranged phys have both suffered greatly in Endwalker lol. Physical Ranged may as well be renamed to ‘Dancer and the other two you don’t use’ lol. Summoner and Red Mage just feel ‘meh’, you don’t really have anything helpful if nobody is dying, but you also don’t have high enough damage to justify having 0 functional utility lol. Which, really, is more of a game design (and community) issue, than a job design one. Ultimately you just end up losing dps over taking Black Mage.

I don’t agree with Summoner / Red Mage being so heavily penalised for having support utility. I mean, if not just for the fact that as a Red Mage you will absolutely be shit on for using Vercure. And Summoner has no control over its utility in the first place so Everlasting Flight barely counts lol. Unfortunately it’s that exact thinking that’s caused the game to become the way it is; everything is perfectly optimised. Which means less abilities (lower damage variation), fixed rotations, no DoTs because unfair advantages on certain fights (e.g boss cannot be targeted ) may skew damage outputs, and honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if they deleted Vercure, Verraise, Everlasting Flight and Rekindle. All they do is get in the way of optimisation…right?

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Originally Posted by tearagion

if melee players don't find it fun to try to stay in melee range they should consider the physranged role

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Or a summoner role...

That's why I play rphys, but then I'm being told because I don't like it I don't deserve the same kind of damage output. The mentality behind this design is absolutely genius.

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Originally Posted by tearagion

if melee players don't find it fun to try to stay in melee range they should consider the physranged role

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Kind of agree, honestly. That's the entire point of the Melee role and why it has higher damage in the first place, and a lot of people actually LIKED fighting for uptime and positionals on the Jobs that offered it. MNK had to be completely reworked to adjust to the fact its core rotation absent positionals was rather...bland.

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Originally Posted by Connor

I feel like casters and ranged phys have both suffered greatly in Endwalker lol. Physical Ranged may as well be renamed to ‘Dancer and the other two you don’t use’ lol. Summoner and Red Mage just feel ‘meh’, you don’t really have anything helpful if nobody is dying, but you also don’t have high enough damage to justify having 0 functional utility lol. Which, really, is more of a game design (and community) issue, than a job design one. Ultimately you just end up losing dps over taking Black Mage.

I don’t agree with Summoner / Red Mage being so heavily penalised for having support utility. I mean, if not just for the fact that as a Red Mage you will absolutely be shit on for using Vercure. And Summoner has no control over its utility in the first place so Everlasting Flight barely counts lol. Unfortunately it’s that exact thinking that’s caused the game to become the way it is; everything is perfectly optimised. Which means less abilities (lower damage variation), fixed rotations, no DoTs because unfair advantages on certain fights (e.g boss cannot be targeted ) may skew damage outputs, and honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if they deleted Vercure, Verraise, Everlasting Flight and Rekindle. All they do is get in the way of optimisation…right?

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I'm gonna be pedantic, but please keep in mind that I agree with your post.

1) DNC and the other two you don't use is a meme. BRD and MCH are competitive enough (and kinda surpass DNC those days).
2) RDM actually has Magick Barrier, which is pretty good.
3) SMN may not have any control over everlasting flight, but a good team can still make use of it, since nobody needs to constantly keep the party topped up. Imo it feeds into team skill play.

Given that they can use earth, wind, fire, water, lightning, and ice magic, does NIN count as a caster?

Because NIN feels glorious right now :cool:

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Originally Posted by Equitable_Remedy

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They do lore-wise! At least partially lol. I’m sure they explain in one of the early class quests that Mudras/Ninjutsu is identical to the ‘spell casting’ we have in Eorzea. In that ‘Mudras’ are essentially how they cast spells in the East. Different means towards the same end. I have Ninja at level 90 but my skill with it is non-existent lol so I can’t really say how it stacks up compared to ranged/casters, but it’s fun to play at least lol.

If there’s one thing for certain is that regardless of where your opinion falls on whether casters/ranged have/haven’t suffered, Melee have really benefitted this expansion lol. For better and worse lol.

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Originally Posted by Valence

snip again I need more characters lol

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1) Definitely true; as much as I meme about Bard, in terms of actual output there’s actually fairly good balance between ranged dps, and just all dps in general (give or take). There’s no job currently that ‘isn’t worth taking’ to any content. Still, there are a lot less Bard and Machinists than Dancers according to a certain website, so I do think there’s something there. Though it may be there’s less players for them purely because of the meme lol
2) Again this is a good point I didn’t touch on. Summoner and Red Mage do have good utility; it’s not like they do less damage but have nothing to show for it. I do kind of wish we had more opportunities to use them, but then that’s more an encounter design issue
3) It’s also worth mentioning as well that in my experience, Phoenix / Everlasting Flight tends to line up with boss AoEs as well. So even if you’re not thinking about it, it’s rare that it’ll literally do nothing

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Originally Posted by Renathras

That's the entire point of the Melee role and why it has higher damage in the first place, and a lot of people actually LIKED fighting for uptime and positionals on the Jobs that offered it.

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It's a caster main who has no melee jobs leveled doing the complaining here, so that should say it all. Giant hitboxes defeat the point of playing melee in the first place, and no melee worth their salt asked for that. Although if caster mains keep complaining about 'mobility disadvantages', the next step is going to be to just cut out all their cast bars entirely. Literally every time that players try to leverage 'difficulty' complaints to gain a dps advantage for themselves, the dev team always responds the same way. Monkey's paw.

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Originally Posted by Connor

1) Definitely true; as much as I meme about Bard, in terms of actual output there’s actually fairly good balance between ranged dps, and just all dps in general (give or take). There’s no job currently that ‘isn’t worth taking’ to any content. Still, there are a lot less Bard and Machinists than Dancers according to a certain website, so I do think there’s something there. Though it may be there’s less players for them purely because of the meme lol

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My only explanation for this right now is twofold:
- DNC used to still be considered having an edge at very high level due to how skewed statistics turned for what amounted essentially to unicorn runs (DNC feeds heavily into those quadratically since not only it relies on procs and chance like BRD, but also relies on the partner's luck and skill). Probably still heavily anchored into people's mind even though for a reason I can't explain, DNC has dipped very recently.
- DNC has an absolutely stellar value for prog on the individual level (yeah it has value on the party level as well but that's nothing in comparison): it's extremely simplistic to play this expansion, and is probably only beaten by SMN right now. Players when progging tend to go for the path of least resistance because it significantly lowers prog time and difficulty.

Either way, they need to stop mixing up support with damage potential with the current battle system design, it doesn't mesh well at all (and is hypocritical to boot because MNK just has stood up there since the beginning of the expansion and it also has healing support).

Caster suffered a lot because we still for some reason have 3 caster dps as opposed to 5 melee dps.

Yes you could make the argument that melee has 2 spots in a raid party but caster role hasn't gotten a new dps since SB and no, BLU doesn't count because that's literally just side content.

Not only that but the power balance between the 3 has always been:

Is SMN or BLM the dps powerhouse?

Is RDM's rez mage good enough to justify lower dmg?

SMN being hit with several nerfs in ShB and then reworked with bare minimum effort in EW.

Really the role needs another job to balance out the selfish dps to support dps ratio.

A bigger argument would be that EW is the start of older job design is clashing with current design: the desire for more accessible and simplified gameplay. It's been happening to tanks and healers since SB and now it's trickled down to dps role which is why there's been posts after posts about questionable changes they've made to dps designs. The devs realize that the game has become more popular than ever and combined with having a tight schedule since covid has worn them out to the point of creative thinking being non-existant.

The dev team truly needs a seperate team for job and combat design, they just phone changes in and change jobs for the worst or leaving jobs to rot for an entire expansion.

I'm not sure that caster has suffered independently but moreso that the game has suffered by becoming a zerg fest.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

It's a caster main who has no melee jobs leveled doing the complaining here, so that should say it all. Giant hitboxes defeat the point of playing melee in the first place, and no melee worth their salt asked for that. Although if caster mains keep complaining about 'mobility disadvantages', the next step is going to be to just cut out all their cast bars entirely. Literally every time that players try to leverage 'difficulty' complaints to gain a dps advantage for themselves, the dev team always responds the same way. Monkey's paw.

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If you took away cast bars from a class like BLM it would just get nerfed to compensate so essentially all you'd be doing is making it easier to play. Hasn't this already happened to BLM itself anyway (by simplifying Enochian for example) and myriad other classes that are currently regarded as braindead? It seems to me making classes braindead just makes them very popular but also increases complaints on the forums.

I don't think cast bars should be removed at all, but frequent complaints in here about how 'difficult' casters are to play compared to other jobs will simply accelerate the process by which they become vestigial. This is just common sense.

If you don't like seeing your favorite jobs get dismantled, the solution is to stop raising 'job difficulty' as a problem.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I don't think cast bars should be removed at all, but frequent complaints in here about how 'difficult' casters are to play compared to other jobs will simply accelerate the process by which they become vestigial. This is just common sense.

If you don't like seeing your favorite jobs get dismantled, the solution is to stop raising 'job difficulty' as a problem.

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But isn't the only way of solving this issue in the current paradigm to make a class like BLM braindead? The problem with having classes that are harder to play that maintain too much similarity to other classes results wise (or are even less appealing without utility) is that players clearly go with the easier option. Imo the game over catering to raiders has sort of forced us into the position of making difficult to play not a thing for anyone.

All the player whining over the years has put us on a slow trajectory of every job's gameplay being streamrolled and DPS being brought more and more in line with one another overall to the point where we are arguing over % differences. Why not just call it a day, finish the job, and be done with it? Make every class do similar DPS and easy to play. And then the argument "Go play Ultimate for your class to be fun" can be everyone's consolation prize.

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Originally Posted by Turtledeluxe

But isn't the only way of solving this issue in the current paradigm to make a class like BLM braindead? The problem with having classes that are harder to play that maintain too much similarity to other classes results wise (or are even less appealing without utility) is that players clearly go with the easier option. Imo the game over catering to raiders has sort of forced us into the position of making difficult to play not a thing for anyone.

All the player whining over the years has put us on a slow trajectory of every job's gameplay being streamrolled and DPS being brought more and more in line with one another overall to the point where we are arguing over % differences. Why not just call it a day, finish the job, and be done with it? Make every class do similar DPS and easy to play. And then the argument "Go play Ultimate for your class to be fun" can be everyone's consolation prize.

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I understand what you mean. They are making most of the classes a shadow of themselves that those who have still kept a modicum of their essence appear to be the underdogs instead. With shB but above all with EW we have reached the apex: they have made the classes stupid in everything, which do not exalt the player's skill and dedication in the slightest for an elusive search for "accessibility". But this instead turned into dullness. Accessibility should be simplicity in understanding a class, not simplicity in maxing dps, accessibility should be in perfect explanation of skills with tutorials during job-quests, and not lack of being able to optimize your class. I also understand the "reverse psychology" you use in saying that you want all the classes stupid, because it's the only way to make them really equal, also capturing the bitterness of the words. Actually the only sensible way is to have a change of course by making the classes interesting and fun to play and learn like in the old expansions. The game was successful because of this, not because of some classes that you can find in the gatchas. FF14 was the valid alternative to wow with an often higher degree of challenge thanks to both the exaltation of the skills of the classes and teamwork and the raid mechanics, but also a place where you can play peacefully with the normal contents, the story but also to the RP. Instead, for them, accessibility is synonymous with tasteless soups.

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Originally Posted by Ggwppino

Accessibility should be simplicity in understanding a class, not simplicity in maxing dps, accessibility should be in perfect explanation of skills with tutorials during job-quests, and not lack of being able to optimize your class.

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1. What does it mean to 'understand a class/job'? AKA, what level of understanding of a class/job does it require for your performance to be deemed acceptable enough that you have grasped the basics of the class/job.

2. If you want it to be complex in maximising DPS, how much of a DPS disparity between basic understanding and max performance should there be? Are we talking about a small one or a relatively large one?

As a side note, even if you explain jobs, how they work and everything ingame, there is no guarantee that people will read them, let alone take the time to understand them. Hall of the Novice exists and people ignore it completely, despite there even being rewards for completing it, with a nice ring at the end as well.

For my last questions. Can you provide examples of where older expansions got it right? What jobs back then got it right? What is it about job design back then that you prefer?

I think a major problem is that RDM's gimmick doesn't matter outside of prog, and BLM is cursed with a huge skill gap between your average BLM player being actively bad, and your cracked BLM player requiring entire groups to adjust around them.

So you're basically left with SMN, which is a glorified Phys Ranged and super easy to learn. If you're someone who's optimised playing the caster role, then there isn't really much space for you in the role at the moment.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

1. What does it mean to 'understand a class/job'? AKA, what level of understanding of a class/job does it require for your performance to be deemed acceptable enough that you have grasped the basics of the class/job.

2. If you want it to be complex in maximising DPS, how much of a DPS disparity between basic understanding and max performance should there be? Are we talking about a small one or a relatively large one?

As a side note, even if you explain jobs, how they work and everything ingame, there is no guarantee that people will read them, let alone take the time to understand them. Hall of the Novice exists and people ignore it completely, despite there even being rewards for completing it, with a nice ring at the end as well.

For my last questions. Can you provide examples of where older expansions got it right? What jobs back then got it right? What is it about job design back then that you prefer?

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Not aimed at me but I'm just curious on some things. 1. From the feedback I've observed, several jobs simply don't require much understanding anymore, or is that incorrect? Is the fact job simplification has occurred in some sort of dispute or are you just of the opinion that it has and doesn't matter? If jobs have been simplified then have they been simplified equally in your opinion? Had to edit because it appears there is a SAM thread asking for their job to be reverted back with many comments noting it may impact DPS. They want meaningful gameplay. Any thoughts on that? There's an entire thread about job simplification full of examples of players complaining about reduced job complexity. Any thoughts on that? 2. There's already disparity between a top percentile player vs a non top percentile player (within a particular class). What I see happening in the game, and what I see some players demanding more over time, is the closing in of DPS between all the classes because certain players (hmm) correlate their contribution to *any content* being their DPS (regardless of their class). Is this incorrect? If it is correct, do jobs need more than DPS to differentiate them and do you feel that is currently being prioritized?

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

1. What does it mean to 'understand a class/job'? AKA, what level of understanding of a class/job does it require for your performance to be deemed acceptable enough that you have grasped the basics of the class/job.

2. If you want it to be complex in maximising DPS, how much of a DPS disparity between basic understanding and max performance should there be? Are we talking about a small one or a relatively large one?

For my last questions. Can you provide examples of where older expansions got it right? What jobs back then got it right? What is it about job design back then that you prefer?

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1. Understanding a class means understanding the mechanism of the class. Understanding a class means understanding what the potential of each individual skill is (not to exploit it to the maximum and therefore to optimize it). The easier it is to understand, the more accessible it is to anyone. The more it is explained and pedantically requested during the progression, the more the player assimilates the notions and understands the importance and when to use these skills. Understanding a class is making an instant association between what you want to do and the skill you want to use. I wouldn't consider it a performance issue. The player knows what he's doing, maybe over time he realizes he can do better, but he knows what he's doing.

2. Once you understand a class you start optimizing and weaving the skills you've learned. When you start working you first learn your job and how to use the tools you have available, and then over time you optimize your work process becoming more and more efficient. the same thing should be here, but with designers so toxic quest for accessibility, they are depriving this to players, of lobotomized or in the process of being lobotomized jobs. By depriving players of the gratification of following a process of optimizing their job. The dps variance from knowing how to play to heavily optimizing your rotation should be fair. It's a quantity that pushes the player to want to optimize, it's the prize, but in the end it's only a purely personal matter. Not for nothing, high-level content does require a certain level of optimization, but it doesn't require extreme optimization.

Well the blm is one of the jobs that has been gradually simplified, but still today it offers a considerable degree of optimization. But let's think of the mch of HW and that of shB/EW, let's think of the smn of sB and that of EW, sam or mnk (The positional class had all their positionals taken away from them. However, it has a certain degree of optimization, for heaven's sake, but it's not the same as the previous expansions.). These are the most striking examples. The dnc was the dps class that was introduced in shB and heralded the new route that all future dps new classes or reworks would have. Get the smn. It's a class radio-controlled by yoshi-p. You don't play it, it does everything itself. The degree of optimization is almost non-existent and completely irrelevant.

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Originally Posted by Ggwppino

1. Understanding a class means understanding the mechanism of the class. Understanding a class means understanding what the potential of each individual skill is (not to exploit it to the maximum and therefore to optimize it). The easier it is to understand, the more accessible it is to anyone. The more it is explained and pedantically requested during the progression, the more the player assimilates the notions and understands the importance and when to use these skills. Understanding a class is making an instant association between what you want to do and the skill you want to use. I wouldn't consider it a performance issue. The player knows what he's doing, maybe over time he realizes he can do better, but he knows what he's doing.

2. Once you understand a class you start optimizing and weaving the skills you've learned. When you start working you first learn your job and how to use the tools you have available, and then over time you optimize your work process becoming more and more efficient. the same thing should be here, but with designers so toxic quest for accessibility, they are depriving this to players, of lobotomized or in the process of being lobotomized jobs. By depriving players of the gratification of following a process of optimizing their job. The dps variance from knowing how to play to heavily optimizing your rotation should be fair. It's a quantity that pushes the player to want to optimize, it's the prize, but in the end it's only a purely personal matter. Not for nothing, high-level content does require a certain level of optimization, but it doesn't require extreme optimization.

Well the blm is one of the jobs that has been gradually simplified, but still today it offers a considerable degree of optimization. But let's think of the mch of HW and that of shB/EW, let's think of the smn of sB and that of EW, sam or mnk (The positional class had all their positionals taken away from them. However, it has a certain degree of optimization, for heaven's sake, but it's not the same as the previous expansions.). These are the most striking examples. The dnc was the dps class that was introduced in shB and heralded the new route that all future dps new classes or reworks would have. Get the smn. It's a class radio-controlled by yoshi-p. You don't play it, it does everything itself. The degree of optimization is almost non-existent and completely irrelevant.

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1. You say it isn't a performance issue, however, knowing your job better leads to better performance, you cannot escape the link that they share. You also used a lot of words to say...not a lot. You say they should understand the potential of each skill, but not necessarily optimise it. This can translate to someone understanding that the combo should go 123, but they do 321. I would say this is a case where someone does not understand the basics of the job. However, the other issue is, how are you meant to know the potential of each skill? Not everyone is going to sit down and calculate the best use for each skill. You say you can explain these during job quests or some other medium ingame, however, you have no guarantee that someone is going to read them, let alone understand them (this also ignores any reworks that changes a skill, you cannot expect people to go back and re-read them). What you have said is so vague, it tells me nothing.

If you want a baseline I expect, keeping your GCD rolling and making use of your main job gimmick. This means, Monk's using Masterful Blitzes and The forbidden Chakra, Dragoons making use of Life of the Dragon, Samurais Iaijutsu etc. If you happen to throw out the odd buff here and there, then good for you. It might not be optimal, but it was used. This then gives a solid baseline that everything else builds up on. There is no point learning the optimal use for Riddle of Fire if you do not know how Perfect Balance and Masterful Blitzes work after all. You seem to want to start with someone knowing everything and fumbling their way through, whereas I want to build the base layer and add things ontop from there and this is exactly how I learn new jobs. Start with the base GCD rotation add things that affect a buff/debuff or messes with a gauge and end it with the buffs. I start at the beginning and work my way up rather than jumping in the deep end. This is what I was trying to imply when I asked the question of 'understanding'.

2. You didn't answer my question at all with the closest you got was, 'fair', whatever that means. What is deemed fair? How much extra benefit am I going to have by taking the time to learn how to play optimally as opposed to just doing whatever I want? 10%, 25%, 50% higher?

3. You, again, didn't answer my question. I have to wonder whether you done this on purpose at this point. However, I was asking about specific examples. Everyone has different views on what was simplifying, what was a QoL change etc., that I wanted to know what your mentality was on the subject. Going through the list:

BLM, how was it simplified? Is it the fact that you had to work to keep up Enochian? Back in HW, Blizzard 4 refreshed the timer, but reduced the max by some amount I don't remember, meaning you had to refresh it by using Enochian, which came off cooldown just as it was needed. This was changed, I believe in SB, where, as long as you had AF or UI active, Enochian would never drop. Was this a simplification? I would call it a QoL as, since you are no longer tied to the timer of Enochian, you don't have to worry about it potentially running out with al the procs you might have, which includes Foul. This was then changed in EW where Enochian is no longer a skill, it is just active. However, the probably removed it to free up a slot for something else, so, would you rather have Enochian or Amplifier?

What about HW Machinist? Between it and Bard, it was the better use of the cast bar, Wildfire's really weren't that hard to optimise, as much as people didn't seem to think so but most of your time was spent using Split Shot trying to get procs with nothing in between. Fun. So, what was good about it?

Summoner, I thought it was just getting jankier and jankier as the expansions went along so when EW reworked it, I was personally happy. Yes, it could do with more, but at least the job feels like it is coherent. I suspect you feel differently. Also, there is a small amount of optimisation on Summoner, mainly where so you place your Ifrit phase as it is so limiting, so, to say it has no optimisations is disingenuous, even if it is a small one.

I assume the SAM comment is in regards to Kaiten. No reason it should have gone, however, that is a small thing compared to the job as a whole, which I don't believe has changed much.

Monk, EW bought Monk something it needed. For 2 expansions, it got shafted with crap all in an attempt to try and keep GL. I would say making GL a trait was a welcome change as it means we can now new toys that aren't just a GL saver. Positionals should have stayed though, yes.

I have said all that about all the jobs, but I have no idea if any of it is what you meant. None of these are meant to be trick questions. They aren't meant to try and catch you out. They are for me to try and understand your way of thinking about these issues. My level of understanding a job is going to be different to yours, what I consider a QoL change is going to be your simplification. All I am asking for is clarification, that is it.

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Originally Posted by Turtledeluxe

Not aimed at me but I'm just curious on some things. 1. From the feedback I've observed, several jobs simply don't require much understanding anymore, or is that incorrect? Is the fact job simplification has occurred in some sort of dispute or are you just of the opinion that it has and doesn't matter? If jobs have been simplified then have they been simplified equally in your opinion? Had to edit because it appears there is a SAM thread asking for their job to be reverted back with many comments noting it may impact DPS. They want meaningful gameplay. Any thoughts on that? There's an entire thread about job simplification full of examples of players complaining about reduced job complexity. Any thoughts on that? 2. There's already disparity between a top percentile player vs a non top percentile player (within a particular class). What I see happening in the game, and what I see some players demanding more over time, is the closing in of DPS between all the classes because certain players (hmm) correlate their contribution to *any content* being their DPS (regardless of their class). Is this incorrect? If it is correct, do jobs need more than DPS to differentiate them and do you feel that is currently being prioritized?

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1. To understand the basics of a job, no, they do not require much understanding. However, as stated above, what a player deems as understanding a job is going to be different for different people.
2. Job simplification has happened to some extent, you cannot ignore Summoner after all and no, jobs have not been 'simplified' equally.
3. Don't play SAM to a point where I have an opinion either way. It isn't a job I care about, so I tend to stay out of the discussion.
4. As I tend to ask when these things come up. What does it mean to have 'complexity', what does it mean for a job to be 'simplified', what does it mean for a job to have 'depth', what defines whether a change is a QoL feature or something else (normally simplification).
5. It has taken a while, But I think I understand what you are asking. To put it plainly, the only reason to bring a specific job is because of their damage output. I'm going to refrain from answering whether or not your statement is correct or incorrect, as I struggled to keep track of what exactly was asked, however, I will comment on job damage in general and that should give you an idea of what my stance is.

Starting from the beginning. The goal is to have every job be able to complete all content. That is the absolute baseline. This means, if a fight is designed with a specific tool in mind that is required, it means every job has to have that tool. Look at knockback prevention. Between Arm's Length and Surecast, every job has a way to prevent knockback. Now, imagine, if say, melee did not have access to this at all. It does mean you cannot design mechanics where you kill a player for not using the Knockback prevention, or give some sort of punishment, however, it isn't an issue as all melees will be treated the same. However, if you were to suddenly give it to 1-2 jobs, suddenly, that knockback prevention has become a massive advantage, which can lead to those 2 jobs being picked over the others, just because they have the tools for the fight. This is why every job has a knockback prevention. This is why tanks have similar defensive kits (you need to be able to mitigate damage effectively after all, go back to 2.0 Warrior for an example where it doesn't work) and healers need to have some minimum healing output. If they don't, they don't join the fight, which contradicts the very goal the set out to do.

This leaves just one metric that every job is focused around, their damage output. This is the reason why people are so focused on it as it is the only thing that differentiates one job from another. Sure, you can point to Verraise and Resurrection, but you only use them when things have gone wrong and ideally after the healers. Are there some instances where Vercure is useful? Probably, but it shouldn't get to that point to begin with. However, because DPS is the only thing that matters, it means people scrutinise it more than they probably should. As of making this post, using FFlogs over all of Savage, there is currently a little under 8% difference between the top job (reaper) and the bottom job (Dancer) based on rDPS (this is upper quartile numbers and I will use these unless stated otherwise). This is not alot, especially when you consider the difference between upper quartile and lower quartile for Reaper is closer to 10% (again, based on rDPS). The difference between BLM and RDM is ~3%, the difference between SMN and RDM is <1%. Currently, I would say every job is viable. Even in TOP, the disparity between the top and bottom is <6%, this is despite the fact ultimate fights tend to favour certain jobs over others just because of the nature of the encounters (long downtime phases).

There is nothing wrong with the job balance in terms of damage output. However, since it is the only criticism people can make of the balance, it is what they hyper focus on. They are just picking at the small things because there is nothing big to pick at. I hope that answers your question.

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You say it isn't a performance issue, however, knowing your job better leads to better performance, you cannot escape the link that they share.

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Knowing a job means you're not hitting buttons at random. You want to do X and then immediately hit that button. Of course, if you already know how the class works and you immediately associate action-skill, you perform better, but this does not mean that you perform at your best. Knowing a class means knowing what you're doing, it doesn't mean knowing how to optimize it to the max

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This can translate to someone understanding that the combo should go 123, but they do 321. I would say this is a case where someone does not understand the basics of the job.

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This means you have never played the old smn or blm. But you've only played melee where the combos are enlightened and consequential. It's okay, no problem. You knew the old smn had two dots and the aim was to keep them active constantly, with the old smn you knew you had to use tri-disaster and its reset timer and with the old smn you knew you had to use your ruin 4 stack. Not here we're talking about 123 or 321, here we're talking about keeping these things in mind and squeezing them to the max to get more damage, there's no 123 and 321 combo. With the same blm you know you have to have mana to do damage but stay as little time as possible in the ice phase, keep your dot up and have movement when needed, take advantage of paradox, transpose, procs, triplecast. Having said that, then there are standard openers that the community has intelligently come to dictate but here it is because there was a study behind it and in fact this is all optimization. The optimization in melee was to keep as much uptime as possible, keep personal buffs up, position well to take advantage of more damage from positionals.

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Also, there is a small amount of optimisation on Summoner, mainly where so you place your Ifrit phase as it is so limiting, so, to say it has no optimisations is disingenuous, even if it is a small one.

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In fact I wrote "The degree of optimization is almost non-existent and completely irrelevant".
The current smn has the optimization of dropping splipstream under buff or under pot but doing it or not doing it changes practically nothing and using ifrit in downtime (but ifrit only lasts 13 seconds and casts only last 6 seconds).
Is there optimization? yes, is that enough? Just compare it to the predecessor or all classes that have had minimal reworks during the expansions.

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You didn't answer my question at all with the closest you got was, 'fair', whatever that means. What is deemed fair? How much extra benefit am I going to have by taking the time to learn how to play optimally as opposed to just doing whatever I want? 10%, 25%, 50% higher?

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Fair is the right term. 10%,20%,30%,50% would be just an invented number written just for its sake. Because the damage is an output that must take into consideration many factors including optimization. There must be? Clearly. The player who plays needs to be rewarded when there is effort. Is this prize actually worthwhile? in part: high-level content should be calibrated considering that people have reached a certain degree of optimization (therefore damage output), clearly high-level content, if not extreme content, cannot expect that there is a extreme degree of optimization, because few people are willing to achieve perfection.

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Summoner, I thought it was just getting jankier and jankier as the expansions went along so when EW reworked it, I was personally happy.

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Me too. The old smn had some factual issues especially for the carbuncle AI and queue system. Then I played the new class for 2 days and it didn't give me anything back because it didn't require anything from me.

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Monk, EW bought Monk something it needed. For 2 expansions, it got shafted with crap all in an attempt to try and keep GL. I would say making GL a trait was a welcome change as it means we can now new toys that aren't just a GL saver. Positionals should have stayed though, yes.

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Yes I agree, in shB they didn't know what to do with the mnk and with each patch they kept modifying it. But was there really a need to strip him of his positionals? What is their excuse?

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

2. Job simplification has happened to some extent, you cannot ignore Summoner after all and no, jobs have not been 'simplified' equally.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

4. As I tend to ask when these things come up. What does it mean to have 'complexity', what does it mean for a job to be 'simplified', what does it mean for a job to have 'depth', what defines whether a change is a QoL feature or something else (normally simplification).
5. Starting from the beginning. The goal is to have every job be able to complete all content. That is the absolute baseline.

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I feel like defining what it means to have complexity is redundant because to your point, it's different for everyone and these definitions are littered across the forum in various topics. My question about job simplification was rhetorical because there is no debate jobs have been simplified. Yes in some ways redundancy has been reduced-- job simplification isn't always a bad thing. But when players are complaining that their former rotations are reduced to mostly a button spam, that's an example of job simplification gone wrong. And the only reason I bring it up is because the more it occurs, the more it will popularize particular classes and create imbalance. Damage output may be fine in the Savage fight but participation is quite skewed in high end content in general from what I've seen. You attribute this to the fight design and while I agree on this, I feel it's far more nuanced than that. You're heavily discounting that players in general choose a class that appeals to them subjectively (it's fun, it looks cool, i like to heal in most games) and has a healthy balance of damage and mobility. People don't want to play RDM because although they may like the mobility, the look, the skills, the damage isn't good enough. In this sense the jobs are not balanced imo.

Also keep in mind FFlogs for Savage and Ultimate are only one form of content. There's also a lot of people playing casual content, in fact for the game to thrive that is quite necessary....and right now it does not feel balanced to me.

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Originally Posted by Ggwppino

Knowing a job means you're not hitting buttons at random. You want to do X and then immediately hit that button. Of course, if you already know how the class works and you immediately associate action-skill, you perform better, but this does not mean that you perform at your best. Knowing a class means knowing what you're doing, it doesn't mean knowing how to optimize it to the max

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Again, the vague statement of, 'knowing what you are doing' doesn't help. What level of knowing is required. Knowing you have to hit the boss with things is knowing what you are doing, but it doesn't mean you know how to play your job. This is where my example of someone not doing a basic combo right came into it. Technically, doing 321 is knowing what you are doing (hitting the boss), but noone is going to call that someone knowing what they are doing. So there is a minimum level that is acceptable, this is different between different people. I already stated my point, I'm just trying to pry out something a bit more concrete than 'know what you are doing'.

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In fact I wrote "The degree of optimization is almost non-existent and completely irrelevant".

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That is on me, missed that one.

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Fair is the right term.

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But what is fair? This is the same question I ask whenever someone brings up complexity, or depth or any other vague term. You have to have some idea about a rough range that would be deemed acceptable. Of course, it is going to fluctuate, but there must be some range you are aiming for. What is the reward for learning the job.

And again I asked for specifics about older expansions and what made them fun to learn, or what they did right, and you have once again failed to provide any sort of response. I can only assume, therefore, that you have nothing to provide. If you do want to comment on it, you don't even need to make a comprehensive list, just a few specific examples so that I can know where your thinking lies.

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Originally Posted by Turtledeluxe

Also keep in mind FFlogs for Savage and Ultimate are only one form of content. There's also a lot of people playing casual content, in fact for the game to thrive that is quite necessary....and right now it does not feel balanced to me.

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people only care about numbers when the numbers matter, ie. Savage, Ultimate and, to a lesser extent Extremes. Noone really cares about how well a job does under dungeon conditions, or normal trials for that matter. Alot of this comes down to the fact you have a much wider spread of player skill and so, someone not using your raid buff optimally, or that other person has delayed the second usage by 30 second for some unknown reason.

If we take a slight detour towards fighting games. Which audience are you going to balance the characters around? The top players who know what they are doing, or the casual ones who do not care about the balance and just want to have fun. It is the same here. The balance is based on the top players and not the random player just playing to have fun and not necessarily aiming to optimise.

If you want some numbers, which might make things a bit clearer. TOP, (based on rDPS) Reaper is 11503, Machinist is 10884. That is highest DPS and lowest DPS. 619 dps difference or reaper is doing 5.6% rDPS more than MCH. Savage, Reaper 10615, Dancer, 9832. 783 rDPS difference or a 8.0% increase. I could break it down between the roles, but the differences will be even smaller.

So tell me, how do the jobs not feel balanced?

Everyone wants to do more damage, because it gets you clears, and is used as an indirect metric of your skill as a player.

When you ask for a job to unilaterally do more damage than all the others based on the anecdotal claim that it is 'more difficult to play than the others', it's well worth remembering that you're also implying that the job in question is too difficult for you. When sufficiently many people point out the difficulty of a job, then it gets simplified. We've already seen several examples this very expansion.

[QUOTE=Mikey_R;6230331.

So tell me, how do the jobs not feel balanced?[/QUOTE]

Because in the quest to make it easy for raiders to do damage, the rest of the content has not been adjusted so mainly all I need to clear a dungeon or even a raid is a tank, perhaps a healer if you want to speed things up. To your point everyone is basically a DPS and casual content is a zerg basically. Some of this is due to fight design and player experience, but as I keep saying I also think part of it is that jons havr been made easier, higher damage, more defensive options etc.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Everyone wants to do more damage, because it gets you clears, and is used as an indirect metric of your skill as a player.

When you ask for a job to unilaterally do more damage than all the others based on the anecdotal claim that it is 'more difficult to play than the others', it's well worth remembering that you're also implying that the job in question is too difficult for you. When sufficiently many people point out the difficulty of a job, then it gets simplified. We've already seen several examples this very expansion.

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From what I've been told by others, devs have made public statements regarding their approach to job difficulty and how it correlates to that job's DPS, so by extension it's not anecdotal in nature. I'm not sure who is calling for unilaterally higher DPS but whenever I see posts like this I can't help but think they're projection. Having thoughts about job balance doesn't automatically mean someone is bad at the game or that they want high DPS just because or some gripe with Ultimates. Making claims like this without any evidence is unnecessary and irrelevant to the subject. If you're saying a class is easier to play and that their difficulty is a myth, just say that and explain your position.

Offhand, the only official reference that I can think about balancing job DPS against 'job difficulty' is the following: Link

'When balancing jobs, each job's base damage numbers at the applicable item level are adjusted with respect to the difficulty of playing that particular job and its rotation, as well as its support actions and their effects.'

It just sounds like a blanket statement to cover why there are differences in damage between the subroles, without actually elaborating on specifics of why. It's worth remembering that exact same official statement also implied that melee dps is intrinsically 'more difficult' than casters which are intrinsically 'more difficult' than physical ranged. This is a stance that I personally disagree with because of how subjective 'difficulty' is. I'd rather just give everyone rDPS parity and level the playing field, and I encourage you to seek equality on those terms. But if you want to argue that you should be doing more damage than everyone else because you feel that you're playing a 'very difficult' job, then please don't be surprised or upset at the ensuing rework.

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Originally Posted by Turtledeluxe

Because in the quest to make it easy for raiders to do damage, the rest of the content has not been adjusted so mainly all I need to clear a dungeon or even a raid is a tank, perhaps a healer if you want to speed things up. To your point everyone is basically a DPS and casual content is a zerg basically. Some of this is due to fight design and player experience, but as I keep saying I also think part of it is that jons havr been made easier, higher damage, more defensive options etc.

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I do not see what balance between the jobs has anything to do with this.

Raiders are not advocating to makes jobs easier, it tends to be other players who say it is too hard.

In regards to job kits, each expansion is balanced around the job's new kits and the extra damage they do. All the small buffs you see every now and then in patch notes really do not increase damage much, so that will not impact clear times much. As for making jobs easier, that is to lower the skill floor, so that it is easier for the lower skilled players to do more damage, and bring them inline with the damage the content is actually balanced around.

However, you STILL haven't said WHY the jobs feel unbalanced. You have just made some vague statements, but you haven't explained them.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

Again, the vague statement of, 'knowing what you are doing' doesn't help. What level of knowing is required. Knowing you have to hit the boss with things is knowing what you are doing, but it doesn't mean you know how to play your job. This is where my example of someone not doing a basic combo right came into it. Technically, doing 321 is knowing what you are doing (hitting the boss), but noone is going to call that someone knowing what they are doing. So there is a minimum level that is acceptable, this is different between different people. I already stated my point, I'm just trying to pry out something a bit more concrete than 'know what you are doing'.

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Knowing how to play the class comes when you no longer feel lost when you play it. End. It's not vague. I don't know what you expect besides saying this.

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But what is fair? This is the same question I ask whenever someone brings up complexity, or depth or any other vague term. You have to have some idea about a rough range that would be deemed acceptable. Of course, it is going to fluctuate, but there must be some range you are aiming for. What is the reward for learning the job.

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The approximate range is that value that makes you clear high-level content. Is it 10%,20%,30%,40%,50%? It's the same, the reward of getting to a good degree of optimization is the ability to clear high-level content, the rest is just for pure personal enjoyment. The rest of the optimization reward is just for the glory.

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And again I asked for specifics about older expansions and what made them fun to learn, or what they did right, and you have once again failed to provide any sort of response. I can only assume, therefore, that you have nothing to provide. If you do want to comment on it, you don't even need to make a comprehensive list, just a few specific examples so that I can know where your thinking lies.

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But between the lines I gave you some examples come on!
"You knew the old smn had two dots and the aim was to keep them active constantly, with the old smn you knew you had to use tri-disaster and its reset timer and with the old smn you knew you had to use your ruin 4 stack ... With the same blm you know you have to have mana to do damage but stay as little time as possible in the ice phase, keep your dot up and have movement when needed, take advantage of paradox, transpose, procs, triplecast."

Shall we take the new smn? "honey, press the 2 buttons as you want. Ah, be careful babe, you have 6 seconds of casting every minute, it's dangerous!"

The old jobs require the player to manage more things or if we want to be picky they require to manage things.

Also slowly they are taking stuff away from the other classes without giving anything in return. And you can very well tell me: QoL, but QoL doesn't take away things to do but improve what you are doing. QoL means join phoenix and bahamut (because they basically were the same button: they were consequential every minute). QoL means autotarget boss when u use an attack. QoL means having the pet ranged attack and leaving the melee autoattack to reduce ghosting, it doesn't mean taking away the manage of dots, casts, stacks and placement of the pet. QoL doesn't mean take all positionals off me. QoL doesn't mean taking skills off me because they have to be assigned to others. QoL does not mean reduce my rotation to 123 combos that light up like tanks. QoL does not mean increasing the range of a skill by 200% because I don't know how to position myself. QoL doesn't mean taking away a skill that is the heart of the class. QoL doesn't mean increasing the hitbox of boss by "area of ​​the whole arena". QoL doesn't mean remove the task from tanks to place bosses well.
Accessibility != deprive of everything that can be optimized. Accessibility, and I repeat myself, is the way in which you make the job accessible, you accompany the player to learn it through various methodologies, not that of giving the baby food ready. It's an insult to the intelligence of the players first of all but makes the game monotonous and everything already learned and discovered.

Also there should be some kind of balance between the classes: as it was for casters in past expansions and as it is for melee. Why should a player, cynically speaking, play blm and get his guts rotten if smn doesn't bring big optimizations to do but is a self-playing class and has a big damage output with minimal variance? Why should a static risk bringing a blm that needs to understand how to optimize itself even during raids, when it can be on the safe side with a smn that just needs to have played it one day as a maximum requirement? Here are two thing: or remove the optimizations from everyone making the jobs embarrassingly the same and empty, or reverse the course which in the long term is perhaps the most sensible one with classes that have their own core and resources to manage and optimize.

Your definition sets an incredibly low bar for what constitutes 'knowing how to play a job.' There are plenty of people who don't 'feel lost' when playing a job freestyle but have no clue what they're doing. Conscious competence is only the final step in skill acquisition.

Reading through your post, it sounds like you find BLM to be too difficult and you're not having fun on it. And if there's enough people echoing that sentiment, the developer tendency is to simplify it down.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Your definition sets an incredibly low bar for what constitutes 'knowing how to play a job.' There are plenty of people who don't 'feel lost' when playing a job freestyle but have no clue what they're doing. Conscious competence is only the final step in skill acquisition.

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But in casual content Is It really relevant? When a player want play high level content, he will crash with optimization gap requested and he's pushed to optimize (and until now thats It). But if designers for a fantastic accessibility crusade remove this gap, What Is the point to play?

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Reading through your post, it sounds like you find BLM to be too difficult and you're not having fun on it. And if there's enough people echoing that sentiment, the developer tendency is to simplify it down.

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uhmm no, in fact for me the smn should have optimization like all class (also blm) i think Is really bad have a class like new smn. Its a dangerous precedent for the game in many aspect (from empty levelling experience but expecially for almost non-existenting optimization). Seems a class make with listlessness by designers.

You're revising your previous definition. Your new definition of 'knowing how to play a job' is not merely a sense of 'not feeling lost', but rather being able to do raid level optimization on it, which is a standard I'd agree with. Did you have a change of heart on your earlier discussion points?

I think if your primary concern is that you find that optimizing SMN is unsatisfying, the solution is to look at ways to improve SMN's design to add more layers to its optimization. I think that should be your focus, rather than on how frustrated you are with having to optimize on BLM, because that just pushes for an unnecessary rework when there may be players who actually like the job's design.

One discussion point that I'm always interested is in how expansion abilities impact a rotation. If you were limited to adding three new abilities to SMN next expansion to maximize the depth that you're looking for, how would you go about it? I think that's the most useful sort of feedback at this point in the expansion cycle, because otherwise they might come back with a Ruin V animation reskin or something else equally uninteresting. Working with what you've got, how can you make it better?

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Originally Posted by Lyth

You're revising your previous definition. Your new definition of 'knowing how to play a job' is not merely a sense of 'not feeling lost', but rather being able to do raid level optimization on it, which is a standard I'd agree with

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So by this reasoning either you are Max Verstappen or you don't know how to drive?

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Did you have a change of heart on your earlier discussion points?

I think if your primary concern is that you find that optimizing SMN is unsatisfying, the solution is to look at ways to improve SMN's design to add more layers to its optimization. I think that should be your focus, rather than on how frustrated you are with having to optimize on BLM, because that just pushes for an unnecessary rework when there may be players who actually like the job's design.

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W8 my discussion points still the same. In my discussion i have every time made a distintct differentations between (summary):

know to play a job -> feels good with class after figuring out my skills and having button-skills in mind. i know what im doing, i clear casual content without problem

grades of optimization after know to play a job -> i know my class and I understand how to optimize my rotation constantly after dedication (with various levels of completeness). My reward is possibility to clear high level content and eternal glory when parse 100.

accessibility -> Does the game allow me to understand what I am learning during levelling? Does it offer me textual content and game content that allows me to understand the skills I'm learning and to get a more or less idea of ​​how to use them? ---- not equal to deprive of everything that can be optimized.


Furthermore i dont think that BLM Need a dps buff or some rework (I may have expressed myself badly, but I don't think so), but the dissatisfaction in my opinion is precisely the fact of having to compete with a class that should in current state be able to participate only in casual and old content for the reasons I wrote earlier. (And I write this from a person who has always the smn as main class on ff14)
so maybe you are confusing with another person

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One discussion point that I'm always interested is in how expansion abilities impact a rotation. If you were limited to adding three new abilities to SMN next expansion to maximize the depth that you're looking for, how would you go about it? I think that's the most useful sort of feedback at this point in the expansion cycle, because otherwise they might come back with a Ruin V animation reskin or something else equally uninteresting. Working with what you've got, how can you make it better?

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In fact, in various posts on ideas for smn I have expressed mine, especially in the one currently in evidence on forum. Clearly these are just proposals and mental movies because the trend will be just to add a new Ruin V animation reskin as you said.

this is how it once was or should be:

Sam= Blm (Top A dps, low R dps, No utility)
Mkn = Smn = Mch* (Mid A dps, Mid R dps, Mid utility)
Drg = Nin = (low A dps, Top R dps, No utility)
Rdm = Brd = Dnc (low A dps, mid R dps, Top utility)
...
* Mch should have some utility, ... if not, put it up there with Sam & Blm?? (utility, as support, not dps buffs)
...
forgot Rpr, not sure where to put

(R dps = dps buffs for others, utility = support for others, but NOT dps buffs)

edit: A & R dps should be much closer to eachother too..

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Originally Posted by Ggwppino

Knowing how to play the class comes when you no longer feel lost when you play it. End. It's not vague. I don't know what you expect besides saying this.

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Again, a vague answer with no real definition. Lyth has already mentioned the issue.

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The approximate range is that value that makes you clear high-level content. Is it 10%,20%,30%,40%,50%? It's the same, the reward of getting to a good degree of optimization is the ability to clear high-level content, the rest is just for pure personal enjoyment. The rest of the optimization reward is just for the glory.

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Again, a vague answer. You need a difference between the baseline and what is expected for the harder content. So, what is generally an accepted increase? 1% isn't going to be enough, 100% too much (i suspect), so, somewhere in the middle. This whole thing started with the drive to optimise and get better, so, what DPS incentive do you need to put that extra work in. It should be a simple question that isn't setting anything in concrete. More of what you yourself feel that would be acceptable. It should not be this hard.

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But between the lines I gave you some examples come on!

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Making me read between the lines is where misconceptions and assumptions are made. This is what I am trying to avoid. As I have said, I want to talk about the combat system from past expansions and how you thought it was better. I might agree with some points, I might challenge some, however, unless I have a basis to go off of, this discussion cannot happen. It almost seems like you are trying to avoid giving specifics for this exact reason.

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Shall we take the new smn? "honey, press the 2 buttons as you want. Ah, be careful babe, you have 6 seconds of casting every minute, it's dangerous!"

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I have already stated that SMN is a step too far, however, that cannot be your only point.

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The old jobs require the player to manage more things or if we want to be picky they require to manage things.

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Examples? BLM probably has more to manage now than it did in HW, despite the Enochian changes, NIN has more to manage now, BRD has more to manage now. Whilst SMN is an extreme example, I would not say it is the case for all jobs.

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And you can very well tell me:...

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I never claimed it was all QoL, just said it could be seen that way dependant on who you talk to.

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but QoL doesn't take away things to do but improve what you are doing.

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Not always, if something is not working right, or it feels bad to use, changing it or replacing it with something else that does work is indeed a QoL fix.

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it doesn't mean taking away the manage of dots, casts, stacks and placement of the pet.

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Noone claimed these were Qol changes to SMN.

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QoL doesn't mean taking skills off me because they have to be assigned to others.

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You have to trim the fat somewhere if you want new shiny buttons to press. There is only a limited space on someone's hot/crossbar after all.

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QoL does not mean increasing the range of a skill by 200% because I don't know how to position myself.

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If this is in reference to GNB and continuation, I can tell you right now it is a very welcome change.

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QoL doesn't mean taking away a skill that is the heart of the class.

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Depends why the action was taken away/changed.

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QoL doesn't mean increasing the hitbox of boss by "area of ​​the whole arena".

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Noone wanted this.

[QUOTE]QoL doesn't mean remove the task from tanks to place bosses well.[.QUOTE]

Alot of tanks would agree with this as well, myself included.

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Accessibility != deprive of everything that can be optimized. Accessibility, and I repeat myself, is the way in which you make the job accessible, you accompany the player to learn it through various methodologies, not that of giving the baby food ready. It's an insult to the intelligence of the players first of all but makes the game monotonous and everything already learned and discovered.

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Is it accessibility to change Enochian to a trait where it basically became useless as a button? How about Blood of the Dragon? Greased Lighting? These were things that you never had to manage to one degree or another. So what is the point in keeping them? If keeping them as they are limited design choices, but changing them opened up new avenues for creativity, should it not be changed? You wouldn't have everything you have on BLM as it is now if Enochian wasn't changed, you might not have had LotD if BotD was kept as it was, MNK would have gone another expansion of getting nothing just because of GL.

The issue with casters is that it is supposed to be built around this idea of doing big damage at a distance while being immobile, so it is about understanding how to position oneself. The summoner is easier to play but that doesn't really address the problem with having an immobile caster in a game that wants people to move around. Also, when saying they are immobile it has nothing to do with their ability to 'mitigate' the issue through skills, it has to do with the fact they need to mitigate the casting bar bit in the first place.

The philosophy of the job class is thus "you have a cast bar but your entire life is to make sure you do not use a cast bar when it matters". That is even more boss dependent than a melee class or even tank job. All the while the casters are still bound by the same old combo systems that other jobs with fewer drawbacks have.

Yeah someone can get good with a caster and make it work, but someone can also get good with a melee or ranged dps and get similar results without all the baggage. Summoner maybe vapidly simplified, but the reason people have it as the most played caster is that it is the least chained up of the casters. BLM is a close second in the three and RDM has fallen from grace a ton. Somehow the caster that has the bouncy melee combo is the least maneuverable and most pain in the rear job to play now.

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Originally Posted by Cicero634

Also yes BLM is engaging but not in the same way you are playing around the fight because you have broken legs. But you aren't playing around your resources, dots, charges, ect.

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I would say BLM rotation is all about adjusting and planning ahead based on your resources, dots, charges, as well as upcoming mechanics and movement.